While I can’t confirm that Churchward was directly copying Blavatsky, the parallels between the two make independence rather unlikely. Both claimed to have (a) traveled to India, (b) met with occult keepers of knowledge, (c) gained access to occult texts, (d) translated these texts from a forgotten language, (e) failed to bring the originals of the texts back for scientific study, (f) and claimed that the texts revealed secrets about human prehistory. The structural similarities in the narratives of discovery are impossible to miss, as are the parallels with the Book of Mormon, minus the sojourn in India. Where they differ is that Blavatsky kept this mostly spiritual, with the Dzyan stanzas merely blubbering about mystical mumbo-jumbo that she needed to explicate with occult information about Atlantis and Lemuria, while Churchward claimed that the Naacal tablets plainly laid out the history of Atlantis and Mu, without the later encrustation of Oriental philosophy.
From this, as well as Churchward’s emphasis on the superiority of White Aryans and monotheism, it becomes possible to understand his Mu myth as an attempt to strip Theosophy of the Oriental trappings of its Indian mysticism. (At the time, the cult was based in Benares, India and focused on Hindu-derived occult traditions.) Perhaps he had had enough of the East during his years as a tea grower in Sri Lanka. His Mu would be Theosophy for the mind of the common (Anglo-American) man: pure, monotheistic, Aryan, and plainspoken in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. But Churchward's lost continent and Blavatsky’s spiritual poetry pale in comparison to the claims of Joseph Smith a century earlier. In all three cases, curiously enough, the original tablets and texts disappeared and have never been found. (What a shock.) Therefore, it was no surprise when in the 1970s, in Gold of the Gods, Erich von Däniken claimed to have found a library of gold tablets on which the aliens had written their entire history in a lost language and then buried it in a cave in Ecuador. Of course every expedition to von Däniken’s supposed cave turned up nothing and the author admitted he had made the whole thing up and had never been there (see Chapter 16).
16. Neil Armstrong’s Brush with Ancient Astronauts
Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon, but fans of alternative archaeology and ancient astronauts also remember him as a member of the 1976 expedition that went in search of Tayos caves in Ecuador that Erich von Däniken claimed in The Gold of the Gods (1972) contained a vast library of metal books inscribed with the writings of an alien civilization. Von Däniken had claimed in Gold to have personally visited this metal library, but he was forced to admit that he had fabricated his account of the cave after its alleged discoverer, Juan Moricz, stated that he had never taken von Däniken to the cave.
In an interview with Playboy magazine in 1974, Von Däniken claimed his false personal account was dramaturgisch Effekte or “theatrical effect” (i.e. dramatic license) and that the cave really existed, though he would not travel there himself because he feared the Ecuadorian government would assassinate him for revealing too much information, and “I really don’t care too much” about the only extraterrestrial artifacts that could prove his theories beyond doubt.[137]
In 1976, Scottish explorer Stanley Hall, a deep believer in alternative science and ancient astronauts, asked Armstrong, then a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati, to join him on a British military scientific expedition to Ecuador to investigate the Tayos caves, which von Däniken had claimed were carved at perfect right angles by aliens with laser beams. Armstrong, as Honorary President of the expedition, flew to Quito in August on a British Royal Air Force cargo plane along with Hall and the Black Watch and the Royal Highland Fusiliers regiment to explore the caves, though he was unaware of von Däniken’s wild claims about them or Hall’s alternative theories. It took only a day’s exploration at Cueva de los Tayos to determine two essential facts. First, there was no metal library where von Däniken had claimed. Second, in Armstrong’s own words: “It was the conclusion of our expedition group that they [the caves] were natural formations.”[138] No lasers. No gold library. No aliens.
Newspapers had a field day, publishing headlines like “the charlatan makes a fool of himself,” and “Däniken unmasked!”
Von Däniken quickly went into damage control mode. Despite having conceded that his Gold of the Gods claims were fabrications in his 1974 Playboy interview, von Däniken reversed course, doubled down on the caves’ reality, and suggested that Armstrong had been duped into debunking him: “He [Armstrong] knew nothing about his task of exposing Däniken,” he wrote in According to the Evidence (1977). “Every expert knows that there are hundreds of different caves in Ecuador.”[139] Armstrong did not set out with the purpose of debunking von Däniken, but he also did not shy away from asserting that the science he conducted was real and that his findings were sound. Von Däniken’s new tactic was to claim that whatever cave anyone visited (and many tried), it was the wrong cave—even though he would never say what the “right” cave might be. He would later claim that Hall knew the exact position of the true cave and purposely went to the wrong one to protect the metal library from exposure to the wrong sort of people. (Presumably the ones who in von Däniken’s imagination were waiting to assassinate him.)
Von Däniken became angry when the controversy would not go away, and he recognized that this was the beginning of the end for his time in the spotlight. A popular author could not withstand the double-whammy of confessing fabrication and being publicly debunked by a global hero. That’s why he began striking out, demanding to know in According to the Evidence, “What are they [the media] still on about?”[140] and telling his dwindling readership that his 1972 claim was five years in the past, old news, and probably in a different cave anyway.
But the public had moved on. Von Däniken continued to write books, but they sold fewer copies, and he was no longer the media darling of the heady years of 1973-1975, when he was on the Tonight show, interviewed in Playboy, and the toast of the New Age intelligentsia. EST, pyramid power, Noah’s Ark, and alien abductions had begun to take over the public imagination, and ancient astronauts were no longer interesting enough even for In Search of…, the 1976-1982 syndicated television program spun off from In Search of Ancient Astronauts (1973) and its two sequels, the film versions of von Däniken’s own work. His theories appeared just once on the series after the Armstrong expedition, despite a prominent first season role. In 1978, a biography of von Däniken by Peter Krassa appeared, but even this laudatory tome was forced to ask if “von Däniken [was] at the end of the road.”[141]
For the next twenty years, von Däniken was an afterthought in alternative history. He continued to pump out his twenty-five books, but increasingly few were ever translated into English. In 1996, he hit his low point, forced to concede that “alternative” history writers Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval had surpassed him in popularity with their lost civilization and ancient Egypt theories. So he wrote The Eyes of the Sphinx, among his last major works published by a large English language publisher (Penguin’s Berkley) and the last for which he apparently wrote completely original text. (His later books contained increasing amounts of recycled text, much of it from Eyes.) It was a sad book, summarizing Hancock and Bauval and layering on aliens.
Von Däniken experienced a dramatic resurrection after 2009 on the back of Ancient Aliens, but the bitterness showed. In 2010, von Däniken, now a prophet claiming the imminent return of the aliens to punish his enemies, still felt anger at Armstrong and all those (like, ahem, me) who continued to cite him as proof that von Däniken had lied about the metal library. (Well, he did admit to lying after all…) In History Is Wrong (2010), von Däniken again asserted that despite his earlier lies, the metal library was real and the media and skeptics were his enemies:
I am happy to laugh around and philosophize with my colleagues from the writing guilds, but I do have something against this constantly offended and indignant minority, which only takes the trouble to understand the minimum of a life’s work necessary to be able to pass judgment
on the rest of the things they can’t actually be bothered to look into.[142]
What part of von Däniken’s life’s work is not understood? Which of his lies, fabrications, distortions, and untruths has been left unexamined? Erich von Däniken was diagnosed as a psychopath and pathological liar by a court-appointed psychiatrist during his embezzlement trial, and some dismiss him on those grounds, but skeptics have studiously examined his every claim because hypotheses are independent of the theorist. His biography and “life’s work” is irrelevant; every claim has been found wanting.
For the record, before his death in 2008, Hall revealed the “true” location of the cave: 1° 56′ 00″ S, 77° 47′ 34″ W. If von Däniken is so certain that this site is a “kick in the teeth” (his words) to “conservative” archaeology and ethnology, I invite him to prove us all wrong and do what he never did in the 1970s: actually visit the cave and show us some real proof. It’s what Neil Armstrong’s expedition tried to do, and it is the honorable way to prove the assertion true. Your move, Däniken.
17. Santa Is an Alien Robot!
The following Great Moment in Ancient Astronautics comes from Bruce Rux’s 1996 book Architects of the Underworld: Unriddling Atlantis, Anomalies of Mars, and the Mystery of the Sphinx. Rux is a former actor, a follower of Zecharia Sitchin, and a conspiracy theorist who believes that Hollywood uses movies and TV shows about UFOs to aid the government in covering up alien visitation now and in the past, as detailed in his book Hollywood vs. the Aliens (1998). He also believes that ancient astronauts and current “grey” aliens are in fact robots sent by the real aliens from their home planet.
According to Rux, references to the Underworld in ancient mythology are code for the planet Mars. His evidence is that the Underworld is usually thought of as laying in the far west and is associated with the color red: “Since ‘sea’ or ‘ocean’ can also mean ‘[outer] space,’ and there is no up or down in space, it is certainly possible that this Underworld is actually beneath the earth—another planet.”[143] Since the Underworld’s color is red (usually thought to represent the sunset), this planet must be the Red Planet, Mars.
The aliens’ robots, who appeared to ancient humans as gods, created the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of the dead because they engaged in cloning and took tissue samples into deep space for cloning (since bodily transport requires too much fuel), an idea proposed by Erich von Däniken in the 1970s and developed by Alan Landsburg extensively in The Outer Space Connection, the book that claimed aliens would come back for the clones on Christmas Eve 2011. As we have seen, through some confusion about dates, this in turn gave rise to the December 2012 Maya Apocalypse panic (see chapter six).
By Rux’s analysis, the color red is closely associated with white and black in alien cosmology, so therefore, such figures as (and I am not making this up) the Red Cross (red symbol on a white background), the country of Japan (red sun disc on a white flag), Easter Island’s statues (which once wore red hats), and Santa Claus (because of his clothes) are all part of the aliens’ secret plans directed from their Martian base.
Yes, you heard it right: the Red Cross, Japan, Easter Island, and Santa Claus are all part of an alien conspiracy overseen by the U.S. government, a secret guarded so carefully that only someone as clever as Bruce Rux was able to identify it.
So I guess that’s where Futurama got its evil robot Santa idea. No, wait… wouldn’t that be part of the conspiracy from Hollywood vs. the Aliens? My God, the aliens have gotten to Bruce Rux! His theory is actually helping the conspiracy! He must be one of Them!
18. Stonehenge: The Day Spa of the Gods
As I’ve discussed quite a bit so far, ancient astronaut theorists and alternative historians ask us to take ancient texts literally in order to make discoveries about the ancient past. Thus, they take Plato’s Timaeus and Critias literally as evidence for the existence of Atlantis. (Though, strangely, Euhemerus’ equally fictional lost continent of Panchaea is roundly ignored.) This type of literalism, as I have show previously, prevents us from making real connections about events in the ancient past. Here is yet another case where ancient astronaut theorists’ literalism leads us to the edge of incoherence when applied to an ancient text.
Our sample today comes from Diodorus Siculus’ Library, where the historian describes the earlier work of Hecataeus of Abdera on a mysterious land far to the north:
Hecataeus and some others have said that on the coasts opposite the Celtae, there is an island little less than Sicily, under the Arctic Pole, where they who are called Hyperboreans inhabit. They say that this island is exceedingly good and fertile, bearing fruit (i.e., crops of grass) twice a year. The men of the island are, as it were, priests of Apollo, daily singing his hymns and praises, and highly honouring him. They say, moreover, that in it there is a great forest, and a goodly temple of Apollo, which is round and beautified with many rich gifts and ornaments; as also a city sacred to him, whereof the most part of the inhabitants are harpers, and play continually on their harps in the temple, chanting hymns to the praise of Apollo, and magnifying his acts in their songs.[144]
Many modern historians believe this passage represents a description of Britain, with the round temple being Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. If so, this would be a remarkable piece of literature, since Hecataeus lived in 300 BCE, roughly a thousand years after Stonehenge’s heyday. (Not all archaeologists agree, however.) But if we adopt the ancient astronaut theorists’ textual literalism, we are prevented from investigating the question of whether this passage refers in fact to Britain and Stonehenge because, since we must take this literally, we should be looking for an island the size of Sicily near the North Pole. An alien Arctic research station? Was the temple a biodome?
I don’t think it would surprise anyone to know that there is no such island at the North Pole (it’s water up there under the ice), or that there has been no weather warm enough to grow two rounds of annual crops since humans evolved. This line of investigation is stale. But if ancient astronaut theorists choose not to interpret this text literally, then we must ask what criteria they use to decide which texts are worthy of literal readings, and which must be read symbolically or figuratively?
Of course, this is a moot point for ancient astronaut theorists, since textual literalism means they also have to accept that Geoffrey of Monmouth was literally correct that the stones of Stonehenge were meant as a bathtub for African giants, a story which probably derives from an older story, that Merlin carried Stonehenge to Salisbury from Ireland:
“If you are desirous,” said Merlin, “to honour the burying-place of these men with an everlasting monument, send for the Giant’s Dance, which is in Killaraus, a mountain in Ireland. For there is a structure of stones there, which none of this age could raise, without a profound knowledge of the mechanical arts. They are stones of a vast magnitude and wonderful quality; and if they can be placed here, as they are there, round this spot of ground, they will stand for ever.”
At these words of Merlin, Aurelius burst into laughter, and said, “How is it possible to remove such vast stones from so distant a country, as if Britain was not furnished with stones fit for the work?” Merlin replied: “I entreat your majesty to forbear vain laughter; for what I say is without vanity. They are mystical stones, and of a medicinal virtue. The giants of old brought them from the farthest coasts of Africa, and placed them in Ireland, while they inhabited that country. Their design in this was to make baths in them, when they should be taken with any illness. For their method was to wash the stones, and put their sick into the water, which infallibly cured them. With the like success they cured wounds also, adding only the application of some herbs. There is not a stone there which has not some healing virtue.”[145]
Corrupt and confused as this legend is, it does correctly preserve a memory that Stonehenge’s stones came not from England but from the Celtic fringe beyond the control of Anglo-Saxon monarchs. Though I’m pretty sure Stonehenge was never used as a sp
a.
Just remember that bit of “ancient text” the next time an ancient astronaut theorist tries to tell you that Stonehenge is an outpost for aliens, a Phoenician temple, or a remnant of Atlantis.
19. Are There Platinum Coffins Off Nan Madol?
Erich von Däniken released a new book called Evidence of the Gods: A Visual Tour of Alien Influence in the Ancient World in 2012 under the auspices of New Page Books. Evidence of the Gods is another recycling job, this time rewriting much of the information that appeared in In Search of Ancient Gods: My Pictorial Evidence for the Impossible (1973; English trans. 1975). In the new book, von Däniken describes sarcophagi with platinum bars found in the waters off Nan Madol (Ponape or Pohnpei), the basalt island city in the Caroline Islands that was an inspiration for Cthulhu’s R’lyeh. This is a revised version of the claim from In Search of Ancient Gods that a mysterious and unnamed source of platinum led to the metal becoming the island’s main export under Japanese rule (1919-1945) despite no platinum being found in the island’s rocks. In turn, this claim is a condensation of an even earlier claim from The Gold of the Gods (1972; English trans. 1973), which is given as follows, referencing an imaginary lost underwater city off Nan Madol:
What the pearl divers did not find was discovered by Japanese divers with modern equipment. They confirmed with their finds what the traditional legends of Ponape reported: the vast wealth in precious metals, pearls and bars of silver. […] The Japanese divers reported that the dead were buried in watertight platinum coffins. And the divers actually brought bits of platinum to the surface day after day! In fact, the main exports of the island—copra, vanilla, sago and mother of pearl—were supplanted by platinum! Rittlinger says that the Japanese carried on exploiting this platinum until one day two divers did not surface, in spite of their modern equipment. Then the war broke out and the Japanese had to withdraw. […]
Faking History Page 11