Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past is a 1968 pseudoscientific work by Swiss author Erich von Däniken (1935–) that explores whether extraterrestrial beings have visited the earth in the distant past, influencing the development of ancient mythology, art, and architecture. Due to the book’s popularity in the 1970s, its title became shorthand for the ancient astronaut theory, the belief that visiting space aliens played a role in human cultural development. Despite intense criticism from archaeologists, historians, and other scholars who have branded the book pseudoscience due to its many factual errors and leaps in logic, it went on to serve as the inspiration for the long-running television series In Search of… (1977–1982) and Ancient Aliens (2009–), which continued the book’s quest for proof of prehistoric alien visitations.
In Chariots of the Gods, von Däniken laid out a series of propositions that suggested, he claimed, contact between space aliens and ancient humans. Framed as a series of hypotheticals, thought experiments, and rhetorical questions, Chariots presented a mythic narrative in which voyagers from a distant planet were imagined to have crossed the gulfs of space to arrive at the early earth. As presented in Chariots, these space aliens actively sought to improve human intelligence through a program of interbreeding with human women, resulting in superior children. Due to the technological supremacy of these space aliens, ancient human beings often mistook them for gods. Thus, their rocket ships became the thunder and flame in which the gods of old appeared to their followers, like Yahweh on Mt. Sinai. But these aliens were not always kind to humans, and they used nuclear weapons to wipe out whole cities whenever the humans failed to meet the aliens’ expectations for intellectual and cultural improvement. These aliens promised to return and to watch over humanity. Chariots speculates that unidentified flying objects may be the visible manifestation of space aliens today, tying the ancient astronaut theory into the burgeoning UFO myth.
Erich von Däniken published Chariots of the Gods in 1968, a book that took the lead in advocating the “ancient alien” theory. This theory holds that aliens from outer space visited the Earth in prehistoric eras and became the source of many of our ancient myths about gods with divine power. Many believe that Egypt’s pyramids, England’s Stonehenge, and other ancient works of art and science could not have been conceived without the help of intelligent extraterrestrials. (Jänichen/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
In later volumes, von Däniken modified his propositions somewhat, suggesting that extraterrestrials used genetic engineering to create humanity from the apes, and in Signs of the Gods (1979) he argued that the aliens designed the white and Asian races to improve upon their earlier experiments with the black race, which von Däniken (1981, 70) suggested the aliens may have seen as a failure. Other theorists suggested even more dramatic claims. A version of the ancient astronaut theory popular with contemporary conspiracy theorists draws on old anti-Semitic folklore and suggests that “good” aliens support everyday Americans while “evil” aliens, often identified as serpentine Reptilians, recalling biblical symbols for evil, are in league with Jewish bankers and Freemasons and are plotting global genocide. Critics have long argued that the ancient astronaut theory has racist undercurrents because it suggests that native peoples around the world lack the intelligence or ability to produce their own cultural achievements without outside help.
Von Däniken supported his tale of alien encounters with what he saw as evidence from architecture, iconography, and ancient texts. Ancient architectural achievements, such as Tiwanaku in Bolivia, the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, and Stonehenge in Britain, von Däniken suggested, could not have been accomplished by ancient humans using known technology, due to the size of their stone blocks. Furthermore, according to von Däniken, inscriptions, such as rock art in the Sahara and the coffin lid of the Mayan king Pacal of Palenque, depicted images resembling the spacesuits and rockets used by 1960s astronauts. Lastly, von Däniken argues that passages from ancient mythology and literature, such as from the Bible, describe the gods appearing in smoke and flame, which he likened to the rockets used in Apollo-era space missions.
Von Däniken was not the first writer to connect ancient architecture, art, and literature to space aliens. In writing Chariots, he drew on works by Robert Charroux, Louis Pauwels, and Jacques Bergier, particularly Morning of the Magicians (1960), which were in turn influenced by Soviet claims, the speculations of Charles Fort, and a nineteenth-century occult movement, Theosophy. Even the famed scientist Carl Sagan, in his works Planetary Space Science (1963) and Intelligent Life in the Universe (1966), has suggested that there could be a scientific basis for the ancient astronaut theory. The latter work was even cited by von Däniken in Chariots. The ancient astronaut theory has also appeared in fiction ranging from Garrett P. Serviss’s Edison’s Conquest of Mars (1898), in which ancient Martians build the Great Sphinx of Egypt, to the weird fiction of horror writer H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1935), famed for his “Cthulhu Mythos” stories of extraterrestrials who visited the ancient earth and left behind fabulous ruins.
Nevertheless, it was Chariots of the Gods that brought the ancient astronaut theory into the cultural mainstream and transformed an obscure hypothesis into modern mythology. In Chariots von Däniken warned readers that he was merely speculating, that he did not have conclusive proof; he also advocated that the very concept of “truth” was unknowable. However, many among the book’s millions of readers skipped over the warnings and read von Däniken’s questions about possibilities as claims of fact.
Chariots of the Gods was first published in Germany in 1968 under the title Erinnerungen an die Zukunft (Memories of the Future), where it was an immediate success, selling more than 200,000 copies in its first year. So widespread was the public’s interest in von Däniken’s theories that the news magazine Der Spiegel coined the term “Dänikitis” to refer to the growing obsession with aliens and ancient mysteries (“Wer von Wem” 1969, 184–185). Von Däniken’s manuscript has been heavily revised by screenwriter Wilhelm Roggersdorf (aka Wilhelm Utermann) to make the manuscript more commercially appealing. Chariots acquired its English title in 1969 when it was first published in Great Britain. Subsequently, it made its first appearance in the United States as a six-part serial in the National Enquirer in February 1970 before being published in book form in 1972. In 1970 filmmaker Harald Reinl made the book into a German-language documentary, which was nominated for a 1971 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
American television producer Alan Landsburg adapted the German film into an American television series, In Search of Ancient Astronauts, complete with new narration by Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling. It aired on NBC on January 5, 1973, and was watched by approximately 28 million television viewers. The popularity of the documentary and its two sequels, In Search of Ancient Mysteries (1973) and The Outer Space Connection (1975), exposed more Americans to the ancient astronaut theory than any other media product. The NBC documentary resulted in increased sales of Chariots, which sold more than 250,000 copies within forty-eight hours of its broadcast. By the time Outer Space Connection aired in 1975, von Däniken had sold an additional 34 million more copies of Chariots and its sequels (Hackler 1977, 30–31).
The popularity of the 1973 NBC television documentary turned Erich von Däniken into an American celebrity and gave him a platform to promote the ancient astronaut theory across multiple media. Von Däniken appeared on the Tonight show on October 4, 1973, with Johnny Carson and was even interviewed in Playboy magazine in 1974.
In response, many scientists, archaeologists, theologians, and journalists spoke out against von Däniken, criticizing his sloppy scholarship and lack of evidence. Several books were published attacking and debunking Chariots, and PBS’s Nova critically evaluated Chariots’ claims in 1978. Von Däniken admitted to Playboy he had taken much of the scientific evidence out of context, misrepresenting it and employing falsifications that he described as “theatrical effects” to make his books more marketable (Ferris 1974, 58). Nevertheless, publishers were quick to put out a series of ancient astronaut books by other authors that offered similar claims, including Josef F. Blumrich’s The Spaceships of Ezekiel (1974), Robert Temple’s The Sirius Mystery (1976), and Zecharia Sitchin’s The 12th Planet (1976).
The widespread repetition of ancient astronaut claims in popular literature, coupled with the theme’s recurrence in movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Stargate (1994), and Prometheus (2012), and in television series such as Doctor Who (1963–1989, 2005–), Star Trek (1966–1969), The X-Files (1993–2002), and Stargate SG1 (1997–2007), has popularized the ancient astronaut theory. Its adoption by conspiracy theorists as the historical backdrop to modern ufology has further solidified the hypothesis’s position as American mythology.
Jason Colavito
See also Alien Abduction Stories and UFOs; X-Files
Further Reading
“The Case of the Ancient Astronauts.” 1978. March 8. Nova. PBS-TV.
Däniken, Erich von. 1971. Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past. Translated by Michael Heron. New York: Bantam.
Däniken, Erich von. 1981. Signs of the Gods? Translated by Michael Heron. New York: Berkley Books.
Ferris, Timothy. 1974. “Playboy Interview: Erich von Däniken.” Playboy (August): 51–64, 151.
Hackler, Timothy. 1977. “Is NBC Exploiting Creatures from Outer Space?” Columbia Journalism Review (July–August): 30–31.
Story, Ronald. 1976. The Space Gods Revealed: A Close Look at the Theories of Erich von Däniken. New York: Harper & Row.
“Wer von Wem?” 1969. Der Spiegel (March 17): 184–185.