We're Not Saying It's Erich Von Däniken, But...

...It's Erich Von Däniken. In the 1960's a Swiss hotelier wrote a book that changed how millions see the past—and how pop culture tells stories about it. We revisit the wild trajectory of Chariots of the Gods, the “ancient aliens” hypothesis it popularized, and the uncomfortable roots that made its rise possible. Then we pull the camera back: how the Space Age, New Age mysticism, and a collapsing trust in old narratives set the stage for infotainment, speculative nonfiction, and a meme that just won’t die.

Transcript

Cold Open: Stargate And The Grays

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Stargate. Stargate SCU?

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Stargate SVU? I wanna see what that amounts to. I mean, it's gotta be more interesting than later Stargate. Show us on the host where he touched you. Inside! Or probed me rectile.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Are they in the proper approach button for today? Negative.

unknown 0:37

Charge the lightning field.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Oh, yeah, I forgot they have as guardians in that show, too. Who are just the Grays?

Why Von Däniken Matters Now

SPEAKER_02 0:48

It's all the gods. Well, yeah. You know, it's a perfect opening to this podcast. Absolutely. Because there would not be a Stargate or Stargate SVU if it wasn't for Eric von Danek and Chariots of the Gods. That is true. Welcome back to Dispatch Ajax. We are your own ancient aliens purveyor. I am Jake. I'm Skip. And we are talking today about a cultural touchstone that has uh seeped into the global consciousness and how we view our past, present, and our future, both in in archaeological terms, but also fiction-wise, and how it's it's spread out to all of our thoughts of what we are and what we were and what we will become.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

It's also about a passing.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Yes. We're we're talking about this because on the 10th of January, 2026, the writer and hotelier, uh Eric von Danegan passed away at the age of 90.

Hosts, Theme, And Cultural Stakes

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Graham Hancock, of all people, tweeted, well, X'd about this, saying that he he passed away at the handsome old age of 90. What does that even mean? No idea. Is the age sexy or what does Graham Hancock mean at all? I'm not really sure. Talk about a modern Van Dynakin.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

I predict a schism on this podcast on how we we view these particular figures.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Are you a fan of Graham Hancock?

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Do I own Graham Hancock writings? I do. Do I own Von Daniken writings? I do. There's a difference between being a true believer and being open to the fun of the experience.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Okay, sure. But I feel like Hancock is like not really the guy to hit your wagon to in that sense. You know, like Bob Lazard, maybe, or like whoever does coast to coast now. I mean, you know, like maybe, but like Graham Hancock.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

I do own books with George Norrie as well. So there's that.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

We can talk a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

A lot of aliens.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

I mean, no, there are there are. I was just trying to think of like specific ancient alien stuff in Pacific Rim. Not particular.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

No, it's mostly about kaiju. That's fine. I'm good with that. Yeah. Which the aliens created. So So who created the Rocket Punch? I'm gonna say the Japanese. My heart? Yeah, and which is fair.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

This is awesome. Maybe maybe one of the preeminent examples of the past you know 20 years of just rule of cool movie, you know?

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Sequel sucks, but yeah.

Chariots Of The Gods Goes Global

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Well, I mean, that's how that goes. Total fanboy movie. True. And I think I think that's kind of uh what we'll be talking about a bit with Church of the Gods, as it were. Yep. Yeah. Van Dannek Eric von Danekin, if I can say his name properly.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Well, he's Swiss, so it it they're umlots. We're probably mispronouncing it, but whatever, it's easier this way. Von Danek. I don't really uh I don't I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

That's how we're gonna go. Yeah, we're not gonna put that much effort. Not really. So Cheers to the Gods. You know, it's it's really the progenitor, not necessarily like the first or even the best, but it was the gateway to popularizing some controversial but lasting ideas about ancient aliens and the origin of mankind.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

And the Stargate, if you will.

TV Infotainment Takes Off

SPEAKER_02 4:47

True, the Stargate. Now, Cheers to the Gods, it was a an international bestseller. It was translated into 32 languages, and over since since its public first publication in 68, it has sold tens of millions of copies, supposedly 63 million copies. It inspired a documentary film in 1970, and many, many imitators after that. That documentary was produced in Germany and was nominated for an Academy Award. It was the ninth highest grossing film of 1970. Jesus. I saw it way back when, when I was a little type, so excited by the thoughts and ideas that they were putting out there. It's mostly just stock footage with a boring narration over the top. True. But it was extremely popular, as I said, in 1972, a shorter version edited by ABC Television titled In Search of Ancient Astronauts. Ah, there she is. Another documentary in 1973 titled In Search of Ancient Mysteries, both were narrated by Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame. Oh, fucking cool. Obviously, those TV specials grew the popularity of some of those ideas and kind of that brand of infotainment that would come to dominate, say, like the History Channel decades and decades later. But before the History Channel, there was In Search of, which was hosted by Leonard Nimoy, that explored various facets of the paranormal and the obscura, you know, as to Bigfoot and aliens and psychic phenomena, things that really captured the imagination.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Stuff that would slightly be covered by Unsolved Mysteries a little bit later in in spits and spurts. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Yeah, you know, it it's something that like really it helped to really sprawn the imagination and create kind of a whole line of pseudo scientific entertainment mixed with information documentary adjacent products thereafter.

The 60s: Space Age And New Mysticism

Fun Vs. Faith: How To Read Von Däniken

SPEAKER_00 7:04

This is where I'd like to interject just a little bit because first of all, I don't think sprawn is a word, but also the I sprawn you to challenge me on that. It can be whatever, man. At the time when Van Danneken wrote this book, he was an obscure hotel manager in Switzerland. He was a nobody. He wasn't working at a university, he wasn't like doing some sort of like project, he was a lowly grunt working the front desk at a hotel in Switzerland in 1968. And what he's about to present to you in Chariots of the Gods is a repackaging of a phenomenon that already existed previously, essentially during the era of between Blavatsky, Crowley, and Egyptology, where it's all about secret knowledge, white people discovering mysticism and spirituality, and then weirdly perverting it or misinterpreting it or exploiting it for their own gain. And the era in which when Europe and America discovered that there are there were ancient civilizations that were extremely advanced, more so than when Europe finally figured out how to do things, the incredulousness that white European or European descent people took these discoveries, where they were like, there is no way, and I mean this literally, they were like, no way that non-white people did these incredible things. There's no way that non-white people created the pyramids. So it has to be something else. And it started out so in the Blavatsky, uh, Crowley, and and early Egyptology days, it was, well, there has to be a secret race of white people that helped them do it, which then eventually turned into, when they realized that wasn't true, eventually turned into, well, it has to be aliens then, right? It has to be something bigger than even us, since we didn't do it as white people. Right. And that's the unfortunately the foundation on which we are standing here is a racist, fundamentally racist uh assumption that other quote-unquote races, yeah, other than white people could have come up with any sort of technology that would have done something in any way, shape, or form, an engineering miracle, even though we know for a fact they did.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Part of what is so fascinating about his work and the ancient Elalian hypothesis is it's it's taking things that are not well understood, or that we as modern civilization look back on the past and question how things happened and trying to work out a way to explain that. Unfortunately, a lot of that does devolve into racist suppositions, but I don't think it has to be that. I think for what von Daniken did was that, you know, like he kind of called into question some foundational assumptions about interpreting history. He was a proliferator into mainstreaming alternative beliefs, ones that are based not necessarily in fact, but rather in fascination.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

That's a generous way to look at that.

The Racist Roots Of Ancient Alien Claims

SPEAKER_02 10:28

Well, you know, he he legitimized personal interpretations of assuming base-level facts in a way that really hadn't been done not only for decades, but for hundreds of years. Now, a lot of this was tying a lot of threads, which had immense appeal and sparked imaginative works of reinterpretation that have rippled to today, but of the time of the early to mid-60s, when he was kind of coming through this and then writing in the late 60s, there was this kind of confluence of different elements of society that proved to be a breeding ground for some of the stuff. There was a boundless potential of the space age that was coming about, you know, it had finally just you know reached the stars, and there was this fascination with that. There was a bountiful New Age mysticism coming from the 60s. There was a general belief in progress and rationality over superstition, and there was something of a loss of faith in tradition and traditional explanations that led to a rise of interest in conspiracy theories. A lot of the old ideas and beliefs were seeming to fail. And so there were many people grasping at straws for a new reasoning and explanation for some of these things. And there was a lack of many of the scientific tools and discoveries that would later disprove many of the wilder assumptions and deductions. You know, there wasn't the internet, there wasn't a lot of the scientific research that we have today that would refute some of those wilder claims. So they were left to be reinterpreted and explored in a new way based on some of the ideas that he was putting forward. But one of the things that at least I find fascinating, and I think why you can still go back and read some of Chariots of the Gods and still take something of you know, some enjoyment or some like wide-eyed sense of excitement from it, is that you don't have to take it seriously or even remotely credulously to enjoy the hypothesis. True. You know, it's like that old age, be open-minded, but not so open-minded your brains fall out. I think that is a necessary precursor to looking at von Daniken's work. You know, it's not taking it as gospel, but you know, allowing, you know, allowing him to call into question a lot of these long-held beliefs and replace them with different interpretations, but enjoy that reframing of the supernatural as the scientific, but without necessarily like the steadfast reshaping your worldview to align in totality with what he's saying. Because again, a lot of what he would say was, I will say, at the very least, objectionable.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Very much so.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

You know, especially like when he would his common use of the word savage or primitive when he would be looking to things. Just like as a passage, you know, a helicopter lands in the African bush for the first time. None of the natives have ever seen such a machine. The helicopter lands in a clearing with a sinister clatter. Pilots in a battle dress with crash helmets and machine guns jump out of it. The savage in his loincloth stands stupefied and uncomprehending in the presence of this thing that has come down from the heaven and the unknown gods, quote unquote, who come with it. After a time, the helicopter takes off again and disappears into the sky.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Sort of an outcropping of the cargo cult discovery.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Yes.

Cargo Cults And Misread Technology

SPEAKER_00 14:05

I feel like this is probably where this view comes from. For those of you who don't know what the cargo cult thing is, during World War II, there were parts of the world that had never been touched by white empire and had never been really exposed to, as part of the Western world would call civilization, who just existed happily within their own thing, when they encountered airplanes that were delivering things to certain theaters during World War II, certain societies that weren't in touch with the Western world. This is how they first encountered them. And so when they saw airplanes and allies dropping off supplies and weaponry and food and yada yada yada, didn't understand what was happening and and and just immediately assumed they were gods in the modern world. And that was a weird thing because after the white person conquering of the world, it was a surprise there were still people that were not in contact with global society. And so it was this incredulous thing that white people did that they were like, Wow, this is nuts. In those societies, their whole cultures were changed, they created religions that were called cults around these flying machines, but only be in the in the case of trying to beat the Nazis in World War II. And so I feel like this this sort of like re-ignited this idea within the Western zeitgeist that there were that maybe modern technology or well, even modern peoples who live in a in a world in which other technology exists would see them as gods. And I think if the cargo cult discovery thing hadn't happened, I don't know that this would have as much weight, but that's kind of where we land at that point. Yeah. In the 40s. Yeah.

What Ancient Aliens Argues, Exactly

SPEAKER_02 15:55

And maybe maybe I should have stated this before, but the idea behind Chair to the Gods is that many of the quote ancient mysteries that indigenous people tended to be involved with either did not originate from them or they were helped by not gods, but the gods were actual ancient aliens. And those ancient aliens either provided technology or the tools and the methodology to create some of these interesting historical and archaeological items, whether that be the Nazca lines in Peru or the megalithic structures like pyramids in ancient Egypt. Or in Central and South America or in Indonesia, ancient maps, or pictures, you know, different artworks that are kind of reinterpreted as having aliens in them or being significant because of alien interaction, or there are depictions of humans using what would be modern technology depicted in these, that these are all from the interactions with these older races and peoples of contact with aliens. And it's because of these alien interactions that these things happened. Now, I think von Daniken, at least especially early on, I mean, he did go on to write, you know, over 25 books. So there is not necessarily an evolution, but in different books it goes on to say different things. But especially early on, it was very much aliens either made these or allowed these things to be made. Now, I I think there's there can be a bit of an evolution in von Daneken's ideology. If you're taking the ancient alien premise as though, you know, some of these interactions with gods were actually with aliens, or that it was interaction with the aliens that helped push some of these ancient cultures to do these things. Not necessarily that the the ancient aliens did them, but were the Nazca lines these you know mosaics laid out over miles of intricate rocks put together to form pictures? Are they to communicate with the gods, aka aliens, rather than the aliens put them down to be uh a runway or an alien airport, or that they were the reason for the creation? I think you can soft pedal some of those ideas and not strip all of the impetus and the ingenuity from those locals who created these things. It is a slippery slope, though.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

The NASCAL lines is a soft version of it because it's a mystery. It's hard to explain how those were created so intricately and so well in a symmetrical way on such a large scale that you couldn't see except for from orbit or from the sky, at least. But also doesn't negate the abilities of the peoples that created them. 100%.

Soft-Pedaling Nazca And Human Ingenuity

SPEAKER_02 19:03

Whether they were creating them for gods or spiritual purposes or to communicate with aliens, it's still an interesting creation done by the handiwork of humans, whether they interact with aliens or not. I mean, it's kind of beside the point, it doesn't strip them of the ability to make that. It's it's interesting that they did do that, especially since like the historical nature of those has kind of been stripped away, mostly by white colonizers destroying their ancient histories. You know, it's funny how that happens. And all of their literature. Yeah, maybe we'd know more if we didn't rave and pillage their culture. You can have things where connections or contact with ancient aliens help facilitate some of these things, but not necessarily strip them of their ability to say, build pyramids. A lot of these ancient cultures were much more advanced than we possibly understand. So it doesn't have to be ancient aliens did it, but ancient aliens could be the impetus for them to do some of these things.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Van Denekin obviously never played civilization, where you could be the Greeks and then make it to the moon in the year like 385 BCE.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

Also, we have to look at where these thoughts come from in in two ways. One, the mouthpiece of this Air von Danneken, we can say he's at least a shady individual. Oh boy, I got some stuff on that. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to get into a little bit of the history of von Daneken now, by all means, this would be a good place for that.

Von Däniken’s Biography And Crimes

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Yeah, probably. Boy, but man, okay, well, it's a little complicated, but I'll try and drag some of this from a good article I read that was published by the University of Pennsylvania Museum by Stephen S or I'm sorry, Stephen M. Epstein in 1987, where he talks about Van Deneken's actual beliefs about where Van Denneken claimed that human history had been shaped by visitors from outer space, obviously, but also cross-breeding with aliens, and that all of this was very clearly shown in Earth's archaeological record, which I think we need to like pause for a second and say, like, there is a thing that fuels this more than just a guy or a couple of guys or a movement. There are things in biblical record, in archaeological record, all around the world, of interesting phenomena that only modern people would go, wait, what the fuck is that? Is that a spaceship? The book Chariot Chariots of the Gods, he gets that title from passages in the Bible where they talk about essentially spacecraft, giant flaming ringed spacecraft that come down to Earth and interact with and from various even in Egyptian archaeology, which you know the in in which they discovered strange pictographs of what you could what which what doesn't seem like contemporary technology. Or in Mesoamerican like artwork that seems to portray rocket ships or people commanding spacecraft or something in those in that vein. Yeah, okay. That's all over the world, ancient history. You're right. They do get into in in Prometheus, and let's not we'll not get into our rant about Prometheus, but those things legitimately do raise question. They legitimately go, wait a minute, hold on. What does that mean? Why why in the Bible is there a guy in a spaceship, a giant flaming series of rings in a ship in a seat? Like why like why like wouldn't you think they would use contemporary imagery if it was meaning one thing or another, instead of what really does seem to be some sort of extraterrestrial craft or or presence? And those things do exist in almost every culture around the world. And so I totally get where he thinks he's going here. Like there the he se you know, like there does seem to be some sort of universal idea here. However, not Van Danneken's problem is that he didn't do a lot of actual research. It's a lot of like, hey, I'm assuming these things, like it would be like today he's on Twitter spewing these things because he saw an ancient alien septic. You know what I mean? Like, that's essentially what we're getting to. And so in this article from University of Pennsylvania, this is this is there's some good stuff in here. The proof of these exists, said Van Danneken, is clearly visible in Earth's archaeological record. This article examined the structure of the argument presented in blah blah. That was the intro, sorry. Van Danneken quote, I wrote Cherries of the Gods in 1966. So for me, it's an old book. When I wrote it, one was not all convinced. This is what does that mean? I wrote it, it's not an old book. When I wrote it, one, the number one, was not at all convinced. By the second book, God, this is such a this is bad writing. Gods from Outer Space, I was more certain, but not absolutely. He was writing these books, not even believing his own hype.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

So, I mean, his his history of writing the book is fraught with criminality. And yes. You know, he at age 19, he was given a four-month suspension for the theft. He left school to apprentice at a Swiss hotel before he moved to Egypt. In 64, he wrote Ancestors Visited by Exterrestrials, uh German-Canadian periodical Der Nordvesten. But while in Egypt, he was involved in a jewelry deal, which resulted in a nine-month conviction for fraud and embezzlement upon his return to Switzerland. Now, following his release, he became a hotel manager in Davos, and that's when he began writing Cherries of the Gods. He worked on the manuscripts late at night working at the hotel, as he would travel back and forth to many different places. He was working with a professional author using the pseudonym of Wilhelm Rogerstorff. But this particular professional author, Utz Uttermann, was a former editor for the Nazi Party's newspaper Volksher Biobachter, and he was a Nazi best-selling author.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

God, the Nazis had to play a part of this. I'm sorry, they just I mean they do, I mean, sorry, they just do.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

We don't want to think of it, but they do. In no November 68, the same year that the Charity of the Gods came out, von Daneken was arrested for fraud after falsifying hotel records and credit references in order to take out loans of$130,000 over the period of 12 years. Now he used this money for his quote-unquote research and to foreign travel. Two years after that, von Daneken was convicted for repeated and sustained embezzlement, fraud, and forgery, with court ruling that the writer had been living, quote unquote, a playboy lifestyle with all that money while he was writing the book. And he pledged this weird nullity, which essentially says like it's invalid from the outset, it doesn't really have any like legal effect because he says this happened so long ago and he wasn't doing it maliciously to hurt anybody. He did he was sentenced to three and a half years of imprisonment and fined 3,000 francs in 1970. He did serve one year before being released. He utilized the sales to of Chariots of the Gods to repay his debts and leave the hotel business, where he would go on to write his second book, Gods from Outer Space, during his prison sentence.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Wow, it's almost like he had some sort of other motivation.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

Yeah. Now, if you go into some of the claims he has in Chariots of the Gods or in some of his later books, upon being pushed on some of these things, he would it would be found out that he either outright made stuff up, complete whole passages and things that he, you know, he he he wrote about that did not happen at all, like a a trip to uh Cuevas de los Tayos in Ecuador. It turns out that in 1974 interviews that yeah, he kind of just made all of that up, that he never went there, that uh he said himself, as as a writer in Germany, we say you know, it it's not a pure science writing, and that you are allowed to use dramaturge effecte or theatrical effects, and that's what he's done. He essentially just embellished uh in a polite way to say it, some of it he just out outright made up, uh, or that he would use popper ideas or uh stuff in in in the news, or he would just make completely come off the wall with his own thoughts and ideas. Um in fact, a lot of the nutty theories in Chairs of the Gods are not even his own. He quote unquote borrowed from scientists like Carl Sagan or I. S. Skrosky, as well as the French author Robert Charot. In fact, in a 1974 Playboy. Oh, I was gonna quote from this actually.

The Alligators Problem: Too Many Claims

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Oh, we're yeah, do you want to do that now? Yes, I have the I have the Playboy, I have the Playboy stuff here. Oh man, this is very funny. To start off, I love this part. Playboy magazine asks him straight up, quote, should the fact that you were a convicted fraud and embezzler influence whether or not people should listen to what you have to say? And again, quote, many people who have been in jail say they are not guilty. I say the same thing. I have never committed fraud or embezzlement, although it is true that I have been convicted of those things. I was improperly convicted three times, but each time for the same thing. Maybe because you were doing the same thing, fraud and embezzlement. But that but that's just that part. This I'm glad you brought up this Playboy interview because it is actually one of the better, one of the better exposes on Vendaniken. In of all things Playboy. They confront him very specifically about certain things and actually go out of their way to break down some of the arguments that he has, and also include quotes from Carl Sagan basically telling everybody he was a fucking idiot. Sagan quote said, and I've got a couple of quotes from Sagan, which are great. Sagan says, quote, every time he sees something he can't understand, he attributes it to extraterrestrial intelligence. And since he understands almost nothing, he sees evidence of extra extra extraterrestrial intelligence all over the planet. And that is from that Playboy interview. Yikes! That is a nasty takedown by Carl Sagan. One of the best things that he said outside of the Playboy interview, Carl Sagan did, was quote, that writing, as careless as von Danekens, whose principal thesis is that our ancestors were dummies, should be so popular is a sober commentary on the credulousness and despair of our times. But the idea that beings from elsewhere will save us from ourselves is a very dangerous doctrine, akin to that of the quack doctor whose ministrations prevent the patient. I'm sorry, ministrations, Jesus, shouldn't say that. Doctor whose ministrations prevent the patient from seeing a physician competent to help him and perhaps to cure his disease. Yikes! And you know what? There are very few people as credible as Carl Sagan. Also in that interview, sorry, I exact article I was in. Come on, come on, come on, where are you? Where'd you go? Where'd you go? There's in here. That's Carl Sagan. Okay, yeah. Let's see. He he in that Playboy article, great, they do talk about a lot of specific things that he gets into that he that he cites that can be pretty easily uh discredited, let's say. I mean, okay, so you have it up. You you were gonna say more about the I don't want to have to search around. You go to the book.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

No, no, no, mine was mine was just that little section. You already covered what I was gonna say.

Why The Book Still Captivates

SPEAKER_00 30:41

Oh, okay, okay, yeah. I just think it's so funny. Well, because like this article that I got from University of Pennsylvania, they quote not only the Playboy article, but a bunch of other articles too, from 71 to like the mid-80s, where they're like, no, this guy's a fucking idiot. And a lot of the stuff that he talks about that he quotes, and that's what I was getting at earlier. It was that like, yeah, things like the NASCAR lines are fascinating, and things like some of the you know, pictorial depictions of things that seem like spacecraft, that is fascinating. And we should talk about that. We should examine what that means. Uh is that a possibility? We've talked about the uh the Nuremberg alien fight, the battle over Germany. Uh or no, I'm sorry, Switzerland. In what was it? The six the yeah, the sixteen hundreds. You know, the one that's in the wood relief, and then that they said later was about uh was uh sun dogs.

SPEAKER_02 31:28

1561.

Early Fictional Forerunners To Ancient Aliens

SPEAKER_00 31:29

1561. Bullshit it was sundogs. I'm sorry, dude. I'm sorry. There's no way you see sun dogs from every angle, 360 degrees all over the city, and is in every major publication and depicted in wood relief and and like there's just no it's just not that no, I don't believe that. Something happened there and it was crazy. It wasn't just a trick of the light, it wasn't a JJ Abrams fucking lens flare, okay? Like something crazy happened there. But at the same time, a lot of the things that he do that he would do as he went along are real stretches. What is it in uh let's see here? He talks about a a stone giant from oh boy, I shouldn't have done this. Tia Juanacaco, Bolivia. The image that that I that I'm looking at here from this article was taken by the Max Yule, taken by Max Yule for the University Museum in 1895. It's a it's a series of ten-foot figures which stand on a plane near Lake Titicaca. They were carved between 500 AD or CE and 100. And these are one of the things that Van Danneken goes out of his way to say, like, oh, these are these are obviously carved by aliens. And it's like, have you seen other stuff? Like, I mean, you know, like you you know humans can do this. Like they they can do this. Here's a good quote from this are from this article. Quote, those of us who have grappled with von Daneken's arguments have come to realize the truth of an old army saying, When you're up to your neck in alligators, it's very hard to drain the swamp. Assertion after assertion springs from the pages of his books, confounding any archaeologist who would try to address them each item responsibly. If we wrestle with Van Daneken's myriad alligators one at a time, we will never be able to fight free long enough to drain the swamp. Now I wonder what Trump got that. First furthermore, not all of his alligators can be pinned. A simple pair of phot a pair of photographs, like the one I mentioned before, can discredit his claim that, quote, we find stone giants belonging to the same style at both Easter Island and then 2300 miles west off the coast of Chile and Tia Hoakanako in the Bolivian Andes, which he quotes in one of his books, one can demonstrate the logical insignificance of the petrified excrement, possibly not of human origin, found at Tepi Asiap, Danikan also cites, by pointing out the modern examples on any city street. Anyone who believes that it is, quote, an absolute mystery to us why the Incans cultivated cotton in Peru in 3000 BC can be taken into the University Museum's Peruvian gallery and led up to the case where a 4,500-year-old cotton fisgments are displayed. Such vision such a visitor might also learn that the Incas did not appear in South American scene until the 13th century AD or later. But how can one disprove that, quote, calculations of the weight of the earth were found at the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt? Basically, he's like, he makes these giant leaps. If you just ask a guy that knows anything, would be like, no, what the fuck are you talking about? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:30

Yeah. I mean, really, the the enormous appeal of Cherys of the Gods, you know, is that it provides an alternate source for myths, which would otherwise be forced to rely on magic and grounds them with science again. They weren't gods or angels, they were spacemen. And because it was put forth in a time of the space program and the destabilizing of a lot of those myths and pillars of religion and society that were going on in the night in the 60s, you can't discount this considerable groundswell of interest in the subject that arose around and helped shape the media that would come during that time and after.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

In that vein, I would like to do at least one last quote from this great article that goes completely with what you're saying. If Van Dedeken's theories cannot be demolished by refuting the assertion he uses in lieu of facts, clearly another line of attack is needed. There is the quote, looks like a spaceman to me type, and then there is the science cannot explain this mystery, so spaceman must be responsible type. And I think that is a very good summation of wow, it looks like a space person, or it looks like a space person, so spaceman must have done it. There's a bit of a bit of a leap there. Yeah. Believe it or not.

Jack Kirby’s Obsession And The Eternals

SPEAKER_02 35:48

But if if you're if you're taking that that fascinating idea and concept, like reinterpretation of myth and history and the things that are involved in both of those and reworking them into a fun story, that's a little more palatable than stripping the abilities and the intelligence and the efforts of ancient peoples you don't understand. Say it couldn't have happened because I believe it was an ancient alien. Now it it What you're saying is I'm not saying it's alien, but it's alien. Yeah, he's like, Oh, it's very much the modern uh just asking questions.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

Yes, yes, it is the it is the Georgios Salakis. I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's alien. That's exactly what we're dealing with here.

SPEAKER_02 36:32

Now, obviously, Von Daneken wasn't the first to to put forth some of these ideas, or as some of his books were later labeled fiction instead of non-fiction, which is kind of important in the uh literary world.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

Especially since it's a worldwide consensus. Yes, that's kind of a deal. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

Again, he wasn't the first, so uh these ideas did permeate beforehand, uh, especially popular culture and fiction writing, which is kind of where some of this drains to be a more palatable and fun. So one of the first ancient alien books of the 20th century was by Lord Dunsani in 1905, and that's the gods of Pagana. This created a pantheon of horrific gods or the chief deity, Mana Yud Sushai, maintains asleep by a lesser god so that the world may avoid the apocalypse that will surely happen when he awakes. If this sounds similar to something else you might know, you might point to HP Lovecraft, uh, who is thought to have read Lord Donsani when he created his own mythos, his Lovecrafting ideas, in his 1926 story, The Call of Cthulhu, which premiered in the 1928 issue of Pulp magazine Weird Tales. Again, this is where we're getting ancient alien ideas and translating them into fun mythmaking within pop culture and science fiction.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

I would like to also say though, though, that also let's step back and recognize Speed Lovecraft was himself extremely and most of these stories. Most of his stories are about racist ideas, uh about immigrants, brown people, black people, Asian people coming in and destroying the culture that loves the looming hordes that comes from Europe not being all that old compared to China, India, you know, African empires, uh, Mesoamerican empires uh being way older and worrying that acknowledging them as legitimate would threaten white Western Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:31

And that this is also where you get into some of that, you know, art and artist, you know, things that are based in racist ideology but don't necessarily have to be. Can you separate those or are they inextricably intertwined forevermore? But at the very least, both these racist authors happen to have these uh these ancient aliens ideas permeated their work. In 1941, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon discuss an island of the gods during prehistoric times in Took Caveboy in Captain America Comics number one. Toque is a story of the dark prehistoric ages in a search to find these enchanted gods of those times. The island of the gods is called Adelan, with Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, would later say is the home of the inhumans. This is later than on the.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

So is it a is it a person from Venus and Venice? Or he went to Venice, went to Venus, and then uh back to Venice, and uh yeah, no.

SPEAKER_02 39:56

Uh Venusian.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

It was a dedication. It was a short trip.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

I mean, there's the worst places to go, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

Well, I don't know. Venus is pretty bad. That's the Soviet.

SPEAKER_02 40:05

I will I choose not to.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

I could, but I won't.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

In 1948, Arthur C. Clarke wrote The Sentinel, a short story that was published in 51 as Sentinel of Eternity, about a tetrahedron device that is millions of years old, left on the moon by ancient aliens and found by astronauts. He's got a t yeah, yeah. Obviously, this was a forebear to 2001, a space odyssey, which essentially has the exact same layout. And also about ancient now, obviously, in the comic world, Jack Kirby was very interested in this idea. In House of Mystery 85 and 1959, Jack Kirby would portray the Eastern Island stone men as being alien vaders from Saturn. He would also come back to this in Journey into Mystery 83 of 1962. Again, playing off these ideas that stone faces were placed there by ancient aliens. Obviously, in these stories, they they come to life and wreak havoc and whatnot.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Cool.

SPEAKER_02 41:05

In 1960, you have, as I said before, Louis, or I guess I didn't mention that. Take that again. In 1960, you have the ancient aliens being written about in a French book, The Morning of the Magicians, by Louis Powells and Jacques Bergier. This discussed the potential facts behind the ancient aliens that could actually be a real thing. As it says, a startling look beyond science, an investigation that recognizes no barrier to humans.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

I think Jacques Vallet feels about his fellow friends in his within his wheelhouse.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Jacques Valet, a classic.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

I wonder I really do wonder what he's about. I'm very curious because I've never read it, but I'm very curious.

Kirby’s Essay: Will The Gods Return?

SPEAKER_02 41:43

I mean, at least with his, you know, what is it? Is it ultra-human hypothesis? I guess he is. I mean, there's certain elements. I mean, essentially it's less gods and more like us in a way, but have been around forever. I don't know. It's that's a topic for another day. It might be, but might tie in later too. Yeah, yeah, very well could be. Again, you had the Robert Sherose, 1963, 100,000 years of man's own known history. Obviously, I think a lot of the ideas in Share to the Gods are kind of plagiarized.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

But this book Yes, he did. He was accused of plagiarism from a French author. Yes, the big also a big problem. And would you be surprised from a guy who would multiple times of fraud and embezzlement that he plagiarized his biggest work? Rutro.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

Yeah. Now Robert Shereau, he was someone that pushed the concept of ancient aliens as an actual truth rather than a fiction, which obviously has been criticized ever since. Robert Sherot looked at English artifacts as well as the Nazca lines and suggested that white-skinned gods lived in Hyboria on Earth centuries ago and showed similarities with mythological works between the ancient Guatemala Greek and ancient Celtic text.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

Oh wow, white people, white people, and then kind of round white people. Wow, this starting to sound familiar.

SPEAKER_02 43:00

This chirux was influential to many readers of the time, notably Erger, the Belgian French comic book writer, creator and writer of Tanton or Tintin. Oh, yeah. And these thoughts made it into one of his works, Flight 714 to Sydney. That was in the year 1967. In this, you have Tintin coming upon ancient aliens and the artifacts left behind from the old earth civilizations in the tropical caves. Yeah, Tintin and his friends they see signs of the UFOs on the ancient cave walls and have a psychic encounter with aliens.

SPEAKER_00 43:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

As you do. We do this on the weekend. Uh now it it did proliferate again in comics. In Thor 146, 1967, the same year. Jack Kirby brings back to Adelon, 1941 concept, into the origin of the inhumans. Jack Kirby and Stanley made this story as an explanation of how the space race of the Cree left sentinels and artifacts. Facts on Earth, including their experiments on early humans creating the inhumans.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

Which means it's not as much Stanley at Kirby because then he basically eternal.

Secular Myths And Pseudoscience

SPEAKER_02 44:09

Yes. Again, Stan stealing everything Jack Kirby ever did and claiming it as his own. Yeah. Jack Jack was a a fan of at least the ideas of Chariots of the Gods. And he used it extensively in his work first essentially for DC with the new gods in this fourth world, but even more prominently in his work The Eternals.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

Where did I I kind of I kind of feel like I almost want to give Jack Kirby a pass on that not just because trying to create fun sci-fi stuff in the 50s, 60s, but also I know Stan Lee was I know a lot of comics, a huge number of comics, and I feel and Kirby may not have to be.

SPEAKER_02 44:49

I feel like coming from born Jacob Kurtzberg.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

There you go. Coming from Jewish traditions, they don't have the same there is an interesting view of non-human entity that is different than the Christian. You know, like their view version of and other species, like the Nephilim. And I don't mean to speak out of turn because I I'm not Jewish scholar, obviously, of much, except for geek culture. I do. There is a I I feel like there's a different angle that is taken from people from traditional Jewish background than from the modern Christian, especially uh the modern American Christian background, but especially post-World War II. And I feel like it wouldn't have been as strange or have the same occasion. It would have been more just of is like fun fan fiction stuff, more so Christian or white Aryan Nazi view non-human creatures. You know what I mean? Like in the Christian traditions, that they don't tr angels and other things in that sense the same way do. And so I don't know that it's ins as insidious when Kirby and Lee did it as when people like Van Daneken. And maybe I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_02 45:52

I think I think there's some theological background we might need to do on some of that to uh get a firmer sense. Yeah, I can't really speak how definitively the mindset would interpret those chariots of the gods, ancient aliens ideas, and how they would play in the mind of a Jewish writer, especially circa 1960s, 1970s.

SPEAKER_00 46:12

I'm just going by Aronofsky's Noah. What do I know? What do the fuck do I know?

SPEAKER_02 46:16

Aronofsky, a uh a grand thought sheen.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

Well, I mean, if you watch Pi, you might think so. If you watch Noah, you're like again with this.

SPEAKER_02 46:24

If you read interviews with him, you might not think too highly at all.

SPEAKER_00 46:27

But um Oh, Mother was great.

SPEAKER_02 46:29

That's uh that's uh that's a horse of a different color. Yeah. Now again, Jack Kirby, he loved the stuff, you know. In 76, he did an adaptation of Space Odyssey, great version of that. Yes, looks fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

Yes, a funny, a fun weird one though. I mean, just like with Star Wars, he was given the property. Hey, you adapt this, you're not allowed to the actual moments. You have to figure it out based on our us telling you what the movie's about.

SPEAKER_02 46:53

Yeah, which is why the movie and the comic they do not necessarily go to the same place.

Doctor Who, X-Files, And Trek Examples

SPEAKER_00 46:58

Oh, they're not in any way, shape, or form do they correspond at all. Which is kind of why it's great. It's such a it's such a weird, like different take on it's like throw somebody gives you a premise and then they fucking they basically just it's like he just sort of adlet. You know, he you know, he did a uh the f the stupid comedy thing that my brain doesn't work today. Doesn't matter. It's it's it's a it's a really strange, really strange adaptation of it. Not his fault. In fact, to his credit, he came up with an incredible awesome story arc based on just essentially a like a couple of line treatment studio gave him because they didn't want to infringe on the actual narrative of improv. He improved the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 47:38

That's sometimes where the best stuff comes from.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

Especially his work, it's great. True shows you how much his brain worked.

SPEAKER_02 47:43

Yeah. Now, like I said, in 76, Jack really uh wanted to explore the idea of this ancient alien stuff in his 19-issue run of the Eternals. Now, in the Eternals, you know, he takes that root reinterpretation of common mythology and runs wild with this. Is something that happens all over comic books, especially Marvel of the time. You know, uh Thor and the Asgardens were taken wholesale from the Norse legends, Ghost Rider has his basis in the spectral horseman folklore gathered by the brothers Grimm, Black Panthers from Egyptian culture as well as 20th century Afro-futurism, and the Hulk plays on the Robert Lewis Stevenson's You know, strange case with Dr. Jack Limbrystal Hyde. But essentially what Jack Kirby decided to do was let's do chair to the gods in comic book form. Yep, yeah, with the Eternals kind of expands on his Cree and human mythology with the Celestial, an ancient race of aliens and their experiments with the evolution of early man. Big man, like cinematic, you know, storytelling in comic books, you know, Jack Kirby's Eternals is is that in spades.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

In the it which is funny because that movie is absolute garbage. It's such not a big scope in the way that it to be. It doesn't ring true in any way, shape, or super badly, horribly. But if you the the the good things they do in the MC about about the Celestials is if you watch First Guardians of the Galaxy, the collector does that whole no is it that one or is it yeah, it's that one. He shows Celestial using the gem. Or I'm sorry, the stone. The stone. And they're terrifying, and they they wipe off, wipe out swaths of life or whatever. My my favorite modern take was very brief, but it was in a Jason Burn Fantastic IV issue, I believe, where the they're running from a celestial and they're like trying to get to a portal to get back to the 616 universe, and they just barely escape, and the hand gets cut off in the portal as they're this they're escaping, like looming, maybe malevolent, god-like that is so much bigger. It's very love crafty. Unfortunately, the Eternals movie be watched by any living being.

Prometheus As Modern Ancient Aliens

SPEAKER_02 49:47

Uh, but I I think the Eternals movie might need to have been made, you know, in late 1978, I think would have been the time. I think one, the ideas of this ancient aliens were still a bit new. There was a big fascination. I think also if you were just basing it off of Kirby's work, it would be big and bold.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

Instead of muted, I mean I I don't know, because like I feel like is it not the most perfect time to do an ancient aliens Marvel movie? Like it that I think it was perfectly timed. I think the problem was that when you think of the MC, you don't before they kind of like really defined their diversification, which I still don't think they've done very well, where it's like they can do Werewolf by Night, they can do they could have done Man, they could do these things that sh that show that's not just superheroes. You could have had an ancient Marvel in an era in which ancient aliens are a huge thing in pop culture. They just not only didn't market it that way, they marketed it as a superhero film, but also kind of like when they you could tell that the studio, when it actually saw the the result of the film, kind of backed off of it and didn't market at all. And I I feel like if they had just not made it if they had if Marvel, if Disney had the if Disney really understood what Marvel was, they would have been like, okay, well, Marvel is more than just it's got horror, it's got fantasy, it's got ancient aliens, it's got all these different things. You could have marketed them in a way that made sense in relation to each of those genres, but they didn't. In fact, they pretty much didn't market them. And granted, it is bad, so that but I I think should have worked today. There's no re shouldn't have worked today.

SPEAKER_02 51:21

I just think it would have been more impactful then. Yeah, maybe. I think there would have been more awe. I think it could have been more about their alienness, but I mean it's harder to do that. There's a lot of issues with the the well, yeah. I mean how do you do a celestial in the 70s? I mean, I've I've seen Zardoz.

SPEAKER_00 51:38

That's actually the best argument you've made so far. Yes, okay, all right. Yeah, when as soon as that celestial starts vomiting AK-47s, I'm in, man.

Mystery Park And The Meme-ification

SPEAKER_02 51:46

Hey, sign me up. But obviously, like during Kirby's run on the Eternals, very much into that, you know, like the first issue is the Tomb of the Space Gods, and the second issue on the cover, it says more fantastic than the chariots of gods. He's name-dropping it on the the on the cover. I mean, he was definitely like, Hey, are you into that? This is what this book is about. These are these I got recurring themes here. If you want to reinterpret all of the ancient myths via this ancient alien idea and place it in the the Marvel universe. I mean, at that time it wasn't the Marvel universe. Essentially, Eternals like functions on its own as as so much of the the Marvel comics did before it became a cohesive universe, which at this time it took Neil Gaiman, but you don't have that sadly modern. But I mean you could have like did well world-ending stuff with the Celestials possibly coming back to wipe out humanity, judge us, which is something they've done and played with for decades after this. Oh, yeah. But you don't you don't have Spider-Man or Fantastic Four or the Hulk showing up. It's just these, you know, your Icarus and Cersei and these essentially these figures from myth, you know, reinterpreted as long-living ancient aliens adjacent creations, you know. It's these your gods are actually superpowered beings created by you know all-knowing space god.

SPEAKER_00 53:10

Which is yeah, I mean, you're right. That's a good point. I mean, you're right, they don't really concept as a whole until Gaiman does that 2005 that uh eternals run, where he shows that they are just sleeping giants waiting to be awakened or whatever. Because they do, they just use them out. You see Icarus, see Cersei. Very rarely do, I don't know, Gilgamesh show up. Like you don't really see that very often, even though that's kind of a big deal.

SPEAKER_02 53:31

Yeah, well, I mean, it's let's be honest, the eternals have never worked outside of Kirby outside of Kirby, and I don't think even Kirby's run was super high selling, you know, it didn't really have legs. The Eternals as a concept has been difficult. Uh it was not long, it was very short.

SPEAKER_00 53:49

They had 19 issues. That whole thing was 90s Christ. The fourth world, his DC version of that was way more impactful, way more influential.

Debunking The Palenque “Rocket”

Peer Review, Evidence, And Healthy Skepticism

SPEAKER_02 53:57

Yeah, and you know, that's something we talked about before of you know, he took what he was doing in in DC and and and did other things, you know, but similar in Marvel. You know, he just he wanted to tell the stories he wanted to tell, and that's he wanted to talk about ancient aliens, about the reinterpreting these myths, ancient cultures uh in a new fasting way, which is what von Daniken is trying to do. And I think that's what he found interesting about the whole thing. He wrote a a little essay at the end, issue one, an editorial form. Maybe I'll just read the whole thing and you can you can decide what's worth it. Okay. I don't know. This is what he Yeah, this is what he he wrote entitled Will the Gods Return Someday? It was at the end of issue one. If they truly exist, I believe they will. Of course, I speak of gods in the historical sense, the kinds of beings who stop ashore from places unknown and impress us with their very images, their manner of communication, and above all, their display of transcendent power. The Aztecs, who outnumbered the forces of Cortez by astronomical odds, were completely cowed by the sight of the Spaniard's horse and the effects of his canon. Were they overcome by their own fear of the supernatural, or were they awed by what they viewed as the fulfillment of their own prophecy? The return of Quetzalcotl and his band of superbeings, whose memory survived antiquity? In my own recollection of the early jungle pictures, there was nothing more stupefying to the chattering natives of remote areas than the sudden appearance of the movie's hero, whose quote unquote big white bird had crash-landed in the center of the village. Sure, they made him a god, and if they had really and if it had really happened, those natives would still be weaving tales about him today. However, my point is, how often has this kind of thing happened in our past? How many of these so-called gods have stumbled upon the boondock planet called Earth? How many of them have inspired the potent myths which not only laid in the groundwork for man's many religious professions and sciences, but have left man with a massive mystery on his hands, one that just won't go away. With the daily accumulation of new artifacts all over the globe and the simultaneous input of UFO flapology on a worldwide scale, humankind is straining its quote-unquote group memory to dredge up a proper picture of the ancient past in order to deal with the provocative incidents of contemporary issues. The compelling quality inherent in this type of theme has led me to project its mystifying questions into comic magazine storytelling. It's natural for myself and for the comic fans who dearly love the world that lies beyond fantasy and fact. We are, in a word, sympatica. Still, despite that fact, I've contrived my own version of those momentous confrontations of prehistory. I take them from the de facto questions of today. What did happen in those remote days of man's early struggle for civilized status? What is the true meaning of the myths which shared a global similarity among diverse peoples? Did beings of an extraterrestrial nature touch down and influence us and influence our lives to this present day? And then the all-important question of the lot are those beings in some cosmic orbit which will lead them back to us someday? The excitement generated by this question is undeniable. It leads directly to ourselves and to how we will react to their arrival. The grab bag of possibilities is a limitless spectrum of spine-tingling visions. They inspire everything from elation to paranoia. At any rate, we can do nothing but sense the air of this century and look aloft, or listen for the sounds not made of this world, or read the eternals for the vicarious thrill of anticipating in story and picture the astounding experience of coming to grips with this kind of creatures we imagine the gods to be. Hey, if you're reading this, you're doing it.

SPEAKER_00 57:52

Oh man, that's great. That's really good. It's dated, it's extremely dated and maybe a little not not the not unproblematic, but uh articulate and well said.

SPEAKER_02 58:03

Yeah, that's and he he explains it right there. Like he's like, I think this is fun. You know, I think other people find this fun, so I'm gonna write a whole book based solely off of this. Right. And it's it still amazes me that they decided, like, let's make more of this and let's make a movie out of it.

Comics After Kirby And Ongoing Influence

SPEAKER_00 58:19

That nobody liked in the first place. Now let's yeah, I mean it it is really interesting because I feel like a lot of this is obviously there are there's larger that go into this dynamic, some of which we've talked about, but some of which are like, you know, an increasingly secular world as science advanced, we start using these substitutes for gods, you know, as we move along in our sort of intellectual and and and technological evolution instead of gods. Maybe you know, there's this weird give and take between like are they are they gods, are they alien, are we misinterpreting what gods are against gods, you know, this whole like post definitely World War II, but post sort of like enlightened era of becoming more and more secular. Using pseudoscience to explain those myths, but also acknowledging that science is kind of is kind of like destroyed our myths from before. And so, because of our human formidapting, I mean it's the same phenomenon, I think, in in some ways as the succubus alien abduction phenomenon is. We're we we realize that succubi aren't a thing, we still experience these phenomena, and so we have to come up with something just as mythological, but based more on our understanding of the universe around it, even if it is just as far after, at least based on more knowledge, and maybe that's what this is for the also race it.

SPEAKER_02 59:34

Unfortunately, that's that's intertwined the depth of this thing, especially in Western culture to 100 million percent, yes. Yeah, and obviously, this was like mostly about von Daniken's Shirts of the Gods and how it like became popular and was adapted in comic book form, something that we are very closely associated with. Obviously, those thoughts expanded for decades after in in many other pop culture things. You know, the quartermasters in the pit, you know, there's an alien ship underground.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:03

I want to talk about quartermasters, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:06

Oh, yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:06

Have you looked into that? Because it's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:08

Yeah, yeah. No, I've I've seen I've seen one of them.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:11

Proto-Doctor Who shit. I fucking love it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:13

Speaking of Doctor Who, you have the Tom Baker's fourth doctor at this pyramids of Mars. Pyramids of Mars, yeah. Uh, you know, battling Egyptian god Sutek, really a member of an alien race called the Assyrians who used robot henchmen dressed as mummies. Yeah, obviously, that's all ancient alien stuff. Remember that? The X-Files did plenty of this, especially with their sixth season episode starting with Biogenesis, revolving around large metallic alien artifacts washed up on the ivory coast, and maybe a clue to aliens creating Earth. Obviously, there's plenty in like Battlestar Galactica and Rogers, Stargate, which we've talked about, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull that is deep tied into the ideas of ancient aliens. But obviously, ancient aliens became just popular in and of itself in 2003.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:05

One example that I would like to point out that I literally watched yesterday of this, the Star Trek The Next Generation episode The Chase, in which is discovered a series of intrigue and the nefarious scheme and what have you. What seems to be a code that is embedded in DNA that they did then they discovered is embedded in all humanoid that when put together they realize is a message from a s of alien who in Star Trek fan culture is often thought to be observers, an ancient race that is referenced in the episode Paradise Syndrome, where Kirk loses his memory in Think of American, where they take a Narrative American species, scoop them off the earth because they're about to go extinct and put them on another planet to see how they would survive. And in that one, unfortunately, I think it ruins all Star Trek lore, and I'm glad they ignore it from then on, but it is a perfect example of that exact possibility that all the reason it's kind of an excuse as to why all aliens on Star Trek are just people with prosthetics on their heads because they were all seeded by an ancient species. Kind of like it's kind of a MacGuffin excuse for having a low budget, which on that sense is kind of brilliant, but then on the other hand, uh kind of ruins a lot of uh glad they dropped it right after that. But I just watched that yesterday, so it was very fresh in my mind. I one, I didn't know they dropped it, too.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:22

I didn't know you hated it. I thought that was a fun, interesting.

Closing Thoughts And Sign-Off

SPEAKER_00 1:02:26

But doesn't it ruin everything else? Like it doesn't make it I it's just because they they're not with evolution because they talk about evol the evolution of in other episodes. They talk about it also kind of like cheapens nature in a way.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:38

It it basically does the same thing that Prometheus does, where it like Prometheus, obviously uh highly influenced by Church of the Gods.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:46

100,000 percent.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:48

Uh really all of Alien uh Scott's alien stuff post-alien with its space jockey to its engineers, literal Prometheus engineers. Prometheus is like the big budget modern ancient aliens movie.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:03

It's probably the most famous one, to be honest. I mean, other than the X-Files, uh, which I mean it is bigger budget and it a way more global success than the X-Files fight the future, but it is essentially the same plot. They even use black goo, for Christ's sake. Gotta have that black goo. But one of them has Martin Lando, which I will gotta give it to them.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:21

And you you may find Black Goo if you visit the the Von Daneken open theme park in Switzerland called Mystery Park. That was in 2003. It that showcased quote unquote different mysteries of the world over seven giant pavilions, including Nazca, Giza, Stonehenge. It sparked some controversy for promoting these ideas and ultimately failed. Though a different company took over and began reopening it in the summers as Jungfrau Park. And also, I was just gonna get to like obviously, like the biggest property within the ancient, you know, chariots of the gods, ancient aliens is of course ancient aliens, the infotainment property that that uh sparked from history channel documentary and has spawned uh sprawned uh many, many seasons with no end in sight.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:17

But you would think like, how many mysteries are you gonna solve, guys? Like, come on.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:20

Yeah, I mean, obviously, uh Giorgio Sukulus memed big hair uh scientist? Is that what term we're gonna go with?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:30

Can we can we can we say ear is that more appropriate? I don't really know. Maybe I'd like to point out also that specifically Giorgio Sokolas he is his partner, his wife, Crix Beeble, an unknown Douglas Adams character, apparently. Is she an alien herself? She's got two heads and three arms. She's a glass and metal artist. It says she makes quote, I make rainbows and handheld universe among other wonders.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:53

It reminds me of that that line from Babylon 5 where you have the the tech cult who comes. Yes, with Tiger Man. Dreamers and makers. We deal in circuitry and and crystal.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:06

And uh uh yeah, uh mathematics and thought. Uh uh yes, it's Tiger Man from uh from uh Buck Rogers and also uh played uh uh sturdy Klingon. He was oh fuck oh fuck, no, I'm gonna blow this. Because it's the three Klingons that come back in that great episode of Dance Nine. It's it's Kang, Kor, Koloth. He's Koloth. That's right. Right. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's no no no no no he's Kang. Koloth is the guy that plays Trelaine in Squire of Gotha. He's yeah, he's Kang. Because Kor is the guy that plays hilariously the original Baltar in Battlestar Galactica. Yeah, he's Kang.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:42

Folks, this is just that guy. He's just he's just searching through his mind palace right now. This is this is the knowledge we're dropping on you. This is this is why he does this podcast. That's why we both do this.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:54

This is why we both didn't realize half of this stuff came out of our brains. Half of this shit came out of our brains. Brains directly without research. We only wanted to do research so we could back it up.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:04

That's the whole reason we started doing research on this podcast. It's just 100%. Let's put dates with the stuff that we know.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:12

Let's cite our sources. Exactly. Yeah, that's literally it. Our entire show is just this, but we cite our sources. We already know it. Even dogs know it. Dogs know it. I was hoping you'd say I was thinking that exact thing. I was thinking that exact line. Man, that's good. That's from Kids.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:29

Obviously, outside of the pod. Uh-huh. This is I'm kind of like I don't have much more to my script. So if if you have something you want to say about George more than that, feel free to hear, and then we'll transition into just wrapping up. Yeah. And that'll be it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:44

Yeah, I figured I figured I'd uh talk about like very just Go ahead, just do it. I mean, you you did a great summation of that. So I mean it's really hard to say, but I I had a uh just a couple from and maybe even won't make it into the final thing, but like from this really great article from Midsmania, where they they kind of like break down arguments that he cites in a lot of his books, both of the gods and after. One of these, he says, uh they say, quote, let's consider the looks like a a spaceman type of argument by examining one of his most famous cases of the quote rocket driving god at Palin Q, which is a late classic Maya site in Chiapas, Mexico. In the caption to his illustration, Vondaniken identifies it as coming from another site, Copan in Honduras. However, in the text, he gets it, he gets its provenance. The stone so he contradicts himself in his own book. The stone relief was carved on the Lynestone sarcophagous lid of the ruler Pakal, who died on August 31st, 683 BC. Or I'm sorry, C. In this carving, Vantanican human figure appropriately garved and antennaeid, reclining to manipulate the controls of a spacecraft whose thrusters are jetting flame. Maya scholar, don't see a speech Pakal, a central figure falling backward into the jaws of Pakal teeters on the head of the sun monster, depicted a skeletal jaw but a flesh and eye suggesting poised halfway between the underworld and the living. That is, at the moment of sunset, from a point above Pakal's stomach grows the world of Maya Cosmo. So at the heart of all of this, and look, we're not hating on Van Dannekin completely. We are gonna hate on Van Danneken a little bit. But you're right, the stuff is fun, it's exciting, and there are things in in a lot of this that are kind of like open for interpretation or made, or maybe not researched, or or the research isn't well explored or or disseminated in modern culture. But unfortunately, when you get this from guys like Van, he's not doing peer review. He's not he doesn't have the oversight of a consensus community. And before you give me that bullshit, not you, before people give me that bullshit about like, well, I don't know, like uh Galileo followed consensus or whatever. Yeah, obviously, no shit, dumbass. But there also was no peer review before Galileo. It didn't exist. In the modern time, we have peer review, which means other people look at his work, look at the evidence, look at other people's, you know, verified evidence, look at the actual archaeol archaeological evidence, and then go, okay, well, here's your here's the problem with your method. And by doing peer review, it's not done by one overarching like agency or government or whatever. It's it's open sourced, and it's by people who know what they're fucking talking about, and they kind of review it and go, here's where you're kind of full of sh and here's what. And the more people that do it, the more that builds up, and the more that we realize that he was full of sh-he didn't really have any really he didn't have any real legitimate background, didn't he basically saw a bunch of pictures as a hobbyist and put it all together as a hypothesis as if it was science, which it is not. And no hate on ancient alien idea outside of the racist bullshit, and no hate on and on uh anybody who does that, but he just came up with it. It's not based in any, it's not real in in the sense that there was no real evidence to this. He just saw a bunch of shit out of context and then made an as an assumption and then created a huge narrative about it. It's kind of like uh what's his name did at the end career, the one that did uh the the research, the uh Manhattan UFO like he started out in science and started out in all legitimate, really, really nailed the stuff that you need to do to really make this legitimate, but then trailed off at the end. So laser focused on this idea know whether we were not to begin with. Vandekin never even had that base, he just started out going, Hey, that's weird. What if it was alien?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:32

Literally, I I I can't explain it.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:35

So what if it's this? Looks like a spaceman to me. Yeah, really, I mean, literally the entire gestalt of this phenomenon, which was started not popularized in the modern sets by Von D, even though it does have its other older stuff, can be summed up by the meme from Ancient Alien. I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's I don't know how you get more perfect than that. So I hate to say it. And we and you know, we love this shit. We love this shit, we die for this shit, we crave this fun, but you gotta you can't take it as without really looking in exactly what it's saying and what most of it's right. Be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brain falls off. That's a good point. That's better than that is a better that is a better way to look at it than what trust but verify. I think it's better than that's better than you don't have to trust anything going in. And when you say trust but verify means you don't trust them. What is it with like that line for that uh that um that Adama uses in in BSG, the the remake BSG, where he's like, well, how do I know I can trust you? He's like, Well, you don't. That's what trusted. I mean, it's right there. The logic is right there. Yeah. Anyway, yep, I'm really glad you brought the uh comic book thing into that. That is a a really good angle that I think our show can bring. Because like we could very easily have just done a history uh biography and down, which we didn't. We really didn't even get into his history at all. But I I don't know that that's necessary, especially since a lot of other people are gonna do that anyway.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:57

Yeah, no, it it's it's interesting to see how it affected pop culture, especially something we love, comic books. Obviously, post Jack Kirby, you know, it became kind of popular in a lot of things. Obviously, the celestials show up a lot, you know. There's something like Earth X, which I was gonna say something about that, yeah. Posits what Jack Kirby put forward in these ancient alien theories as like the history of the Marvel universe. Not that that's necessary in canon for not in canon. Yeah, but you know, it's something that has just become, you know, a widespread thought bubble that kind of surrounds a lot of mythology inner workings within comic books. You see it from a lot of more modern writers of the time, you know, uh Warren Ellis or Grant Morrison, they use that kind of stuff constantly.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:44

I think to better effect spread up than a lot of modern writers.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:48

Yes, yeah, but I also don't think like a lot of other interpretations of that ancient aliens hypothesis, it's kind of more about the ancient aliens hypothesis, whether as opposed to like some of this stuff is more like window dressing or like plot setup. It's not necessarily about that, but it's just out there, you know. Uh a post-Vondanic post-Cherry to the gods and post-Jack Kirby's Eternals, it definitely like just came become like it's a prolific thought pattern that is in a lot of stuff, and it it's it's fun. It's fun when we see it. It's not something I'm gonna base my life off of, but it's it's interesting. Oh, oh, that that's an interesting thing. Let me look into that. Let me see what archaeology says about that. Let me see what the questions are about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:32

We're not gonna travel to a mountain in Oregon.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:35

I don't have I don't have the means or the drive to go to Puma Punku or Mount Shaston. Uh I have been to Mount Shaston.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:43

So have I. Not for those reasons, though. Some of those reasons. Fair hit on a swivel. Yeah, I get it.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:51

Well, I'm saying, you know, like I have that that molder poster of the UFO, I want to believe, for a reason. Me too. I I find it fascinating and I I want there to be that magic in the world. Absolutely. It's more of like, you know, I'm I'm looking.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:07

Isn't that the whole thing though? Isn't that the essence of the thing? Is that we want that magic in the world, and yet as a society today, especially people like you and I, we don't want it to be magic, we want it to be science. Isn't that the whole problem? Is that we're looking for magic and trying to explain it with science?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:22

That's what the whole ancient aliens things was about.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:24

Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Isn't that the crux of the whole thing? Is that we're like we're trying to we're trying to project magic onto something that while using quote unquote science is completely disproven by science? I guess that's kind of the problem here. We want magic. Let's just admit we want it to be magic, but we know that magic doesn't exist, so we just hope for it.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:44

Let's skip what if it does?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:46

What if well if Jack Kirby would have a lot to say about it, to be honest?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:50

And Stanley has had a lot we've had a lot to say. True. Dispatch Ajax. And we hope you have had a lot to enjoy about what we've said about it. Uh we want to say rest in peace to Eric Vontaniken. Yes, he was a monster in his field, man. He was a monster. Well, not really.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:07

Well, I mean, he was just kind of a he was just kind of a scammer. Not one of the most prolific scammers, but a scam, he was totally a scammer. I mean, he was a come on, he was a grifter. We all know he was a grifter. Convicted multiple times.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:19

Yeah, but he was he was a pioneer in this field. Uh maybe not even a pioneer, he was a proliferator in this field. That's what he would go down in the same way that Stan Lee is thought of as like the godfather of modern comics, especially Marvel comics, you know, Von Danekin took a lot of people's ideas and ran with them and sold a lot of books based off of it. Good circle. Made a lot of money.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:41

Good full circle, because I was literally trying to make a Stan Lee joke and I just couldn't come up with one. That was a good that was a that is a good full circle, probably pretty apt analogy. It's just Van Dineken looking staring at a wall, screaming, I'm here, true believers, you know, like no, they're here, true believers.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:00

They're back and really true believers. You can't get more uh more ancient aliens than that.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:06

That's for sure, for sure. And I've seen a lot. No, I intentionally, but whatever. A lot of Star Trek alone went over after after those interviews.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:12

I mean, but and I I've always hated Stargate because they they killed Far Escape for it. It's a whole different thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:17

And I I agree. I uh you and I completely agree on Stargate. I think it's garbage. But Claudia Black eventually, I'm sure was on there. Well, but weren't weren't a bunch of the Fargate guys on there eventually?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:27

Yes, yes, Ben Browder, Claudia Black. I don't know if that might have been it, but I mean those are the two big stars.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:33

So a bunch of a bunch of star Star Trek people went on there too. What's her name? Tapal and Enterprise, she was on there. I know that Miles O'Brien eventually showed up on uh one of the Stargate shows. I think Stargate Atlanta to say.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:44

Um it's the only gate in town.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:45

And then you had Stargate Stargate Universe had what's his name from all of the Danny Boyle movies? Big B. He was on Stargate Universe. Oh, Robert Carlisle? Yeah, Robert Carlisle, which is like slummin' it, are we? Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:57

Well, I mean, he what? I mean, he was in that once show, right? What once upon a time or whatever. Oh, you mean the one that whole show?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:05

Oh, I wanted to do I wanted to do a whole episode about that fables in the 10th kingdom. Really? I still did we do that? No, we talked about it and you said you didn't want to do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:15

Uh there was a reason I didn't want to do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:17

I know, and I'm standing by whatever that reason was. Because I still think that's a valid, valid, interesting idea to but I mean there's a reason we didn't.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:30

And he wanted to distance himself from that.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:32

But yes, but I but I brought up the 10th Kingdom, which was a show that aired before Fables or that show came out, that was premise. And that's why I was like, are we just stealing from are they all stealing from each other, or is this parallel thinking? I still 100% think that uh Once Upon a Time is I believe that wholeheartedly. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying we may not do an episode on it. No, that's where we landed the first. So anyway.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:56

Anyway, we want to say uh thank you all for uh beaming up and listening with us.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:01

Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:01

We're glad that you've plugged your headphones into that Mesoamerican stone wall, and you were able to gather the tunes of our Dulcet voices. We didn't even talk, we didn't even talk about fifth element. We ain't got time. We ain't got time.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:18

Ain't nobody got time for fifth element. Come on.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:21

We hope that you have time to like, share, subscribe. Please uh rate us five godly chariots on the podcast App of your choice, ideally uh Apple Podcast. The best way for gets to get heard and seen. We would appreciate that. Yeah. Any uh Vimanoramas that you might find? Click on those.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:37

Any NASCA lines you might come across.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:40

Uh hey, hey, put another NASCA line on me. I gotta have a good night.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:44

Put it on my tab.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:50

Uh on a on a on a Herker's tit. I did a NASCA line.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:53

On an ancient aliens tit.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:55

Thank you for uh uh hanging out with us. Uh stop back with us next time. But until we write the new uh manifest on reinterpreting myths in a pseudoscience fashion that will spread for eons after, skip. What should they do?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:10

Man, I didn't even know that was on the table. But in case that happens, or at least they're taps, they've tipped their bartenders, their KJs, their DJs, their podcast hosts. Make sure they've cleaned up after themselves to some sort of make sure they're ready to get the fuck out of here. Because it is closing. And from dispatch, would like to remember no matter where you go, there you are.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:27

It was aliens.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:28

I'm not saying it was aliens.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:29

I'm just saying. Just saying. What if it was?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:33

Please go away.