Chariots of the Gods

I still recall what a stunning impact this "documentary" had on my family -- including my father, a professor -- when we saw it on television in the early '70's.

Of course, all of von Däniken's assertions have been thoroughly and utterly debunked in the meantime, and von Däniken turned out to be a complete fraud, but still, this was the first time I had ever heard of the Plains of Nazca, so I have to thank Erich for that.

I much prefer the German title to the English: "Erinnerungen an die Zukunft" or "Memories of the Future".

This lively production loosely based on von Daniken's first work, 'Chariots of the Gods?' brought his theories of alien visitations in the past to the attention of the movie going audience. At that time it was a break-through in thinking. Since then von Daniken has presented dozens of more books of proofs, many of them more scientific and hard-nosed than this. As a result, there have been bookshelves full of other books on this subject, including those written by scientists, professors and other notable experts. Meanwhile, a campaign of debunking this whole theory is maintained by a clique of limited thinkers, believing in their arrogance, that this is the only world in the entire universe on which intelligent life arose - gimme a break! Watch it again for the joy of discovery. A tremendous soundtrack is a bonus

I was 11 years old in 1973 when I read some of "Chariots of the Gods?" and saw "In Search of Ancient Astronauts," a condensed version of this 1972 documentary. As a kid, you are impressible and can be enthralled by these new ideas, that maybe aliens helped humankind along the way to advanced civilization.

As an adult seeing "Chariots of the Gods" 35 years later, I was amazed at the claims the narrator sometimes makes, leaving out significant background details and being excessively one sided. There are several specific examples. In the first, a visit is made to the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, where a set of curved tubes is said to be the exhaust port on the bottom of the rocket (and the base of a Saturn one is shown for comparison). However, no details are given of where the artifact was found, how old it was or what mainstream archaeologists thought it was.

In the second, there were statues in Mexico, who were claimed to be wearing odd hats, communication or utility devices on their chests and perhaps weapons or communicators on their belts. No alternative opinion was presented, such as the "communicators" might just be ordinary breastplates, and the hats some kind of ornamental warrior headgear. Additionally in Pelenque, Mexico, a sarcophagus lid for the Mayan leader Pacal is supposed to be a rocket ship, with no additional explanation given that his "rocket" might actually be a collection of Mayan symbols representing the king's passage to the underworld, and the meaning of these symbols unknown to few modern people except archaeologists specializing in pre-Columbian history.

I liked the crazy, spacey soundtrack, which ranged from early '70s electronica to New Ageish acoustic, and the cinematography, much shot from the skies -- the way these alleged "ancient astronauts" might have seen the earth! There just wasn't enough evidence presented that aliens created all these mysteries, which certainly are unexplainable.

Spacemen? I don't know. The theory that humans, not aliens, reached a high level of civilization thousands of years ago -- say more like late 21st century -- only to have it destroyed by a natural disaster, such as an ice age, seems like a more probable explanation for the supposedly advanced technologies in ancient artifacts and even the strange costumes. People knocked back to the stone age by a disaster over generations could have forgotten their heritage, old costuming and technology and have only traces, which to them might become religious legends. They might record them on cave or cliff walls in images that look more familiar to us because we are advanced, just like their distant ancestors. And artifacts that were fabricated with technology similar to ours thousands of years ago also could have come from these very ancient humans, not a bunch of extraterrestrials!

I would imagine anyone who gone though the trouble of obtaining this film already knows about premise of Chariots of the Gods so I will save you the trouble. I am a fan of Leonard Nimoy's In Search of TV series and its pilot shows. In the shows the name Von Daniken and the book Chariots of the Gods were mentioned, and I remembered there is a documentary film from the book. So, I looked it up and watched it. While Chariots of the Gods is not as dramatic as the In search of: Ancient Astronauts narrated by the great Rod Serling, but it has that snazzy 70's Euro pop jazz going for it. The kind of music that reminds you that you are watching a low budget 1970 film from West Germany. Also, if you had watched Rod Serling's Ancient Astronauts or Outerspace Connection, you will noticed most of the footages from those films are from the Chariots of the Gods. The images of the film is quite good on the VCI Entertainment release DVD. Like other reviewers have said, if you turn the volume down this movie could make a good travelogue.

Also, like so many other reviewer have wrote, the narrator is no Rod Serling. As a matter of fact, I think he is about as dry as a glass of martini, with no olive. This film consists of him reading from the book with no sound bites of people who were interviewed. If you want answers of strange going on with those little green aliens then this film is not for you, because this movie offers questions, a lot of questions, but no answers. With rhetorical questions like: "Could the ancient Egyptian mummifies body to copy alien's hyper-sleep during space travel?" or "Could the stone drawing in the middle of Sahara desert thousand of years ago be that of UFOs?" or "Could that 5,000 years old Japanese figurine be that of an alien in a space suit?" make me want to put my finger to my cheek and go "Hmmmmmm....Is that so?" Even though most of the questions posed doesn't pass go on my mumbo jumbo filter, it is still good a fun watch on a boring summer afternoon. What can I say, I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff.

Now being a man of no religious faith at all, I was curious to see just how far this ultimate in conspiracy theories could be strung out by Harald Reinl and you know what, I think he makes a decent fist of asking some questions and suggesting some plausibly alternative answers to some long-held imponderables. Hollywood has long shown us bamboo scaffolding being use by willing (or not) labourers to build the pyramids at Giza or in Mexico, or to sculpt the effigies and tombs at the likes of (the original) Abu Simbel or at dozens of sites across Mesoamerica. Ok, so he does quote some highly spurious statistics and source a few Soviet-style scientific sceptics of all things deific, but a lot of the questions it raises about engineering, construction and man-hours do merit a bit of thought. Just how long did it take to build the tomb of Khufu at 2 tons per stone multiplied by one million stones that they had to raise up to four hundred feet off the sand? Why are all the stone heads on Easter Island so exact, and similar? Why was the obsession about the sun and the moon and stars so prevalent across the globe when contact between peoples was impossible? Could there really have been visitors from outer space who founded every religion on earth? Who gave us architecture or geometry or even fire and the wheel? Of course it's all highly speculative stuff, this, and is very easy to cynically dismiss as nonsense, but looked at with an open-mind it is no less believable or unsubstantiated at times than claims that there is an an almighty deity out there somewhere taking credit for our glories whilst blaming humanity when it goes horribly wrong. Regardless of it's flawed philosophy, it's still a good excuse to go on a trawl to some amazing archeological locations across the world and admire some astonishing and enduring artistry that symbolises and chronicles much of the early evolution of the human race. The rest of it? Now where did I put the salt?