Paleocontact theory
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{{Infobox Pseudoscience
|name=Paleocontact theory
|topics=Archeology
|claims=Intelligent extraterrestials visited the Earth in ancient times and profoundly affected the development of human civilization.
|origyear=1919
|origprop=Charles Fort, Immanuel Velikovsky, Erich von Däniken
|currentprop=Robert K. G. Temple, Zecharia Sitchin, Richard Hoagland
}}
Paleocontact theory is a term used to describe the hypothesis that intelligent extraterrestrial creatures visited Earth in the distant past or at the dawn of human civilization. Carl Sagan, I.S. Shklovskii, and Hermann Oberth are three notable scientists who have seriously considered the possibility of extraterrestrial visitations in Earth's past.
Although this thinking is often popularly described as a "theory", the term is actually not applicable to ideas so lacking in evidence. The ideas consist more of explorative speculation than any hard knowledge. Fossil and archeological records merely leave open the possibility rather than establishing a testable prediction.
The idea of paleocontact appears in numerous science fiction and speculative fiction stories.