In 1968 Erich Von Dankien published Chariots of the Gods? which proposed the in ancient times aliens visited the Earth and were treated as gods. He suggests proof via his interpretation of ancient writings including the Bible and by structures, statues, and various paintings and carvings. This lead to a documentary that showed up on US TV in 1973, entitled In Search of Ancient Astronauts with Rod Sterling as the narrator.
Von Dankien went on to write 26 books, only his first three made the bestseller lists. He, according to Fortean Times, invested in an amusement park in Switzerland devoted to his theories which closed in 2006.
His ancient astronaut theories have been criticized as having little proof for such a broad theory. One book, entitled Crash Go the Chariots was an early debunking of this theory. They have been other books and both the Skeptical Inquirer (Committee for Scientific Inquiry) and Skeptic (The Skeptical Society) have published articles critical of Von Dankien's theories.
Now the History Channel presents a two hour documentary entitled Ancient Aliens which is an update of the 1973 film mentioned previously. Von Dankien still pushing his theories, careful not to mention things like the rust proof pillar in India or the Easter Island statutes that could not be erected by the natives, as these have been quite thoroughly debunked. He still makes some wild exaggerations about size and weights of things to make his point that only an advanced technology could do build some of the structures found from ancient times.
One thing new is that there is a publication called Legendary Times magazine, published by Giorgio A. Tsoukalos which is a quarterly on ancient astronaut theory. I did not know that Von Dankien's theories were that popular to have a magazine devoted to them. Tsoukalos was present throughout the show, maybe he helped get the funding for it, presenting his views that Von Dankien was correct. If you go to his website, he is offering a free issue to encourage people to join up.
Bottom line, this was slanted pro Von Dankien, very little skeptical viewpoints were represented. What was there, was edited to make the skeptics look close minded. Given that there is plenty of published work rebutting the ancient astronaut theory, I wonder why the History Channel could be present a better balanced show.
At least this was better than that horrible 7 Signs of the Apocalypse.
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I saw this show on the Pseudo-History Channel and was appalled. What a slanted program! Very few other voices were allowed to speak, and that Tsoukalos fellow was there to attack those comments we did hear.
ReplyDeleteEvery piece of "evidence" made me want to ask, "Why is YOUR interpretation of the evidence correct?" and "Why are you assuming that this can be the ONLY answer?" Very frustrating.
It was a very poor showing, yet again, from the History Channel.