Erich Anton Paul von Daniken, the famous Swiss writer and director, is a staunch supporter of the fact that many events in human history and unexplained finds are the result of the intervention of extraterrestrial intelligent beings. According to the writer, "irrelevant artifacts" such as a bird from Saqqara, a Baghdad battery, a Sabu disk or an Antikythera mechanism; geoglyphs Nazca or Giant from the Atacama Desert; the majestic buildings of antiquity: Baalbek, Puma Punku, which are difficult to repeat even now, are all signs that much more advanced civilizations have visited the earth in the past and passed on some of their knowledge to our ancestors.
The beginning of the story
Despite the fact that Erich von Daniken is not the founder of the hypothesis of paleocontacts (this idea was put forward and seriously considered before, including by such prominent scientists as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky), he is undoubtedly one of its most important adherents and propagandists. He came to the hypothesis about ancient aliens in his youth. Erich von Daniken was born on April 14, 1935 in the small old town of Zofingen in northern Switzerland into a religious family. Having entered the Catholic College of St. Michael in Friborg, he soon became disillusioned - not in God, no, but in the official religion.
“God has to be omnipresent,” he says, “so he doesn't need transportation to get around. And of course, God doesn't make mistakes. But in the Bible, the book of the prophet Ezekiel, we see God moving in a chariot (Ezekiel 1: 4-28). Then we read that God created the heavens and the earth and man, and decided it was good (Genesis 1:31). But soon after he realized that he had made a mistake, that it was not good, and destroyed humanity, unleashing a flood on him (Genesis 6: 6-7).
Stories about the encounter with higher powers, such as the one described in the book of Ezekiel, are contained in many ancient religious texts, not only in Christian ones. Thus, in the Mahabharata, an ancient Indian epic, we read about flying chariots and iron cities that moved and became invisible by the power of the thought of their owner (for example, Mahabharata, Aranyakaparva (Forest Book), chapters 15–23 Similar episodes made the young man think of aliens from other planets.
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Chariot of the Gods
After leaving his studies, von Daniken got a job as an assistant to the owner of a hotel, then moved to Egypt, where he could personally see the famous pyramids, ancient drawings, such as the famous "helicopter hieroglyphs" from the Temple of Set in Abydos. This further convinced him that in ancient times, people encountered creatures that possessed technology and technology, significantly superior to everything that was in those days.
Returning from Egypt to his homeland, von Daniken married Elizabeth Skaia. In 1963, their daughter, Cornelia, was born. Around this time, he took a job as a hotel manager in Davos, where in the mid-1960s he wrote his first and most famous book, Chariots of the Gods. Publishers for some time refused to publish it - the ideas put forward in it turned out to be too bold and doubtful. But after its release in 1968, it became an instant bestseller. And even the fact that the author was later awarded the Shnobel Prize for this book testifies (despite the humorous nature of the prize) of international fame and recognition.
While working on the book, von Daniken got into trouble with the law. He falsified some papers to finance his travels abroad to write the book. However, the resounding success of "Chariots of the Gods" allowed him to pay off his debts. Now he could devote himself to finding evidence of paleocontacts and writing books.
In subsequent years, several dozen of his works were published, and von Daniken never limited himself to describing any one region, for example, Egypt. So, he sought to demonstrate that aliens were met by inhabitants of all corners of the Earth. From the highlands of the Andes to the islands of Kiribati, from Greece to Peru, from Altai to Easter Island, there is evidence everywhere that, if not prove the presence of extraterrestrial beings, then certainly give food for thought.
Memories of the Future
In the places about which von Daniken wrote, he always tried to visit himself and personally see everything with his own eyes. Excellent knowledge of 4 languages allowed him to communicate without an interpreter in many countries of the world. A passionate traveler, he, in his own words, once set himself the goal of driving 100 thousand miles every year to explore mysterious phenomena in different parts of the planet. This, according to many, was the key to the success of his books and documentaries based on them.
Here is what one reviewer writes: “When the presenters discuss the rock paintings that look like aliens traveling in the sky in spaceships, the image of what is at stake appears on the screen. So we can see everything with our own eyes and independently form an opinion about it, and not take on faith the words of others. Many documentaries place too much emphasis on experts who tell the viewer something and throw in incomprehensible terms. In Memories of the Future, the testimonies themselves act as experts. Perhaps that is why the film, despite its conflicting ideas, became an international bestseller.”
Science - pros and cons
But, of course, von Däniken's conflicting ideas have many supporters and many opponents. Official science declared his hypotheses pseudoscientific and refuses to take them seriously, arguing that all the things the author writes about have a rational explanation. But von Daniken has something to argue with that.
“Why did the Maya build these incredible pyramids? He asks. - Scientists say that for the gods of nature, forces that the Indians admired, but could not understand. But nature doesn't talk. The Maya has a legend that Kukulkan (god of wind and water, fire and air) gave people the knowledge of astronomy and mathematics. But nature does not say: "Take such a number, divide it into such, and you will get such."
»During the Second World War, so-called cargo cults arose on the islands in the Pacific Ocean. The islanders, who had never seen airplanes, decided that they were deities, and began to make models of airplanes from wood and straw and worship them. They embraced technology that they could not understand as a miracle. It can be assumed that the same thing happened in ancient times with our ancestors, who saw technologies unknown to them, continues von Daniken.
But all this does not mean that the writer denies the official science. On the contrary, he is one of the founders of the Association for Archeology, Astronautics and the SETI Project (AASRA), which aims to establish using scientific methods whether alien beings visited Earth in ancient times. Von Daniken's other social endeavor is the Jungfrau theme park in Interlaken, Switzerland. It opened in 2003 and consists of seven pavilions dedicated to the great mysteries of our planet. The idea and design of the park was developed by von Daniken himself.
The story continues
Now the writer is 80 years old, but he is still cheerful and continues to attend various events related to hypotheses of paleocontacts.
He lives in a small mountain village 40 kilometers from Bern, where he enjoys the silence, the company of his family, delicious food, which he happily prepares himself, and aromatic wines from the vineyards of Bordeaux.