Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1978 - 6

gifts, implements and articles left by the space
travelers into holy relics. Thus, we would expect
to find evidence of extra-terrestrial substances.
But all of the "relics" of these "gods" are made
of common terrestrial materials, such as clay,
stone, iron, gold, etc., and most, even as
described by von Däniken, are well within the
technological capabilities of pre-industrial
societies.
A further pitfall in refudiating von Däniken's
theories is our own lack of experience with
certain simple tasks. We are so accustomed to
using bulldozers to move earth, for example,
that without them the job seems monumental.
Von Däniken can safely propose that it would
have taken thousands of people to move the
large stone heads on Easter Island. In fact, Thor
Heyerdahl discovered in 1955 that it took only
two hundred to move a twelve-ton head across
the Island. Von Däniken wrote: "nobody could
ever have freed such gigantic lumps of lava with
small, primitive stone tools" (Godsfrom Outer
Space [New York 1972] page 116). The mayor of
Easter Island, however, along with six other men
carved out the contours of a new statue in three
days with stone tools found in the old quarries.
Additional head-raising experiments were done
in 1960 by William Mulloy of the University of
Wyoming and Gonzales Figueroa of the
University of Chile. But we are willing to believe
von Däniken's exaggerated speculations simply
out of ignorance and our own inability to
estimate physical labor.

'fon Däniken is a household word because he
has captured the imagination of the public.
Indeed, it is tempting to dismiss his output as
mere "works of the imagination," hopefully
relegating him to a harmless territory. But the
implications of von Däniken's work are far from
harmless. The attitudes inherent in his basic
premise that space visitors produced every
innovative thought for our seemingly retarded
ancestors are a bizarre form of extra-terrestrial
racism, debasing human ingenuity and energy.
Von Däniken, for example, queries, "Who taught
the savages to take the seeds of certain wild
plants, pound them up, add water, and bake an
article of food?" (Godsfrom Outer Space, page 15)
and, "Where did the narrators of the 1000 and 1
nights get their staggering wealth of ideas?"
(Chariots of the Gods?, page 65). The ancient
astronaut premise can also be seen as the more
6

traditional "White Man's Burden" form of
racism. It is implicit that industrialized
civilizations, and thus the Western world, were
aided and abetted by extra-terrestrial wise men;
the gods, according to von Däniken, favored that
group above all others.
As anyone who has ever argued with an
ardent von Däniken fan has found, however,
facts and logic are often poor weapons against
the space-god hypothesis. It is not enough to try
to destroy the theory on the basis of reasoned
arguments alone; something new must take its
place and hold the listeners. This will not prove
an easy task, although it is an important one.
Yet there is a great store of archaeological
information that is both fascinating as well
as accurate. But it takes imagination to
communicate prehistory to the public in terms of
process and gradual developments that span
generations and centuries. It takes imagination to
make the problems and solutions of our
ancestors exciting, and it requires real skill to
bring out the similarities, not the differences,
that link us with so many facets of the past.
One element that should be focused on is the
exciting process of discovery. Professional
archaeologists usually report results, and fail to
mention the intriguing detective work that goes
on behind the scenes. It is often this combination
of the scientific method, chance and the specific
personalities and intellectual investments
involved, that make archaeology exciting.
Another successful mode of popularizing
archaeology draws on the image of humanity
in the past. This has been developed by the
experimenters of archaeology who quite literally
attempt to people the past. Most famous is Thor
Heyerdahl, who traversed major portions of the
Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans in reed boats to
prove it could have been done, l he most
"scientific" are exemplified by F. Bordes of the
University of Bordeaux and Don Crabtree of the
Idaho State Museum, who have learned the skills
to duplicate the stone tools of our palaeolithic
ancesters. Perhaps most successful are the long
term experiments such as Williamsburg in
Virginia and Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth,
Massachusetts, where archaeologists have
endeavored to recreate daily activities of
American colonial life. Of course, the
archaeological implications of such experiments
must be carefully tested against scientific data,
but the experiments involve actual artifacts and
strive to accurately recreate their use.
No archaeologists claim that they can fully
Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1978

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1978
