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2.98 AVERAGE
2.98 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
While I admire the thought put into this, he treats ancient civilizations with much more hope than he does contemporary society, which he seems to have a nihilistic viewpoint of. Maybe archaeological findings showcase forms of entertainment? Maybe they were bored and used imagination? No, it’s gotta be aliens lol. Now I can’t cross reference his statements with actual proof because I’m not going to bother to do research but I’m going to go ahead and state that his conclusions is only based on him wanting to find what he wants to find. I mean he included an interview with Wernher von Braun near the end where von Braun disproved everything this guy has been talking about for the whole book haha. I’m sure he’s disappointed as well that we have yet to land on Mars even though he was sure it’d happen by 1986 at the latest.
A but dated, but still enormous fun. Not to be read seriously.
Author Erich von Däniken was probably a fun guy to talk to, if you're into having wild conversations with strangers at parties. This book is bullshit, but it's fun bullshit and it's not necessarily a waste of your time to sit with it awhile. He seems to have a very low opinion of humanity, to assume our ancestors were in no way capable of doing all the legitimately cool stuff he tosses in as examples (much of which has been investigated and explained since the 1968 publication date, and some of which are still head-scratchers). They were apparently primitives and savages (he doesn't hesitate to use the same labels for some modern human cultures) who needed Ancient Alien Astronauts to guide their development and possibly also have sex with. While making these drastic presumptions, he will introduce them with such Red Flags as "undoubtedly" and frequently end them with assertions that other explanations are "impossible".
So now you know the kind of book you're getting into. I still had fun breezing through it, and several times I was like - yeah, history is super-weird and people were doing odd things for unknown reasons. Maybe there were Aliens. Probably not though. But if there were Aliens running around in Pre-History, it would not surprise me at all if humans tried to have sex with them.
So now you know the kind of book you're getting into. I still had fun breezing through it, and several times I was like - yeah, history is super-weird and people were doing odd things for unknown reasons. Maybe there were Aliens. Probably not though. But if there were Aliens running around in Pre-History, it would not surprise me at all if humans tried to have sex with them.
Clearly I'm entering my junk food era, but I find this kind of thing immensely enjoyable. I suppose I'd always imagined that the "Ancient Aliens" stuff started somewhere, but didn't realize how specifically it started HERE.
The audio book opens with a brief mea culpa regarding some thing Von Daniken got wrong in the initial printing, and it concludes with a brief interview speculating about what might happen in 2012 (which, in hindsight, is even funnier because it honestly seems like whoever was in charge of making out the "Mayan Calendar" just gave up on it at a certain point, which sparked so much speculation and misguided anxiety that we even got a Roland Emmerich disaster movie about it).
Where this retains some intrigue is w/r/t the similarities between religions, and among epic stories that have been relayed down throughout the years. I don't know if I quite reach the conclusion Von Daniken does, but this is all stuff worth thinking about at least. I'm not going full "Ancient Aliens" here or anything, but I am about to listen to a podcast episode about the Nazca Lines, so maybe I'm on my way. Who knows.
The audio book opens with a brief mea culpa regarding some thing Von Daniken got wrong in the initial printing, and it concludes with a brief interview speculating about what might happen in 2012 (which, in hindsight, is even funnier because it honestly seems like whoever was in charge of making out the "Mayan Calendar" just gave up on it at a certain point, which sparked so much speculation and misguided anxiety that we even got a Roland Emmerich disaster movie about it).
Where this retains some intrigue is w/r/t the similarities between religions, and among epic stories that have been relayed down throughout the years. I don't know if I quite reach the conclusion Von Daniken does, but this is all stuff worth thinking about at least. I'm not going full "Ancient Aliens" here or anything, but I am about to listen to a podcast episode about the Nazca Lines, so maybe I'm on my way. Who knows.
informative
slow-paced
This is the most fun book I've read in a long time.
If I was to read a scifi novel that used excerpts from CHARIOTS OF THE GODS straight faced, I'd say that it was some excellently written fake quackery. However, this was some fantastic, po faced quackery that was massively entertaining to read. I didn't take any of it seriously, and I had to put the book down to digest some of the more ridiculous statements, and I had a whale of a time reading it.
If I was to read a scifi novel that used excerpts from CHARIOTS OF THE GODS straight faced, I'd say that it was some excellently written fake quackery. However, this was some fantastic, po faced quackery that was massively entertaining to read. I didn't take any of it seriously, and I had to put the book down to digest some of the more ridiculous statements, and I had a whale of a time reading it.
Five stars for entertainment value alone.
Truly wild, the things people are willing to believe.
Truly wild, the things people are willing to believe.