Already in his first book, Chariots of the Gods (1968), EvD points to circles, spheres or wheels in the texts and art works of the Sumerians, Greeks, and Maya as well as in the Bible. He finds “balls on which indefinable beings sit and ride through the air,” or people who “ride on balls with wings,” and balls in a row can become “a relief of an airship”. The hypothesis, according to which representations of balls or spheres can be understood as airships or spaceships, is deepened in his second book, Return to the Stars (1970). Here, EvD dedicates a whole chapter to the sphere and explores it as “the ideal shape for space-craft”: “Old texts and archaeological finds around the world have convinced me that the first space-craft that reached the earth many thousands of years ago were spherical.” For the sphere allows adapting the flight path with no risk and creates an artificial gravity by rotating of its own accord. Then he goes on to “examine the first legends of mankind’s creation with this ‘sphere story’ in mind”. According to a Polynesian creation myth, the original “revolving void” (Po) could have been a spherical spaceship that had approached Earth where the crew created life. A creation myth of the Maya tells about gods who created man in several attempts, then rose into heaven again, back to the one “who sees in the darkness” (Dabavil) – EvD concludes that there was the notion of gods dwelling in stone spheres, and that the Mesoamerican ball game could have been inspired by this event. A creation legend of the Columbian Chibcha mentions a “something house”. Light radiated from it and created the world in the beginning of time. The widespread legend of the cosmic egg, from which the world and life emerged, could be “an authentic account of a space-craft from unknown stars”. In the extensive Tibetan Buddhist text collection Kangyur and Tengyur (or Kanjur and Tanjur, respectively), there are reports of “pearls in the sky” and “transparent spheres” as dwellings of the gods. In the Tassili mountains in the Algerian Sahara, rock paintings of spheres and spherical structures were found, again pointing to ancient spaceships. Finally and more detailed, EvD reports about the mysterious and tons weighing stone spheres or balls in Costa Rica – mysterious because it is unclear, by what technology they could be so accurately produced and transported to abandoned and inhospitable areas like the jungle or high mountains.
“Circles, spheres and balls can be found in abundance,” EvD states. And “all spheres and circles – whether in creation myths, prehistoric drawings or later reliefs and paintings – represent ‘god’ or the ‘godhead’.” His research and expedition increased his suspicion “that the prehistoric balls and all the pictures of them in reliefs and on cave walls are directly linked with the visit of unknown intelligences, of intelligences who landed on our planet in a ball. They already knew and had proved that the sphere is the most suitable shape for interstellar space flights.”
Floco’s comment:
Passion for an inspiring idea, amiable assertiveness when speaking in public, comprehensive presentation for a wide audience, tireless researching and working, as well as a generous understanding and handling of facts – all of this is part of the phenomenon Erich von Däniken. It is through the latter that EvD was an easy target for archaeologists and other “bean counters,” as he likes to say. Thus, critical thinkers reject the hypothesis that the ancient representations of circles and spheres actually indicate spaceships. In fact, it needs some imagination to see the influence of extraterrestrial intelligences in the mythic accounts or the ancient art works. Sometimes, even the spherical shape has to be imagined, e.g. in the case of Polynesian Po, the Mayan gods who “see in the darkness” or the “something house” of the Chibcha – the concepts are not verifiable in every case. Yes, EvD travels down the path of the unexplainable, where religions, myths and unbelievable stories of all sorts have unfolded for ages. So far, he failed to provide any evidence about the visit of extraterrestrials on Earth. And his account about his contact to an alien life form (Tomy and the Planet of Lies, 2012) did not exactly increase his credibility.
So is EvD’s hypothesis just nonsense? No quite, for his work shows something more essential. Like, how little we know about our past, and how limited specialization is if no research is done beyond its boundaries. Archaeology, anthropology, and prehistory try to solve “mysteries,” too. Investigations of the ancient art of Mesoamerica, for example, provide dozens of interpretations of the dotted or concentric circles (see the Lead Story in this issue). Not only that none of these can be considered certain or claim universal validity. But to be plausible, they also need to tie in with the shared and accepted knowledge, that hardly brings about waves of innovation. Yet, a lot can be won if the mind is allowed to wander freely, if the spherical representations may be anything thinkable, from stars, flowers, jewels to entoptic phenomena like floaters and to UFOs. This is what EvD’s wild jumping through space and time reminds us of, namely, the conditions of our existence, i.e. how much we take our life for granted, how little we dare to dream, but also what possibilities open up if the consciousness deepens into the light that always seems within reach.