What is the ideological goal of ancient aliens/ancient technology theories?

It actually has its roots in hyperdiffusionism, an early 1900s idea that some lost civilization invented all these technologies and did all the impressive things, and anyone who did anything neat is descended from them. This lost master race - surprise! This is totally a nazi thing. The people who came up with this were nazis.

The modern appeal comes from a lot of racism (it's never aimed at, say, Romans), a lot from anti-intellectualism (the news constantly peddles bald-faced lies through "experts" so all experts are untrustworthy), and sadly I think a lot comes from the US de-funding schools (you never got a real history class so the first youtube conspiracy theorist you hear is your first exposure to "history" and you don't know better). And some of it is still nazis.

it's never aimed at, say, Romans

The swarthy Italians would never have had the intellectual base to produce the scutum, it must have been tower shield wielding aliens that brought them such technology!

(really though, the idea that people aren't constantly thinking about their environment and how to improve it is kind of insulting to the intelligence of all of humanity)
- The version where it's re-framed as the us highway system being made by aliens is my favorite "americans don't have the technology to accomplish this! They barely understand how it works and can't maintain it!
- typical german whinging about the superior roman brainpan. you people up north are too cold blooded. people down south in africa are too warm blooded. only we romans are JUUUUUUST right. (this is what actual romans thought, IIRC)

There is the "non-white people could not have possibly stacked rocks this big!" thing

I honestly think it’s mostly just this.

Yeah it's just racism afaik

I think a lot of it is ego protection for people who don't want to grapple with themselves not understanding how the world is put together. "well, I can't figure out how to stack rocks, so how could someone else 5000 years ago have done it? something like this can only have been done by hyper-advanced technology" like John Fetterman recently being scared shitless by some pipework

Aliens built the big ben.

I refuse to believe white people could ever stop killing people long enough to make jt.

It’s just branch of anti-intellectualism. It comes from the same place as vaccine skepticism and extreme views about homeschooling. The ivory tower academics want you to believe that their mundane explanations for mundane things are correct, but what if wild speculation based on things I made up instead?

It’s also just kind of fun, like astrology. If you’re taking it seriously then you should be institutionalized, but if you just view it as a weird hobby/LARP/creative writing exercise then sure, why not indulge a bit? Who are you hurting by seeing what kind of crazy thing they say next? It’s so far outside anything that would be taken seriously that it feels pretty safe to put in the list of things you can enjoy knowing that it’s all pure fiction, even if some people believe it.

(after writing this): Hopefully this doesn't come off as hostile. I'm a bit drunk and bouncing around.

I mean, both vaccine skepticism and homeschooling as cultural values can be seen as (partly) the ownership of children, as well as anti-intellectual skepticism (marxists here have reason to disagree with most economists, which could be seen as anti-intellectualism by a certain crowd). How dare you tell me to do something with my property? While any one individual might have legitimate reasons for whatever, its interesting to explore why these ideas spread beyond any one person.

I think a good example to use is the spread of right wing money churches in the US. While any one individual might have grown up in it, or have been swayed by the rhetoric, you can't ignore the serious funding prosperity doctrine got from this business consortium. It isn't particularly interesting to say "Oh, they're all dumb" or "Oh, they were all brought up in the church" because we can't do much with those explanations and they don't offer much explanatory power as to why they spread or why they have entrenched power.

I think it's fine for individual people to have a pile of "wrong" beliefs. Frankly, to verify everything would require more time and emotional energy (should they choose to give it, not necessarily a given), so everyone is going to have some. What I think is more interesting to question and explore is why particular ideas have draw or power in our society, even if a number of people have a harmless avenue towards that belief.
- All good points. I should clarify that when I say "anti-intellectualism" I don't mean "being stupid" but rather the more systemic issue of people being propagandized into distrusting the concept of basic institutions, to the benefit of reactionary forces. "Do your own research" isn't really skepticism, it's a more fundamental rejection of reality. There's a difference between being critical of prevailing institutions or ideas, and being skeptical of the idea that these institutions are legitimate in the first place. Even Marxist critiques of economics are made in the context that the academic institution overall has some merit (or else there would be no reason to be critical of economics, specifically).
  
  I think the ancient aliens stuff is sort of the sillier end of that more general rejection of reality. It doesn't really matter if you believe in it or not, but it comes from the same place, which is a rejection of some basic assumptions that most of us do take as given. My guess, if I could make a better attempt at answering your question, is that it's a low-stakes way of testing the waters with people about their willingness to challenge the more substantial baseline assumptions about reality. You put out an idea that is both unverifiable and irrelevant, like Jesus being an alien, and you plant the idea that there could be other things that might be wrong about what the established institutions say about things. Then you leverage that wedge of uncertainty into getting people whipped up about whatever your actual ideological goal is. More importantly, you do it in a way that undermines people trying to accurately describe the world, because accurately describing the world goes against reactionary ideology.
Crystals and astrological shit just look really cool

So do runes tbh, except I'm not about to decorate my house with them

I haven't really looked into this specifically, but my vibe is that it's people without any class or material analysis trying to explain a world that isn't explainable with typical liberal theories. It's the same reason people go anti-vax or blame one specific racial minority for all the world's problems: things are fucked up, and what they learned in school doesn't answer the question.

I'd also argue that this kind of thinking is more common with petite bourgeois types, as they're more resistant to a class analysis, as doing so would paint them and their people as the bad guy.

It does feel like it has a grand overarching narrative like traditional antisemitic conspiracy theories, without actually mentioning Jews at all. Hyperborean/Atlantis vibes without the explicit racism (lots of implicit racism though).
- There's a lot of overlap.

false consciousness

"The government is hiding alien technology from us and preventing our lives to becoming better by it!"

Maybe.

There is the "non-white people could not have possibly stacked rocks this big!" thing

This boils down to white supremacy. If you asked well, what about the Carthage, Etruscans, the Greeks, the Roman’s, etc. they’d give you a bunch of bullshit about the Western Seat of Ideas.

fun theories
trying to find corroborative evidence for flood/atlantis/whatever

I wonder if there's overlap between young earth creationists and ancient aliens. It seems sorta contradictory, but more bonkers things have happened. Looking back, a lot of young earth creationists stories/things (outside of the direct canon) was about sneering at coastal liberal elites, a themed version of a more secular complaining about snooty professors and woke coloured hair lesbians, just with the language changed.
- Oh i feel ancient aliens and ancient technologies are wildly different groups. One is like "you didn't build that" to all ancient people. The ancient technologies is more of cyclical history/fall from grace (due to sin, here probably evangelicals can come in)/golden age (here fashies can come in)/bible tells true stories twisted by time (again red meat, for evangelicals). Aliens don't do anything that interesting for both of those groups, aside from racism, no lessons to be extracted.

It would be more cool if space aliens were real and liked to kick it.

basically what's said already in this thread, but the podcast covered this lol

I think the goal has always been just making money selling books