🧵 Erich von Däniken is dead, aged 90.
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Däniken's 'paleo-contact' claims of extraterrestrial influences on early human development, attracted a dedicated following, despite his earlier convictions for theft, fraud and embezzlement (and robust debunking of his theories). Films, soundtracks, and even prog concept albums followed his books.
@Richard_Littler Some white people are desperate to believe anything to avoid having to realise that ancient brown people have constructed impressive monuments.
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When I moved to Switzerland, I discovered he was a local. He built an 'ancient mysteries' theme park, which soon failed, but the buildings still stand. I took some photos a couple of years ago.
I have never heard of this and just found out, it's near Interlaken and around a children's fun fair, called "Mysty Land".
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When I moved to Switzerland, I discovered he was a local. He built an 'ancient mysteries' theme park, which soon failed, but the buildings still stand. I took some photos a couple of years ago.
@Richard_Littler For a while he was going to open another theme park, in Blackpool. (It dead-ended around 2014. I used it in one of my novels …)
I am now imagining the consequences if he'd commissioned H. R. Giger to design the interiors.
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@Richard_Littler Just noting that there's a very skeevy racist subtext running just below the surface of Von Daniken's thesis—that ancient people *couldn't* have built the monumental structures they left behind, so they must have been "helped" by aliens (clearly white savior-coded).
@cstross @Richard_Littler I've met the guy back in 2004 when his bizarre theme park was relatively new. Some analogue shots right off the Migros Picture CD-ROM in this thread: https://mastodon.social/deck/@guenterhack/115877370682477543
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@Richard_Littler Just noting that there's a very skeevy racist subtext running just below the surface of Von Daniken's thesis—that ancient people *couldn't* have built the monumental structures they left behind, so they must have been "helped" by aliens (clearly white savior-coded).
@cstross @Richard_Littler It's curious that the Egyptians and Maya had to have some help from aliens but the Romans didn't, isn't it?
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@cstross @Richard_Littler It's curious that the Egyptians and Maya had to have some help from aliens but the Romans didn't, isn't it?
@datarama @Richard_Littler Exactly this.
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When I moved to Switzerland, I discovered he was a local. He built an 'ancient mysteries' theme park, which soon failed, but the buildings still stand. I took some photos a couple of years ago.
@Richard_Littler Cool buildings!
I think I read one of his books as a teen. Can't remember which one though. A remember reading a lot of Charles Berlitz, which seems the same type of genre, just about the Bermuda Triangle.
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@Richard_Littler For a while he was going to open another theme park, in Blackpool. (It dead-ended around 2014. I used it in one of my novels …)
I am now imagining the consequences if he'd commissioned H. R. Giger to design the interiors.
@cstross Now, that concept worked out *much* better.
My photos of the Giger-designed bar in Gruyères... -
@Richard_Littler Just noting that there's a very skeevy racist subtext running just below the surface of Von Daniken's thesis—that ancient people *couldn't* have built the monumental structures they left behind, so they must have been "helped" by aliens (clearly white savior-coded).
@cstross @Richard_Littler Back when colonialist white supremacist racism sold well. The whole racist "ancient aliens" thing has stuck around in the decades since, but not in such profitable form I think.
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When I moved to Switzerland, I discovered he was a local. He built an 'ancient mysteries' theme park, which soon failed, but the buildings still stand. I took some photos a couple of years ago.
@Richard_Littler We had raves there.
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@cstross Just one example among a great litany of things wrong with his books/theories.
@Richard_Littler @cstross also as a treat "Erich von Däniken weg" means "Erich von Däniken gone"
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@Richard_Littler For a while he was going to open another theme park, in Blackpool. (It dead-ended around 2014. I used it in one of my novels …)
I am now imagining the consequences if he'd commissioned H. R. Giger to design the interiors.
@cstross @Richard_Littler I'm imagining something like the Shandor building in the original Ghostbusters film, where the architecture makes it part of a summoning gateway.
It's a real building, too, though somewhat altered via film magic for the movie.
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@cstross Now, that concept worked out *much* better.
My photos of the Giger-designed bar in Gruyères...@Richard_Littler @cstross It's quite a place, isn't it? We went with one person who was not at all into the Alien movies who found it 'difficult'!
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When I moved to Switzerland, I discovered he was a local. He built an 'ancient mysteries' theme park, which soon failed, but the buildings still stand. I took some photos a couple of years ago.
@Richard_Littler oooooh, that's interesting. Any contact between that guy and Claude Vorilhon (also known as Raël)?
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@Richard_Littler Just noting that there's a very skeevy racist subtext running just below the surface of Von Daniken's thesis—that ancient people *couldn't* have built the monumental structures they left behind, so they must have been "helped" by aliens (clearly white savior-coded).
@cstross @Richard_Littler There's the implied subtext. And then there's the explicit, in-your-face JAQing off, like: "Was the black race a failure and did the extraterrestrials change the genetic code by gene surgery and then programme a white or a yellow race?" (von Däniken, /Signs of the Gods/, 1980, in the chapter “Man Outsmarts Nature” – loads more where that came from)
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@Richard_Littler @cstross It's quite a place, isn't it? We went with one person who was not at all into the Alien movies who found it 'difficult'!
@jschwa1 @Richard_Littler @cstross
I don't mind Alien movies, but I still find it difficult even to look at the pictures, and I did have a Giger poster calendar once upon a time.
The mental image of imagining me sitting on one of those chairs, and imagining such scenes exist somewhere in the galaxy, way way far away is quite different in outcome.
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@Richard_Littler Just noting that there's a very skeevy racist subtext running just below the surface of Von Daniken's thesis—that ancient people *couldn't* have built the monumental structures they left behind, so they must have been "helped" by aliens (clearly white savior-coded).
@cstross @Richard_Littler Ugh, my old man was well into this stuff, to the extent that he'd nod-and-wink that anyone who knew what they were talking about (eg. contemporary scientists like Hawking) must be an alien. Which isn't really helpful when your own son is doing a physics degree, is it?
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🧵 Erich von Däniken is dead, aged 90. Many of my generation will remember him as a proponent of the pseudoscientific 'ancient aliens' theory, just one of the many sensationalist supernatural topics that flooded culture in the 1970s.
I've had this book since I was a little kid.RE: https://mastodon.social/@Richard_Littler/115882082456309865
@Richard_Littler my favorite way to approach him, sitchin etc is as a separate and wonderful form of sci-fi
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When I moved to Switzerland, I discovered he was a local. He built an 'ancient mysteries' theme park, which soon failed, but the buildings still stand. I took some photos a couple of years ago.
@Richard_Littler I actually went there when it was operational. Not intentionally mind you, someone else had organised the trip and I only learned what it was when I entered.
Mostly standard themepark rides all garnished with the odd "ancient aliens" stick. You could tell they poured a lot of money into it though. -
🧵 Erich von Däniken is dead, aged 90. Many of my generation will remember him as a proponent of the pseudoscientific 'ancient aliens' theory, just one of the many sensationalist supernatural topics that flooded culture in the 1970s.
I've had this book since I was a little kid.@Richard_Littler A total fraud but a rich, successful fraud As an ex-archaeologist I found him but annoying but fair play to him, I suppose. He certainly tapped into the zeitgeist and there are people making bank today with much less entertaining and fun theories than he opined. And he had a cool name too which helps.
