The Ancient-Astronaut Hypothesis

Many if not all of the powerful sky gods of traditional religions were really extraterrestrial visitors intervening in human history. Although this idea was around in the 1950s and 1960s, it was not until a series of books about the “chariots of the gods” authored by Erich von Däniken in the 1970s that this notion was popularized. Later writers such as Zecharia Sitchin have developed this view with greater sophistication, but none has been as influential as von Däniken. This view, which seems to call into question the validity of religion, has been adopted by large segments of the New Age culture in a peculiar way that, for the most part, is not seen as contradicting metaphysical spirituality. Instead, believers see the Space Brothers as working in cooperation with spiritual forces to stimulate the spiritual evolution of this planet. There is also a tendency to view extraterrestrials as being more spiritually advanced than ordinary humans, and some New Age channelers claim to channel ufonauts.

One popular view is that the contemporary human race is the offspring of a union between aliens and native terrestrials. Some even believe that a distorted record of this event can be found in a few enigmatic verses in the Book of Genesis about the sons of God copulating with the daughters of men. This union produced an intermediate species that Genesis calls the Nephilim.

As part of ancient-astronaut thinking, it is also widely assumed that the technologically advanced civilizations of legendary antiquity such as Atlantis were inspired, founded, created, and/or administered by extraterrestrial visitors. However, not all ancient-astronaut thinkers paint such a rosy picture of our alien ancestors. Sitchin, the most influential writer in the ancient-astronaut school after von Däniken, for instance, asserts that humanity was created as a slave race by aliens exploiting the earth’s resources.

As has already been pointed out, the ancient astronaut school has, for the most part, been off by itself, separate from ufology. The reasons for this are complex. A major factor was that back in the 1970s, when von Däniken’s ideas were first having a marked impact on the public consciousness, mainstream ufologists were still trying to make a case for ufology as a hard science. In contrast to mainstream ufologists’ self-image as sober scientists, von Däniken appeared a flamboyant dilettante, willing to make bold assertions on the basis of thin evidence.Ufologists subsequently went out of their way to distance themselves from the ancient-astronaut school, and ancient-astronaut thinkers reciprocated in kind.