🧵 Erich von Däniken is dead, aged 90. Many of my generation will remember him as a proponent of the pseudoscientific 'ancient aliens' theory, just one of the many sensationalist supernatural topics that flooded culture in the 1970s.
I've had this book since I was a little kid.
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@Richard_Littler Just noting that there's a very skeevy racist subtext running just below the surface of Von Daniken's thesis—that ancient people *couldn't* have built the monumental structures they left behind, so they must have been "helped" by aliens (clearly white savior-coded).
@cstross @Richard_Littler This is why I've always liked the Woodman hypothesis. He says "OK, let's suppose Von Daniken is right about the Nazca lines: they were meant to be viewed from the sky. Does this really necessitate aliens? Or is it possible that the people of ancient Peru simply invented flight?" And then he goes and demonstrates that it is indeed possible by building a hot air balloon using only materials and tech known to have been available to the builders of the Nazca lines.
@cstross @Richard_Littler There’s even a meme for that…
@cstross @Richard_Littler Ugh, my old man was well into this stuff, to the extent that he'd nod-and-wink that anyone who knew what they were talking about (eg. contemporary scientists like Hawking) must be an alien. Which isn't really helpful when your own son is doing a physics degree, is it?
@cstross @Richard_Littler There's the implied subtext. And then there's the explicit, in-your-face JAQing off, like: "Was the black race a failure and did the extraterrestrials change the genetic code by gene surgery and then programme a white or a yellow race?" (von Däniken, /Signs of the Gods/, 1980, in the chapter “Man Outsmarts Nature” – loads more where that came from)
@cstross @Richard_Littler Back when colonialist white supremacist racism sold well. The whole racist "ancient aliens" thing has stuck around in the decades since, but not in such profitable form I think.
@cstross @Richard_Littler It's curious that the Egyptians and Maya had to have some help from aliens but the Romans didn't, isn't it?
@cstross @datarama @Richard_Littler See also Great Zimbabwe (not mentioned in the article but aliens were also postulated as the origin at one point as well; anything and anyone so long as it wasn't black people):
@cstross @Richard_Littler I've met the guy back in 2004 when his bizarre theme park was relatively new. Some analogue shots right off the Migros Picture CD-ROM in this thread: https://mastodon.social/deck/@guenterhack/115877370682477543
@cstross Just one example among a great litany of things wrong with his books/theories.
Däniken's 'paleo-contact' claims of extraterrestrial influences on early human development, attracted a dedicated following, despite his earlier convictions for theft, fraud and embezzlement. Films, soundtracks, and even prog concept albums followed his books.
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When I moved to Switzerland, I discovered he was a local. He built an 'ancient mysteries' theme park, which soon failed, but the buildings still stand. I took some photos a couple of years ago.
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@Richard_Littler For a while he was going to open another theme park, in Blackpool. (It dead-ended around 2014. I used it in one of my novels …)
@cstross @Richard_Littler There’s a Giger museum and café in Gruyères:
@cstross @Richard_Littler I'm imagining something like the Shandor building in the original Ghostbusters film, where the architecture makes it part of a summoning gateway.
It's a real building, too, though somewhat altered via film magic for the movie.
@cstross Now, that concept worked out *much* better.
My photos of the Giger-designed bar in Gruyères...
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