The Unsolved Mysteries of Erich von Däniken
News of the death of the infamous charlatan Erich von Däniken reminded me that at one time, when I was about 11 years old, I borrowed his book Chariots of the Gods from the public library. Even at that age I thought it was a load of nonsense, but I have to admit that I was fascinated by the origin of the Nazca Lines in Southern Peru, most of which were created between 500 BC and 500 AD but were probably based on even older structures. An example, depicting a humming bird, is shown here:
Von Däniken claimed that these were landing strips for ancient spacecraft piloted by extraterrestrials, an explanation that can easily be refuted. The actual purpose of these structures is yet to be discerned. I thought it was likely that they had some astronomical significance, but if they do then it has yet to be elucidated. How they were made is less difficult to explain: almost certainly they were made by scaling up smaller drawings. This would have required some mathematical understanding, and perhaps the use of coordinates, but there’s no reason to suppose that the people who created them lacked such knowledge. What they mean is indeed an unsolved mystery.
The other unsolved mystery is why people fall for the sort of nonsense peddled by von Däniken. It seems to me that part of the answer is that modern humans have an almost irresistible tendency to assume that earlier human beings were much less intelligent than us. This is clearly not true. In fact human intelligence has evolved very little over the past few millennia. What has evolved is knowledge (passed on cumulatively through the generations) and the technology created using that knowledge. Erich von Däniken promoted the idea that only extraterrestrials could have created the Nazca lines; he and others have suggested that the pyramids of ancient Egypt were built by aliens too. It’s part of our desire to think of ourselves as being much smarter than our ancestors. You only have to look at the world today to realize that humans aren’t as clever as they think they are. In fact we’re just as dumb as humans have always been; we just have better gadgets (including, unfortunately, weapons).
Another book I got out of the public library at about the same time was Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky. As far as I can remember, this book propounded a new theory of the solar system in which the planet Venus was ejected from Jupiter and then went rattling around encountering other planets and causing various catastrophes. This was supposed to have happened around 1500 BC which “explains” various historical events, including many described in the Bible. It is nonsense of course, but some people lapped it up, as some continue to believe that the Earth is flat.
I find it hard to understand why some people persist in denying scientific advances for which there is considerable empirical evidence and prefer instead to believe in nonsense peddled by the likes of Erich von Däniken. If anyone can solve that mystery they will be doing the human race a very big favour.
In the Dark 
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