Chariots Of The Gods

Erich von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods?": Science or Charlatanism?

Erich von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods?":
Science or Charlatanism?

by Robert Sheaffer

(First published in the "NICAP UFO Investigator", October/November, 1974.)

(en Espanol aqui)

Was God an ancient astronaut? Do centuries-old legends of gods and heroes tell of space travelers who came to earth from distant parts of the Cosmos? Are some of the ruins of antiquity remnants of great airfields, the favored landing sites of extraterrestrial craft?

"Yes!," writes Erich Von Daniken in his runaway bestselling book, "Chariots of the Gods?" This phenomenally successful book is now in its forty-fourth printing, with over four million copies currently in print. Von Daniken's sequels to this book, "Gods from Outer Space" and "The Gold of The Gods" are also selling well, as are flocks of imitations.



The popularity of such a sensational theory should not be surprising. Immanuel Velikovsky created a similar stir almost twenty-five years ago with the publication of his "Worlds in Collision", suggesting that the present state of the solar system can be explained by a series of spectacular cataclysms among the planets. It has been over twenty-seven years since "flying saucers" burst into the public's awareness, and UFOs still continue to generate excitement and controversy. Sensational hypotheses such as these generate such levels of interest that they tend to become self-sustaining, quite apart from the question of whether they are true.

Culled from
debunker.com
REFERENCES:

Chariots of the Gods? is currently published by Bantam Books, New York. Page numbers refer to Bantam edition.

Erich Von Daniken's Genesis, New York Sunday Times Book Review. March 31 , 1974

National Enquirer, March 17, 1974