Just who is Erich von Daniken and what is his goal in life besides irritating archaeologists with his outrageous theories?
Erich von Daniken was born in Zofingen, Switzerland, on April 14, 1935. He was educated at the College of St. Michel in Fribourg, and studied ancient holy writings. While managing a Swiss hotel, he wrote his first book, Chariots of the Gods. which became a bestseller in the United States. He wrote his second book, Return to the Stars, while confined to a Swiss prison awaiting trial for fraud charges. He was found guilty in Feb. 1970, and served two years. Von Daniken is responsible for the television special, In Search of Ancient Astronauts, which is based upon his first book. The term 'ancient astronauts' presents the theory that extraterrestrials are responsible for most of the great works of ancient civilizations on Earth. Von Daniken upholds the notion that ancient people did not develop technologies, myths, arts, culture, etc... on their own, but were taught by aliens. His hypothesis states that there is an abundance of "evidence of highly advanced artifacts" found in the archaeological record that is "beyond the capability of ancient humans. This can be called the Our Ancestors, the Dummies, Hypothesis" (Feder, 215).
According to another von Daniken hypothesis, K. L. Feder calls this the Amorous Astronaut Hypothesis, the human species is the product of "interstellar miscegenation." Von Daniken states, in Chariots of the Gods, "A few specially selected women would be fertilized by the astronauts. Thus a race would arise that skipped a stage in natural evolution." As Carl Sagan so astutely pointed out in The Case of the Ancient Astronauts, the chances of any two different species from even our own planet being able to mate and produce offspring are quite remote. A human ancestor would likely have been more successful mating with a petunia than with a creature from outer space; at least the human ancestor and the petunia both evolved here on earth" (Feder 214, 215).
K. L. Feder, in his book Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries, describes von Daniken's approach to substantiate his extraterrestrial theories analogous to an inkblot test. He calls this the Inkblot Hypothesis. Feder's point is that the image "seen in an inkblot is entirely dependent on the mind of the viewer." Feder states that " von Daniken sees spacemen because he wants to, not because they really are there" (Feder, 206). |
