Tsoukalos speaks at UNH

Bill Nye is a debunker of the idea of aliens, but Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, the publisher of Legendary Times Magazine and the consulting producer of the hit television show Ancient Aliens on the History Channel, is still a big fan of the scientist anyway.  In fact, a lot of people are skeptical of Tsoukalos’ studies.  But Tsoukalos doesn’t care
“You don’t need to finish the puzzle in order to see the bigger picture,” Tsoukalos said. “And people are always trying to take away the pieces.  But the ancient aliens theory is so far along that the picture is crystal clear.”
Tsoukalos was born in Switzerland, but his mother is from Austria and his father from Greece. It was because of his parents being travelers that he first developed his interest in the developments of European archeology.

“I had the great privilege of growing up with parents who were avid travelers,” Tsoukalos said, “I was blessed to go to the ancient monuments, where they hired private guides to teach me.  Those monuments were my playground.”
He had taken a particular interest in the ancient aliens theory because of his grandmother, who introduced him to alternative history.  He continued to research the history of ancient civilizations by attending lectures about the subject, and continuing to eat up the information right up to 1998, when he was asked to take over as the publisher for the English language version of Erich von Daniken magazine Legendary Times.  The magazine is the world’s only ancient astronaut publication.

“What a lot of people don’t realize is that Legendary Times was discussing these issues for more than a decade,” Tsoukalos said. “The show has only been on for two years and a month today.  But it’s already garnered so much new attention from college students who are studying anthropology, and these people are standing up and questioning what their professors say.

“But the professors won’t even entertain the thought,” he continued, “and yet it excites me to see that there is a new generation who are standing up and proposing these theories.”
In his lecture in the Strafford Room, Tsoukalos was engaged in a PowerPoint presentation, and showed the enthusiastic Ancient Aliens fanatics pictures that the modern day anthropologists dismiss as a civilization’s misinterpretation of the life around them.  He points out various characteristics of statues and models that have been dug up and features that anthropologists have written off as mythological, but he believes that it is the technologically primitive cultures’ attempts to interpret the inventions of the technologically advanced cultures.

“It’s called the Cargo Cult,” Tsoukalos said in his lecture. “It’s basically the primitive cultures being exposed to the advanced cultures, and recreating their technology, in hopes that these advanced cultures, these ‘gods’, will return.”
But Tsoukalos believes it is important to understand that gods don’t exist when considering the ancient aliens theory.

“Just because you subscribe to the ancient aliens theory, people make the mistake of believing we are atheists, and that’s the biggest misconception,” he said. “People ask me all the time if I believe in God, and I say I do, just not the God that’s described in the Old Testament.  Just because you don’t believe in one type of god, doesn’t mean you eliminate the concept of God.  It means that the idea of God is way bigger then you can ever imagine.”
The main point that Tsoukalos wants his fans, and anybody else who is even remotely interested in the subject, to understand is that it is OK to challenge what one is taught in a classroom.

“I took anthropology and archeology courses in school, but I do not have a degree in archeology and I am extremely thankful that I don’t have a paper on my wall that says I am an archeologist,” Tsoukalos said. “I am a renegade archeologist, and the ancient aliens theory does not fit into the anthropologist’s carefully cobbled-together house of cards.  But I am the one who is at the bottom, trying to pull at the bottom card.”