Re: Chariots of da Gods?!!

William Belcher (wbelcher@students.wisc.edu)
2 Oct 1996 21:07:23 GMT

Dan:

I too have read almost everything that von Daniken has written - before
when it first came out and more recently (including his "new" book, Eyes of
the Sphinx, that seems to be most of the material in this new film).

I would have to disagree with you - all of his books are full of pure
speculation that were then and still are based on pure speculation that has
no basis in fact.

For example, the "high-tech" weapons that the stone warriers at Tula have,
he states that they are ray-guns (to use his 70s terminology), yet we as
archaeologists have always known that they are atlatls - very common and
low-tech (but very deadly in the right hands) spear-throwing weapons. I
would disagree vehemently with the statement that none of the artifacts
that he discussed have been explained, most of them were explained before
and even more so now. For example, his insistence that the tomb at Palenque
depicts a space craft goes against all Mayan iconography - it is definitely
a picture of Pacal the Great (at least they used his name, before he was
thought to be an alien - yes, check it out in Chariots of the Gods?) poised
at the point of death - the "nose-cone" is the tree of life motif and the
"flames and rocket" are the Maw of the Underworld (those flames are
actually teeth - take a closer look). So instead of a rocketship, we have a
great leader poised between life and death.

von Daniken consistently recognized modern technology in petroglyphs, rock
paintings, statues, etc - but it's interesting, it's technology from 1996,
it's the technology from the late 1960s and early 1970s - he is constantly
making references to the Apollo program and its equipment...I don't know
this for certain, but I suspect that if a species had the capability to
cross interstellar space, their technology wouldn't resemble our current
level of technology let alone that from the 1970s (by probability that they
would resemble humanoids and even come up with solutions that look like our
technology is evolutionary so slight that it could have never have
happened).