(14) ERICH VON DANIKEN –

CHARIOTS OF THE GODS? (1968)

(RONALD STORY – THE SPACE GODS REVEALED 1976)

I’m not saying that it was aliens but it was aliens – ancient astronauts!

A modern mythology par excellence – and Erich von Daniken is its prophet!

The mythos of aliens as ancient astronauts was not original to Daniken and his Chariots of the Gods, which remains the Bible of the mythos, despite Daniken’s increasingly wild sequels. Indeed, he appears to have ripped off his theories from previous writers, perhaps not surprisingly for someone convicted and imprisoned for embezzlement and fraud (and he wrote one of his sequels in prison). However, Daniken was the foremost popularizer of the mythos, such that the craze (or cult) for it was coined Danikenitis.

While absurd, one can’t deny that the mythos Daniken popularized was – and remains – a hoot.

It’s the mythos in which “ancient locations, legends, gods, and creatures from ancient myth are connected to alien visitors from a radically more advanced civilization”, including “that these aliens influenced our history in some way, mostly through technological advances”.

“Proponents of this theory also espouse that ancient construction projects like the pyramids and Stonehenge are clearly too advanced and a little too fantastic for ancient man to have constructed without help…since there are pyramids in the Americas, Egypt, and China… you guessed it, they all got their idea from aliens. Other popular sites include the Moai of Easter Island and the Nazca Lines…this theory is often crossed over with Atlantis”.

Oh yes – and the Biblical God is an alien, the Bible is littered with references to aliens or alien technology (The Ark of Covenant was electrically charged! Sodom and Gomorrah were literally nuked! Ezekiel’s vision of flying wheel within a wheel was a helicopter!), and the titular chariots of the gods are of course UFOs.

I can’t have special mention for Daniken without including one of many books refuting him – Ronald Story’s The Space Gods Revealed and its point by point refutation of Chariot of the Gods.

RATING:

X-TIER (WILD TIER)