Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken

My Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Däniken must have won some mighty awards for this one, right? Right?

I have to admit that it was seriously entertaining though, mostly in imagining who it was who played the practical joke on Däniken each time he sticks his neck out on an imagined ‘fact’.

Just to sum up the book: how can anyone imagine a concept like Time Travel without having experienced/seen it? Surely Victorian England was visited and ruled by the Time Lords who then vanished. leaving us to roil in our longing stories. People who have read the book, please laugh along with me…

This is not to deny that there are mysteries in the past, but then so are there in any field of human study – that does not mean that we have to postulate such excesses based on so little evidence. I can’t resist going off on the same vein again – How can anyone imagine talking animals? Surely ancient India was home to intelligent animals as well as the sporadic aliens, all conspiring to befuddle the poor humans into worshiping them and then mythologizing them.

The mistake is to rigidly try to classify the myths as facts or stories. If only Däniken had taken the time to understand the power of symbolism in myth-making… hell, he could have done that purely by reading a few comic books!

By the way, was it only me or was Däniken’s usage of the word “utopia” just all over the place and far away from the accepted meaning?

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