von Daniken

Aardvarchaelogy has a guest post by Florian Freistetter reporting on a recent popular lecture given by Erich von Däniken, which is worth a read if you know who von Daniken is.

At age 10 or so I was terribly impressed and convinced by von Daniken's books, of which the local library seemed to have the full collection at that time. While von Daniken, and similar works by Peter Kolosimo, were terribly contrived, they were certainly entertaining (the plot of the latest Indiana Jones movie is basically a simplistic copy of von Daniken's work) and in some way informative (I wouldn't say educational) - I probably first heard about Easter Island, Nazca, the Mayans, and so on in those books, while having largely forgotten the wacky parts.

[Image: Pacal the Great's sarcophagus lid, interpreted by von Daniken as a Mayan riding a rocket.]