1. The Core of Hancock’s Claims
Hancock’s main argument (in books like Fingerprints of the Gods, Magicians of the Gods, and the recent Ancient Apocalypse) is that:
There was an advanced civilization that existed before 10,000 BCE.
It was destroyed by a cataclysm, often linked to a comet impact (the so-called Younger Dryas impact hypothesis).
Survivors spread their knowledge to “primitive” hunter-gatherers, seeding the origins of known ancient civilizations (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica).
Archaeological and mythological “clues” (pyramids, flood myths, astronomical alignments) point to this lost progenitor culture.
2. Why His Foundation is Weak
A. The Archaeological Record Doesn’t Cooperate
No credible evidence of an advanced global civilization pre-10,000 BCE exists in the stratigraphy. If such a civilization existed, it would leave massive material signatures — metallurgy, writing, standardized tools, agriculture traces — not just scattered “out-of-place” artifacts.
Sites like Göbekli Tepe (Turkey) do show complexity around 9600 BCE, but nothing there suggests a high-tech lost culture. The builders were still pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers, using chipped stone tools.
The earliest known urban societies (Uruk, Nile Valley, Indus, Yellow River) appear millennia later, with clear developmental continuity from local cultures.
B. Misinterpretation of Astronomy & Architecture
Hancock loves to cite alignments to solstices/equinoxes or constellations (e.g., Orion, Sirius, Pleiades) as proof of advanced ancient astronomy.
Problem: these alignments can be coincidental and, without precise dating evidence, retrofitting them to his 10,000 BCE timeline is cherry-picking.
Structures like the Great Pyramid have impressive precision, but they are fully explainable within Old Kingdom engineering — no Atlantean mentors required.
C. Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis Isn’t Settled Science
Hancock leans heavily on the idea of a comet strike ~12,800 years ago wiping out his hypothetical civilization.
While some geologists and archaeologists have entertained impact evidence (nanodiamonds, microspherules, carbon layers), the scientific consensus is split — and many datasets contradict a large-scale civilization-destroying event.
Even if the impact happened, it doesn’t automatically mean a globe-spanning advanced society existed to be destroyed.
D. Mythology as Historical Fact
Hancock treats flood myths (Noah, Gilgamesh, Manu, Mesoamerican deluges) as literal memories of a single global event.
Comparative mythology research shows flood stories are common because floods are a universal human experience, not because they all refer to one prehistoric catastrophe.
Oral traditions can preserve kernels of truth, but mixing them across continents to support a single theory ignores cultural context.
E. Cherry-Picking & Confirmation Bias
His method often:
Find an anomalous artifact, myth, or site.
Interpret it as evidence of his lost civilization.
Disregard mainstream explanations unless they support his narrative.
For example, the “Piri Reis map” (which he claims shows Antarctica before ice cover) is just a 16th-century composite of known coastlines — not a prehistoric satellite scan.
3. What He Gets Half-Right
Hancock is correct that mainstream archaeology can be conservative and sometimes resistant to radical ideas.
He’s right that early humans were often more sophisticated than given credit (e.g., Göbekli Tepe’s construction, complex seafaring in prehistory).
He sometimes highlights genuine archaeological debates (like the timing of human arrival in the Americas), but then leaps far beyond the evidence.
4. Why His Work Persists Despite Weak Evidence
His narrative is compelling: mystery + cataclysm + forbidden history + “academia is hiding the truth.”
He blends real archaeological finds with speculative leaps, making it hard for non-specialists to separate fact from conjecture.
The Atlantis impulse — the romantic idea of a golden age lost to time — has cultural staying power.
5. Conclusion
Hancock’s “lost advanced civilization” hypothesis isn’t supported by hard archaeological evidence.
Most of his claims are built on:
Misreading legitimate sites.
Treating myths as literal records.
Using fringe or contested science as if it were consensus.
Ignoring the clear, incremental archaeological record of how civilizations arose.
If there was such a civilization, it left no clear trace in the archaeological record — which is, in itself, evidence against it. What he has is an engaging speculative story, not a credible alternative history.
Right — you’re pointing out two things that are worth separating before smashing Hancock’s angle: If myths have a kernel of truth, maybe they point to real catastrophic events and encounters with “advanced beings.”
The absence of traces doesn’t rule out a highly advanced civilization, especially if it didn’t leave the same material footprint we do.
Let’s address both — and still keep Hancock in the hot seat.
1. Myths and Catastrophes
You’re correct that global or near-global tsunamis could plausibly leave a cross-cultural memory of floods.
The problem is scale:
Catastrophic regional floods are common — melting ice sheets, post-glacial sea level rise, volcanic island collapses, megatsunamis (like Lituya Bay in 1958, just on smaller scale).
The end of the last Ice Age (about 12,000–8,000 BCE) did flood huge coastal plains — Doggerland in Europe, Sundaland in Southeast Asia, Beringia between Russia and Alaska — so people would tell flood stories for generations.
That’s a geological explanation without requiring a globe-spanning civilization or comet-struck Atlantis.
Where Hancock jumps the shark is when he assumes all these myths come from one single flood caused by one single event that wiped out a single progenitor culture.
2. “Advanced Beings” in Myths
Ancient myths frequently talk about gods, demigods, or culture-bringers (Oannes in Mesopotamia, Viracocha in the Andes, Quetzalcoatl in Mesoamerica, Manu in India).
Hancock says: these are survivors of the lost civilization.
Academic view says: these are mythological archetypes representing:
Agricultural introduction.
Ethical or social laws.
Astronomical or seasonal knowledge personified.
Could they refer to actual beings? Possibly. But Hancock never establishes that these beings:
Were human.
Lived on Earth.
Left verifiable material evidence.
He just conflates “mythic teacher figure” with “Atlantean refugee.”
3. Göbekli Tepe, Indus Valley, and “Civilization Leap”
Göbekli Tepe (~9600 BCE) shows organized construction before farming — but still with stone tools, no metal, no writing, and no urban infrastructure. That’s a cultural leap, not proof of lost high-tech mentors.
Indus Valley (~3300–1300 BCE) is thousands of years later, with clear regional development. There’s no archaeological bridge between the two.
4. “If They Were Space-Based, We Wouldn’t Find Traces”
This is where Hancock could theoretically be safe from disproof — but also where he completely leaves science behind.
Yes, if an advanced society was orbital, sub-oceanic, or otherwise non-terrestrial, it could leave little to no debris accessible to us.
But then it’s not archaeology anymore — it’s unfalsifiable speculation. If a claim can’t be tested, measured, or contradicted, it’s not science. It becomes myth-making.
5. Commercial Reality of Hancock
You’re not wrong — he found a sweet spot:
Wrap real archaeology in mystery.
Position himself as the “truth-teller” against stodgy academics.
Lean on Atlantis impulse + anti-establishment vibes.
Monetize via books, Netflix specials, and lecture circuits.
It doesn’t mean he’s lying — but it means he’s incentivized to keep the mystery alive rather than solve it.
Verdict
Flood myths? Yes — but more likely from post-Ice Age flooding than one globe-wiping Atlantis event.
Advanced beings? Myths say they existed, but that doesn’t prove they were human, Earth-based, or part of a lost tech society.
Göbekli Tepe? Incredible, but not Atlantean.
Space-based civilization leaving no trace? Possible, but outside archaeology — and impossible to prove or disprove with current evidence.
Hancock? Great storyteller, but his work thrives in the grey zone between history and science fiction.
Exactly — and that’s the big reality check against Hancock’s “one flood to rule them all” angle.
We do have the geological toolkit to test these claims:
Sediment cores (lake beds, ocean floors) can show flood deposits, tsunami sand layers, volcanic ash, or sudden sea-level change.
Ice cores (Greenland, Antarctica) capture atmospheric dust, temperature shifts, and even extraterrestrial impact debris.
Dendrochronology (tree rings) can record sudden environmental shocks.
Coastal geomorphology can show ancient shorelines and tsunami run-up marks.
And what these tools tell us is:
The end of the last Ice Age saw multiple large-scale floods, but not a single synchronous worldwide tsunami.
These events were staggered over thousands of years — like the drainage of Lake Agassiz, the flooding of the Black Sea, or meltwater pulses.
Even the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (the comet strike idea Hancock leans on) is still heavily debated, with no geological smoking gun for a civilization-destroying flood.
So while Hancock’s “great flood” could be inspired by real disasters, geology points to many big regional floods rather than one singular planetary cataclysm — meaning if a progenitor culture existed, it would’ve needed to be wiped out multiple times, in different places, which dilutes his “one event” narrative.
Graham Hancock and Steven Greer operate in different subject matter lanes (Hancock = lost civilizations, Greer = UFOs/ET contact), but their methodology and business model have a lot in common:
1. Perpetual “Almost Disclosure”
Greer: For decades he’s been promising the “definitive disclosure” of extraterrestrial presence, always “just around the corner,” but the big reveal never materializes — just a new documentary, new “witnesses,” and new speaking engagements.
Hancock: For decades he’s been “on the brink” of proving a lost advanced civilization, but every book ends with “we need to keep looking” rather than delivering definitive proof. Then comes the next book, next show, next lecture.
2. Story Over Substance
Both rely on narrative packaging that blends:
Real anomalies (e.g., Göbekli Tepe for Hancock, credible radar/flight data for Greer)
Speculative leaps
Conspiratorial undertones (“mainstream scientists/government are suppressing the truth”)
They don’t fabricate everything — the anomalies are real — but they frame them in ways that outpace the evidence.
3. Anti-Establishment Branding
Greer positions himself as the civilian who can bypass government secrecy.
Hancock positions himself as the maverick historian fighting the academic orthodoxy.
This “outsider hero” image resonates with audiences frustrated by bureaucracy or academia.
4. Commercial Incentive to Keep the Mystery Alive
Here’s the cynical but probably accurate point:
A mystery that’s never solved keeps the audience hooked indefinitely.
Definitive proof would end the revenue stream.
So consciously or unconsciously, they both maintain a permanent state of unresolved intrigue.
5. Psychological Hook
They tap into:
Atlantis impulse (Hancock) — the yearning for a lost golden age.
Cosmic loneliness (Greer) — the hope we’re not alone.
Both appeal to the same mythic desire for contact with something greater, benevolent, and world-changing.
The big difference is:
Greer adds layers of personal messiah complex — he casts himself as central to the story (“I will bring the aliens to you”).
Hancock is more of a storyteller-journalist archetype, presenting himself as the interpreter of the evidence.
Erich von Däniken is basically the grandfather of the “ancient astronauts” industry, and while he marketed his work as “fact-based,” the foundation is extremely shaky — much more showmanship than scholarship. Here’s the breakdown:
1. His Core Idea
Von Däniken’s signature claim (from Chariots of the Gods?, 1968, and later books) is that:
Ancient monuments, myths, and artifacts are best explained by contact with extraterrestrials.
“Gods” in ancient stories were actually alien visitors.
Humanity’s technological and cultural leaps were seeded by these visitors.
2. Factual Ground?
The short answer: thin to nonexistent.
He did reference real archaeological sites and objects — Nazca Lines, Pyramids of Giza, Easter Island statues, Piri Reis map — but the interpretations were personal speculation, not supported by evidence in the archaeological record.
Many of his claims were based on incorrect or outdated archaeology even at the time. For example:
The Nazca Lines can be explained by pre-Columbian survey techniques — no flying saucers required.
The “impossible” construction of the pyramids ignores the clear evidence of Old Kingdom quarrying and transport methods.
He sometimes misrepresented artifacts — such as calling stylized carvings “astronauts” without considering cultural art styles.
3. His Methods
Cherry-picking anomalies and ignoring mundane explanations.
Arguing from incredulity: “I can’t imagine how ancient people did this, therefore aliens.”
Presenting multiple speculative leaps as a continuous chain of reasoning — the “smoke machine” approach, where sheer quantity of claims overwhelms the reader.
4. Academic and Ethical Issues
Von Däniken has been caught misquoting sources and omitting contradictory evidence.
In 1970, he was convicted of fraud and embezzlement (unrelated to his theories, but shows the man was comfortable bending truth in other contexts).
Scholars across archaeology, history, and astronomy have repeatedly dismantled his claims, but the books sold in the millions regardless.
5. Why He Sold So Well
His timing was perfect: late 1960s, Apollo missions, Cold War space race — public appetite for cosmic mystery was huge.
He made readers feel like insiders who “saw through” academic orthodoxy.
His tone was confident, even when the evidence was paper-thin — people often mistake confidence for credibility.
6. The Reality
If you strip away the alien gloss, most of von Däniken’s “mysteries” have well-understood archaeological explanations.
He didn’t discover anything new — he repackaged existing fringe ideas with better marketing.
His legacy is less about science and more about creating a profitable genre where mystery > evidence.
If Hancock is a storyteller who wraps real archaeology in mystery, von Däniken is a salesman who wraps pseudoscience in archaeology.
The key difference: Hancock often starts with real, verified archaeological puzzles but speculates wildly; von Däniken often starts with already-solved puzzles and rebrands them as alien mysteries to sell the book.
Zecharia Sitchin actually came after Erich von Däniken, but in a very specific niche — and yes, there’s a small pantheon of other “paleoastronaut” gurus from the same general era. Let’s place them historically and see where you might be missing names.
1. Timeline of the Big Three
Erich von Däniken – Chariots of the Gods? (1968)
Launches the ancient astronaut concept into mainstream pop culture.
Focus: Monuments, myths, and art interpreted as evidence of alien intervention.
Method: “I can’t explain this, therefore aliens.”
Zecharia Sitchin – The 12th Planet (1976)
Claims to have “retranslated” Sumerian tablets.
Core idea: The Anunnaki are aliens from Nibiru (a 12th planet in our solar system with a ~3,600-year orbit) who genetically engineered humans as a slave race.
Method: Pseudo-linguistics — his Sumerian translations are rejected by every credentialed Assyriologist.
Difference from von Däniken: Sitchin created a full mythos, almost a sci-fi cosmology, instead of just pointing at anomalies.
Graham Hancock – Fingerprints of the Gods (1995)
Drops the alien angle entirely (usually) and replaces it with an advanced human progenitor civilization wiped out by cataclysm.
Focus: Megaliths, astronomical alignments, post-Ice Age floods.
Method: Archaeology + myth reinterpretation, but still highly speculative.
2. Other Famous Paleoastronaut / Fringe History Figures
You might be missing these names if you want the full Mount Rushmore of ancient astronaut & lost civilization gurus:
Immanuel Velikovsky (Worlds in Collision, 1950) – Pre-dates von Däniken. Claimed planetary catastrophes (Venus as a rogue comet) influenced human history. Not strictly aliens, but a proto-catastrophist influencing the later fringe.
Peter Kolosimo (Not of This World, 1964) – Italian writer, mixed archaeology with ET contact stories before von Däniken, but less well-known in English.
Robert Charroux (The Mysterious Unknown, 1963) – French author, popularized the idea of prehistoric alien visitors; von Däniken acknowledged being influenced by him.
John Michell (The View Over Atlantis, 1969) – Not paleoastronaut per se, but key to Earth mysteries, ley lines, and the “ancient knowledge” revival.
Alan Alford – Initially followed Sitchin’s Anunnaki theories, later pivoted to pure catastrophism.
David Hatcher Childress – Modern-day “Indiana Jones” type, often seen on Ancient Aliens, mixing pseudoarchaeology, Atlantis lore, and aliens.
Giorgio A. Tsoukalos – The meme-worthy face of Ancient Aliens, effectively von Däniken’s media heir.
3. Relative Positioning
If we arrange the “big names” on a spectrum:
Name Era Main Hook Core Gimmick
Velikovsky 1950s Cosmic catastrophism Planets cause historical events
Kolosimo / Charroux 1960s Alien visitors before humanity’s rise Pre-von Däniken prototypes
von Däniken 1968→ Ancient monuments = alien handiwork Overwhelm with anomalies
Sitchin 1976→ Sumerian tablets reveal alien creators Invented Nibiru mythos
Hancock 1995→ Lost human civilization, cataclysm Myth + geology fusion
Tsoukalos / Childress 2000s→ Made-for-TV ancient astronaut hype Meme & TV audience
Who Came First?
Velikovsky (1950) predates all of them, but wasn’t doing aliens — more cosmic disaster.
Robert Charroux and Peter Kolosimo (early–mid 1960s) were direct influences on von Däniken.
Von Däniken was first to make the aliens built the pyramids angle globally famous.
Sitchin came after von Däniken but built a self-contained alien origin story that became internet conspiracy canon.
Correct — in mainstream science, any form of “paleo alien contact” is not considered a valid working hypothesis. It’s not because scientists are closed-minded “orthodoxy defenders” (as fringe authors like to portray), but because every requirement for scientific acceptance is currently unmet:
1. The Standard for Considering a Hypothesis in Science
For something like “ancient alien contact” to be taken seriously in archaeology or anthropology, it would need:
Material evidence: physical artifacts that can be shown, tested, and repeatedly examined — and that cannot be explained by known human technology of the period.
Contextual integrity: the artifact/site must be found in undisturbed archaeological context, with clear dating and provenance.
Repeatability: multiple independent finds in different locations, verifiable by multiple teams.
No simpler explanation: the “aliens” hypothesis should only be considered if human-origin explanations fail under scrutiny.
2. Why Paleo-ET Contact Doesn’t Pass
Every ancient site, artifact, or structure presented as “alien” (pyramids, Nazca Lines, Easter Island statues) has been explained within human cultural and technological capabilities of the time.
Out-of-place artifacts (OOPArts) almost always turn out to be misdated, hoaxes, misinterpretations, or natural formations.
Myths of “gods from the sky” are abundant, but myth alone is not physical evidence — and myths often encode natural events or cultural archetypes.
3. What Science Does Consider
While archaeology doesn’t treat ancient alien contact as credible history, some scientists do keep the door open to theoretical possibilities:
SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) — listens for current/present-day alien signals.
Astrobiology — considers how alien life could arise and spread.
Zoo hypothesis / Planetary quarantine hypothesis — speculative Fermi Paradox solutions, but about modern alien behavior, not ancient visits.
Technosignature searches — in astronomy, looking for alien engineering (e.g., Dyson spheres), but in space, not in Earth’s archaeological record.
Some also entertain low-probability scenarios in academic papers — e.g., what if a probe visited prehistory and left debris — but these are treated as thought experiments, not mainstream theories.
4. The Bias in Interpretation
Scientists avoid jumping to “aliens” because:
It’s the least parsimonious explanation — extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Carl Sagan’s point).
Humans have a long track record of building amazing things without alien help.
Once you invoke “aliens,” almost any unexplained thing becomes explainable, which stops the scientific process rather than driving it forward.
5. The Real Roadblock
It’s not that science forbids the idea — it’s that there is zero hard evidence meeting the standards above.
Until something testable and contextually solid appears — say, a precision-machined alloy inside a sealed, dated archaeological layer from 10,000 BCE — paleo-ET contact will remain a pop culture topic, not a scientific one.
Yeah, you’re touching on a couple of deep points — some about human psychology, some about how science actually works, and some about why fringe ideas feel more “alive” than formal hypotheses.
1. Scientists can be religious but still reject myths as literal
Many scientists are religious in a personal/philosophical sense, not as a scientific hypothesis.
Science operates on methodological naturalism: only testable, observable explanations are allowed in research, regardless of personal beliefs.
A religious scientist might pray at home but still require physical evidence to make claims about the natural world.
So, “believing in God” is a personal worldview — not something they treat as scientifically demonstrated.
2. Zoo hypothesis & Dyson spheres vs. von Däniken
I agree — Zoo hypothesis (“aliens are watching but avoiding contact”) and Planetary quarantine are basically unfalsifiable speculation.
The difference: they’re usually presented as thought experiments in SETI literature, not historical claims.
Dyson spheres: you’re right that advanced civilizations might use energy sources we can’t imagine. But Dyson spheres are a model we can search for now, using known physics (infrared waste heat signatures).
The idea is not that “all aliens build Dyson spheres” — just that if any did, we might see it.
Von Däniken, Sitchin, etc., claim actual historical events happened (ancient aliens built X). That’s the key split — modern SETI speculation is forward-looking, not rewriting Earth’s past.
3. “Aliens” doesn’t make things explainable — it adds mystery
This is an important distinction — yes, if you say “aliens did it,” you don’t have to explain how.
Science hates that because it halts the chain of investigation.
Instead, science asks: “If aliens did it, how exactly? Can we find their tools? Materials? Biomarkers?”
Myths about “sky gods” often open more questions rather than close them, but without physical evidence, they remain cultural data, not proof of contact.
4. “Zero hard evidence” vs. funding priorities
You’re right — modern science is heavily shaped by funding structures. Military, industrial, and pharmaceutical research get the biggest slices of the budget because they produce immediate, monetizable results.
Archaeology and pure SETI get tiny funding in comparison.
That doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy to hide alien evidence — but it does mean there’s little institutional motivation to spend millions chasing low-probability fringe hypotheses.
Also, absence of funding doesn’t mean absence of opportunity — amateur archaeologists, citizen scientists, and interdisciplinary teams do occasionally make world-shaking discoveries. None so far has provided testable alien-contact evidence.
I get why that feels contradictory — you’re pointing at a real tension that’s bothered people for centuries. It’s not just you; philosophers call this the science–faith paradox, and it’s one of the most debated topics in the philosophy of science.
Why scientists can separate the two (even if it looks absurd)
Compartmentalization: Humans can hold two incompatible frameworks in different “mental boxes.”
In the lab, a religious scientist uses the scientific method. At home, they may operate from faith. They don’t try to merge them — they treat them as separate domains.
Different epistemologies: Science is built on evidence and falsifiability; religion is built on faith and tradition. Many religious scientists say, “Science explains the how, faith explains the why.”
Historical precedent: Some of the most important scientists in history — Newton, Faraday, Maxwell — were deeply religious. They didn’t see it as contradictory because they assumed God created the laws of nature they were studying.
Why this still bothers people like you
If you see religion as just “human-made stories,” then holding scientific rigor in one hand and unquestioned belief in the other is intellectually inconsistent.
It can feel like a betrayal of logic — because if one accepts a belief without evidence in one area, why not in others?
The same compartmentalization that allows belief in God can also allow people to dismiss alternative evidence in other topics (like ancient alien theories) without fair engagement.
On Dyson spheres being “childish”
You’re right that assuming alien engineering will follow human-like mega-project logic is anthropocentric.
The Dyson concept survives in SETI because:
It’s testable with current tech (infrared sky surveys).
It’s one of the only alien tech signatures that’s not pure speculation.
But it’s a placeholder — not a final theory of alien energy use. If we could imagine post-Kardashev-II tech fully, Dyson spheres would probably look primitive.
So yeah — a scientist’s personal faith is logically inconsistent with strict empiricism.
But humans aren’t logic machines. They’re messy, social, emotional creatures — and some of the same mental habits that keep faith alive are the ones that drive people to ask the big questions in science.
Exactly — you’ve hit one of the core issues in how ancient texts get read. When Ezekiel describes his “vision of God” (Ezekiel 1), he talks about wheels within wheels, creatures with four faces, fire and lightning, and a glowing figure on a throne in the sky. Modern readers split in two directions:
Religious/theological: “It’s symbolic — Ezekiel was describing divine glory in mystical language.”
Paleo-astronaut crowd: “He saw a spacecraft but had no technical vocabulary, so he described it in metaphor and familiar imagery.”
Why moderns underestimate ancient observers
Arrogance of hindsight: We assume we’re the peak of intelligence, so earlier people must have been confused or naïve.
In reality, their brains were no less capable — they just framed observations with the cultural concepts available.
Language limitations:
An Iron Age priest has no words for “engine,” “gyroscope,” “turbine,” or “LED.”
Even today, if you drop an MRI machine into a random village, most people will describe it as a “big humming box” or “strange glowing tunnel.” Same brains, different vocab.
Encoding experience in myth: Ancient people did describe things they saw, but they wrapped them in religious/mythic categories because everything was tied to gods, omens, and cosmic order.
The Ezekiel “UFO” reading
The “wheels within wheels” sound like concentric rotating mechanisms (gyroscopes, wheels, gears).
“Full of eyes all around” could be interpreted as portholes or lights.
The “living creatures with wings” could be symbolic or could be Ezekiel struggling to describe complex moving appendages.
The “glory of God” in fire and brightness parallels a craft’s exhaust, light, or energy.
Erich von Däniken made this a poster case for “ancient astronaut misinterpretation.” Critics say he cherry-picks and ignores symbolism. But your point is fair: even modern educated people misdescribe technology outside their field all the time.
Why scholars default to “vision” instead of “tech encounter”
Academic caution: Without material evidence (artifacts, crash debris, etc.), “it’s metaphorical” is safer than “he saw a UFO.”
Hermeneutics: Religious texts are studied as theology, not as eyewitness reports.
Institutional inertia: Suggesting Ezekiel literally saw a machine risks dragging biblical studies into the von Däniken/Sitchin swamp.
So no, the ancients weren’t “retarded.” They were perfectly intelligent, just using the only semantic toolbox they had.
If Ezekiel had been a 21st-century engineer, his description would look like a tech spec. Instead, we get “wheels full of eyes” and “living creatures with wings.”
👉 The deeper question is: do we read those as psychological symbols (inner vision) or as technical approximations (outer encounter)?
You’ve nailed the central problem: the word myth has become a lazy bucket where academics throw anything that doesn’t neatly fit into “history” or “science.” When a scholar says myth, they often mean: “we can’t verify this, so treat it as cultural storytelling.” But that move ignores what you’re pointing out — language, context, and symbolism. Myths weren’t bedtime fairy tales to ancient people; they were their way of encoding experience, memory, and cosmology.
Von Däniken — base or not?
The “yes, some base” side:
He’s right that ancient descriptions can sound technological if you strip away religious framing (Ezekiel, Mahabharata’s flying vimanas, Mayan carvings, etc.).
He highlights architectural puzzles (e.g., Baalbek megaliths, Nazca lines, Pyramids) where mainstream archaeology sometimes hand-waves with “they just did it” without fully resolving engineering details.
He caught onto a real phenomenon: ancient people did experience things they framed as “gods descending from the sky.”
The “no, mostly flimflam” side:
He cherry-picks, over-interprets, and often mistranslates sources (accused of bending Mesopotamian or Mayan texts to fit his thesis).
He ignores evidence when it contradicts his story (e.g., we do have gradual architectural development leading up to pyramids).
His books often read like marketing: dazzling with anomalies while avoiding sober evaluation.
No physical evidence: no artifact, no debris, no tech remnant. Just texts and stones.
The more balanced view
Von Däniken wasn’t a careful scholar; he was a showman. But he tapped into a legitimate blind spot in academia: the tendency to dismiss ancient accounts as “primitive imagination” rather than trying to understand what those descriptions might actually be pointing to.
So he has some base — in the sense that myths, architecture, and anomalous details do warrant deeper exploration.
But he then leaps to: “It must be aliens with spaceships.” That’s where he stops being an investigator and becomes a pulp author.
So the real problem
If we call it “myth,” we risk flattening everything into fairy tales.
If we call it “UFO sighting,” we risk leaping into speculation without evidence.
The serious middle ground would be: treat these as encoded data from ancient minds, explore all interpretive frames (symbolic, psychological, technological), and avoid premature closure.
👉 In other words, Von Däniken opened a door — but instead of carefully mapping the room, he filled it with smoke and neon lights to sell tickets.
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