until the premiere of In Search of Ancient Astronauts, a one-hour “documentary” exploring Däniken’s theories, on January 5, 1973. While it became an immediate sensation in Europe, the book did not become a bestseller in the U.S. The sacred text of this curious 21st century dogma-note that Ancient Aliens has just wrapped season 11 and airs on the History Channel-is Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods?, first published in West Germany in 1968, with an English translation appearing the following year.

To put it another way, the ancient astronaut “hypothesis” is both anthropocentric and dehumanizing, just like the rest of our religions. It’s as if the only miracle the tyranny of science will permit is the positing of extraterrestrials with better high-tech-who, for some inexplicable reason, singled out for advancement a species that was and still is plundering and decimating itself, as well as pissing away every one of its major resources. The idea that alien astronauts visited the Earth at some point in primitive human history, endowing us with imagination and ingenuity-and possibly our genetic code-has become the cult religion of a hyper-materialistic Western world that consecrates nothing beyond its own egomaniacal gadgetry. Chris Foss illustration depicting “space visitors” planting the Easter Island Moai, from Roy Stemman’s Visitors from Outer Space, 1976

Erich von däniken books in order