Losing the legacy

Oh no, "Ancient Aliens" again. The *fifth* season?! How many silly seasons can there possibly be? And all the true believer reviewers again! "Lots of cool facts". Geezus. Good people, there are arguably *no* true facts in this series *at all*.

True to form, I've only watched one episode, "The Von Daniken Legacy". I admit that I hate Erich von Däniken. His ideas or "question marks" about aliens visiting Earth in ancient times (in pyramid-like UFOs, to boot) must be *the* worst superstition ever spawned. Homeopathy and reductionist materialism, come back, all is forgiven! Däniken's "theories" are so remarkably ridiculous in a kind of inimitable folksy style, with the main protagonist playing the role of fat German bar-owner spewing "common sense", that they almost make me weep! The fact that I used to believe in ancient aliens myself only ads insult to the injury. OK, I was only eleven at the time, but hell, I'm a perfectionist.

And yes, I need to chill and have a candy bar, I know...

OK, I'm back. Has "Ancient Aliens" become any better during my coffee break? Well...no. So here goes!

I'm not necessarily opposed to rejected knowledge claims (avid readers of my reviews, all two of them, may have noticed a certain soft spot for Bigfoot and...ahem...John Michael Greer), but Däniken's speculations really are annoying and extremely unsophisticated. Däniken, a romantic adventurer of the classical kind, has no formal training in archaeology, anthropology or comparative mythology I'm aware of. Yet, he goes around the world, see mysterious stone structures, declare them "impossible" and...voilá, this proves that aliens built them! The magnificent stone structures at Puma Punku in Bolivia are declared "impossible", when a more reasonable hypothesis is that they *aren't* impossible at all - I mean, they are there, aren't they, and they are made out of sandstone, not moon rock. That the local Natives can't build them, and point to the sky as explanation for who did, leads Däniken to conclude that...well, aliens did it. It's all so breathtakingly simple.

Another example is Lord Pakal at Palenque in Mexico, debunked at least 10,000+ times, but still going strong. If looked at horizontally and with some creative imagination, the lid of Pakal's tomb looks like a guy manning a space rocket. If looked at vertically, using scholarly knowledge of Mayan mythology and iconography, the magnificent artwork shows Pakal being symbolically sacrificed. But no, Däniken's folksy immediate impression simply must be true, or else no ratings for History Channel...

Indeed, it's precisely the populist style, pitting independent researcher against the scientific establishment, which explains part of Däniken's appeal. Däniken is our "audience substitute". While everything you read in peer-reviewed journals isn't necessarily true, there *is* a reason why archaeologists need formal training, not just the ability to run around inside megalithic monuments gasping at the sheer "impossibility" of it all. There is another salient feature of the ancient astronaut milieu, too, one Däniken is at pains to explicitly deny in this documentary. Däniken says he hasn't formed a new religion. In a purely formal sense, he is right. He is *attacking* religion by a modern form of euhemerism, in which the gods are explained away in "naturalist" fashion as space travellers in nuts-and-bolts craft. What Däniken doesn't want to see, but what surely almost everyone else spotted long ago, is that the belief in ancient astronauts is *in effect* a new kind of religion. At the very least, Däniken is offering the masses a potent substitute for religion. The large amount of spiritual types who have climbed onboard the fiery chariot surely shows what we are dealing with. As for Däniken himself, he even claims that the aliens created us and will return one day! Thus, he is specifically tailoring his speculations to an audience used to the *Christian* religion. I don't think Taoists, Shintoists or the Dogon in Mali eagerly awaits "the return of the gods"...

Claude Vorhillon and his Raëlians are the most obvious example of how "ancient aliens" can be turned into a religion (a religion which claims to be materialist, in fact). In their case, the quasi-Biblical traits are very obvious. Zecheriah Sitchin is another example of a person forming what is really a new religious movement around ideas presumably inspired by Däniken's. And Däniken himself? Isn't he really the exoteric attractor of the new creed, its Aaron so to speak? If you take the bait, I'm sure more "esoteric" people are waiting in the wings. I've heard that the Ancient Astronaut Society, which started as a Dänikenite fan club, ended up as a New Age group. Thus, paradoxically the appeal of Däniken's message could be seen as a combination of both populist anti-science and elitist "hidden knowledge", both modern irreligion and post-modern religion. An interesting object for a comparative religion study, I'm sure! These people don't understand that *they* are the ones that should be placed under the sociological and psychological microscope...

The religious/Meaning aspect is surely the reason why so many people are oblivious to the (easily spotted) contradictions in Däniken's books. How can aliens (that's *aliens*, for heaven's sake!) breed true with humans? If they can, why has no alien DNA been found in our gene pool? (Albert Einstein doesn't count.) Why would aliens need to build stone structures at Puma Punku, if they have super-advanced technology light years ahead of us? Why aren't there any *real* traces of a high technological civilization in India, if the Vedic peoples interacted with aliens? Däniken's supporters point to "mysteriously" charred stone walls as evidence for ancient A-bombs, making you wonder why the bombs didn't obliterate the whole town, rather than just charring its walls...

Seriously, should I continue?

Are there real, unsolved mysteries in the universe? Oh, definitely. You already know which ones: where do we come from, why are we here, where are we going... And why *this* fun house of a planet? I'm willing to contemplate the erroneousness of materialism, the existence of Spirit, even one or two paranormal phenomena (although hopefully not on my favourite Swiss hotel). But literal, flesh-and-blood (or green jelly) aliens scaring the living daylights out of Moses, breeding true with female ape-men, and erecting stone structures of a suspiciously-looking human provenance all around the globe just for their higher amusement (and ours?)...naaaah. It's bad archaeology, bad anthropology, bad comparative religion, and - when push comes to shove - probably even bad spirituality.

Erich von Däniken and his fiery chariots is a legacy I would rather loose. One star.