#Erich von Däniken

[docgold13]

me again. Was Zelazny's Lord of Light also the inspiration for Kirby's run on The Eternals?

to an extent, possibly... I think the major inspiration for Kirby's creation of The Eternals was Erich von Däniken's pseudoscience bestseller, 'Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past.' The was one of the first of the 'ancient alien' theories... suggesting crazy stuff like aliens must have helped build the great Pyramids of Egypt and whatnot. It's a kind of fun read (although a bit racist).

[superitskitaabistanstuff]

166-طوفانِ نوح سے پہلے از جاوید طوسی

طوفانِ نوح سے پہلے از جاوید طوسی نام کتاب:طوفانِ نوح سے پہلے مصنف:جاوید طوسی صنف: نان فکشن، آرکیالوجی، انسانی تاریخ صفحات:222 سن اشاعت:2019 ناشر: نگارشات پبلشرز جاوید طوسی صاحب کی کتاب طوفان ِنوح سے پہلے ایک انتہائی منفرد کتاب ہے۔ اس کتاب کو پڑھنے سے پہلے ہمیں اندازہ نہیں تھا کہ اس کتاب کے مندرجات کیا ہوں گے۔ قدیم انسانی تاریخ اور ارتقاء کے موضوع پہ اردو ذبان میں اس موضوع پہ کم ہی کام…

[pacificus-pacificator]

Alien and UFO Fantasies

The idea of alien life forms and extraterrestrial intelligence(s) fascinate mankind, as has been shown by many works of fiction and non-fiction.

Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods was fascinating reading for a teenager, that is, when one is young and naïve — it certainly got me started on the idea of Comparative Religions in Anthropology. Alongside Giorgio Tsoukalos, Erich von Däniken speaks of his “theories” on the Ancient Aliens TV show. Neither of them have any scientific credibility to do so, but they do portray real professors and intellectuals, if only to bifurcate their words to suit their own ideas.

However, one has to have an open mind as to whether advanced intelligent species exist, even within our galaxy of many sun-like stars and habitable planets.

But, analogically speaking, just like normal professors not being bothered attending frat parties (“kids being kids,” after all, and, hopefully, within limits and reason), these beings may just be too intelligent to bother with an adolescent-like ape species who thinks that he owns the world and everything around it ...

N.B. AI artworks/“creations” have no copyright whatsoever. All other artworks/images belong to their respective creator(s)/owner(s).

Text by Razz © 2024

[dont-read-this-im-dead]

I thought this was going to be more UFOs and aliens, but it was actually just a history lesson of the Maya. It was pretty interesting, and it went a lot into their stone carvings, trying to decipher them, see if their gods really were aliens, or just from Asia or some such.

[mycstilleblog]

"Sie sind hier! Was jetzt?" von Robert Fleischer. Rezension

Zusammen mit Schulkameraden habe ich mich seinerzeit schon früh immer wieder mit der Thematik „Außerirdische“ beschäftigt. Angeregt wurden wir auch durch diverse spannende Bücher. Beispielsweise durch die Scince-Fiction-Romane von Stanisław Lem. Anregende Literatur: „Ein Stern fiel vom Himmel“ Im Buchregal meiner Eltern fiel mir als Schüler das Buch „Ein Stern fiel vom Himmel“ (erschienen 1934)…

[ronnydeschepper]

Het Evangelie volgens de Lukas (24): Gespalkte ongein

Het leukste aan komplotteorieën is dat ze volstrekt ongeloofwaardig zijn. Zo ongeloofwaardig dat ze voldoende onrust nalaten, om toch nog een kiem van onzekerheid te zaaien, die zich nestelt in je eigen gebrek aan begripsvermogen als het monster in Alien. Als het nou es écht zo was ? Ik had dat al toen ik de meest vergezochte parawetenschap las over het verzwolgen kontinent van Mu (Captain James…

[brianbachochin]

Prophecy Brief: (Re)visiting UFOs

Congress holds hearing about claims US government has UFO evidence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NE9IhP5mZw 

[pathofweeds]

[femme-objet]

recently saw someone claim that "ancient aliens was promulgated by the nazis" and like. they were so caught up in debunking pseudohistory abt ancient civilizations that they fell for pseudohistory about the nazis

[sixamese-simblr]

UFO religions are kinda rad in concept until you get confronted with the fact that the white supremacy is an inherent feature and not a bug

[minzapinza]

god, talking to my dad about anything is so exhausting nowadays. Inevitably, he will steer any conversation to about how climate change is a hoax and based on false models and how "they" want you to believe that it's worse than it actually is etcetc and then 3 minutes later he will complain about how flat earthers don't know what they're talking about because globe earth, moon landing etc is proven science.

I don't try to engage with him anymore or try to steer the topic to other things but man, the cognitive dissonance is insane.

[sci-the-superb]

Love reading a book from 1975 and it starts ripping into the Ancient Aliens guy in the middle of the 1st chapter

[cellarspider]

Spider's Big Prometheus Thing: Index Post

Being a list of all the posts produced in the course of this inexplicable project of mine. This project is now complete, at an unexpectedly extensive thirty entries long.

I swear, I didn't intend for it to go like that, but it was fun to write.

All entries have at least a minimum level of citations for where to start looking for more facts on any subject external to the movie itself, which includes everything from how DNA is sequenced to how Nickolodeon slime is made, and from the comedy in mislabeled portraits of early church fathers to the correct attribution of a cat's contributions to historical linguistics.

Be aware that there's also hidden rambling and bonus facts in the image alt text. A lot of them.

0. Introduction

Setting the scene, including my background, my intent, and where this movie is going.

1. Opening

Expectations, landscapes, and aliens.

Rambles: DNA, whether aliens would have it, and why it doesn't look like a pale bacon ladder.

Alt-text rambles: nano-bubbles.

2. Discovery

The Isle of Skye is gorgeous, the movie attempts to establish its themes, and why it had already got my hackles up. Rambles: how cool ancient and pre-modern peoples were, the implications of humanoid figures in European cave paintings, and misplaced lions. Alt-text rambles: seriously, Skye is just so cool. Erich von Däniken and modern publishing royalties are not.

3. David

We meet the loneliest android, and his fandom of choice. Rambles: I go nuts for a paragraph over Proto-Indo-European. Alt-text rambles: Help me remember a dude's name, that time Ron Perlman saw Sigourney Weaver do something so cool he forgot to act, and a Coronation Street conspiracy theory.

4. Humans (Derogatory)

We meet the human crew, and analyze why they're a mismatch to the movie's established expectations, and what subgenre they fit in most. It isn't the one the movie seems to be aiming for. Rambles: 50s B-movies and their Men Of Science, modern movies and their quietly suffering scientists. Alt-text rambles: inconsistently moist characters, Idris Elba's christmas tree decorations.

5. Pseudoarchaeology (Extremely Derogatory)

We meet Old Man Capitalism, poor logistics, and how the movie began to really lose me through dropping in some racist pseudoscience tropes. Rambles: more logistics (of alien bioengineering), historical art styles, what the world was getting up to in the 600s CE Alt-text rambles: Linguistics, more ranting, the life and extraordinarily ornate death of Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal. Rants: the existence of writing, people who don't look like you can still think, stargazing and how conspiracy theorists don't understand it.

6. Roads

Poor firearm safety with Chekhov's Gun, when movies move too fast, atmospheric chemistry, and the moment I began to yearn for blood. Rambles: First contact protocols, why 3% CO₂ won't kill you but it will make you weird, my personal experience digging up a Roman road. Alt-text rambles: the logistics of securing items in moving craft, linguistics, atmospheric science, colorblind-friendly diagram design, swearing about orology, and cursing the crew for their fictional crimes against archaeology. Rants: Why they should've stayed in orbit, and my impassioned defense of historically significant transportation infrastructure.

7. Masking

The bit that made most people realize these characters were idiots. Featuring an attempt at themes. Rambles: NASA's policies on biological contaminants Alt-text rambles: Benedict Wong having nothing to do, helmet design, driving on dusty track, the tiny overlap between archaeological horrors and Minecraft, the CDC's excellent captions on men sneezing. Rants: Nominating a man for the Heinrich Schliemann Archaeology Award, all these people are catching space covid

8. Ghosts

Comparing the Engineers to their series antecedents, and I develop a slight soft spot for the geologist. Rambles: Set design in Alien, how carbon dating works. Alt-text rambles: Adventure games, GET DOWN MISTER PRESIDENT, I get very excited for Dune: Part Two, the archival devotion of people with rare blorbos.

9. Dignity

Personal, professional, social, and media context for the treatment of people's remains. Rambles: Personal experiences around the archaeological discovery of human skeletons, professional codes of ethics, movies that handle dead bodies better by being more crass about it. Alt-text rambles: None, the main text gets full focus this time.

10. Atmosphere

How intertextual imagery is overused, how the one major character arc is developing, and a whole grab bag of miscellaneous shambolic events. Rambles: How tourist-breath can destroy artifacts, and a deleted scene Alt-text rambles: Whether explaining mysteries is always the wrong decision in fantasy, the usefulness of helmets, Mass Effect's loading screens, please someone give me more recommendations for things where Giger creatures aren't all bad, and how cultural variation in gestures can make you look like an asshole. Rants: they aren't done desecrating the dead oh boy it's just gonna get worse

11. Decontamination

How to present an audience with events that make no sense, how to do it eerily, and how Prometheus does this by accident. Rambles: NASA's Apollo 11 quarantine policies Alt-text rambles: How 2001: A Space Odyssey put on a cosmic lightshow, how traditions are faked for political and social power in Midsommar, confusing lab equipment, robot arm safety, the use of camper vans in space exploration, umarell behavior, and robot horror movies. Bonus text rambles: pressurized gas cylinder safety, and how the cargo of one truck apparently tried to join Roscosmos. Rants: Laboratory safety

12. Shocking

Mary Shelly would not be proud of them. Rambles: Which home electrical appliances their tomfoolery is equivalent to. Alt-text rambles: Semiotics and Alien, reuse of props and art department equipment, the cast's inability to look at things, how the first chestburster scene intelligently incorporated spontaneity, and I completely lose my mind over a single computer readout, finding out in the process that the Engineers are close cousins to the common house mouse. Rants: I didn't think that "don't stick electrical plugs in people's ears" would be something that needed to be said, but here we are.

13. Family Tree

A soothing ramble about some of the cool bits of my job. Rambles: How evolution has made some vertebrate blood white or green, how genomes are sequenced, and how to determine the relatedness of species. And more. A lot more. I love my job. It's so cool. Alt-text rambles: How Nickelodeon slime was made, how hecking tiny molecules are, why blue-tongued skinks have blue tongues, my review of Dune: Part Two, how hard I worked to not turn Gene Wilder into a jumpscare, lots of enthusiastic explanations of DNA sequencing techniques, the aesthetics of the machines wot do that for you, how "snip" no longer sounds like a verb to me, and how I started out as a computational scientist.

14. Cheers

David poisons a man, and how his character arc ties into christian-influenced existential dread. Rambles: series continuity, gnostic theology, Ridley Scott's beliefs. Alt-text rambles: How to ruin petri dishes, Vickers' questionably carbon-based existence, the game of Operation, hand doubles in filming, how the funniest possible misidentification of an early church figure is wandering around the internet, the cool genders of suit actors, gnostic Archons, and the Engineers as Sophia. Rants: Holloway seems unaware that archaeologists study dead people, Ridley Scott is his own biggest problem.

15. Unworthy

The movie does something I'm not going to joke about. Don't read this if you're having a bad day. Big content warning for Holocaust imagery.

16. Intimacy

Your asexual commentator grapples with Hollywood's terrible track record on romantic and sexual chemistry. Rambles: Why we don't say an archaic-looking species is "older" than another, how religious scientists do what they do Alt-text rambles: the human family tree, Abbott and Costello, pitcher plant cultivars, the creative possibilities of a Buddhist version of this movie, and Stephen Still's lack of accordions. Rants: I've never been a boyfriend but I'm pretty sure that's not how you do it

17. Threat

Prometheus takes a hard turn into old slasher movie tropes. Rambles: A movie trailer that gave Wee Spider the screaming heebies Alt-text rambles: The age rating of Prometheus, a spontaneous X-Files crossover AU, Pitch Black, how likely it may or may not be that the images in the post will get flagged, critter behavior, insufficient EVA suit design, and the content balancing I take into account when selecting screenshots. Rants: This movie does not seem to know what it is. Alt-text rants: Ditto, focusing on characterization.

18. Flames

"Mac wants the flamethrower!" Rambles: I wandered off in the middle to watch a 40k comedy video, does that count? Alt-text rambles: More content-balancing, what kind of very English critter David appears to be, dune buggy design, Star Wars: The Old Republic is worth your time, Dune: Part Two is worth your time, an extremely long ramble about integration of CG background elements, and Oblivion memes. Alt-text rants: Movie color grading and lighting, undercutting scares.

19. Stars

The movie shows how good it can be when no dialog is involved. Rambles: The movie Contact and how Prometheus could've learned from it. Alt-text rambles: How I estimate large numbers from a still image, a brief Baldur's Gate 3 appearance, the set design and staging of a room made for giants with squishy computers, the use of color to make a cohesive scene, facts about Uranus, visual intimation of threat, VFX wizardry, practical FX wizardry, Michael Fassbender's wordless acting.

20. Expectant

The movie shows how good it can be when character choice is removed from the horror. Rambles: the inspiration and place of chestbursting in Alien movies, the continuing religious symbolism in the movie, the clunky dialog, how to build or undermine tension, and the good blending of practical and CG effects, and how tiny creatures of the ocean manage to be more uncanny than horror critters. Alt-text rambles: reading details the prop department never meant for you to see. Alt-text Rants: the return of the head-exploder and the first sight of actual PPE, slowly mangling a plot point's name until it has been thoroughly folded, spindled, and mutilated.

21. Underdelivered

The movie shows how terrible it can be when horror doesn't build tension. Rambles: Contortionists in horror, hillbilly horror/hixploitation movies. Alt-text rambles: Resident Evil 7, Dead Space and "strategic dismemberment"

22. Hubris

The movie tries to do some themes again Rambles: my ineffable desire to genetically sequence ditch weeds, Left Behind Alt-text rambles: Brad Dourif's commitment to the bit in The Two Towers, nigh-invisible wheelchair product placement, the Fallout series in general and the upcoming show in particular, praise for an epic-length critique of Left Behind, Robert Zemeckis' bizarre quest to mocap everything Rants: This movie does a terrible job representing both religiosity and atheism

23. Informed

Exposition is delivered, and plot points try to knit together. Rambles: The Silent Hill movie, Pacific Rim Alt-text rambles: Pyramid Head's secret unclothed backside, demanding environmental enrichment for scientists, greebling, Tumblr's favorite shitty copper merchant Rants: What could've been done instead of an exposition dump and daddy issues Alt-text rants: these people and their interior design are tempting fate and testing my patience

24. Inscribed

I go rogue and ramble about constructed languages and cuneiform for an entire post. Guest appearances from Klingon pop music and a delightfully eccentric Assyriologist. Rambles: All of it. Alt-text rambles: the self-awareness of conlangers, fingernail length, Schleischer's Fable as a warm-up for the next section, my primary conlang derangement, speculation about whether cuneiform was legible for the blind, my beef with the cowards at Lucasfilm for refusing to use Star Wars' coolest letters, my love for Warframe's Grineer, going into far too much detail about redesigning Prometheus' Engineer script, and finally, the many crocodiles of ancient egyptian hieroglyphs. Rants: None/all of it

25. Judgement

We discuss some of what the movie doesn't. Rambles: Fiction and morality, Blade Runner, biblical allusions the story could've made and doesn't Alt-text rambles: Lance Henriksen's insane career, the paintings of John Martin and a surprise George Washington, Rutger Hauer's effect on Blade Runner, my tentative plans for the next essay series. Rants: Germs, old man makeup. Alt-text Rants: The characters are reading ahead in the script again, the half-assed Engineer writing system continues to hurt me

26. Awoken

I go bananas over PIE. Rambles: fix-it fic for this damned movie, PIE, how to avoid PIE, how to analyze PIE, and my personal alternative to PIE. Alt-text rambles: calculating how long the Engineer's overslept, their potential spiritual kinship to Moominpapa, behind the scenes photos of the suit actors, Prometheus rants in the days of LiveJournal, the game Hades, how hard it personally is to get PIE right, the linguistics nerdery of the Hittite empire, and watermarks. Rants: how the movie fails its premise and hurts my soul with linguistics

27. Shortcomings

The characters, and movie, fail to get their message across to someone bent on their destruction. Rambles: David's confused religious symbolism, Star Trek Alt-text rambles: My desire for fanfic, behind the scenes photos, what other critters the Engineer's suit actor has played, the naming of Australopithecines, crash-proofing a movie set, alien gender, Gandahar and how French animated SF in the 80s was awesome, Scorn and its expert consultation from a cenobite, and Doctor Strangelove. Rants: the assumptions of the human characters, I go from trying to be measured to actively spiting the writer for his take on thoughtful SF Alt-text Rants: Del Toro is the only one who gets me, the movie has forgotten its main character just had a major surgery, one last rant about how terribly unsafe the Prometheus was as a ship, before it becomes definitively not a ship.

28. Momentum

It's the bit where she doesn't turn. Rambles: How to fix the dumbest thing we've seen in a hot minute, Edge of Tomorrow and feeling Tom Cruise's fear, how the dead thing is never really dead in horror. Alt-text rambles: How hard it is to find the most catchy song in We Love Katamari, more behind the scenes pictures of my blorbos, Friday the 13th Part IV, bad braille, and trilobites. Rants: I mean how can you not when the movie forgets how space works? Like, the idea of 3D space as a concept? Also, a particular rock earns my ire, and my ranting about interior designs on ships finally pays off.

29. Dissonance

The ending of the movie, and its tonal incoherency. Rambles: Protagonist-centric morality and lack thereof Alt-text rambles: Star Trek TNG, green blood, caecilian teeth. Rants: shallow christian themes, sequels that could have been, Shaw's confusingly deployed robo-racism Alt-text rants: sequel disappointments, inadvisable post-caesarian activities, how the hell do you fit that much 'burster into one chest, biological plausibility in alien extend-o-mouths

30. Justification

A breakdown of a post-release interview with Ridley Scott, explaining some missing details. Rambles: Gnosticism again, Mesoamerican and European human sacrifice and the exoticization of shared cultural practices, and a hearty book recommendation. Alt-text rambles: Icelandic volcanoes, The Collector (2009), Stephen Speilberg's War of the Worlds and how scaring the shit out of someone isn't necessarily the job of a horror film, the Tollund Man, unique cultural practices, Hello Future Me, and my opinions on what we've seen of Alien: Romulus. Rants: Ancient peoples weren't stupid, an unexamined christian-centric worldview, an unexamined christian-centric worldview, I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGh

[quasi-normalcy]

Stargate SG-1 and its spinoffs are so good that you just kind of will yourself to forget that the entire franchise is based around Roland Emmerich's fetish for Erich von Däniken's ancient aliens bullshit.

[natkhat-sa-shyam]

There's this show called "So Weird" on Disney plus, you kinda remind me of the main character Fi.

thank you anon..

Yk there was a time in my life when i was soo much obsessed with ufo, ancient aliens, extraterrestrial activities, science behind hindu traditions and all. When i used to work as an science columnist i wrote some articles on such topics.

You all guys might used to watch praveen mohan's videos but I've read him. Even i tried reading david hatcher childress, Erich von Däniken and all.

And I'm planning to continue my column in the news paper and start writing on science behind hindu traditions. also i wanna start a series which explains the roll of hormones in our behavior. <well I've wrote a mini series on that and i wanna continue it.>

[bestiarium]

The Nommo [Dogon mythology; African/Malian mythology]

In 1948, French anthropologist Marcel Griaule published his book Dieu D’eau: Entretiens avec Ogotemmêli (‘god of water: conversations with Ogotemmêli’) on the culture and mythology of the Dogon people in Mali. This book detailed the Dogon creation myth in which Amma, the creator god, built the Earth out of clay. He then had sex with the Earth (the sexual organ of the Earth was an ants’ nest), which bore his offspring: the two Nommo twins. The Nommo helped their father to create humanity. It was also said that the Nommo built an elaborate stairway to descend to Earth from the heavens.

In 1965, Griaule published another work on the matter: Le Renard Pâle (‘the pale fox’). This book presented a completely different Dogon creation myth, in which the creator god Amma hatched the world from a primordial egg. The Nommo feature in this version as well, being ancient water spirits created in heaven. One of the Nommos, Ogo, rebelled against the others and managed to escape from heaven, starting the universe in the process. This was the beginning of space and time, and his placenta became the Earth. As punishment, Amma transformed Ogo into a pale fox. The fox then attempted to have sex with the Earth, spawning strange bush spirits.

Though the Earth was created, it was tainted and corrupted by Ogo’s acts. And so another Nommo, Ogo’s twin, sacrificed themselves to purify the planet. In the process, he created the stars Sirius A and Sirius B. This detail spawned a lot of discourse throughout the years, since Sirius B is not visible with the naked eye, so how could the Dogon have known about it?

But it gets weirder: the Nommo, the primordial beings associated with the Sirius system, built an ark on which they sent the first 8 humans to Earth, where they would populate the world and became the ancestors of humanity. Many ‘ancient alien’ theorists (such as Erich von Däniken) viewed this as proof that Africa was visited by beings from the Sirius star system in the distant past. This also renewed public interest in the Dogon people and kickstarted local tourism.

But there were problems. For one thing, why are there two different sets of Dogon mythology and creation myths? According to anthropologist Germaine Dieterlen, this is because there are several differing levels of initiation into Dogon religion. A bigger discrepancy is presented by the Dogon themselves: when questioned by later anthropologists, the two creation myths mentioned earlier were unknown to most Dogon people. In addition, the Dogon claimed that it was Griaule who told them about Sirius B and that they had no knowledge about that star before the arrival of the French anthropologist. Therefore, it seems likely that the story about ancient creatures who came from the heavens in an arc were at least partly made up by Griaule or originated from a misinterpretation. The Nommo, however, do feature in Dogon mythology as water spirits. Though they are not as central to the native Dogon religion as was previously believed, the Nommo are widely feared: in traditional Dogon beliefs, each river, lake or other significant body of water is home to either one Nommo spirit or a pair (one male and one female Nommo). They reside in the depths and occasionally grab people who venture too close to the water, pulling them under and drowning them. People also make offerings to the Nommo to placate them, so that they stop taking people.

Sources: Van Beek, W. E. A., 1991, Dogon Restudied: A Field Evaluation of the Work of Marcel Griaule, Current Anthropology, 32(2), pp. 139-167. Bouju, J., and Leonardo, J. R., 2003, Nommo – the Spirit of Water – in the Dogon World, MIT Press, 36(4), pp. 279-280. (image source 1: Miki Montlló on Artstation) (image 2: three Nommo statuettes. Image source: lot-art)