History Main / AncientAstronauts

** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E3TheStonesOfBlood The Stones Of Blood]]" Cessair was an alien who also took on the identity of Vivien Fay, Morgana Le Fay, The Goddess and The Cailleach. Also her [[SiliconBasedLife Ogri]] acted as some of the stones in stonehenge.

** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E3TheStonesOfBlood The Stones Of Blood" Cessair was an alien who also took on the identity of Vivien Fay, Morgana Le Fay, The Goddess and The Cailleach. Also her [[SiliconBasedLife Ogri]] acted as some of the stones in stonehenge.

* Music/Doctor Steel was a firm believer in Zechariah Sitchin's theory that humanity was created by aliens that posed as gods to the ancient Sumerians, and also believed there was a secret alien illuminati still in control of world affairs. Several of his songs and videos reflect this belief.

* Music/Doctor Steel was a firm believer ([[OrIsIt or was he?]]) that not only did ancient aliens make us, but there was a secret alien illuminati in control of world affairs. Several of his songs and videos reflect this belief.

* LarryNiven did this a few times; the Pak actually were humans, or at least humans were a variant of the Pak, it is implied that the Thrintun were the source of the beginnings of life on Earth, and a non-Niven story set in Niven's world mentions an abortive Kzin visit resulting in myths about particularly nasty tigers.

* In ''The Wild Boy'', it's indicated the Iani, the creatures who created the Lindauzi, also visited Earth and possibly spawned humanity-the two races are definitely related somehow.

* The SagaOfPlioceneExile by Creator/JulianMay has humans being the descendants of ancient astronauts from another galaxy who interbred with time travelling humans from the near future from our point of view. Most names for the aliens and locations are corrupted from Celtic, especially Irish, mythology. It's implied that the alien/human civilisation a few million years in the past is somehow responsible for the eventual occurrence of homo sapiens and Irish myths, although it's never explained how this was supposed to work. Also a good example of AMythologyIsTrue.

* The alien entity Lavos, in ''Chrono Trigger'' and ''Chrono Cross'' is revealed to had caused the final evolution step of neanderthal-ish hominids into humans and be the chief influence in the raise of the most magically and technologically advanced civilizations of the world.

* The backstory of ''WesterAnimation/RoswellConspiracies'' is that [[AllMythsAreTrue mythological creatures]] are actually aliens who came to the earth centuries ago.

* In the post ''Infinite Crisis'' retcon, [[Comicbook/{{Legion of Super-Heroes}} the Daxamite race]], an off-shoot of the more famous [[{{Superman}} Kryptonian race]] with the ability to interbreed with human, has been shown sending their explorer on Earth, in ancient times. Due to Daxamites and Kryptonians gaining {{Superman}}-like powers from a yellow sun, they gave themselves a strict ''no sex'' rule. That didn't prevent them from passing down the history af the Gods of the Mesoamerican pantheon.
** Actually, some Daxamites were more lax than others in self-discipling themselves. While some of their offspring lead humanity to formulate legends about demigods and other mythical heroes, a particular Daxamite, Bal Gand, escaped back on Daxam, programming her ship to carry her MixedAncestry future son back to Earth if he was ever ostracized for that.
*** He didn't, but many centuries later, during a xenophobic upheaval on Daxam, her descendant Lar Gand found the ship meant for his ancestor, crashlanding in Smallville, home of a certain Clark Kent...

* ''MissionToMars'' reveals the origin and purpose of the mysterious face on Mars [[spoiler:and that all life on Earth was seeded by ancient astronauts fleeing a dying Mars.]] The fact that later, higher-res photos proved in real life that the Mars Face doesn't actually look anything like a face slightly ruins the effect.
** Who cares, it's fiction anyways.
*** Also somewhat [[HandWave explained]] with a line from Luke to the effect that the face, having been buried in dirt in the intervening millennia since its construction, looks somewhat different than its architects intended. Indeed, when [[spoiler: the security system activates]], one of the side effects is a nice dusting. (One [[FridgeLogic wonders]] why the aliens wouldn't have taken erosion and weather patterns into account when building it, but there you go.)

* Implied in ''[[TenThousandBC 10,000 B.C.]]''. The slaves say that The God of the Pyramid came down from the stars.
** Others say he's from Atlantis, so we get two common flavors of this trope.
*** It could be both, actually.

*** But it was the Elder Things (also often called the Old Ones) that started the life on this planet. Why? To get meat and slave-labour. Or by accident, or as a joke.
* David Gerrold and Larry Niven's novel ''The Flying Sorcerers'' neatly serves this trope, by having a human explorer be stranded on a distant planet through the actions of primitive aborigines that think he's a magician -- an ''invading'' magician. He is forced to enlist their help to get to a location on their planet where he can signal his orbiting mothership for aid -- and to do so, creates all sorts of legends in the process, as he is forced to teach the aborigines such principles as electricity and airtightness, to fashion a powered balloon to get him where he needs to go.
** He also "invents" interchangeable parts and money; if he'd only had the good sense to bring [[EarthsChildren Ayla]] with him, he'd have also been able to manage sex-toys, the steam engine, and double-entry book-keeping.
*** It does help that the explorer just happens to be based on [[spoiler:Creator/IsaacAsimov]].

* ''Series/StargateSG1'' takes this to its logical extreme. Virtually every culture's gods or mythic figures (right up to KingArthur) have, in the course of the show, been revealed to be inspired or coopted by aliens of one form or another. Mostly, they were the Goa'uld, which began as the Egyptian gods and spread from there, though the benevolent Asgard were the [[NorseMythology Norse gods]], and [[KingArthur Merlin]] was a SufficientlyAdvancedAlien. The Christian God has been notably absent, though one Goa'uld was posing as Satan.
** To be fair, however, the Goa'uld were evicted from Earth before the beginning of Christianity. The Goa'uld posing as Satan, had started out posing as the Egyptian Seker, and just slowly morphed into a version of the devil from there, and he would naturally assumed to be so by Christians offworld.
** While ''Stargate'' has pointedly avoided addressing the Judeo-Christian-Islamic Deity directly, presumably to avoid offending "certain people," it can be easily argued that the Ori are representative of the darker side of Christian history, particularly the Crusades and Inquisition.
*** Such events have occurred in the histories of many religions that were "spread by the sword."
** This was alluded to when Daniel explained how there is a point in human history where humans suddenly stopped worshiping fire (a representation of the Ori) and started worshiping pure white light (a representation of the Ancients, which are pretty angelic like)
** SG-1 have also shown some Goa'uld posing as Greek Titans and Oriental gods, as well as Mayan crystal skulls as alien communication devices, and Aztec having their own alien descendants and ancestors. For example, the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl is actually a giant alien made out of smoke.
*** However, Lord Zipacna posed as a Mayan deity of the same name, meaning not all Mesoamerican deities were "giant aliens".

*** Which is odd given at least one Goa'uld Mother proved 'perverse' by the standards of the rest and produced a line of symbiotes that were true companions to their human hosts rather than enslaving them. With the example of at least one turning benign the statement that none could become so compassionate seems off.
*** Not to mention that plenty of other religions, including ancient Egyptian, have deities defined by their benevolence and compassion, while the Old Testament features a God who at times shows extremely Goa'uld-like pettiness and obsession with power.

** In the episode "Blink of an Eye", the ''crew of Voyager'' become Ancient Astronauts to a civilization on a planet that exists in enormously accelerated time; from the viewpoint of the planet, Voyager is in their sky for basically the sum total of civilization, and eventually they advance their technology to the point where they can go out into space to meet them.
*** The aliens don't know about the time dilation though, and by the time the explorers make contact it's more than a generation later on the planet and they start trying to shoot down the alien ship that so callously destroyed their peaceful explorers. The ship is only saved when one of the explorers goes back to explain things, then returns to Voyager with ships specifically built to move Voyager out and break the time acceleration.
** "Dragon's Teeth" involves a race of aliens who used a naturally occurring network of dimensional tunnels to carve out an empire. When their oppressed subjects eventually overthrew them, some retreated into cryostasis to wait for a more opportune time. By the time of the series, most cultures in the Delta Quadrant only remember them as cruel trickster demons in a few very old legends.
*** For reference, in the time they ruled (about 900 years before the series timeline), they remember the Borg as being mostly harmless and confined to but a few systems.

** The Colonials themselves, if their costuming is any indication, are also meant to be AncientAstronauts or at least some sort of {{Precursors}}. Their starfighter pilots wear "Pharonic" helmets evidently meant to have inspired Tutankhamen's burial mask, and bridge officers wear a very distinctive octagonal cloak, like the classical Greek chalmys.
*** The missing 13th colony, which they're looking for, is Earth. [[spoiler:(In TheOriginalSeries they find it. They find it in the new one too, but because the new one is DarkerAndEdgier, it's been nuked to hell and gone).]]
**** [[spoiler:In the finale of the new series, it turns out that that wasn't ''our'' Earth that was nuked. It ends with the survivors settling on our planet, which they name Earth -- about 150,000 years ago, meaning this trope applies to the entirety of the show.]]

** In "The Satan Pit," it hung a lampshade; The Beast claims to be an AncientAstronauts version of the Devil, but the Doctor is highly skeptical, pointing out all the various examples of the trope in different cultures on different planets. Creator/RussellTDavies describes this episode as a "sequel" to "The Daemons."
*** It's also left ambiguous as to whether the Beast actually ''is'' the Devil (as in, the real deal) or is a SufficientlyAdvancedAlien who has just served as the inspiration for that mythological archetype throughout the ages and galaxies.

** Another interesting twist from the setting are that humans are the AncientAstronauts to other species. The Tau are one of the few species this happened to and who still exist; the ancient technology that the Tau found? A ''human'' ship that was supposed to wipe them out but was caught in a warpstorm.
*** However, most other primitive species found by the Imperium tend to die via zenophobic planet cleansing.

** It was seemingly implied that Forerunners were actually humans, what with 343 Guilty Spark's belief in the first game that he had somehow already talked to the Master Chief in the prehistoric past and the fact that much of Forerunner technology could only be activated by humans, among many other things, but ''HaloCryptum'' revealed that Forerunners were actually a separate species who were simply somewhat biologically related to humans. In fact, "prehistoric" humans(and their Prophet allies) had independently developed their own advanced interstellar empire, but ended up losing a war with the Forerunners. In the aftermath, humanity was stripped of its technology and forcibly devolved.
*** Guilty Spark's seemingly faulty memory might be due to the Forerunner geas (heritable genetic commands) placed on various human lineages, one of which apparently shares some relation with the Master Chief.

** In another episode they played this trope straight, with the pyramids being built by Alien cats.
*** They did so to rob Earth of its rotational energy, which seems to be a play on a Real Life theory that pyramids are giant hydrogen engines used to power a microwave power station, which in turn powered star ships in orbit.

* "Real life" example: DavidIcke's book ''TheBiggestSecret'' is a conspiracy theory claiming that not only did reptilian aliens found the great ancient civilizations of Earth, they also continue to rule the Earth from the shadows.
** ...and apparently don't mind the masses knowing that they rule secretly, since they allowed the publication of that book.
*** Or that their conspiracy received publicity due to a [[http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/11/23/so_why_would_someone_for_the_lizard_people/?refid=0 bizarre incident in the 2008 Minnesota US Senate race recount controversy.]]
**** Why should they? Everybody thinks that the people telling the thing are deluded retards, which just strengthens their conspiracy! It's not like anyone can now come forth with evidence without being laughed out of the room.
**** It's not like they'd be monitoring all Earth media, waiting to snatch authors away in the [[JustForFun/CandleJack mid-sentence]].
**** There's also a theory that the reptilian data is misinformation fed to Icke, in order to discredit him as he got too close to the real {{Illuminati}}.

** [[FutureImperfect Three thousand years later...]]
** In a similar vein, [[http://www.nationalcathedral.org/about/darthVader.shtml the National Cathedral]] in UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC has, and I kid you not, a [[StarWars Darth Vader]] Grotesque. [[WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}} Stone By Day, Dark Lord of the Sith by Night]]...
* The theory of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia panspermia/exogenesis]] posits that Earth's life has an extra-terrestrial origin.
** Though, a good portion of those theories are less "extraterrestrials intentionally planted the seeds for life on Earth" and more "meteorites with the chemicals needed to develop life happened to smash into Earth from somewhere else in the universe."
* Another "Real Life" example: Bible scholar [[http://www.sitchin.com/ Zechariah Sitchin]] firmly believes this to be fact. And his supposed source? The Bible itself. His works, The Earth Chronicles series, detail his studies and interpretations.
* Also, for...some reason, [[{{Kesha}} Ke$ha]] in [[http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/keha-tik-tok/1219714/ this clip]]

* The theory has been somewhat debunked regarding Stonehenge. A man working by himself is building a replica in his backyard using nothing but simple machines (mostly levers). At least he has proven that aliens didn't need to be involved.

When this trope kicks in, [[NoSuchThingAsSpaceJesus expect various myths to be actually related to aliens]]. Everyone knows about ClarkesThirdLaw: the ''many'' legends of magic, gods, beings coming from the sky and the like were actually based on alien technology that we could not comprehend at that time.

Popularized by Erich von Däniken's 1968 book ''Chariots of the Gods'' and its various sequels, which stridently insist that a careful blend of selected archaeological evidence will reveal that this very scenario happened in reality. The Real Life evidence for this, however, is little. However, if it's brought up in fiction, [[TheCuckoolanderWasRight expect these theories to be always right on the money]]. After all, it's not like either aliens ''or'' ancient humans would be interesting enough to write fiction about on their own, without them interacting, would they?

* ''AlienVsPredator'' actually provides a rationale for why the visitors were regarded as godlike beings but still only influenced humanity in the pyramid-building direction: Earth was [[spoiler:(and still is)]] a rite-of-passage hunting ground, only visited once every century in designated sites built for the purpose. Occasionally, things got out of hand and the visitors had to resort to continent-blasting weapons.

* In the German sci-fi series ''Literature/PerryRhodan'', Atlan the Arkonide (more than 10,000 years old and immortal due to some AppliedPhlebotinum granted to him by a SufficientlyAdvancedAlien EnergyBeing) is supposed to be responsible for some of the oldest human myths, like the Epic of Gilgamesh. In one of the spin-off novels, we can even see Atlan acting like a god in front of primitive humans. Atlan's people the Arkonides build their first colony on the famous Atlantide landmass (to state the obvious, it's named after him).
** Actually the Arkonides, during their early space-empire-building phase, originally founded a colony on Venus when they first found the Solar System, because Earth (or ''Larsaf 3'' as they called the planet) had technologically primitive humans on it. When an attack by another race of aliens, the Druuf, forced the Arkonides to abandon their Venus base, the surviving soldiers and settlers were relocated to Earth, where they founded their new colony of Atlantis, named after their commanding officer Atlan. When the next wave of attack hit Earth, Atlantis was destroyed, and while some of the colonists were evacuated, a number of soldiers as well as Atlan himself were left stranded on Earth and scattered, with the surviving Arkonide soldiers intermarrying with humans of stone-age and bronze-age cultures, and Atlan trapped in an underwater station where he put himself into [[SuspendedAnimation cryostasis sleep]] when no rescue ship from home arrived (the reason no help arrived was that at the time there was a brutal war going on between the Arkonides and another alien race, the Maahks, so administrators on Arkon kind of forgot about Atlan and the Larsaf-system altogether). Atlan ordered the station's positronic brain to wake him up every few centuries so he could check out how the native cultures were doing and tried to boost their technological progress in the hopes that some millennia later the humans of Earth would have advanced far enough to build spaceship capable of taking Atlan home to Arkon.
*** Centuries after the first manned moon landing had brought official first contact between Earth and Arkon, Perry Rhodan and Atlan went on an expedition to the Andromeda galaxy and found out why Arkonides and Terrans (humans from Earth), as well as a number of other humanoid races of the galaxy, were all genetically compatible. Turns out they were all descendants of the First Mankind, the Lemurians, who had evolved on the continent of Lemuria on Earth! After the Lemurians invented space-travel they colonized most of the Milky Way, before some 50,000 years ago a war with aliens as technologically advanced as themselves forced them to flee to Andromeda. Earth humans were actually the ''second'' Mankind, descended from degenerate Lemurians, while Arkonides were descended from Lemurian colonists who had [[InsufficientlyAdvancedAlien lost most of their high technology]]. (And some revisionist history censorship by the first emperors of Arkon ensured that millennia later the Arkonides did no longer remember being a bunch of mere colonists). In the ''Literature/PerryRhodan'' series, the AncientAstronauts actually ''originated'' from Earth!
**** It actually gets much worse than that. Not only was Earth the home of a vast interstellar Empire 50,000 years ago (Lemuria) and the site of a colony of descendants of that empire 10,000 years ago (Atlantis), it was also visited by aliens both with Earth-ancestry and without before during and after these events. There were significant alien presences at many times in Earth's history and at this point is hard to say if there are any myths left that ''cannot'' be traced to visitors from the stars.
** The sheer amount of ancient astronauts that have visited Earth in the Perry Rhodan Universe is perhaps better understood if one realizes that Clark Dalton, one of the [[AuthorAppeal creators]] of the series, was actually a friend of Erich van Däniken and the two wrote a sci-fi novel together about the topic of ancient astronauts.

** As pointed out in the AllMythsAreTrue entry, this turns out to have not been the best idea they ever had, especially as they're attempting to breed TheMessiah.

* The Third Kind features "evidence" of Aliens speaking Ancient Sumerian implying that they interacted with ancient sumerians possibly teaching them their native tongue.

* Although literal Chinese dragons ''do'' exist in the Marvel Universe (thanks to [[ImmortalIronFist Iron Fist's]] backstory), Marvel's most well-known ancient "dragon" is a giant alien named Fin Fang Foom.

* The heavy-metal band [[GWAR]] have a great number of songs on this theme; it could, in fact, be said to be the central theme of their music (well, apart from violence). Almost all of their songs are written from the perspectives of a group of alien warriors (one played by each band member) who were banished to the Earth millions of years ago after becoming too violent and unpredictable even for their warlike [[EldritchAbomination]] [[TheMaster master]] to tolerate and now seek a way to leave the planet. The album "Lust In Space" focused particularly heavily on this theme.

* Kyubey from ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' tries to invoke this as the result of their intervention, with human civilization and science as the result of [[spoiler:the sacrifice of Magical Girls and various historical figures such as Cleopatra herself making a DealWithTheDevil with them]]. He even comments that if they never existed, then humans would "still be living naked in caves."

--> And the smell of a world that's burned