In my recent article – How to Watch Ancient Aliens (Responsibly) – I argue that, although the “ancient alien astronaut theory” is fun and intriguing, one ought to maintain a degree of skepticism. It has always seemed to me that this theory appeals to people because they are amazed by wonders of the ancient world. We know that the builders only had primitive tools, and we are simply amazed by the fact that they could have built such massive and puzzling structures. They had no Caterpillar tractors, no Home Depot down the street, and no instructional videos on You Tube. We find ourselves craving explanations, up to and including extraterrestrial intervention.
However, I think we also wonder why they would have done it. We look to explain their motives. I.e. the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Moai statues on Easter Island, the Nazca lines: they all seem like a LOT of work for their perceived utility, an amazing amount of work; and we find ourselves craving explanations for that aspect too. Consider Stonehenge and Serpent Mound as two examples. Both have qualities of celestial alignment that would be useful for calendars, agricultural decisions, coordinated religious ceremonies, etc. However, it is hard not to think that there could have been an easier way to mark those changes in the sky. “We rolled a small rock over there. We marked an SE on it for Spring Equinox. Can we go fishing now?”
I have been thinking about this question, the “why” of ancient monuments, and have come up with a theory. Perhaps not a stand-alone theory, but I think it offers a potential supplement to any other theory that might be on the table (even the “ancient alien” theory). To explain, let me digress and talk briefly about my job.
I work at a university and have several part-time student workers under my supervision. My job revolves around a series of deadline cycles for scholarships, and what I can delegate to those students tends to rise and fall from week to week based on those deadlines. Feast or famine. We had a “famine week” recently, and the students were repeatedly asking me: “Do you have anything you want me to do? Was there something else you wanted me to work on?” During one particularly long shift, I was starting to dread the next time they would show up at my door. I found myself desperately trying to think of a project that would keep them busy, even if it was not particularly urgent or particularly necessary.
And this gave me some sudden insight. I thought about the pressure that I felt from just two student workers, and in my imagination, multiplied it times an entire civilization. I suddenly had a vision of myself instructing my student workers to build a great monolithic structure outside my building: “Oh yes, this project will take years. Well, we want to, um, honor the gods of learning. No, I’d prefer you get the rocks from fifty miles away. Yes, of course we want to make it a little bigger than the other monuments on campus. Yes, we may not get it done until after you graduate.”
Thus, if you are trying to understand why the ancient monuments were built, it might be helpful to imagine that ancient rulers, both secular and religious, were constantly confronted with basically that same question: “So what now, boss? What do you want us to do next?” In some of the cultures that left behind great and enigmatic structures, they were clearly experiencing a level of agricultural success and a shift toward greater social and economic complexity. In others, they may have been experiencing the unraveling of those systems. But in either case, it occurred to me that any person who found themselves ruling would, organically and increasingly, feel the pressure to direct the energies of his/her subjects in order to provide meaning and maintain control.
I realized that a partial explanation for the enormous trouble that went into ancient monumental sites is, quite simply, that a civilization needs to work on something. At a certain level of development, societies may have many people with many skills, but they may not have sufficient social, economic, political and technological complexity for that individual labor to be productively dispersed in a million different directions all the time. At the same time, leadership always exists and always wants to stay in power. And in those times, that leadership was almost always autocratic, at least to some extent. In that context, it seems logical to imagine the natural invention of such projects.
Of course, many of these monuments likely had religious significance as well as political significance, and I do not question the centrality of these religious motivations. But I also do not believe my theory fundamentally contradicts fervent religious belief/concentrated religious power. To bring the answer to “Is there anything else you want us to do?” in alignment with “What do the gods want?” seems like an entirely fortuitous synergy that smart pharaohs, chiefs, kings, shamans, or priests would have been more than happy to exploit.
With that in mind, I would also note that my theory is compatible with despotic rule. When I have seen pictures of the pyramids at Giza in the past, I have often thought that the pharaohs, demanding the labor (and most likely forced labor) of so many people, must have been incredibly arrogant. And I still pretty much think that. I am sure that the “keeping people busy” motive often grew malignant over time, was applied with a cruel hand, or became tangled with ego and self-interest in awful ways. Rulers would have felt pressure to keep slaves busy too. To keep vassals in their constant service. “No, student workers, I have decided you cannot graduate until my monument is done! Working on monuments to learning is what student workers do! It has been thus for generations!”
Even so, when wondering about the “why” of enigmatic monumental sites of the ancient world, my argument is simply that it might be helpful to see/imagine rulers trying to keep people busy, trying to organize their labor in ways that would be advantageous to their control. In other words, if you find yourself looking at or reading about a site and wondering, “What was the purpose of this site? Why did they go to so much trouble to build this” one partial answer might be that its purpose, the explanation for the massive effort, was the effort itself.
Oh, and if my student workers are reading this, I want them to know that the stuff we need to get done next week is really important.