Hogfather

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This speculation has been advanced in the context of, e.g., the ancient pyramids of Peru, where the stones really do fit together almost perfectly, and where the Kuta Lines really can only be seen from above.

Apparently the part of Peru where the Inca lived is rather prone to earthquakes, and not wanting their perfectly fitting stones to fall over and break into little pieces when the earth moved, the Inca built all their major buildings with the walls sloping inwards. Many Inca buildings are still standing (less a roof or two, of course), in sharp contrast with California, where modern buildings fall over with distressing regularity.

Britain has things called leylines — ancient sites so arranged that they draw a perfectly straight line across a map, allegedly impossible to trace without modern cartographical techniques.

For the most bizarre extrapolation of this belief, see Erich von Daniken, Chariots of the Gods, which claims not only that aliens visited the earth in ancient times, but also that they actually started human civilisation.

The footnote ties together a number of modern myths about aliens, ending with the “The truth may be out there…”, the catchphrase of the 90s TV series The X-Files.