Ancient Aliens – The Alien Phenomenon

Ancient Aliens – The Alien Phenomenon

Ancient Aliens – The Alien Phenomenon: Erich von D niken’s Chariots of the Gods? challenged everything we thought we knew about mankind’s history, suggesting that aliens visited Earth in the distant past. Fifty years after the book’s publication, is he about to be proven right?


 

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This is an American television series that premiered on April 20, 2010, on the History channel. Produced by Prometheus Entertainment in a documentary style, the program presents hypotheses of ancient astronauts and proposes that historical texts, archaeology, and legends contain evidence of past human-extraterrestrial contact. The show has been widely criticized by historians, cosmologists, archaeologists and other scientific circles for presenting and promoting pseudoscience, pseudohistory and pseudoarcheology.

 

Ancient Aliens – The Alien Phenomenon

 

The conceit of this episode is that recent discoveries and developments might finally “prove right” von Däniken’s ideas—a neat trick considering von Däniken famously claims not to have ideas. “I’m just asking questions,” he has repeatedly insisted for the past half century. (Well, almost: In his famous Playboy interview in 1974 he made clear claims and did not use the question excuse. It seems to have entered his repertoire when after he received real challenges to his ideas.

In 1974, he actually asserted that he was certain that he was correct about his many space alien claims.) It turns out that this is only an excuse trotted out when challenged on points of fact or logic. When absorbing the adulation of believers and reveling in perceived harmonies between some his questions and real-life events—akin to stopped cocks telling the right time twice a day, or horoscopes being vague enough to predict any future—suddenly his disclaimer about not actually making any real or testable claims evaporate.

Erich Anton Paul von Däniken was born in Switzerland in 1935, raised a strict Catholic, and in Catholic school developed an interest in UFOs, like many youths in the early 1950s. He had a criminal record. Däniken was convicted of theft when he was 19, and he left school to become a hotelier.

He was convicted of embezzlement after leaving that job. Däniken took another hotel position, and he stole money there, too, by falsifying records in order to obtain tens of thousands in fraudulent loans to finance his interest in space aliens and what the court later called his “playboy lifestyle.” The court psychiatrist declared him a pathological liar. Eventually, he would be convicted of embezzlement and fraud yet again, serving a year in prison.

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