Carson and the Pseudo-Archeologists

Presidential candidate Ben Carson made use of his Seventh-Day Adventist convictions to interpret the Pyramids as grain silos, provoking reactions from many archeologists, such as Kristina Killgrove, who pointed out not only various issues with the claim but also to general recent efforts in combating pseudo-archeology in the first place. The most interesting of these are the initiative to review pseudo-archeological work in archeological reviews and the link to a Fall 2015 university course on that problem.

My take-home quote for right now is

In the second review, The Ancient Alien Question, archaeologist Jeb Card points out, as does Feder, that the origins of this idea lay in Victorian mysticism and Theosophy, a movement that “blended hermetic magic, spiritualism, Western curiosity ab[o]ut Eastern religion, colonial racism, and misconceptions of evolution into a worldview of root races, lost continents, and ascended masters who originated on Venus or other worlds.