Erich von Däniken

Decades ago, when I was still an impressionable kid visiting various public libraries around the town (because one would become too familiar and I expected that another library would have something completely different, I guess) one of the ubiquitous names that really appeared absolutely everywhere was Swiss author Erich von Däniken who at the time smashed all the best-selling charts and was hugely popular. Today Däniken seems like grand predecessor of every pseudo-archaeologist who came later but I must say now that he didn't sprung out of Zeus head, he actually based his ideas on theories mentioned elsewhere in previous generations - this doesn't mean anything disparaging, what I mean is that his first book "Chariots of the Gods?" came in perfect time when we started exploring the Moon and world was ready to read about different possibilities of our creation. That book was such a phenomenon that it made his name and established his career to this day, where he became unofficial grand priest of every "ancient astronauts" theory fans around the world. I dare to say that for every sharp-knifed critic laughing at Däniken, there is a seriously intrigued reader somewhere around the world.

For a while I got distracted with other kinds of literature, but I never completely forgot about Däniken. It shows in passion with which I continued reading books by Graham Hancock and other younger writers who basically continued his path in a more sophisticated way - all of them might say what they want but they are forever indebted to Däniken who broke the ice first and got real avalanche of criticism for it. Last year I found his "Return to the Stars" on Interliber book fair and bought the original 1970s second-hand volume out of sweet nostalgia - this year I continued the tradition with something that has not been translated in English yet, but I have Croatian version (its named "Auf Den Spuren Der Allmächtigen" in original, it is translated as "Tragom Bogova" or "In the Footsteps of Gods"). 

As always, I read this with greatest interest and curiosity - Däniken might be older now but he is still more than capable to stir readers brain with interesting theories and surely as much as universe is fascinating, there are just so MANY unexplained mysteries left from ancient civilisations on our very own planet that its almost impossible not to get caught in author's enthusiasm for pointing at various theories and most of all, questions he makes. Sure, at times he appears a bit zealous and perhaps too obsessed with everything but its part of his charm and after all, this is his life's work. What I still find interesting is the way he looks under every forgotten corner of the world and comes up with ideas that others simply left untouched or unexplained. Its very easy for all these academic scientists to laugh and dismiss him but they don't have explanations and he has courage to ask the questions. I distinctly remember having a very strange, intuitive sudden feeling about deities described as "bees" on South American temples while reading this - creatures shown coming down to Earth with unusual poses, focused downwards and having insect faces - while author himself doesn't go so far, I couldn't help but start wondering about appearances of these "Gods" and how alien they might have been looking to locals back than. Not to mention interesting ideas about so many of half-animal deities from ancient temples, where Däniken poses interesting theory that this was simply primitive description of what they saw (Indian Elephant God being a person dressed up as astronaut, with some kind of respiratory device on him or the famous South American "winged snake" being actually a symbol for what we see today as a mark of a flying objects in the sky). Fascinating. I am also aware that Däniken occasionally repeats himself and rehashes old stories mentioned elsewhere, that his theories can naturally be explained differently if one is familiar with history (rockets on ancient monastery fresco in Serbia could easily have been than-current representations  of the Sun and Moon, for example - but they DO look like rockets) and that other, younger authors today write with far bigger skill and sophistication (see Graham Hancock) but they all simply follow in his footsteps.