Author doesn`t let facts get in the way

One of his earlier fast ones, "Gold of the Gods," never led to the discovery of so much as a single extraterrestrially forged ingot. By way of explanation, author, visionary and cosmos-class charlatan Erich von Daniken announced that the Hungarian who had promised to take him to the cave in which the treasure had lain for millenniums had, well, died. That`s the problem with stories like this, a reviewer noted sadly. The Hungarian always dies.

Truth be told - no ordinary event, in this context - it`s impossible to determine whether von Daniken should be regarded as con man or crank. If he`s a con man, he`s quite a lucky one, if any of his other books are as dreary and plodding as "Odyssey of the Gods: The Alien History of Ancient Greece." Occasionally, the author does rise to excitable - especially when defending himself against what he sees as the closed minds of the scientific community. At such times, self-righteous indignation inspires a flurry of exclamation points and nasty snippets of sophomoric sarcasm.

A few decades back, von Daniken gained dubious fame and considerable fortune with "Chariots of the Gods?" In it he proposed, by offering misunderstood, misrepresented and wholly misguided interpretations of prehistoric artifacts, that the "gods" of various myths were, in fact, extraterrestrials, and were responsible for building the pyramids of Egypt and everything else of any antiquarian significance. Clearly, von Daniken insisted, our pitiful ancestors were incapable of such feats.

That his harebrained theories were blasted to shards by everyone in the all-but-snickering scientific community who took the trouble didn`t deter him from churning out some two-dozen books. In the latest, he claims that the tales the ancient Greeks told of their gods are, in fact, accurate recountings of alien visitors. Although the best riposte remains "Oh, come now," some people actually swallow this poppycock, so perhaps it`s worthwhile to examine this work more closely. Besides, shooting fish in a barrel can be a lot of fun.

Von Daniken maintains that these ancient aliens bred with humans. Chimpanzees, our closest relatives, with whom we share roughly 98 percent of our DNA, cannot breed with humans, of course, but if aliens, who presumably evolved in one of the ritzier neighborhoods of the Pleiades, want us to have their love-children, well, why not? The offspring - stay with him, now - were a race of giants, the very giants of those stories we mistakenly dismiss as fairy tales.

Proof? You want proof? Well, you would. It`s so like you. "Giants` bones have ... been found," von Daniken declares, "although some anthropologists still try to insist that these are the bones of gorillas." Those anthropologists! To seal his argument, he boldly presents an assertion that there were, indeed, giants, offered by a Dr. Louis Burkhalter, "the former French representative of the Prehistorical Society, in the 1950 edition of the Revue du Musee de Beyrouth." Which should settle that once and for all.

A good portion of of "Odyssey of the Gods" is a recounting and reinterpretation of the tale of Jason and the Argonauts, and their quest for the Golden Fleece. Turns out it wasn`t a fleece at all (Now, wouldn`t that be silly? A bunch of grown men - ) but a crucial component to a spacecraft.

Proof? You want more proof? He didn`t shut you up with Dr. Burkhalter? Well ... you can`t have any. Von Daniken merely points out that these stories couldn`t have been fabricated, because - they just couldn`t, OK? Here`s his reasoning on the tale of Daedalus and Icarus (part of "Argonautica"):

"I doubt whether this story was originally regarded by those who told it simply as parable. Too many of its elements are too logical and show parallels with modern space travel technology."

Like Icarus` flying too close to the sun, and the heat melting the wax that held together the feathers on his artificial wings: If that isn`t proto-techno-speak, well, what is?

Jonah wasn`t swallowed by a whale; obviously, von Daniken says, he was snatched by a submarine of alien construction. He visits the ruins at Delphi and notices that "the mighty slabs of stone which now cover the ground, on which columns formerly stood, make one think immediately of a helicopter-landing platform." Talos, the monster guardian of Crete, wasn`t mythical, but a gigantic, real-life robot. The tale got a little twisted in the retelling, though: Talos was destroyed not by the letting out of his festering blood, but by the draining of his (its) hydraulic fluid.

There`s always that lack of hard data, though. It`d be vexing to just about anyone else, but never to von Daniken. Here`s his take on the Knossos excavation in Greece:

"Nothing of a technical nature was found - no workshop of the brilliant Daedalus, no bones of a Minotaur, and sadly no single metal piece of the Talos robot from the `Argonautica.` That`s probably rusting away under the water of Crete`s thousands of bays."

That Hungarian: Dead again.

- Arthur Salm

(c) Visit Copley News Service

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Author: Arthur Salm