Walk into any museum with a solid collection of Mesopotamian or pre-Columbian artifacts and you’ll eventually hit that "wait, what?" moment. You see a figure. It's carved into basalt or limestone thousands of years ago. It looks like it’s wearing a fish-bowl helmet. It has what appear to be life-support hoses. Some people look at these and see evidence of "Ancient Astronauts"—the idea that extraterrestrials visited Earth and basically jump-started human civilization. Others see religious iconography and stylized ritual gear. Honestly, the debate over aliens in ancient art is one of the messiest, most fascinating intersections of archaeology and pop culture. It’s a rabbit hole that goes way deeper than a late-night history channel marathon.
Look at the Wanjina (or Wandjina) paintings in the Kimberley region of Australia. These are striking. Huge, white, mouthless faces with massive black eyes, surrounded by what look like halos or helmets. To a modern eye, they’re the spitting image of a "Grey" alien. But if you talk to the Mowanjum people, the traditional custodians of these images, they’ll tell you these are the creators of the landscape and the laws. They represent clouds and rain. The "helmet" is often a symbolic representation of the power they wield over the elements. Is it possible both are true? Probably not. But the visual overlap is why the internet never lets this topic die.
The Pakal "Spaceship" and the Problem of Perspective
The most famous example of aliens in ancient art is easily the lid of the sarcophagus of K’inich Janaab’ Pakal, the 7th-century ruler of the Maya city-state of Palenque. When Erich von Däniken published Chariots of the Gods in the late 1960s, he pointed at this slab of stone and claimed Pakal was reclining in a cockpit. He saw pedals, control levers, and even flames shooting out of a tailpipe.
It’s a compelling visual. Once you see the "rocket," it’s hard to un-see it.
However, Mayanists like the late Linda Schele or David Stuart have spent decades decoding the actual hieroglyphs and iconography surrounding Pakal. To an expert in Maya cosmology, this isn't a pilot in a cockpit; it’s a king at the moment of his death. He’s falling down the "World Tree" into the jaws of the underworld, Xibalba. The "flames" are actually the roots of the tree. The "oxygen mask" is a nose ornament. It’s a profound spiritual statement about the cycle of life and the divine right of kings.
We tend to project our own technological reality onto the past. We see a rocket because we live in a world of rockets.
Gold "Planes" from the Quimbaya Civilization
In South America, specifically Colombia, the Quimbaya people crafted small gold figurines between 500 and 1000 CE. Most are clearly birds, fish, or insects. But a handful of them look suspiciously like delta-wing fighter jets. They have upright vertical stabilizers (tail fins) and flat wings that aren't found on any known animal in nature.
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In the late 1990s, two German enthusiasts, Algund Eenboom and Peter Belting, actually built large-scale remote-controlled models of these "flyers." Guess what? They flew. They were aerodynamically sound.
This doesn't prove the Quimbaya saw 747s. It does, however, prove they understood the principles of lift and drag, even if they were just trying to stylize a very fast-moving fish or a moth. It’s a classic case of the "Oopart"—out-of-place artifact. It challenges our assumption that "ancient" means "ignorant of physics."
Dogon Art and the Sirius Mystery
Then you’ve got the Dogon tribe in Mali. This is where the aliens in ancient art conversation gets spooky because it involves data, not just drawings. The Dogon have a rich tradition of masks and wooden sculptures. Their oral history and sand drawings supposedly contain detailed information about the Sirius star system—specifically Sirius B, a white dwarf star that is invisible to the naked eye.
The Dogon claim they got this knowledge from the Nommo, amphibious beings from Sirius who arrived in a "vessel" that landed in a cloud of dust.
Robert Temple’s 1976 book The Sirius Mystery popularized this, but later researchers like Walter van Beek pointed out a major flaw. Van Beek, who lived with the Dogon for years, found that while they have incredible astronomical knowledge, the specific "Sirius B" details likely came from early French researchers who shared their own knowledge with the tribe in the 1930s. The Dogon, being clever and culturally fluid, incorporated this new info into their existing mythology. It’s a lesson in how "ancient" knowledge can sometimes be a feedback loop between the observer and the observed.
Renaissance UFOs: The Madonna with Saint Giovannino
It’s not just "primitive" art. The 15th-century painting The Madonna with Saint Giovannino, attributed to Domenico Ghirlandaio (or his workshop), hangs in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Over Mary’s shoulder, in the background, there is a dark, leaden-colored oval object emitting rays of light. To the right, a man and his dog are looking up at it, shading their eyes.
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Art historians call this a "luminous cloud" or a "shining star," a common motif in Renaissance art to symbolize the divine light of the Nativity. But UFO enthusiasts call it a classic "flying saucer."
Why would a Renaissance master paint a "shining star" as a metallic-looking disc?
Symbolism was the language of the era. Objects in paintings weren't always meant to be literal. A bird wasn't just a bird; it was the soul. A lily was purity. A disc in the sky was the "Cloud of Glory." But the sheer specificity of the man shielding his eyes makes it feel weirdly witness-like. It’s that ambiguity that keeps the "ancient alien" theory alive. It’s the gap between what we see and what they meant.
The Tassili n'Ajjer "Great Martian God"
In the Sahara Desert, specifically the Tassili n'Ajjer plateau in Algeria, there are thousands of rock paintings dating back over 8,000 years. One of them is a massive figure nicknamed the "Great Martian God." It’s a round-headed giant with no facial features, wearing a heavy suit.
When the French archaeologist Henri Lhote first saw these in the 1950s, he joked about them looking like Martians. The name stuck.
The reality is likely tied to shamanic trance states. Cultures across the globe, from the San in South Africa to the Chumash in California, have created "big-headed" rock art. Anthropologists like David Lewis-Williams suggest these are depictions of shamans "out of body," seeing themselves or spirits in distorted, glowing forms during rituals. The "suit" might just be ritual body paint or grass-woven garments.
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But even with that explanation, the visual remains haunting. It’s easy to see why someone would skip the "shamanic ritual" explanation and go straight to "interstellar visitor."
Why We Want to Believe
Humans are pattern-matching machines. We see faces in clouds and "astronauts" in petroglyphs because our brains are hardwired to find familiar signals in noise. This is called pareidolia. When we see aliens in ancient art, we are often just seeing our own modern technological reflection.
There is also a darker side to this. Many critics point out that the "Ancient Aliens" theory can be inadvertently dismissive of human ingenuity. It suggests that our ancestors—especially non-European ones—weren't smart enough to build the Pyramids, Puma Punku, or Teotihuacán on their own. It’s a way of saying, "If I can't figure out how they did it with copper tools, a god must have helped them."
But that doesn't mean the art isn't weird. It is weird. It’s beautiful, complex, and occasionally inexplicable.
Actionable Ways to Explore This Topic
If you want to actually understand these artifacts without the hype, you have to look at the context. Here is how you can dig deeper:
- Check the Museum Catalogs: Don't rely on grainy JPEG crops. Go to the websites of the British Museum, the Met, or the Museo Larco. Look at the high-res images and read the "provenance" and "cultural context" notes.
- Learn Iconography: Every culture has a visual "alphabet." In Maya art, a snake often represents a portal to another world. In Sumerian art, the "handbags" held by the Apkallu (winged genies) are likely buckets for holy water or pollen. Learning these "letters" changes how you read the "sentence" of the artwork.
- Read the Critical Response: For every "ancient astronaut" claim, there is a detailed rebuttal by an archaeologist who has spent thirty years on-site. Read both. Compare the evidence. The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle—the ancestors were more capable than we think, and their art was more symbolic than we assume.
- Visit Rock Art Sites: If you can, go to places like Moab, Utah, or the Valcamonica in Italy. Seeing these carvings in the context of the landscape—the way the sun hits them, the silence of the canyon—makes it clear that these weren't just "drawings." They were part of the earth itself.
The mystery of aliens in ancient art isn't going away. Whether it’s evidence of contact or just the wild, unbridled imagination of our ancestors, these images serve as a bridge. They connect our modern obsession with the stars to a time when the stars were the only thing our ancestors had to guide them through the dark. We might not be seeing "them," but we are definitely seeing "us"—and our eternal desire to find our place in a very big, very strange universe.