Erich von Däniken

A hotel manager in Davos, Switzerland might be able to arrange a fine martini, a cab, or even some adult entertainment for you. He might speak four or more languages. He might be charming. But he’s not one you would likely put much stock in when it comes to questions of beginnings, metaphysical questions of origins and destinations. He’s not one you would expect to come up with earth-shattering theories about where humanity came from, about who might be listening in our most private thoughts, about who might be ultimately controlling more than we could imagine.

If a hotel manager form Davos, Switzerland proposed a theory that rewrites all history — religious, economic, political — you might suggest he put the drinks on your room tab and head upstairs to sleep it off. Especially if he suggests that the gods of all religion, ancient and modern, are aliens. That there’s proof in artifacts from around the world. That the evidence is painfully obvious.

Erich von Däniken is famous for his crackpot theories about extraterrestrial visitors’ influence on human culture and history. Thoroughly discredited, admittedly a fiction writer, Däniken’s books have still reached a wide audience.

Including my students.

In preparing for the PASS test, students have been planning and writing practice tests for the last several days. I give open-ended prompts and then we discuss, in one-on-one conferences, what went well and what could be improved. The other day, I put the following prompt on the board.

Many people influence us. Sometimes they introduce us to a new interest or hobby, or sometimes they affect our views on things. Write about someone who has had a significant influence on you.

And then I read a quirky eight-grader’s thesis: “Erich von Däniken has influence my view of history.”

I try to stay away from taking definitive stands about politics, religion, economics, or much of anything else in the classroom. I teach reading and writing — nothing else. But this, this I couldn’t resist.

“Have you read any critical analyses of von Däniken’s work?” I asked him. I suggested a few of the flaws in the theory, then encouraged him to read some critics’ view of von Däniken’s theories. Ideas like Carl Sagan’s:

That writing as careless as von Däniken’s, whose principal thesis is that our ancestors were dummies, should be so popular is a sober commentary on the credulousness and despair of our times. I also hope for the continuing popularity of books like Chariots of the Gods? in high school and college logic courses, as object lessons in sloppy thinking. I know of no recent books so riddled with logical and factual errors as the works of von Däniken.

Tolerance and acceptance of students’ views — that’s one thing. A student taking seriously ideas from an exposed fraud — quite another.