The Ancient Astronaut Hypothesis, as stated by von Däniken:
"The gods of the dim past have left countless traces which we can read and decipher today for the first time because the problem of space travel, so topical today, was not a problem, but a reality, to the men of thousands of years ago. I claim that our forefathers received visits from the universe in the remote past, even though I do not yet know who these extraterrestrial intelligences were or from which planet they came. I nevertheless proclaim that these "strangers" annihilated part of mankind existing at the time and produced a new, perhaps the first, homo sapiens.
"This assertion is revolutionary. It shatters the base on which a mental edifice that seemed to be so perfect was constructed. It is my aim to try to provide proof of this assertion."
Short Bio of vD
The Map Itself
evD says:
"At the beginning of the eighteenth century ancient maps which had belonged to an officer in the Turkish navy, Admiral Piri Reis, were found in the Topkapi Palace. Two atlases preserved in the Berlin State Library which contain exact reproductions of the Mediterranean and the region around the Dead Sea also came from Piri Reis.
"The maps were absolutely accurate -- and not only as regards the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. The coasts of North and South America and even the contours of the Antarctic were also precisely delineated on Piri Reis' maps. The maps not only reproduced the outlines of the continents but also showed the topography of the interiors! Mountain ranges, mountain peaks, islands, rivers, and plateaus were drawn in with extreme accuracy.
"What is more, the mountain ranges in the Antarctic, which already figure on Reis' maps, were not discovered until 1952. They have been covered in ice for hundreds of years, and our present-day maps have been drawn with the aid of echo-sounding apparatus.
"Comparison with modern photographs of our globe taken from satellites showed that the originals of Piri Reis' maps must have been aerial photographs taken from a very great height. How can than be explained?
"There are one or two questions that can be answered quickly. Unquestionably our forefathers did not draw these maps. Yet there is no doubt that the maps must have been made with the most modern technical aid -- from the air.
The map was 'discovered' in 1929 in palace of Topkapu
(Constantinople). It is dated 1513 and was made by Piri Re'is (Piri
Ibn Haji Mehmed) an admiral in the Turkish Navy (and former pirate).
It is of good accuracy for the early sixteenth century, however: Cuba
was wrongly labeled, about 900 miles of the South American coastline
is missing, the Amazon River appears twice, the Drake Passage between
Cape Horn and Antarctica is omitted.
The idea was not original with von Daniken: in the Morning of the
Magicians (1960) by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier you find "Were these
copies of earlier maps? Had they been traced from observations made on
board a flying machine or space vessel of some kind? NOtes taken by
visitors from Beyond?"
evD says:
"Not far from the sea, in the Peruvian spurs of the Andes, lies the
ancient city of Nazca. The Palpa Valley contains a strip of level
ground some 37 miles long and 1 mile wide that is scattered with bits
of stone resembling pieces of rusty iron. The inhabitants call this
region pampa, although any vegetation is out of the question there.
If you fly over this territory - the plain of Nazca - you can make out
gigantic lines, laid out geometrically, some of which run parallel to
each other, while other intersect or are surrounded by large
trapezoidal areas. The archaeologists say that they are Inca roads.
A preposterous idea! Of what use to the Incas were roads that ran
parallel to each other? That intersected? That were laid our in a
plain and came to a sudden end?
"Seen from the air, the clear-cut impression that the 37-mile-long plain of Nazca made on me was that of an airfield!
"In that case, what purpose did the line at Nazca serve? According to my way of thinking, they could have been laid out on their gigantic scale by working form a model and using a system of coordinates, or they could also have been built according to instructions from an aircraft. It is not yet possible to say with certainty whether the plain of Nazca was ever an airfield. If iron was used it will certainly not be found, because there is no prehistoric iron. Metals corrode in a few years; stone never corrodes. What is wrong with the idea that the lines were laid out to say to the "gods": "Land here! Everything has been prepared as your ordered"? The builders of the geometrical figures may have had no idea what they were doing. But perhaps they knew perfectly well what the "gods" needed in order to land.
"Enormous drawings that were undoubtedly meant as signals for a being floating in the air are found on mountainsides in many parts of Peru. What other purpose could they have served?
"Easter Island lies far away from any continent or civilization. The islanders are more familiar with the moon and the stars than any other country. No trees grow on the island, which is a tiny speck of volcanic stone. The usual explanation, that the stone giants were moved to their present sites on wooden rollers, is not feasible in this case, either. In addition, the island can scarcely have provided food for more than 2,000 inhabitants. (A few hundred natives live on Easter Island today.) A shipping trade, which brought food and clothing to the island for the stonemasons, is hardly credible in antiquity. Then who cut the statues out of the rock, who carved them and transported them to their sites? How were they moved across country for miles without rollers? How were they dressed, polished, and erected? How were the hats, the stone for which came from a different quarry from that of the statues, put in place?
"Even if people with lively imaginations have tried to picture the Egyptian pyramids being built by a vast army of workers using the "heave-ho" method, a similar method would have been impossible on Easter Island for lack of manpower. Even 2,000 mean, working day and night, would not be nearly enough to carve these colossal figures out of the steel-hard volcanic stone with rudimentary tools -- and at least a part of the population must have tilled the barren fields, gone fishing, woven cloth, and made ropes. No, 2,000 men alone could not have made the gigantic statues. And a larger population is inconceivable on Easter Island. Then who did do the work? And how did they manage it? And why do the statues stand around the edge of the island and not in the interior? What cult did they serve?
The considerable archaeology of Easter Island shows the statues were easy to carve (they are of volcanic tuff, a compacted volcanic ash that is porus and crumbly), there were basalt and obsidian tools, the statues could be readily erected and moved by very conventional means. the red scoria used for the pukao (top knots) has oxidized iron and is of much lower density than the tuff of the statues. A fair bit has now been surmized about the E.I, culture and its downfall (and statue knockdown by the islanders) when the local and limited ecosystem collapsed.