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== Early life ==
== Early life ==
Von Däniken was raised a strict Catholic, he attended the international Catholic school Saint-Michel in [[Fribourg]], Switzerland. He became apprenticed to a Swiss hotelier following the completion of his formal education and a communication breakdown between his father and the Catholic church.<ref>Story(1976), p1</ref>
Von Däniken was raised a strict Catholic, attended the international Catholic school Saint-Michel in [[Fribourg]], Switzerland. the of and and the .<ref>(, </ref>


At the age of 19, von Däniken was caught stealing money, both from an innkeeper and from a camp where he was employed as a youth leader, and was given a four-month suspended sentence. The psychiatrist who examined von Däniken at the time described him as displaying a "tendency to lie".<ref name="playboy"/> Von Däniken was withdrawn from his school, and became apprenticed to a Swiss hotelier for a time,<ref>Story(1976), p1</ref> before moving to Egypt. While in Egypt, he was involved in a jewelry deal which resulted in a nine-month conviction for fraud and embezzlement upon his return to Switzerland.
In 1974 von Däniken gave an interview to ''[[Playboy]]'', where it was recounted in the editorial introduction of how at the age of eight he witnessed the crash-landing of an American bomber near his home and watched how the crew emerged and walked silently past him. After leaving school his interest "turned to astronomy, flying saucers - anything extraworldly." By the age of 19 he got into trouble with the law when he was "convicted of stealing money from an innkeeper and from a camp where he worked as a youth leader" that resulted in a four-month suspended sentence. A psychiatrist who examined him said he displayed a "tendency to lie." Running away to Egypt from his job apprenticed to a hotelier, he got himself in a dubious jewellery deal that resulted upon his return to Switzerland in a conviction for fraud and embezzlement, for which he served nine months in prison. Whilst in prison he experienced an intense vision. When becoming a hotel manager for 12 years he took frequent vacations to travel around the world, something he could only manage by falsifying his books - and getting into debt to the sum of $130,000 - and he became convicted for the second time of "repeated and sustained acts of embezzlement...fraud...forgery." This resulted in 12 months in prison. It was during this spell in prison that von Däniken wrote the first draft of a manuscript that eventually became ''Chariots of the Gods?''.<ref>Playboy, August 1974 (volume 21, number 8)</ref>

Following his prison sentence, von Däniken became a hotel manager.<ref name="playboy"/> During his twelve years in this job, he frequently travelled abroad to carry out research for what would become his first book. This foreign travel, apparently beyond the means of a modest hotel manager, drew the attention of the authorities, and following his arrest a Swiss court ruled that von Däniken had been falsifying hotel records. He was convicted for "repeated and sustained acts of embezzlement... fraud... forgery" and sentenced to a year in prison. It was during this incarceration that von Däniken wrote the first draft of a manuscript that eventually became ''Chariots of the Gods?''.<ref name="playboy"/>


== Claims of alien influence on Earth ==
== Claims of alien influence on Earth ==

Revision as of 10:00, 11 January 2012

Erich von Däniken
Erich von Däniken in 2006
Born
Erich Anton Paul von Däniken

(1935-04-14) 14 April 1935 (age 89)
Zofingen, Aargau, Switzerland
OccupationAuthor

Erich Anton Paul von Däniken (born 14 April 1935 in Zofingen, Aargau) is a Swiss author best known for his controversial claims about extraterrestrial influences on early human culture, in books such as Chariots of the Gods?, published in 1968. Däniken is one of the main figures responsible for popularizing the "paleo-contact" and ancient astronaut hypotheses.

Däniken is a co-founder of the Archaeology, Astronautics and SETI Research Association (AAS RA), and designed the theme park Mystery Park in Interlaken, Switzerland, that first opened on 23 May 2003.[1] His 26 books have been translated into more than 20 languages, selling more than 60 million copies worldwide, and his documentary TV shows have been viewed around the world.[not verified in body]

His ideas are largely rejected by scientists and academics, who categorize his work as pseudohistory and pseudoarchaeology.[2][3][4]

Early life

Von Däniken was raised a strict Catholic, and attended the international Catholic school Saint-Michel in Fribourg, Switzerland. During his time at the school he rejected the church's interpretations of the Bible, and developed an interest in astronomy and the phenomenon of flying saucers.[5]

At the age of 19, von Däniken was caught stealing money, both from an innkeeper and from a camp where he was employed as a youth leader, and was given a four-month suspended sentence. The psychiatrist who examined von Däniken at the time described him as displaying a "tendency to lie".[5] Von Däniken was withdrawn from his school, and became apprenticed to a Swiss hotelier for a time,[6] before moving to Egypt. While in Egypt, he was involved in a jewelry deal which resulted in a nine-month conviction for fraud and embezzlement upon his return to Switzerland.

Following his prison sentence, von Däniken became a hotel manager.[5] During his twelve years in this job, he frequently travelled abroad to carry out research for what would become his first book. This foreign travel, apparently beyond the means of a modest hotel manager, drew the attention of the authorities, and following his arrest a Swiss court ruled that von Däniken had been falsifying hotel records. He was convicted for "repeated and sustained acts of embezzlement... fraud... forgery" and sentenced to a year in prison. It was during this incarceration that von Däniken wrote the first draft of a manuscript that eventually became Chariots of the Gods?.[5]

Claims of alien influence on Earth

The iron pillar of Delhi, erected by Chandragupta II the Great

Several scientists, such as Carl Sagan and I. S. Shklovskii, have written about Däniken's paleocontact and extraterrestrial visitation claims. While Sagan did not rule out the possibility of visitation, he said that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", which Däniken fails to provide.[7]

In Chariots of the Gods, Däniken wrote that a non-rusting iron pillar in Delhi, India was evidence of extraterrestrial influence.[8] In a later Playboy interview, when challenged that the column did have rust on it, Däniken replied "I have found that investigations were made and they came to quite different results, so we can forget about this iron thing."[9]

Some also question von Däniken's credibility, as he has also knowingly put forward fraudulent evidence to advance his hypotheses, such as photographs of pottery "depicting UFOs" from an archaeological dig dating back to the biblical era. The PBS television series Nova determined that this was a fraud, and located the potter who made them. Von Däniken said that the deception was justified because some people would only believe his ideas if they saw actual proof.[10]

In The Gold of the Gods von Däniken said he was guided through artificial tunnels in a cave under Ecuador, Cueva de los Tayos, containing gold, strange statues and a library with metal tablets, which he considered to be evidence of ancient space visitors. The man whom he claimed showed him these tunnels, Juan Moricz, told Der Spiegel that all of von Däniken's descriptions came from a long conversation and that the photos in the book had been "fiddled". Von Däniken told Playboy that although he had seen the library and other places he had described, he had fabricated some of the events to add interest to his book.[11][12]

Kenneth Feder has accused von Däniken of European ethnocentrism,[13] while John Flenley and Paul Bahn have suggested that views such as his interpretation of the Easter Island statues "ignore the real achievements of our ancestors and constitute the ultimate in racism: they belittle the abilities and ingenuity of the human species as a whole."[14]

Ronald Story published The Space Gods Revealed: A Close Look At The Theories of Erich Von Däniken in 1976, written in response to the evidence presented in Däniken's Chariots of the Gods?. It was reviewed as "a coherent and much-needed refutation of Von Däniken's theories".[15]

A 2004 article in Skeptic Magazine states that Däniken plagiarized many of the book's concepts from The Morning of the Magicians, that this book in turn was heavily influenced by the Cthulhu Mythos, and that the core of the ancient astronaut theory originates in H. P. Lovecraft's short stories "The Call of Cthulhu" written in 1926, and "At the Mountains of Madness" written in 1931.[16]

Popularity

Däniken's first book, Chariots of the Gods?, was an immediate best seller in the United States, Europe and India, with subsequent books translated into 32 languages and selling more than 62 million copies around the world.

Däniken became popular in India during the 1970s, as a result of his books being translated into the Bengali language by the translator Ajit Dutta. School level students were the first major group of his believers in India. Däniken subsequently visited the Kashmir region to check for the presence of radioactivity in an ancient temple, where he believed that a spacecraft had once landed.

An exhibit, Un Monde Insolite, largely based on Däniken's book Chariots of the Gods was opened in Montreal, Canada, for several summers in the 1970s. The exhibit was located in a former pavilion of the Expo 67 exhibition. It featured replicas of various historical artifacts that Däniken claimed were evidence of past alien visitation.

Books

  • Chariots of the Gods? (1968))
  • Return to the Stars (1968)
  • Gods from Outer Space (1970)
  • The Gold of the Gods (1972)
  • In Search of Ancient Gods (1973)
  • Miracles of the Gods (1974)
  • According to the Evidence (1977)
  • Signs of the Gods (1979)
  • Pathways to the Gods (1981)
  • The Gods and Their Grand Design (1982)
  • German language books published between 1984 and 2009:
    • Der Tag an dem die Götter kamen (1984) ISBN 3-442-08478-4
    • Habe ich mich geirrt? (1985) ISBN 3-570-03059-8
    • Wir alle sind Kinder der Götter (1987) C. Bertelsmann, ISBN 3-570-03060-1
    • Die Augen der Sphinx (1989) C. Bertelsmann, ISBN 3-570-04390-8
    • Die Spuren der Ausserirdischen (1990) (Bildband) ISBN 3-570-09419-7
    • Die Steinzeit war ganz anders (1991) ISBN 3-570-03618-9
    • Ausserirdische in Ägypten (1991)
    • Erinnerungen an die Zukunft (1992) (Reissue with new foreword)
    • Der Götter-Schock (1992) ISBN 3-570-04500-5
    • Raumfahrt im Altertum (1993) ISBN 3-570-12023-6
    • Auf den Spuren der Allmächtigen (1993) C. Bertelsmann, ISBN 3-570-01726-5
    • Botschaften und Zeichen aus dem Universum (1994) C. Bertelsmann, ISBN 3-442-12688-6
    • Götterdämmerung (2009) KOPP Verlag 978-3942016049
    • Grüße aus der Steinzeit: Wer nicht glauben will, soll sehen!, 2010
    • Was ist falsch im Maya-Land?: Versteckte Technologien in Tempeln und Skulpturen, 2011
  • The Eyes of the Sphinx (1996)
  • The Return of the Gods: Evidence of Extraterrestrial Visitations (1997)
  • The Arrival of the Gods: Revealing the Alien Landing Sites of Nazca (1998)
  • Odyssey of the Gods: An Alien History of Ancient Greece (2000)
  • The Gods Were Astronauts: Revised (2001)
  • History Is Wrong (2009)
  • Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials (2010)

Films

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Mystery Park, Interlaken". Switzerland Flexitours. Thursday, 8 April 2010. Retrieved 18 April 2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ Fagan, Brian M. (10th edition 2000). In the beginning: an introduction to archaeology. Prentice-Hall. pp. 17–18. ISBN 978-0130307316. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  3. ^ Orser, Charles E. (2003). Race and practice in archaeological interpretation. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-8122-3750-4.
  4. ^ Fritze, Ronald H. (2009). Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-religions. Reaktion Books. pp. 13, 200, 201. ISBN 9781861894304.
  5. ^ a b c d Playboy, August 1974 (volume 21, number 8)
  6. ^ Story(1976), p1
  7. ^ Carl Sagan (writer/host) (14 December 1980). "Encyclopaedia Galactica". Cosmos. Episode 12. 01:24 minutes in. PBS.
  8. ^ Däniken, Erich von: Chariots of the Gods?, p. 94.
  9. ^ Playboy magazine, page 64, Volume 21 Number 8, 1974
  10. ^ Horizon, BBC documentary, The Case of the Ancient Astronauts, first aired 3/8/78.
  11. ^ Stiebing Jr, William H. Ancient Astronauts, Cosmic Collisions, and Other Popular Theories About Man's Past Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, 1084 ISBN 0-87975-258-8 pp96-98
  12. ^ Von Däniken offered the following explanations in his Playboy interview: "In German we say a writer, if he is not writing pure science, is allowed to use some dramaturgisch Effekte - some theatrical effects. And that's what I have done." Von Däniken added "I have been inside the caves, but not at the place where the photographs in the book were taken, not at the main entrance. I was at a side entrance." He claimed he actually witnessed in person the objects that he described and published photographs of in his book, and explained that Moricz's denials about his claims were due to the fact that Moricz's expedition crew had signed documents involving pledges of silence about what was in the caves. Von Däniken also stated that a leading German archaeologist was sent to Ecuador to verify his claims, but in 6 weeks of staying there he could not find Moricz. Playboy, p. 58.
  13. ^ Feder, Kenneth L. Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology Mayfield Publishing Company 1990 3rd ed. ISBN 0-7674-0459-9 p. 195
  14. ^ Flenley, John; Bahn, Paul G. The Enigmas of Easter Island, Oxford University Press 2003 ISBN 978-0192803405 p.114
  15. ^ Time, 2 August 1976
  16. ^ Jason Colavito (2004). "An investigation into H.P. Lovecraft and the invention of ancient astronauts. As seen in Skeptic magazine". Skeptic (10.4).
  17. ^ "Roland Emmerich's Stargate film based on Erich von Daniken's research". Zoozle news. Retrieved 19 March 2011.

References

  • Story, Ronald (1976). The space-gods revealed : a close look at the theories of Erich von Däniken. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0060141417.

Further reading

  • Lingeman, Richard R. (31 March 1974). "Erich von Daniken's Genesis". The New York Times. p. 6.
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