Tuesday, March 25, 2014

The coming of the Ant People




An occurrence almost as rare as seeing a UFO happened to me:

Something on Ancient Aliens gave me pause to think.

The episode dealt with humanity's relative fixation with insects.  As a case in point, the show looked to the Hopi and Zuni tribes of the American Southwest.  Petroglyphs of the area depict humanoid figures with elongated skulls, antennae, and spindly appendages.  The Hopi called the beings in these depictions the "Ant People" who helped the Hopi survive storms and cataclysms by living with them in an underground world.  I found a site on the subject that while entertaining, might not have the most credible information.  Anyway, it alleges that according to Native American legends, these "ant people" first came from the stars before setting up shop beneath the ground.

This is not the first occurrence of "ant people" in ancient legend or literature.  Vigilant readers of the Classics will recall from Homer's Iliad the ant-like soldiers who fought at Troy in a hive-like mentality.  When viewed as a cross-section, the catacomb dwellings of Derinkuyu, Turkey very much resemble ant "farms" for serious lack of the proper term.

Is there anything to "the ant people?"  I'm nowhere near ready to definitively say, but here are a few possibilities I see at first blush:

1. We are always trying to make sense of the natural world.  Our ancestors did this in the best ways they knew how.  Sometimes, this meant appropriating animals in a totemic sense and attaching a narrative to it. End of story.

2. There really is (was?) a humanoid race of ant-like beings that live beneath the Earth.  Native peoples such as the Zuni and the Hopi encountered them.  These encounters were documented in both petroglyphs and oral tradition.  Do they still exist somewhere in an underground civilization a la Shaver's Hollow Earth?  This conjures up what Mac Tonnies was getting at in Cryptoterrestrials, even though I think he was mainly concerned with more "ethereal beings" higher up on Keel's superspectrum.  More on that once I finish the book!

3. The beings depicted are actually aliens.  Note the elongated heads, the large eyes, and the skinny bodies.  This is comparable to a modern day Gray.  Did the ancient peoples encounter aliens and describe them relative to things they already knew: ants?  That sounds like the Ancient Aliens conclusion.

One other interesting note about all this.  New Mexico is included in the region we're discussing.  That state is, of course, home to two major aspects of UFO lore.  One being the crash at Roswell and the other the alleged underground base at Dulce.  If the "ant people" are aliens, then what is it about New Mexico that draws them?  Is it the activities of our military and our intelligence agencies?  If the "ant people" are from beneath the ground, was Roswell the result of them coming to the surface to ask what the hell the big bang was at the Trinity Site in July 1945?

I don't know.  If I had ten dollars to bet on my three theories, I'd put five dollars on number one, three dollars on number two, one dollar on number three, and keep one dollar for myself.

It's dollar day at the college cafeteria tomorrow.





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2 comments:

  1. Hey there I actually do think that the ant people actually might be the watchers or even be related to the elongated skulls. If you actually do research the skulls that were found have holes in the top back area of the head and some think it is because they had antennas. Let me know what you think. Take care.

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  2. Thanks for the comment!
    Being skeptical does not mean I'm not open-minded. As with anything else, it's all in the evidence. If more comes up that tilts towards the idea of Ant People, then I will have to concede it. :)

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