The problem is summed up by Carl Sagan: “Every time he [von Däniken] sees some­thing he can’t understand, he attri­butes it to extraterrestrial intelli­gence, and since he understands almost nothing, he sees evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence all over the planet” (Playboy 1974:151).

Unfortunately its true of so many people, and the information revolution we were all promised seems to have made it worse, not better.

This stupendous gaslighting mirrors what I took away early in this article. It used several Appeal to Authority and Epistemic Invalidation and is quite clearly pathetic. Hard to read the clearly biased claims.

1. Can obviously be made

2. Can be made very fast

There is simply no reason why major advancements in metallurgy couldn't have been made between 4453 and 4382BC, completely unknown to us, and later forgotten.

If fact, it's a mystery why we can't see more of such ancient artifacts, if anything.

The article doesn't even go far enough by blaming the oiling on some accidental dumb ritual, while it used to be common knowledge that iron can be protected from rusting by oiling it, and it was done completely on purpose.

I have also take a page from his books by expostulating outlandish theories to explain facts with a straight face, always ending with a quick "of course there are other explanations".

It's a hobby. Mostly harmless.

But I think the basic idea, by itself is harder to dismiss

Archeology by itself is always going to have limitations, and there are vast swatches of history we are almost completely ignorant about

EvD is certainly guilty of taking himself much more seriously than the evidence suggests. But there's always going to be that "what if"

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ancient_astronauts

"However, the fifties and sixties were more dominated by European works. The Italian Peter Kolosimo wrote several books as early as 1957, but his Timeless Earth (1964) became an international best seller and was translated into several languages. French-language authors included Henri Lhote who proposed that prehistoric Saharan rock art depicted close encounters, Bergier and Pauwels' Morning of the Magicians (1960), Robert Charroux's One Hundred Thousand Years of Man's Unknown History (1963) and Misraki's Flying Saucers Through The Ages. A few British authors also published before Von Däniken, such as Brinsley Le Poer Trench, John Michell and W. Raymond Drake who wrote Gods or Spacemen? in 1964.

"Although Von Däniken claims he was formulating his ancient astronaut ideas throughout his school days, it is clear that many others had already published their books on the subject, long before he became notable with Chariots of the Gods? in 1968."

- If you claim that the assistance of alien visitors is needed to explain the milestone leaps or technological achievements of ancient human civilizations...are you walking into a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down logic trap? Because obviously "our" alien visitors would have need even greater leaps and achievements in their own past, to be able to travel to the earth. And their visitors similar, and so on.

- Based on the folk & religious beliefs of a great many cultures, it's easy to argue that human societies have a very strong bias toward believing in anthropomorphic supernatural beings - be they angels, demons, ghosts, spirits, or whatever. Are von Däniken's ancient aliens anything more than "random" meme, which turned out to be an excellent fit for the social environment it found itself in?

Rest in ascension.

At that age, I didn’t yet understand why some people are incapable of changing their point of view. To be honest, I still don’t fully understand how ideology can cloud the mind so thoroughly that only a single way of thinking remains possible.

He had a way of describing things with a vigor that is quite rare. It was a fascinating read as a kid, blending science fiction with history and archaeology. Of course, later learning about the scientific method, or even just Occam’s razor, made it clear that the theory of ancient aliens is very unlikely, but the what if, the “wouldn’t it be cool if this premise were true,” still lingers in my mind from time to time.

A quite unique and interesting person departed this planet yesterday.

I think it is more surprising that we have not found any alien artifacts by now.

Godspeed Erich.