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Review of In Search of Aliens S01E06 "The Mystery of the Cyclops"

9/6/2014

39 Comments

 
When In Search of Aliens launched, it was supposed to be a six episode series according to publicity materials. Yet somehow it’s still going to keep going after this outing, S01E06 “The Mystery of the Cyclops,” which opens with Giorgio Tsoukalos on a boat heading to Malta, where an ancient megalithic society once built seven large stone structures. Tsoukalos wonders if giants or Cyclopes built the megaliths, “and if so, could there be a connection to ancient astronauts?” Tsoukalos claims that archaeologists “struggle” to explain the existence and construction of the buildings.
To help explore the issue, Tsoukalos turns to the Odyssey, where Odysseus encounters the Cyclops Polyphemus (9.187-542), the son of Poseidon (Homer, Odyssey 1.70, Apollodorus, Library E7.4). Tsoukalos asserts that the traditional identification of the Cyclopes’ island home as Sicily (Pliny, Natural History 3.89; Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.160ff; Statius, Thebaid 6.716ff; Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 4.104ff; etc.) is wrong and that Polyphemus actually lived on Malta, based on the well-known authority of “some.”

Here’s an interesting fact: The first (and only) association between Polyphemus and Malta comes from ancient astronaut theorist Erich von Däniken’s Signs of the Gods (1979), where he wrote:
It is often surmised in scholarly literature that the island of the Cyclops was present-day Sicily. It may be so, but not necessarily. Malta and its four small satellite islands are only 95 kilometres from Sicily. Anyone who studies the megalithic buildings carefully will share my impression that giants did the work. Were they the ‘inventors’ of Cyclopean masonry?
How odd that Tsoukalos fails to credit his mentor for this!

Tsoukalos then turns to the so-called wagon ruts on Malta, a series of fairly standard sized grooves crisscrossing limestone fields. Erich von Däniken is the most famous proponent of the idea that these were grooves for some machine, having written about them in Signs of the Gods, where they are afforded slightly more space than his claim in that same book that aliens created white people to correct the “failure” of the black race, whom he described as “musical” and apelike. Apparently choosing not to direct readers to this failure of a book, Tsoukalos merely attributes von Däniken’s claims to “some ancient astronaut theorists,” perhaps having learned his lesson after unwittingly endorsing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories a few episodes back.

In fact, since it quickly becomes a pattern throughout the show to remove von Däniken from an episode so clearly modeled on his work, it’s almost as if the mysterious three-week delay in airing this episode (originally scheduled to have been episode 4) was due to some scrambling to edit Signs of the Gods out of the show and replace it with the odd formulation “some ancient astronaut theorists.” Perhaps they discovered von Däniken’s book about Malta was wildly racist? I’m just asking questions, as von Däniken would say, if he weren’t omitted here.

Tsoukalos says mainstream scholars believe that the ruts were made by heavy wagons reusing the same paths over centuries, though this isn’t universally held. He doesn’t say it, but arguments have also been made that the ruts were made by sledges, or that they were meant for irrigation. (Atlantis theorists like that one because Plato said Atlantis was irrigated in Critias 118c-e). Tsoukalos says that the idea of carts making the ruts in the soft, wet limestone is “nonsense” because it implies that the carts had axles of carts using the same tracks had the same width and that people followed the same path over and over. Remember: He’s the same guy who argues that the ancients had precision measuring to build their structures yet somehow are now incapable of building wagons of relatively standardized size—or, better yet, reused and rebuilt the same wagon for traveling along the same track. He also expresses amazement that some tracks continue into the ocean, as though the coast line of Malta has not changed in 3,000 years.

In 2008, Derek Mottershead, Alastair Pearson, and Martin Shaeffer, writing in the journal Antiquity, performed an analysis on the Malta limestone. They found that the rocks eroded easily, especially when wet, at which point the limestone loses about 80% of its integrity:
Even under dry conditions, the mass of the unladen vehicle alone is sufficient to cause erosion of the Clapham rock surface. Failure of the rocks at Bin˙gemma and Naxxar requires the vehicle to be loaded with 0.636 and 0.956 tonnes respectively. Under saturated conditions, the vehicle alone is sufficient to cause failure of both theClapham and Bin˙gemma rocks, whilst in the case of the more resistant Naxxar rock, a relatively modest load of 0.665 tonnes will cause rock failure. These calculations therefore demonstrate that these relatively weak rocks are readily eroded under vehicles of quite modest dimensions and loads.

The calculations above strongly suggest that a two-wheeled cart is well capable of generating sufficient forces to damage the rock surfaces and, through repeated passages over time, causing the erosion of ruts of depths up to >0.5m. Furthermore, the passage of wheels would appear to account satisfactorily for all the morphological features of the ruts.
So, case closed right? Not for Tsoukalos, who meets with Gordon Weston, the author of a 2010 book called The Maltese Cart Ruts. Weston relates the results of a series of experiments conducted by the BBC in 1955 to explore possible origins of the ruts and dismisses all of them as unconvincing, apparently unaware of more recent research from the 1990s and 2008. “Science is useless for this problem,” Weston says. He argues that no methodology can be used to investigate the ruts, which will be news to Mottershead et al.

Tsoukalos says that the presence of the cart ruts suggests to him that Malta was home to a sophisticated civilization that included space aliens.

After the break, Tsoukalos meets with Anthony Bonanno, an archaeologist, who tells Tsoukalos that there is a legend that the Maltese temples, which are aligned to astronomical events, were built by a giantess, which is par for the course with ancient sites. Pausanias famously attributed the Mycenaean ruins of Tiryns to the Cyclopes (Description of Greece 2.16.5), as the medieval British attributed Stonehenge to Giants (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae 8.10-11). Yet the Maltese temples would be a tight fit for giants. The doors and ceilings are not that tall, as illustrated when Tsoukalos stands before one and his bouffant hairdo nearly touches the top of the doorframe.

Recycled graphics and footage from several episodes of Ancient Aliens are used to illustrate various ancient sites that have (or are claimed to have) astronomical alignments, and Tsoukalos asserts that such alignments can “connect the mind to other realms.” He expresses wonder that “ancient” (i.e. medieval) legends attribute the megaliths of Carnac in France to giants. According to Lewis Spence—himself a fringe writer on Atlantis in the early twentieth century—the Breton peasants of his day attributed the works to not just giants but also fairies and demons. So much for the wisdom of legend. Worse, we know from Irish legends that the perfectly natural Giant’s Causeway formation was often attributed to the work of a giant, proving again that legends are no reliable guide to ancient history.

After the break, Tsoukalos checks out some of Malta’s largest megaliths, one weighing 20 tons, which leads to the frequently repeated assertion that “supposedly primitive Stone Age” people could not move large rocks without either space alien help or advanced technology. Tsoukalos rejects Bonanno’s explanation that the stones were moved using spherical rolling balls, and he can’t fathom why ancient people bothered moving massive rocks if not for orders from space aliens masquerading as gods. Tsoukalos cites von Däniken’s claims for the prehistoric space alien origin of the temples, but again omits reference to his racist book Signs of the Gods and instead attributes the claims to “some ancient astronaut theorists.”

Tsoukalos rejects the traditional date of the Venus of Malta sculpture to 3000 BCE because he thinks it looks like the Paleolithic Venus of Willendorf, even though the Maltese sculpture is clearly more naturalistic in its depiction of the female body. (It has proportional sized arms, for one thing.) Tsoukalos calls the two “nearly identical,” even though they are clearly not. But even if they were, by what right might we claim that it is surprising to find the female nude as “subject matter” for art? Similar figurines were made in tribal cultures down to the twentieth century. This does not make them Paleolithic, nor can we agree with Tsoukalos that the Maltese temples are Paleolithic based on his lack of familiarity with depictions of the female nude.
Picture
Venus of Willendorf (Matthias Kabel / Wikimedia Commons)
Picture
Venus of Malta (Hamelin de Guettelet / Wikimedia Commons)
After another break, Tsoukalos confuses early twentieth century attempts to classify races by skull shape with secret acknowledgement of alien skull elongation based on this National Geographic article by William Arthur Griffiths from June 1920, which he cites explicitly. Here is the text in question from the article:
From an examination of the skeletons of the polished-stone age, it appears that the early inhabitants of Malta were a race of long-skulled people of lower medium height, akin to the early people of Egypt, who spread westward along the north coast of Africa, whence some went to Malta and Sicily and others to Sardinia and Spain.
Tsoukalos quotes only the words “long-skulled people” to give the false impression that the author was referring to elongated skulls rather than a standardized category of human head shape. In fact, the author specifies that he sees no difference between ancient Maltese and ancient Iberians and Gauls. After visiting the burial site of 7,000 ancient Maltese, who bodies were lost in World War II, Tsoukalos implies a conspiracy to destroy the 7,000 Maltese skeletons to hide what he claims are elongated skulls based on an “old grainy photo” that to me shows only normal human skulls.

Here is the photo. There are no elongated skulls in it that I can see, though in the 1920s archaeologists did write that some of the skulls seemed to show intentional cranial deformation through head binding.
Picture
Tsoukalos visits the Maltese National Museum of Archaeology to view the few remaining skulls, and he states that when the skulls were displayed in 1907 viewers thought they were the skulls of Cyclopes (despite having two eyes) or space aliens (say what?). I can’t find any record of that, and instead see that Tsoukalos is repeating material and claims made in Atlantis Rising magazine in 2004 by Adriano Fiorgione, the editor of HERA magazine, an Italian mystery-mongering publication. This article was cited by David Hatcher Childress and Frank Joseph.

One interesting anomaly is that one Maltese skull lack a sagittal suture, where the bones of the skull fuse along the top of the skull in adulthood. However, while this is presented as a possible alien genetic experiment, Tsoukalos fails to note that ancient Maltese skeletons display a wide array of congenital skeletal defects, including spina bifida, taurodontism, polydactylism, etc., likely caused by small, inbreeding populations. Records of similar deformations occurred in Matlese archaeology and historical records through the Middle Ages and down to the present. In fact, in the 1980s, Malta had a high rate of chromosomal abnormalities, affecting 22 per 10,000 live births, much higher than the European rate, which was closer to 9-12 per 10,000. None of this supports Tsoukalos’s contention that the skull without a sagittal suture is an “actual extraterrestrial.”

 Tsoukalos then meets with an ancient astronaut theorist named Hubert Zeitlmair, whom he describes as a professor (and calls by that title throughout), but who is better known as a German real estate investor. His doctorate, through which he claims the title of Doctor, is a “doctor honoris causa” (Dr. HC), an honorary degree, not one awarded for academic work, which is a Dr. Iur. (Doctor of Law). According to his website, he is a “Professor of Atlantis Research,” but he makes this claim only in the German version, omitting it from the English version. I do not how he claims the title.   

According to his website, Zeitlmair claims to be in contact with spirit beings from Atlantis who direct his work.
On this very land of Malta I finally met my primeval ancestors, namely… the God Pa.tha-i-da.na Asu.ara tSi.dha, and the Goddess Ashtar-tara Queen of Atlantis. With their kind support I was able to discover knowledge of a »calibre« far beyond that which I ever have expected… This knowledge guided me to an awareness that superficial thinking people will never reach.
Zeitlmair combines New Age speculation with Zecharia Sitchin’s Nibiru-Anunnaki myth and claims to have discovered a lost temple underwater off Malta, a find disputed by archaeologists. He also believes Maltese temples are, of course, aural energy power plants. Hilariously, even the often-credulous Atlantipedia describes his work as “New Age drivel” and “a load of tosh,” which is how H2 producers know they’ve hit pay dirt.

Zeitlmair claims that the Maltese skulls are up to 200,000 years old, from when the aliens first came to earth. Nevertheless, Tsoukalos finally remembers that he was supposed to be talking about giants and Cyclopes this hour, so he immediately notes that the skulls are too small for that, but could instead be the actual skulls of “ancient astronauts,” who apparently were poorly fed, suffered terrible congenital defects, and died in their thousands. He drops the issue without another thought to let Zeitmair claim that the Maltese temples were built with stone spheres in their joints to they could jiggle during earthquakes. This has nothing to do with giants, Cyclopes, or aliens.

Zeitlmair says that Maltese civilization came to an end due to Noah’s Flood 12,000 years ago, and Tsoukalos endorses the reality of the Flood.

OK, so is it finally time for the Cyclopes? We only have four minutes left after the break, and we haven’t looked for a single Cyclops yet. We burn up one of the last four minutes repeating the Flood claim not once but three times, as voice over, as Tsoukalos’s question to Zeitlmair, and as Zeitlmair’s response. Tsoukalos charmingly thinks that megalithic blocks serving as a base for smaller stones represents cultural decline after the end of the Giants, apparently failing to realize that structural stability requires the greatest weight and size blocks to be at the bottom, lest they fall over.

So where are the damned Cyclopes?!? For crying out loud, Giovanni Boccaccio did a better job looking for Cyclopes when he reported the discovery of a giant skeleton on Sicily in the 1300s and immediately related it to Polyphemus.

But instead of Cyclopes we get… wait for it… the WATCHERS FROM THE BOOK OF ENOCH. AGAIN! Tsoukalos asserts that the Nephilim are the giant hybrid children of E.T.s, but we’re missing a key point: The alleged skeletons of the “aliens” are too small by his own admission! So where are the giants? Where are any skulls with one eye? According to Tsoukalos, “it is possible that the Nephilim and the Cyclops could be one and the same,” alien-human hybrids from before the Flood of the Noah. So where did the one eye thing come from? If you care, in 1914 Othenio Abel proposed the most widely accepted explanation for the Cyclopes, which I translated and posted a couple of years ago: fossil elephant skulls on the island of Sicily. The trunk hole looks like an eye socket in a giant human skull. But then again, Tsoukalos is trying to support Malta over Sicily because of his acceptance of the speculations of his mentor who must not be named in this hour.

“Not too many people talk about what you talk about,” Tsoukalos tells Zeitlmair. If by that he means his Atlantis spirit guide who gave him superior wisdom mere mortals can’t fathom, sadly he’s mistaken. These loons are a dime a dozen.
39 Comments
666
9/6/2014 05:16:36 am

Adrienne Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters: Palaeontology in Greek and Roman Times (Princeton University Press, 2000)

Adrienne Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths,and Myth in Greek and Roman Times (Princeton University Press, 2011)

Reply
Clint Knapp
9/6/2014 05:53:55 am

So you mean to tell me Giorgio didn't find any Cyclopes, aliens, or real reasons to parade around in his Indiana Jones cosplay other than to catch some decent HD footage of an archaeological site? Shocking.

I do want to make a small point, though: the Venus of Willendorf does indeed have arms- they're just disproportionately small. They start at her shoulders, come down to an elbow at each side, and then bend up again to form those raised features across each breast as though clutching herself or just using her breasts as an arm rest. It almost appears as though she has hands too, but it's hard to say.

Several more detailed images can be found here if anyone's interested:
http://www.donsmaps.com/willendorf.html

Reply
EP
9/6/2014 05:56:06 am

You sure those aren't just rolls of fat? :)

Reply
666
9/6/2014 08:35:14 am

She seems to have her arms and hands over her bosoms

666
9/6/2014 08:36:49 am

They're her arms and hands

http://www.donsmaps.com/images28/venuswillendorfimg_1469.jpg

EP
9/6/2014 09:10:20 am

666, a ":)" at the end of a sentence usually denotes a joke. (As opposed to a serious statement.)

Jason Colavito link
9/6/2014 06:06:53 am

You're quite right. I should have said proportional arms, and I'll make the change.

Reply
Game, Set + Match
9/9/2014 10:41:33 am

She is older, is wearing a veil or mask, is above the age
of 35 and has ample but sagging breasts that she is now
warming her hands by. 15 women like that when dancing
around a fire run the risk of having the adjective "amazon"
or "femi-nazi" applied to them all. The slight lack of a true
sense of proportion says things aethetically about them.

Kal
9/6/2014 06:55:10 am

Muddling Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, "You are going to have cyclopes in your cyclops show right?" Yeah I saw it also. Funny they left out VD.

I think the poster who comments on the statues might be onto something. Middle aged to elderly goddess of the islands might be just what that is, as it is not a young figure.

People were capable of making figures more accurate, including faces, just as they are today, but they likely didn't use certain materials as well. Soft rock will be easier to carve into something.

Those ruts are from carts and the rock is soft. Most of them are probably modern ruts with standard cart sizes.

Yeah, where are the giants?

Normal sized neolithic buildings and skulls. Yeah.

Malta is not where they came from. It was Sicily. Malta is just a colony.

The great flood and the end of the ice age are separated by at least two thousand years. They were probably two floods, or there were many floods of island cultures post the ice age recorded in history. As for there being a connection between the Minoan flood and the Noah flood, they're separated by at least a millennia. That is, if the Biblical flood happened 6.000 years ago, and the Minoan one 8.000 years ago, and the actual dated end of the ice age, about 10,000 years ago. (The other floods are myths). Maybe.




Reply
DanD
9/6/2014 08:59:38 am

Giorgio could have presented the best Cyclops ever and much more believable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCYfrAPEz38

Reply
EP
9/6/2014 09:04:10 am

Still more historically accurate than Mesopotamian human-alien hybrid Gods from outer space.

Reply
EP
9/6/2014 09:58:48 am

Jason, there is something that's always bugged me about Abel-style explanations of the myth of the Cyclopes (and analogous explanations of other myths). How convincing it is depends on whether we assume (as certain or likely) that the early Greeks (or whoever) didn't just create the Cyclopes through the power of imagination. After all, it's not like there is a tempting paleontological link with *every* legendary monster.

Also, while an elephant skull would have been easily confused with a skull of a giant humanoid, it's not like the ancients wouldn't have noticed that there are also eye sockets. Why a one-eyed giant, then, as opposed to a three-eyed giant? (Note that even Abel does not claim that Empedocles is said to have identified Sicilian skulls with Cyclopes specifically.)

Reply
Jason Colavito link
9/6/2014 10:10:43 am

The Empedocles reference is, surprisingly, fake. He never said anything of the sort, according to Adrienne Mayor, and I haven't found anything in his fragments either.

I tend toward the broader idea of John Boardman that the Greeks utilized such artifacts to give physical reality to myth rather than developed myths to explain such artifacts. Walter Burkert thought that Cyclopes were a mythic version of blacksmiths who wore eye patches, so in this reading the skulls served to give shape and reality to a preexisting myth.

Reply
EP
9/6/2014 10:37:42 am

That is, assuming they ever thought of associating the skulls with the monsters of their mythology. It's not clear to me that they would have felt compelled to do so at all (unlike Boccaccio, let alone Abel). Just because the moderns used the skulls to explain the ancient myths, doesn't mean that the ancients used them for the same purpose. *This* is what we can't take for granted (if only because it's the same line of thought that leads us to do things like accept fake Empedoclean testimony insufficiently critically).

As for the Empedocles claim, it sounds so plausible because there are a few genuine references to fossils in the fragments of the Presocratics. (It sounded vaguely familiar at first, though I couldn't put a finger on where I'd heard it...)

EP
9/6/2014 12:07:49 pm

Jason, I never thought I'd say this, but you may be (following Tsoukalos) being unfair to von Daniken.

So "some" means von Daniken, sure enough. But this raises a different question: Why would *von Daniken* want to place Polyphemus and Odysseus on Malta, as opposed to Sicily?

From what I can gather, his supposed case for Malta over Sicily doesn't extend beyond noting that Malta is relatively close to Sicily. Malta is where the alleged alien architecture is found. But why would von Daniken need to place Odysseus there? It's not like aliens couldn't have had presence on Malta as well as in Sicily - especially since they are near each other!

I looked at the passage in von Daniken's book carefully, and realized that he never actually says that (or "asks" whether) Odysseus encountered Polyphemus in Malta, only that Malta (which is close to Sicily) could have been the home of the Cyclopean giants.

Von Daniken, of course, is a terrible writer, so maybe he said the more sensible thing only because he failed to say what he meant. Perhaps he does say the foolish thing in the parts of the show that got edited out. Or perhaps Tsoukalos misread his mentor and the mentor may or may not have played along.

But the fact remains that he doesn't technically place Odysseus and Polyphemus on Malta.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
9/6/2014 12:59:26 pm

He doesn't place Polyphemus there, but he places the Cyclopes there, or, more accurately, heavily implies without ever saying--his modus operandi. Tsoukalos simplified the suggestion, and this is almost certainly the producers' doing. They didn't even try to make a case that Polyphemus lived on Malta. It was just coloring to give a sexier hook to what I assume they felt their audience would find an obscure and confusing set of ruins without a familiar monster to frame it.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
9/6/2014 01:02:18 pm

Oh, and EVD repeats the claim that giants built Malta's ruins in "Odyssey of the Gods" (1999/2000), but this time cites the Odyssey and then specifies directly that "these same giants were responsible for the huge megalithic constructions."

EP
9/6/2014 01:04:49 pm

Agreed. It's got to be either a familiar monster or a NATO general :)

EP
9/6/2014 01:09:56 pm

At the risk of falling into excessive pedantry, I wish to distinguish two claims: (1) Odysseus & Polyphemus were on Malta, the home of the Cyclopes; (2) They were in Sicily, but Malta was the home of the Cyclopes. Even the 2001 claim is compatible with the more sensible (2).

Jason Colavito link
9/6/2014 01:20:48 pm

If you're looking for excessive pedantry, I don't think we've established that EVD assumes two islands occupied by Cyclopes, since he speaks only of one island of the Cyclopes in 1979. Since the Odyssey describes the sole island as the Cyclopes home, it would seem he is ascribing that home island to Malta, presuming (which it is never safe to do) that he actually read the Odyssey.

EP
9/6/2014 01:31:14 pm

Right, he's unclear about whether he means to place Polyphemus on the same island as the home of the giants. But how do we decide which he meant at the time? I agree that it's hard to go wrong underestimating his ignorance and simple-mindedness, but once I started looking at the passage I couldn't be sure that he meant what everyone seems to think he meant and still feel like I'm being fair to him.

I'd even begun writing the original post along the lines of "Haha, silly von Daniken! Why didn't he just say the most sensible thing, LOL?" But then I realized that he doesn't deny it either.

Either way, I'm sure we can agree that we've been victimized by his awful writing and that we've already spent more effort trying to interpret our sources fairly than von Daniken did in his entire career.

Jason Colavito link
9/6/2014 01:57:47 pm

Honestly, I think EVD purposely writes in curlicues (made worse by often poor English translation) for the sole purpose of ensuring that he can always claim not to have said whatever it is we think he said.

EP
9/6/2014 02:20:38 pm

That actually makes a great deal of sense. Except it ascribes to him more literary prowess than I'm willing to grant. (OK, back to the pyramid thread!)

he deliberately keeps things unqualified
9/6/2014 03:22:28 pm

"Honestly, I think EVD purposely writes in curlicues (made worse by often poor English translation) for the sole purpose of ensuring that he can always claim not to have said whatever it is we think he said."

THIS CONFUSES HIS TRANSLATOR, SO THEY THEN COMPENSATE BY CAREFuLLY PUTTING ALL THEY CAN
UNDERSTAND INTO THEIR OWN CULTURAL CONTEXT.

Reply
Only Me
9/6/2014 03:53:32 pm

If EvD is being purposefully vague, why should we take his claims seriously? More importantly, if he's afraid to commit, why take it personally when the majority finds his "theory" laughable, at best?

It appears someone wants his cake and to eat it, too...then have everyone else pay the bill.

Reply
Shane Sullivan
9/6/2014 06:29:15 pm

Hey, hey, hey!

It took *courage* to write that book.

EP
9/6/2014 06:33:48 pm

Speaking of courage, dafuk is dis:

http://www.amazon.com/Tomy-Planet-Lies-Erich-Daniken/dp/0988349434/ref=la_B001HMLE7I_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410067912&sr=1-15

Why doesn't anyone tell me anything?! :)

Only Me
9/6/2014 07:09:18 pm

EP, that's a new one for me, too. But, at least we have some idea why Giorgio was accepted as his "gatekeeper" :)

EP
9/6/2014 07:26:24 pm

No, seriously, wtf? Read the back cover. It's the creepiest fucking thing.

Clint Knapp
9/6/2014 08:11:11 pm

I'm more amused that this is actually in the description:

"God knows that von Däniken was not the only one who had known Tomy; others could see him, as well."

I can forgive the back cover describing the most batshit tale of self-indulgent lunacy ever. It reads like a really shitty Indiana Jones plot, which we should come to expect from von Daniken and his ilk. What bothers me is that the Amazon description itself leads one to believe it's non-fiction until very explicitly stating it's fiction-- but only if one clicks 'Read more' to get to it.

Only Me
9/6/2014 08:13:17 pm

I agree. "Nationally recognized intellect Erich von Däniken"? Now THAT'S some creepy shit.

Just take it as it is, EP. A two-year old attempt to sucker some more true believers into coughing up their money. There's only one review--for the MP3 CD version.

EP
9/7/2014 04:40:59 am

Say what you will, I very much want Jason to review it now. I bet you're underestimating the creepy awesomeness of this book. I mean, that cover, man... that cover...

Shane Sullivan
9/7/2014 06:27:28 am

I'm particularly looking forward to the iconic scene where von Daniken rides his bike away from the government agents with Tomy in the basket, at one point flying past the moon.

Reply
Shane Sullivan
9/7/2014 06:29:07 am

Darn it, that was supposed to be a response to the thread above.

Reply
EP
9/7/2014 06:53:18 am

Tomy is a perfect replica of von Daniken in his 20s. Just in case the whole thing wasn't creepy enough, von Daniken is "immediately fascinated" with his "impeccable" replica. Because the fact that AN OTHERWORLDLY BEING JUST MATERIALIZED IN FRONT OF YOU is clearly not fascinating on its own!

Reply
Shane Sullivan
9/7/2014 08:28:53 am

To quote American Dad, "it's not gay-- it's you on you."

FrankenNewYork
9/7/2014 02:21:58 pm

If he had asked directly about cyclops on the islands anyone with any credibility to protect would have to point out either A: wrong island and/or B: cyclops were never real, and that (if it were left in the show) would have shortened the episode substantially.

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        • Fragments of Panodorus
        • Annianus on the Watchers
        • The Watchers and Antediluvian Wisdom
      • Medieval Texts >
        • Medieval Legends of Ancient Egypt >
          • Medieval Pyramid Lore
          • John Malalas on Ancient Egypt
          • Fragments of Abenephius
          • Akhbar al-zaman
          • Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah
          • Murtada ibn al-‘Afif
          • Al-Maqrizi on the Pyramids
          • Al-Suyuti on the Pyramids
        • The Hunt for Noah's Ark
        • Byzantine World Chronicle
        • Isidore of Seville
        • Book of Liang: Fusang
        • Chronicle to 724
        • Agobard on Magonia
        • Pseudo-Diocles Fragmentum
        • Book of Thousands
        • Voyage of Saint Brendan
        • Power of Art and of Nature
        • Travels of Sir John Mandeville
        • Yazidi Revelation and Black Book
        • Al-Biruni on the Great Flood
        • Voyage of the Zeno Brothers
        • The Kensington Runestone (Hoax)
        • Islamic Discovery of America
        • Popol Vuh
        • The Aztec Creation Myth
      • Lost Civilizations >
        • Atlantis >
          • Plato's Atlantis Dialogues >
            • Timaeus
            • Critias
          • Fragments on Atlantis
          • Panchaea: The Other Atlantis
          • Eumalos on Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Gómara on Atlantis
          • Atlantis as Biblical History
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Atlantis and Nimrod
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • Atlantis and Hanno's Periplus
          • Atlantis and the Sea Peoples
          • W. Scott-Elliot >
            • The Story of Atlantis
            • The Lost Lemuria
          • The Lost Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Africa
          • How I Found Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Termier on Atlantis
          • The Critias and Minoan Crete
          • Rebuttal to Termier
          • Further Responses to Termier
          • Flinders Petrie on Atlantis
          • Amazing New Light (Hoax)
        • Lost Cities >
          • Miscellaneous Lost Cities
          • The Seven Cities
          • The Lost City of Paititi
          • Manuscript 512
          • The Idolatrous City of Iximaya (Hoax)
          • The 1885 Moberly Lost City Hoax
          • The Elephants of Paredon (Hoax)
        • OOPARTs
        • Oronteus Finaeus Antarctica Map
        • Caucasians in Panama
        • Jefferson's Excavation
        • Fictitious Discoveries in America
        • Against Diffusionism
        • Tunnels Under Peru
        • The Parahyba Inscription (Hoax)
        • Mound Builders
        • Gunung Padang
        • Tales of Enchanted Islands
        • The 1907 Ancient World Map Hoax
        • The 1909 Grand Canyon Hoax
        • The Interglacial Period
        • Solving Oak Island
      • Religious Conspiracies >
        • Pantera, Father of Jesus?
        • Toledot Yeshu
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        • Testimony of Jean de Châlons
        • Rosslyn Chapel and the 'Prentice's Pillar
        • The Many Wives of Jesus
        • Templar Infiltration of Labor
        • Louis Martin & the Holy Bloodline
        • The Life of St. Issa (Hoax)
        • On the Person of Jesus Christ
      • Giants in the Earth >
        • Fossil Origins of Myths >
          • Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephants
          • Fossil Elephants
          • Fossil Bones of Teutobochus
          • Fossil Mammoths and Giants
          • Giants' Bones Dug Out of the Earth
          • Fossils and the Supernatural
          • Fossils, Myth, and Pseudo-History
          • Man During the Stone Age
          • Fossil Bones and Giants
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • History of Paleontology
        • Fragments on Giants
        • Manichaean Book of Giants
        • Geoffrey on British Giants
        • Alfonso X's Hermetic History of Giants
        • Boccaccio and the Fossil 'Giant'
        • Book of Howth
        • Purchas His Pilgrimage
        • Edmond Temple's 1827 Giant Investigation
        • The Giants of Sardinia
        • Giants and the Sons of God
        • The Magnetism of Evil
        • Tertiary Giants
        • Smithsonian Giant Reports
        • Early American Giants
        • The Giant of Coahuila
        • Jewish Encyclopedia on Giants
        • Index of Giants
        • Newspaper Accounts of Giants
        • Lanier's A Book of Giants
      • Science and History >
        • Halley on Noah's Comet
        • The Newport Tower
        • Iron: The Stone from Heaven
        • Ararat and the Ark
        • Pyramid Facts and Fancies
        • Argonauts before Homer
        • The Deluge
        • Crown Prince Rudolf on the Pyramids
        • Old Mythology in New Apparel
        • Blavatsky on Dinosaurs
        • Teddy Roosevelt on Bigfoot
        • Devil Worship in France
        • Maspero's Review of Akhbar al-zaman
        • Arabic Names of Egyptian Kings
        • The Holy Grail as Lucifer's Crown Jewel
        • The Mutinous Sea
        • The Rock Wall of Rockwall
        • Fabulous Zoology
        • The Origins of Talos
        • Mexican Mythology
        • Chinese Pyramids
        • Maqrizi's Names of the Pharaohs
      • Extreme History >
        • Roman Empire Hoax
        • America Known to the Ancients
        • American Antiquities
        • American Cataclysms
        • England, the Remnant of Judah
        • Historical Chronology of the Mexicans
        • Maspero on the Predynastic Sphinx
        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Remarkable Discoveries Within the Sphinx (Hoax)
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • The Shaver Mystery >
          • Lovecraft and the Deros
          • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
        • Fortean Society and Columbus
        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
        • The Skyfort Document
        • Whirling Wheels
        • Denver Ancient Astronaut Lecture
        • Soviet Search for Lemuria
        • Visitors from Outer Space
        • Unidentified Flying Objects (Abstract)
        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
        • Ancient Astronaut Society Telegram
        • Noah's Ark Cables
        • The Von Daniken Letter
        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
        • CIA Search for the Ark of the Covenant
        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
        • UFOs in Ancient China
        • CIA Report on Noah's Ark
        • CIA Noah's Ark Memos
        • Congressional Ancient Aliens Testimony
        • Ancient Astronaut and Nibiru Email
        • Congressional Ancient Mars Hearing
        • House UFO Hearing
      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
        • Premodern UFO Sightings
        • The Moon Hoax
        • Inhabitants of Other Planets
        • The Fall of the Sky
        • Blavatsky on Ancient Astronauts
        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
      • Interdimensional Flying Saucers
      • Poltergeist UFOs
      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
      • Sublime and Beautiful
      • Voltaire on Vampires
      • Demonology and Witchcraft
      • Thaumaturgia
      • Bulgarian Vampires
      • Religion and Evolution
      • Transylvanian Superstitions
      • Defining a Zombie
      • Dread of the Supernatural
      • Vampires
      • Werewolves and Vampires and Ghouls
      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
      • King Solomon's Mines
      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
      • Sredni Vashtar
      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
      • The Corpse on the Grating
      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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