The reason is obvious: I was a bright and curious kid who knew what to think when it was test time in school but didn't yet know how to think in everyday life. No one at school or at home ever explained to me that it's necessary to challenge weird ideas, to react to unusual claims with skepticism, to ask for evidence, and to make the effort to separate science from pseudoscience. Like most kids, I was left on my own to stumble around in a world teeming with errors and lies and hope for the best. I was a defenseless, trusting child, and Von Däniken was targeting me with precision-guided nonsense designed to herd me straight to the conclusion he wanted. It wasn't a fair fight.
Fortunately, something happened on my way to a lifetime of playing the victim to con artists, quacks, and fools. NOVA, the excellent PBS science program, produced an episode that analyzed the claims made in Chariots of the Gods. I happened to see The Case of the Ancient Astronauts sometime in the late 1970s, and it changed everything for me. The NOVA program did a brilliant job of showing how Von Däniken's claims were hollow and unscientific. Maybe extraterrestrials did land here thousands of years ago, but NOVA made it clear that Chariots of the Gods fails to prove it. What struck me is how misleading and loose with the facts Von Däniken had been. It was like a light went off in my head, “Oh, now I get it, you can't trust everything you read and see on TV, even if it looks and sounds like real science.” The NOVA show put real experts and real facts up against Von Däniken's story, and it all collapsed like a house of cards. Credible archaeologists said that ancient Egypt didn't spring up from nowhere, as Von Däniken claimed. They also explained that ancient Egyptians were intelligent and perfectly capable of building the pyramids without alien assistance. I heard reasonable interpretations of the artwork Von Däniken highlighted that didn't require aliens at all. The experience of being hoodwinked and then enlightened changed me forever. Never again would I believe something important without pausing to question it. Being in a book or a documentary doesn't mean something is true. Post-Chariots of the Gods, I was different. Now I would think for myself and use skepticism and critical thinking to defend myself against people who would have me believe unproven things. Thank you, Erich von Däniken. If you hadn't suckered me with that ridiculous book of yours and set me up to learn an invaluable life lesson in childhood, I'm scared to imagine where my mind would be today.
WHO NEEDS ALIENS?
Let's explore some of the problems with the claim that ancient astronauts once visited Earth and left ample evidence. First of all, I have no problem admitting that it could have happened. Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old and anatomically modern humans have been around for more than one hundred thousand years. The universe is about 13.7 billion years old, plenty of time for intelligent life to have evolved on many other planets. Other civilizations could be out there. And somebody from somewhere could have dropped by for a visit in the past, assuming they were patient travelers or figured out how to move around our very large universe at higher speeds than we think are possible. But an unusual and spectacular claim like this needs something more than “it's possible” to be worth believing. Good evidence and compelling arguments are not to be found in Chariots of the Gods, however. For example, Von Däniken makes a big deal about old artwork depicting what he says look like astronauts wearing spacesuits and helmets. But that's his interpretation. Another, more likely, interpretation is that these are nothing more than depictions of tribal people wearing clothes and headdresses. This explanation is simple and doesn't require going to extraordinary lengths to accept. But Von Däniken's claim is gargantuan and needs to be backed up by a mountain of supporting evidence, which he does not have.
Von Däniken and others who work so hard to push the ancient astronaut story on unsuspecting minds are at their most offensive when they claim that ancient people could not have built the things they built. In their view, humans who lived a few thousand years or so ago were too dumb to have engineered and constructed large, complex projects. Don't believe it. I have been inside a burial chamber deep in the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza. I also have been in several tombs in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor. While I admit to being thoroughly impressed by the scale, age, and effort behind these works, not once did I see anything that made me suspect it was beyond the capabilities of human beings—even those who lived a very long time ago. Yes, it was a mighty feat to work with an estimated two million stone blocks weighing more than a couple tons each. It's true that scholars do not know with absolute certainty exactly how it was done. Most likely it was accomplished with the clever use of cranes, ramps, and a huge labor force. However, what can be said for sure is that the reasonable idea that humans built the pyramids is much more likely to be accurate than the radical idea that aliens did. The former has evidence, logic, and common sense going for it, while the latter has none of those things.
University of South Florida archaeologist Nancy White's feelings about Von Däniken's claims are typical of most archaeologists who remain unconvinced. “I only read it once long ago, but the biggest problem is that it's not science,” White said. “He was, by profession, a motel operator.”1
White, the author of Archaeology for Dummies, strongly rejects the idea that ancient people were incapable of designing and building the impressive remains attributed to them.
“The ancient human mind of any prehistoric time period was just as complex as the modern mind, possibly more so before people had writing to help them remember things. Real archaeology should be exciting enough on its own.”
The late Carl Sagan felt the same way:
Fundamentally, what Von Däniken has done is to sell our ancestors short, to assume that people who lived a few thousand years ago or even a few hundred years ago were simply too stupid to figure anything out, certainly to work together for a long period of time to construct something of monumental dimensions. And yet people of a few hundred or a few thousand years ago where no less intelligent, no less capable, than we are. Perhaps in some ways they were better able to work together.2
It is shocking to me how many people believe that the pyramids in Egypt were built by extraterrestrials. I've encountered this belief all over the world—except in Egypt, interestingly. The Egyptians I met were all quite certain that their ancestors deserved the credit. I once encountered this weird belief while talking about one of my books, Race and Reality, on a radio talk show. A caller wanted to know why I hadn't included information about “who really built the pyramids” in my book. There I was, all geared up to talk about the concept of race and human diversity, but somehow the silly and unrelated idea of pyramid-building aliens took center stage. I politely explained to the caller that the world's leading archaeologists have no doubts about who built these structures, as well as every other ancient structure we know of. I added that human brains back then were virtually the same as ours, so there is no reason to think that ancient Egyptians were not capable of building them. He scoffed and insisted that it's impossible. Even today we couldn't build pyramids like that if we tried, he declared. Straight out of Chariots of the Gods, I thought to myself. After all these years, Von Däniken still haunts me.
Donald Redford, professor of classics and ancient Mediterranean studies at Penn State, says there is no big mystery about the Egyptian pyramids. He estimates that twenty to thirty thousand workers probably built the Great Pyramid at Giza in less than twenty-three years. No magic or extraterrestrials required. It was primarily just ropes, lubricated surfaces and a lot of pulling. Whenever someone challenges him about this, he says he simply shows “a picture of twenty of my workers at an archaeological dig site pulling up a two-and-a-half-ton granite block. I know it's possible because I was on the ropes too.”3 There are still unanswered questions about how various aspects of the construction, but so what? The absence of an answer to something is not a reason to plug in miracles, magic, or aliens. Besides, the ancient Egyptians weren't the first people to do some heavy lifting. A site in Turkey called Gobekli Tepe may be the world'
s oldest religious temple. Dated at 11,600 years old, it includes massive stone pillars that are eighteen feet tall and weigh sixteen tons. Ancient people were smart enough to cut these stones and move them into place without the use of wheels or large domesticated animals. And they did it some seven thousand years before the Egyptians built their pyramids at Giza.
I am baffled by Von Däniken and others who claim that the pyramids at Giza suddenly materialized in human history and that such large and challenging construction projects could not have sprung up without alien involvement. I visited Saqqara in Egypt, where I saw the large stepped pyramid of Djoser. It's older than the more famous pyramids at Giza and—guess what?—it looks just like the less sophisticated earlier version of those pyramids one would expect. I also saw even older tombs, called mastabas, which also seemed to me like clear points along a learning curve or engineering development for ancient Egyptian builders.
Von Däniken's claims were wildly popular in the 1970s and still resonate with millions of people today. This is unfortunate because it leads people away from a connection they could be feeling for the many fascinating and brilliant people who came before us. Here is a small sampling of Von Däniken's condescending—and thoroughly unjustified—attitude toward ancient people as well as his odd underestimation of contemporary construction capabilities:
If the Stone Age cavemen were primate and savage, they could not have produced the astounding paintings on the cave walls.4
The Great Pyramid is visible testimony of a technique that has never been understood. Today, in the twentieth century, no architect could build a copy of the pyramid of Cheops, even if the technical resources of every continent were at his disposal.5
Where did the narrators of The Thousand and One Nights get their staggering wealth of ideas? How did anyone come to describe a lamp from which a magician spoke when its owner wished?6
It is an embarrassing story; in advanced cultures of the past we find buildings that we cannot copy today with the most modern technical means.7
All of this is incorrect. Even if extraterrestrials actually did visit Earth thousands of years ago, Von Däniken's arguments for it are wrong. Ancient people were obviously capable of brilliant and creative achievements. We know this because we have plenty of good evidence that proves it—including Gobekli Tepe, the pyramids in Egypt, stone statues on Easter Island, the Roman Colosseum, the Parthenon, and cave art left by prehistoric people. We also know that the human brain has been powerful, capable, and creative for many thousands of years. Finally, it is difficult to imagine any ancient structure anywhere being beyond the comprehension of today's engineers and builders. Von Däniken claims this repeatedly, but that doesn't make it true.
Sadly, the baseless claim of ancient space travelers visiting Earth has not faded away. If anything, it may be stronger today as more and more people are taken in by it. There are numerous websites and copycat books out there, and the History Channel seems to be on a mission to create as many new believers as possible with its steady stream of pseudodocumentaries about ancient alien astronauts. As I write this chapter, Von Däniken's book Chariots of the Gods is ranked number seven on Amazon in the “Astronomy and Space Science” category, right up there with Stephen Hawking's latest work. In the “Ancient History” category, Chariots of the Gods is ranked number nine.
Sigh.
GO DEEPER…
Books
Colavito, Jason. The Cult of Alien Gods: H. P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop Culture. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005.
Feder, Kenneth L. Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.
Stiebing, William. Ancient Astronauts, Cosmic Collisions, and Other Popular Theories about Man's Past. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1984.
Story, Ronald. The Space Gods Revealed. New York: HarperCollins, 1986.
Wenke, Robert J. Patterns in Prehistory: Humankind's First Three Million Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
White, Nancy. Archaeology for Dummies. New York: For Dummies, 2008.
Other Sources
Birth of Civilization (DVD), National Geographic.
If the evidence were good enough, my colleagues and I would abandon our antennas and begin crawling the countryside. It would be easier and cheaper. It would also offer the tantalizing possibility of communication that was up close and personal. But after more than sixty years of UFO sightings, we still seem unable to come up with the good stuff. Physical evidence—a taillight or knob from an alien craft—is in short supply.
—Seth Shostak, senior astronomer
at the SETI Institute
What we see is only what our brain tells us we see, and it's not 100 percent accurate.
—John Medina, Brain Rules
Believing is seeing.
—John Slader
Nobody wants this one more than me. I even have the credentials. A heavy dose of The Twilight Zone and original Star Trek episodes in childhood primed me to think outside the sphere. While other kids played marbles and obsessed over baseball cards, I was busy contemplating ways to defend Earth against extraterrestrial invaders. In adulthood I once had a dream that involved the Drake equation.1 That's not normal. I've probably watched the films Contact and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 original) more times than any adult not currently living in his parents' basement. I can't recall many song lyrics, but I have no problem reciting Charlton Heston's classic line from Planet of the Apes : “I can't help thinking that somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man.” It's also very likely that I've read more books and watched more documentaries about astrobiology and space exploration than most astronauts.
A few years ago, I attended a lecture by SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak with the barely restrained enthusiasm of a twelve-year-old girl at a Justin Bieber concert. My pulse quickened when he announced that if any extraterrestrial signals are out there, fastimproving technology gives us a very good chance of detecting them within the next twenty or thirty years. I was far too dignified to ask Shostak for his autograph after the talk—but there's no denying that I wanted it. I don't pretend to know that intelligent extraterrestrials exist. However, the idea that they probably do excites me. I may not be an ET believer, but I am definitely an ET hoper. If they ever really do land, the UFO enthusiasts are going to have to get in line behind me. Some years ago I literally announced to my family that if a spacecraft ever lands anywhere near our zip code, I'm going in to say hello, offer the first handshake, give the Vulcan salute, or whatever. My precocious children were quick to warn me about vaporization, enslavement, uncomfortable probing, radiation, and alien pathogens. But I don't care about their nagging over details. It would be a moment too big, too exciting, and too important to shrink from. First contact is mine; I'm going in.
I have always preferred to give UFO claims a fair hearing rather than dismiss them automatically. Maybe it's because I have the heart of a UFO believer, if not the mind. Or perhaps it is because I have seen weird things in the sky too—twice. The first time I was ten years old, cruising down some dreary Florida highway in the car with my father when I spotted several lights streaking across the sky at high speeds. They did this repeatedly and flew together in loose formation. I can't remember much detail, only that I was amazed by what I was seeing and pretty sure they couldn't be airplanes based on how sharply they turned. If someone had pressed me afterward to explain what I saw, I assume I would have said that what I saw was definitely something strange—probably alien spaceships. Today, however, if I saw the same thing I would stop well short of suggesting that I saw alien spaceships. I'm not ten years old anymore, and I now understand how easily the human mind can be misled, particularly when the eyes feed it unusual and unexpected images. Looking back, a more likely explanation for what I saw might be that it was nothing more than the reflected lights of passing cars on the window of the car I was in. Then again, maybe it was an alien armada passi
ng through the solar system. I'll never know for sure, and I have to live with that.
A few years later, I was outside playing in my neighborhood and saw several tiny lights in the sky moving very fast. Again, I didn't think they moved like jets. Maybe it was a meteor shower. Or maybe it was squad of alien anthropologists observing the play habits of Earth boys from high altitude. What were they? What did I see on those two occasions? The only honest answer I can give for both events is “I don't know.” Not everyone is willing to accept that kind of uncertainty, however.
People all around the world often see weird things in the sky that they cannot readily identify. But some are unwilling to admit that these things they see are unidentified and leave it at that. So they jump to the extraordinary conclusion that the objects must therefore be extraterrestrial spaceships. The point that needs to be emphasized and repeated often when talking about UFOs is that seeing something that is an unidentified object is not the same as seeing an identified alien spaceship. The jump from one to the other is not reasonable or logically defensible. The unidentified nature of such sightings means they could be labeled just about anything. If, for example, fairy belief was widespread today, then all these hovering and streaking lights in the night sky would likley be identified as fairies rather than spacecraft from another planet. No matter how strange a light in the sky may seem, there can be no justification for pretending to know that it's a spaceship unless one can clearly see the hull of a star cruiser with nonhuman beings waving from the portholes.
Since not everyone is aware of this, it's always worth stating the fact that no one has ever produced any scientifically confirmed evidence of a spaceship having visited us. This absence of evidence is crucial to the issue and should be the focal point of every UFO discussion. Nothing, not one piece of a flying saucer has ever been found and passed on to the world's scientists and skeptics so they could examine and verify its extraterrestrial origins. Nothing. We do not have a single piece of exotic metal that could not possibly have been crafted by humans, no devices that baffle the best engineers, and—despite what you may have heard—not even one alien body. Sure, it's possible that such evidence exists in Area 51 or some top-secret government vault in a hollowed-out mountain somewhere. But until somebody releases it, leaks it, or steals it and shows us, it's silly to pretend that we know it's there. All we have are eyewitness accounts of weird things in the sky and stories of people being abducted or interacting with aliens. Based on what we know about the reliability of eyewitness accounts, however, this is just not good enough for something so unusual and important. It is known beyond a shadow of doubt that sane, intelligent, honest human beings are capable of misinterpreting what they see and misremembering what they saw. Therefore, before coming to the conclusion that extraterrestrials are buzzing around our planet, we must have hard evidence that scientists can analyze, test, and confirm. Short of an alien spacecraft landing in Times Square, nothing else will do for a claim this extraordinary and important. Tens of millions of people have decided not to wait for evidence, however.
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