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Liber XXXIII · Theosophy

Liber XXXIII · Theosophy · Chapter XI: UFO Religions

Ancient Astronauts: Von Däniken, Sitchin and the Critics

The ancient astronaut theory explained: Theosophical and pulp roots, von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods?, Sitchin's Anunnaki and what archaeologists say.

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The ancient astronaut theory is the claim that intelligent beings from other worlds visited the Earth in the remote past and that their visits explain ancient monuments, myths of sky gods and even the origin of humanity. It was popularised by the Swiss writer Erich von Däniken in Chariots of the Gods? (1968) and by Zecharia Sitchin's books on the Mesopotamian Anunnaki, drawing on earlier Theosophical, Fortean and science-fiction ideas. Archaeologists and historians reject it as unsupported by evidence, but it has become a widespread modern myth and the basis of new religious movements such as Raëlism.

What the Ancient Astronaut Theory Claims§

Ancient astronaut writers typically make three claims. First, that certain ancient structures, such as the pyramids of Giza, the stone platform at Baalbek, the statues of Easter Island or the lines in the desert at Nazca in Peru, were beyond the technical abilities of their builders and therefore required outside help. Second, that myths of gods descending from the sky, fiery chariots and heavenly beings who mated with humans are garbled memories of real encounters with technologically advanced visitors. Third, in stronger versions, that these visitors created or modified human beings, so that religion itself began as a misunderstanding of alien science.

Favourite textual examples come from scripture. The vision of the four living creatures and wheels within wheels in Ezekiel 1 is read as a description of a spacecraft; the "sons of God" who took human wives in Genesis 6, and the fallen Watchers of the Book of Enoch, as extraterrestrials; and the flying vimanas of Sanskrit epics as aircraft. The NASA engineer Josef Blumrich even published a technical reconstruction, The Spaceships of Ezekiel (1973).

Forerunners: Theosophy, Charles Fort and Pulp Fiction§

The idea that humanity's spiritual history involves beings from other planets appears clearly in Theosophy. In The Secret Doctrine (1888) Helena Blavatsky described Lords of the Flame who came from Venus in a remote age to awaken mind in early humanity, and later Theosophists made Sanat Kumara, ruler of the Earth from his seat in Shamballa, a Venusian being (see The Secret Doctrine). These figures were spiritual rather than technological, but they established the pattern of higher beings from space guiding human evolution, a pattern inherited by the contactee movements described in our guide to UFO religions.

The American writer Charles Fort, in The Book of the Damned (1919) and later books, collected reports of anomalies that science ignored, from falls of frogs to lights in the sky, and playfully suggested that humanity might be "property" of some other intelligence. Pulp science fiction took up the theme, and H. P. Lovecraft's stories, especially At the Mountains of Madness (1936), imagined ancient alien races who built cities on Earth and created life. The writer Jason Colavito has argued that Lovecraft's fiction, filtered through French authors, shaped the later "non-fiction" theory.

In 1960 the French journalists Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier published Le Matin des magiciens (The Morning of the Magicians), a bestselling mix of occultism, alternative history and speculation that included ancient visitors. Around the same time the Soviet scientist Matest Agrest speculated about extraterrestrial visits in antiquity, and the astronomers Iosif Shklovskii and Carl Sagan, in Intelligent Life in the Universe (1966), discussed paleocontact as a scientific possibility worth testing, while finding no convincing evidence for it.

Erich von Däniken and Chariots of the Gods?§

Erich von Däniken (born 1935), a Swiss hotel manager with a long interest in religion and the unexplained, published Erinnerungen an die Zukunft ("Memories of the Future") in 1968; it appeared in English as Chariots of the Gods? Its brisk, questioning style and the sweep of its examples, from the Nazca lines, which he suggested resembled landing strips, to the carved lid of the Maya king Pakal's sarcophagus at Palenque, which he read as a man at the controls of a rocket, made it an international bestseller. A German documentary film followed in 1970, and an American television special, In Search of Ancient Astronauts (1973), brought the theory to a mass audience.

Von Däniken's career was dogged by controversy. In 1970 he was convicted in Switzerland of financial offences connected with his hotel work, and wrote further books during and after his imprisonment. Critics showed that many of his examples were misdescribed, and a television investigation reported that pottery he had illustrated as ancient evidence was the work of a modern Peruvian potter, and documentaries such as the BBC's The Case of the Ancient Astronauts (1977) examined his claims one by one. He nevertheless continued to publish for decades, and his ideas were revived for a new generation by the cable television series Ancient Aliens, first broadcast in 2009–2010.

Zecharia Sitchin, the Anunnaki and the Sirius Mystery§

The Azerbaijani-born American writer Zecharia Sitchin (1920–2010) offered a more elaborate system in The Twelfth Planet (1976) and its sequels, the "Earth Chronicles". He claimed that Sumerian and Babylonian texts describe a twelfth planet, Nibiru, on a long elliptical orbit, whose inhabitants, the Anunnaki, came to Earth to mine gold and genetically engineered humans as workers. Sitchin's readings depend on his own translations of cuneiform texts, which specialists in Assyriology reject: in the actual sources the Anunnaki are a group of gods, Nibiru is an astronomical term usually associated with Jupiter or a celestial crossing point, and nothing indicates an undiscovered planet. Our guide to Mesopotamian religion gives the scholarly picture of these gods. Sitchin's ideas nonetheless fed later predictions of a catastrophic return of Nibiru, which repeatedly failed to occur.

Robert Temple's The Sirius Mystery (1976) argued that the Dogon people of Mali possessed knowledge of the invisible companion star Sirius B, which he traced to amphibious visitors from the Sirius system remembered in myths of beings such as the Babylonian Oannes. The claim rested on the ethnography of Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen; a later restudy by the anthropologist Walter van Beek in the early 1990s found no such knowledge among Dogon informants, and critics suggested that any astronomical details may have come from contact with Europeans.

Ancient Astronauts as Religion: Raëlism and Beyond§

For many readers the ancient astronaut theory is entertainment or speculative history, but it can also function as religion. In 1973 the French journalist Claude Vorilhon, later known as Raël, said that he had met an extraterrestrial who revealed that humanity was created in laboratories by the Elohim, scientists from another planet whose activities the Bible records as the acts of God. The Raëlian movement he founded treats ancient astronaut ideas as revealed doctrine. Other groups and many New Age teachers speak of "starseeds", Pleiadian or Sirian ancestors and returning space brothers, echoing Theosophy's masters from Venus.

Scholars of religion see the theory as a modern myth that translates the sacred into technological terms. It keeps the sky gods, angels and divine ancestors of tradition but reinterprets them as visitors with spacecraft, so that faith in science and faith in higher beings can coexist. This reading places it within the broader history of the New Age and of esoteric reinterpretations of scripture.

What Archaeologists and Historians Say§

Archaeologists respond that the monuments cited by ancient astronaut writers can be explained by the skills, tools and organisation of the people who built them. Excavations at Giza have uncovered workers' settlements and administrative records; papyri found at Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea, dating to the reign of Khufu, record the transport of limestone for the Great Pyramid. The Nazca lines were made between about 500 BCE and 500 CE by removing dark surface stones to expose lighter ground, a technique experiments have shown requires only stakes, cords and planning. The Palenque lid depicts King Pakal at the base of a world tree, in iconography well understood by Maya specialists, and the inscriptions of ancient Egyptian religion and Mesopotamia describe gods, not machines.

Critics such as the archaeologists Kenneth Feder and Stephen Williams also point to an uncomfortable pattern. Almost all the achievements credited to aliens belong to non-European peoples, from Egypt and Peru to Zimbabwe and the Pacific, continuing a nineteenth-century tradition of denying indigenous peoples credit for their own monuments. Whatever its appeal as a story, the ancient astronaut theory has no support in the archaeological record.

Frequently asked questions§

What is the ancient astronaut theory?§

It is the claim that extraterrestrials visited Earth in prehistoric or ancient times and influenced human culture, religion and technology. It was popularised by Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? (1968) and is rejected by archaeologists.

Who are the Anunnaki in Sitchin's books?§

Zecharia Sitchin claimed the Anunnaki were inhabitants of a planet called Nibiru who created humans. In actual Mesopotamian sources the Anunnaki are a group of gods, and specialists reject Sitchin's translations.

Did aliens build the pyramids?§

No archaeological evidence supports that idea. Workers' villages, quarries, tools and administrative papyri show how the Egyptians organised the construction of the pyramids themselves.

Is the ancient astronaut theory a religion?§

For most readers it is speculative history, but some groups, notably the Raëlian movement, treat it as revealed religious truth. Scholars often describe it as a modern myth that reinterprets ancient gods in technological terms.

Sources and further reading§