I read Erich von Daniken's first book "Chariots of the Gods?" many years ago, and over the last two weeks re-read it and his two subsequent books "Gods From Outer Space" and "The Gold of the Gods". First off, for the most part I do not subsribe to his theories. With very little 'evidence' he has created a sizeable cosmology that has no sound, solid proof. I'm going to assume that the viewers of this board have read, or are aware of his theories. He does have a very good point when he says that new discoveries are sometimes 'tailored' to fit an already existing world view. I agree with that. However, his main thesis is that since many of the phenomena of the past cannot (at present) be explained in simple human terms, then it must be the work of extraterrestrials. That I cannot agree with. He presents many examples and then follows them with an either/or argument. For example in "The Gold of the Gods" he shows two pictures of reliefs of a Mayan god that was labeled as a 'bee god'. Von Daniken says that they do not even remotely resemble a bee god. OK fine. But then he says that since it's not a bee god then it must be an ancient depiction of an alien. Perhaps it was mislabeled as a 'bee god', but even if it were is it not more likely that it is still a depiction of a god, or perhaps a warrior? The best acceptable answer is not an ancient astronaut.

Secondly, for books that are purported to be about ancient aliens, a surprisingly large amount of of them are simply him voicing his dissatisfactions with the prevailing mindset of the scientific community. Once again, I can agree with some of what he says in that respect, but it is irritating for a book to so frequently stray from it's intended subject. I wouldn't mind a few paragraphs here or there but not whole chapters and then some. You could honestly take his first three books (which are around 200 pages each, give or take), remove anything that doesn't deal with ancient aliens, and you would be left with just enough to fill one 200 page book.

I agree with Jack-Knife's summary of Von Daniken. Von Daniken was of course cognisant of the marketability of the topic and some writers fall back on "padding" to extend their book sales for future material. In terms of why most of us that were of a scientific bent read them, I think the question of visitation in ancient times was the main thrust of interest. Sagan poo-pooed most of ufology, but vouchsafed at least the possibility existed we may have been visited in ancient times by advanced intelligence. This might have been all that anyone like Von Daniken needed to weave together the many fascinating artifacts that cannot be accurately interpreted with any certainty to tie them into that hypothesis. Actually his was not the first such book, but I think his sold better than say Leslie Le Pour Trench and others because of a photograph section. Very desirable in books like that. Advanced civilizations have been proposed as the sources of many of these artifacts not from outerspace but on earth, as well, by such as Churchward, Spalding and Cayce and more recently by people writing books on out-of-place artifacts, like Cremo, and even modern day scholars with no ostensible creationist axe to grind. See (http://www.viewzone.com/expo2002.html) and
(http://paranormal.about.com/od/ancientanomalies/Ancient_Anomalies.htm). Still, there are many possible alternative hypotheses that can be put forward to explain these things than other-world explorers or that men had flying machines to visit all parts of the world. Since carving stone is laborious, it would make sense to use symbology to convey some message that now could be mis-interpreted as people flying (how long would it take to make the ground line, mountains and trees to give context?) Also, America BC made a case that men did sail the seas far earlier than Leif Erickson. They need not have been only sailors either, according to some the earth was literally smaller in diameter, land bridges existed to make it possible to walk around the entire globe, etc. (See Hilgenberg's hypothesis of an expanding earth that might also have an impact on Velikovsky's theory and others).

I understand the problem you have with the either/or dichotomy. Maintaining uncertainty is just too uncomfortable for some people. And I'm not sure that in terms of making books, it sells very well. People don't want more uncertainty, they want certainty, period, because they want a terminous to the thought process, which is by nature, painful.

Many years ago I watched a BBC science programme called Horizon which did an in depth investigation into the claims made by daniken in his book 'chariots of the gods'
& in every case his conjectures were totally blown out the water. Not only did he arrive at the wrong conclusions on his theories, but in some cases he omitted evidence that would show his theories in a bad light. The man has no credibilty in my opinion.

:-http://www.debunker.com/texts/vondanik.html

I have read "The Sky People" by Leslie Le Pour Trench, if people thought von Daniken was eccentric, then Trench was certifiable. But refering back to von Daniken, this has been said before and it's true that he affords no creativity to ancient peoples. In his books he is constantly asking "where did they get the idea for that?" and so forth. That answer is they came up with it themselves. We have novelists of today who write science fiction, why should there not have been novelists and story tellers in ancient times? A writer does not always need an outside source of inspiration for a story. Look at "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson, he came up with the story himself and wrote it, years before Sigmund Freud identified the id, the ego and the super-ego.

Alien visitation theories aside, i discovered information in danikens books(i read half a dozen of them) on artifacts and historical sites i would otherwise probably never have heard so i value his works on those grounds. I agree with some of the posters above that the alien contact theory was overused throughout.

Well, I remember reading Von Daniken's works and, although I am a "believer" in the POSSIBILITY of ancient contacts between humans and "sky gods" (i.e., extraterrestrials), I think he tended to find an alien behind every bush and under every rock.

There are a lot of archaeological sites with mysterious features to them: strange cravings, megalithic structures, etc. That does not mean that we must automatically, as he did, jump to the conclusion that aliens MUST have been involved.

But, his books did capture people's imaginations and netted him enough money to buy a nice hotel in Switzerland that provided him with a comfortable income for the rest of his life.

Someday, hopefully, some CREDIBLE researcher is going to find a fossilized alien or saucer somewhere and that is all we will be talking about for decades after. I'm sure that, at that time, Von Daniken's name will surface again and he will be hailed as a "visionary" that was far ahead of his time.


technoguy

BTW This is my first post on this forum. I've been very interested in the whole topic of UFOs all of my life...particularly the advanced propulsion technology they appear to demonstrate. I'm glad to have found this site...