Thor Heyerdahl KStJ was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in biology with specialization in zoology, botany and geography.
Sir David Frederick Attenborough is a British broadcaster, biologist, natural historian, and writer. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Studios Natural History Unit, the nine nature documentary series forming the Life collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
Erich Anton Paul von Däniken is a Swiss author of several pseudoscientific books which make claims about extraterrestrial influences on early human culture, including the best-selling Chariots of the Gods?, published in 1968. Von Däniken is one of the main figures responsible for popularizing the "paleo-contact" and ancient astronauts hypotheses.
Ancient astronauts refers to a pseudoscientific set of beliefs that hold that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistoric times. Proponents of the theory suggest that this contact influenced the development of modern cultures, technologies, religions, and human biology. A common position is that deities from most religions are extraterrestrial in origin, and that advanced technologies brought to Earth by ancient astronauts were interpreted as evidence of divine status by early humans.
Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past is a book written in 1968 by Erich von Däniken and translated from the original German by Michael Heron. It involves the hypothesis that the technologies and religions of many ancient civilizations were given to them by ancient astronauts who were welcomed as gods.
Life on Earth: A Natural History by David Attenborough is a British television natural history series made by the BBC in association with Warner Bros. Television and Reiner Moritz Productions. It was transmitted in the UK from 16 January 1979.
Graham Bruce Hancock is a British writer who promotes pseudoarchaeological and other pseudoscientific theories involving ancient civilizations and hypothetical lost lands. Hancock speculates that an advanced ice age civilization with spiritual technology was destroyed in a cataclysm, but that its survivors passed on their knowledge to hunter-gatherers, giving rise to the earliest known civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica.
Mu is a lost continent introduced by Augustus Le Plongeon (1825–1908), who identified the "Land of Mu" with Atlantis. The name was subsequently identified with the hypothetical land of Lemuria by James Churchward (1851–1936), who asserted that it was located in the Pacific Ocean before its destruction. The place of Mu in both pseudoscience and fantasy fiction is discussed in detail in Lost Continents by L. Sprague de Camp.
Moai or moʻai are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Rapa Nui in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the island's perimeter. Almost all moai have overly large heads, which account for three-eighths of the size of the whole statue. They also have no legs. The moai are chiefly the living faces of deified ancestors.
Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology is a book by Kenneth L. Feder on the topic of pseudoarchaeology. Feder is an emeritus professor of archaeology at Central Connecticut State University.
The Song of the Earth: A Natural History of Music is a BBC documentary presented by David Attenborough and written and directed by Grant Sonnex. It was first transmitted in 2000 and is part of the Attenborough in Paradise and Other Personal Voyages collection of 7 documentaries.
Natural World is a strand of British wildlife documentary programmes broadcast on BBC Two and BBC Two HD and regarded by the BBC as its flagship natural history series. It is the longest-running documentary in its genre on British television, with nearly 500 episodes broadcast since its inception in 1983. Natural World programmes are typically one-off films that take an in-depth look at particular natural history events, stories or subjects from around the globe.
Sophora toromiro, commonly known as toromiro, is a species of flowering tree in the legume family, Fabaceae, that is endemic to Easter Island.
Rapa Nui National Park is a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located on Easter Island, Chile. Rapa Nui is the Polynesian name of Easter Island; its Spanish name is Isla de Pascua. The island is located in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeastern extremity of the Polynesian Triangle. The island was taken over by Chile in 1888. Its fame and World Heritage status arise from the 887 extant stone statues known by the name "moai", whose creation is attributed to the early Rapa Nui people who inhabited the island starting between 300 and 1200 AD. Much of the island has been declared as Rapa Nui National Park which, on 22 March 1996, UNESCO designated a World Heritage Site under cultural criteria (i), (iii), & (v). Rapa Nui National Park is now under the administrative control of the Ma´u Henua Polynesian Indigenous Community, which is the first autonomous institute on the island. The indigenous Rapa Nui people have regained authority over their ancestral lands and are in charge of the management, preservation and protection of their patrimony. On the first of December 2017, the ex-President Michelle Bachelet returned ancestral lands in the form of the Rapa Nui National Park to the indigenous people. For the first time in history, the revenue generated by the National Park is invested in the island and used to conserve the natural heritage.
Makemake in the Rapa Nui mythology of Easter Island is the creator of humanity, the god of fertility and the chief god of the "Tangata manu" or bird-man sect. He appeared to be the local form, or name, of the old Polynesian god Tane. He had no wife.
Attenborough in Paradise and Other Personal Voyages is a DVD collection of seven David Attenborough BBC documentary specials.
"The Amber Time Machine" is the 12th episode of the 22nd series of the British wildlife documentary BBC television series Natural World and is presented by David Attenborough. It is It was first transmitted in 2004 and later became part of the Attenborough in Paradise and Other Personal Voyages collection of seven documentaries.
Ancient astronauts have been addressed frequently in science fiction and horror fiction. Occurrences in the genres include:
Madagascar is a British nature documentary series, first broadcast on BBC Two and BBC HD in February 2011. Produced by the BBC Natural History Unit and Animal Planet and narrated by David Attenborough, the three-part series focuses on the landscape and wildlife of the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Attenborough also appears briefly on camera at the beginning and end of the series. Each episode is followed by a ten-minute Madagascar Diaries segment, illustrating the techniques used to film a particular subject.
The mythology of Indonesia is very diverse, the Indonesian people consisting of hundreds of ethnic groups, each with their own myths and legends that explain the origin of their people, the tales of their ancestors and the demons or deities in their belief systems. The tendency to syncretize by overlying older traditions with newer foreign ideas has occurred. For example, the older ancestral mythology might be merged with foreign mythology, such as Hindu, Islam, or Christian biblical mythology.
