Ancient Aliens – Aliens and Sacred Places: Are sacred places the product of man’s reverence for God–or the result of contact with ancient space travelers?
Jerusalem’s Temple Mount has been called a heavenly gateway. Islam’s shrine at Mecca displays a Black Stone believed to have fallen from heaven. And the temple at Baalbek, Lebanon was built on a massive stone structure resembling a landing pad. Did man encounter divine beings at these holy places, or might they have met ancient extraterrestrials?
Aliens and Sacred Places
Baalbek
The Tell Baalbek temple complex, fortified as the town’s citadel during the Middle Ages, was constructed from local stone, mostly white granite and a rough white marble. Over the years, it has suffered from the region’s numerous earthquakes, the iconoclasm of Christian and Muslim lords, and the reuse of the temples’ stone for fortification and other construction.
The nearby Qubbat Duris, a 13th-century Muslim shrine on the old road to Damascus, is built out of granite columns, apparently removed from Baalbek. Further, the jointed columns were once banded together with iron; many were gouged open or toppled by the emirs of Damascus to get at the metal. As late as the 16th century, the Temple of Jupiter still held 27 standing columns out of an original 58; there were only nine before the 1759 earthquakes and six today.
Black Stone
The Black Stone is a rock set into the eastern corner of the Kaaba, the ancient building located in the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is revered by Muslims as an Islamic relic which, according to Muslim tradition, dates back to the time of Adam and Eve.
The stone was venerated at the Kaaba in pre-Islamic pagan times. According to Islamic tradition, it was set intact into the Kaaba’s wall by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in 605 CE, five years before his first revelation. Since then it has been broken into fragments and is now cemented into a silver frame in the side of the Kaaba. Its physical appearance is that of a fragmented dark rock, polished smooth by the hands of pilgrims. Islamic tradition holds that it fell from heaven as a guide for Adam and Eve to build an altar. It has often been described as a meteorite.
