lofuji wrote:I thought von Daniken had been comprehensively debunked back in the 1970s. I remember reading his original book (Chariots of the Gods) then on the recommendation of a friend, who was extremely offended when I told him that it was complete and utter tosh. But highly marketable: I understand that there's a von Daniken theme park somewhere in Switzerland. No doubt it has about the same relation to reality as Disneyland.
The one thing I remember about Chariots of the Gods was that the author kept saying that experts can't agree on an explanation of x, so his explanation was of equal validity. Yet you read, say, a Mayan scholar's description of the sarcophagus from Palenque, which von Daniken maintained showed a rocket ship, and every part of the image can be related to conventional Mayan iconography well attested by multiple occurrences from several Mayan sites. Unfortunately, you can't argue with that kind of ignorance.
lofuji
Too right.
I read von Daniken when I was about twelve and didn't know any better and some of it seemed plausible, but then I recall a debunking documentary (Panorama) in the 1970s where those "ancient" stones depicting heart surgery were actually being churned out by some little old guy five miles from where they had been "discovered." The real nail in the coffin for me was a goldwork Mixtec pectoral he claimed as a representation of an "ancient circuit board" - all those funny little lines produced by the lost wax method which er... well, they were actually pictographs which even
I could read.
Unfortunately people will always (it seems) want to believe that sort of stuff so there will always be a market for it, a market in which complete debunking is reduced to being merely a different perspective.
I think the worst thing I ever saw (and it made Erich look like Carl Sagan) was this thing book called 'The Mayan Prophecies' by (I think) Maurice Cotterell - the Maya you see, had photographic memories (something to do with not having television) which they used to mentally superimpose different images from the lid of poor old Pacal's tomb (beneath which he was most likely still spinning from the von Doonican encounter) over one another to reveal mysterious and prophetic new images. Mr. Cotterell helpfully spent some time in a photolab in order to reconstruct these images as the Maya would have seen them. One of them looked a lot like Mickey Mouse. Unfuckingcanny.
