Many people think somebody else built monuments such as Stonehenge or the Pyramids of Egypt. After all, constructing such buildings would have required great feats of engineering, as well as mucho dinero. Therefore, using such logic, Stonehenge wasn’t built by the Neolithic people of Britain; it was built by extraterrestrials. As for the Pyramids, they weren’t built by the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom, Fourth Dynasty, they were built by the people of fabled Atlantis.

Frankly, I’d just like to give credit where it’s due. The archaeological data and historical records show, with a fair degree of accuracy, who built what and when, and I’m getting tired of hearing the pseudoscientific claptrap that says otherwise! So please read on:

Some scholars wonder how pyramids could have been built throughout the world without the help of an extremely advanced civilization. Graham Hancock, author of Fingerprints of the Gods, wrote that these theoretical people helped others build stone monuments from Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica. They also spread astronomical knowledge, such as that of the Precession of the Equinoxes. But the remnants of this hypothetical lost culture, perhaps that of the Atlanteans, have never been found by Hancock or anybody else. (That’s because they’re under the ocean, buddy! Hancock is so smart, he's dense. Nevertheless, Fingerprints is fascinating reading, and every fan of archaeology should probably read it.)

Actually, pyramids are found throughout the world because before the Greeks and Romans began using sophisticated building techniques around 500 B.C., people couldn’t build straight up higher than four to six stories without the buildings collapsing under their own weight. However, a pyramid, with its wide base and four triangular sides tapering to a point, allowed builders to erect very heavy and impressive structures hundreds of feet high. For example, the Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt, the tallest building in the world until the Washington Monument was completed in 1884, is nearly 500 feet high.

On a more speculative note, Zecharia Sitchin, who wrote The Twelfth Planet, the first book in his Earth Chronicle series, thought that beings from the planet Nibiru created the human race’s first grand civilization, that of the Sumerians in Mesopotamia some 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. The Sumerians then diffused these marvelous skills to such far-flung locales as Tiahuanaco near Lake Titicaca in South America, where stone blocks weighing as much as 400 tons have been found. (Perhaps this Twelfth Planet is one of those dwarf planets astronomers have been discovering in our outer solar system. But don’t bet your telescope on it!)

Then, of course, there’s Erich von Daniken, who penned a number of highly imaginative books in the 1960’s and ‘70s (remember Chariots of the Gods?). In this book and others von Daniken asserted that aliens from other worlds influenced various ancient cultures such as the Aztecs, Inca, Maya, Nazca and the Moai of Easter Island, as well as many civilizations in the Old World. He also theorized that aliens genetically altered apes, thereby creating Homo sapiens. It seems those “little green men” really got around, dude!

Perhaps on a less speculative note, in such books as America BC, author Barry Fell theorized that the people from the Old World traveled to the New World long before Columbus and helped the peoples of the Americas build their advanced civilizations. Fell wrote about Celtic Ogham-like inscriptions found on stones in North America. One such inscription apparently shows the Nativity. (The Mormons must love this guy!) However, much of Fell’s work isn’t taken seriously in the scientific community.

As of right now, there’s no conclusive proof that anybody beat Columbus to the New World, other than the Vikings, of course, around A.D. 1000. (Don’t tell me about the Phoenicians, Chinese, Lost Tribes of Israel, Irish or Polynesians.) New Discoveries regarding such matters could be made, of course, and if there is, I’ll be one of the first to view these artifacts or documents, my face agog, my heart racing.

At any rate, let’s be happy that all the various people of this planet are bright and self-reliant, which bodes well for us all. We don't need no super races! We can build our own monuments and, in the end, this skill may help save us from catastrophe, especially if that Twelfth Planet comes barreling toward us one of these days. Then we could impale it with one gargantuan pyramid in space!

As for who built the Taj Mahal, I’ll take credit for that. People have always thought I’m from the other side of the tracks!