Star Trek: 10 Times Aliens Influenced Human History

Kukulkan in real-life is a feathered serpent god originating from several Mesoamerican cultures. He was known as a creator god and a bringer of rain, wind, storms, and life. Several temples to Kukulkan have been discovered at locations throughout the north of the Yucatán Peninsula, such as Chichen Itza, which clearly shows the diety's historical importance in this area.

He remains an important figure in some Mayan cultures, though his popularity has diminished. In Star Trek, The Animated Series episode How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth decided to go full "Ancient Aliens" with the legends of Kukulkan, making him into a powerful alien entity that visited many cultures in Earth's history, instructing them to build a bunch of temples, monuments, and forms of agriculture with the end goal of creating a city that would eventually be used as a signalling device to contact Kukulkan, letting him know that it's time to return. The same entity was said to have also inspired the legends of Chinese dragons, as well as the architecture of both ancient Chinese and ancient Egyptian cities.

In an interview with Trekspertise, Russel Bates, the writer of the episode and a Kiowa Native American, said that he wrote the story to reverse the stereotype that all of the beautiful Native American structures found throughout the continent were not actually built by the Natives. At the time this was a popular belief, as many claimed that the structures were too sophisticated and must have been built by some other society. Bates flipped the script by showing us that, in fact, all of humanity's historical wonders were made by a Native American god.

In the episode, Kukulkan, tired of waiting for the signal, sent a probe to Earth to investigate and found that he had been largely forgotten. Angered by this, he captured members of the Enterprise's crew and threatened to trap them inside of simulated realities of his design, before being outsmarted and defeated.