In the episode “Ancient Aliens and the Secret Code” (season 3 episode 13) William J. Birnes stated that a straight line links the Pyramids of Giza, the Oracle of Dephi and Viking ring fortress in Denmark [1]. This claim was accompanied by an animation showing a line being drawn on a map crossing all spots as it progressed.

This claim is false and the map that was shown was manipulated in order to support his statement. The alterations can be best seen in the beginning where the line starts from Giza. It is clear that the border between Turkey and Syria does not look that way and it seems as if the countries in the north of the Mediterranean Sea were moved to the right.

The manipulation is visible below Turkey

There are other parts of the map that look deformed, mainly in the north of Europe. It can be hard to see the big picture in the animation, so I took the images and put them together.

The whole map that was shown in the animation

Since the camera zoomed in as the animation progressed, I had to scale the images and introduced further errors. These are however insignificant and don’t diminish the illustrational purpose of the image.

In the end I would like to show you how this line really looks.

Illustration of the line in Marble

[1] Youtube – http://youtu.be/FaAWDLnCzow?t=26m35s