The ancient aliens theory claims extraterrestrials built the pyramids, but archaeologists have found the workers’ villages, bakeries, healed bones, graffiti, and crew names — and all the evidence points back to ordinary Egyptians

The ancient aliens theory claims extraterrestrials built the pyramids, but archaeologists have found the workers’ villages, bakeries, healed bones, graffiti, and crew names — and all the evidence points back to ordinary Egyptians

The claim is familiar enough to have its own television franchise: the pyramids of Giza were too large, too precise, and too old to have been built by human hands, so someone from elsewhere must have helped. The idea was popularised by Erich von Däniken’s 1968 book Chariots of the Gods? and kept alive by decades of cable programming. What it has always lacked is an artefact. Giza, meanwhile, is one of the most thoroughly excavated construction s…