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Jan. 12, 2015 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:05:05
Edition 190 - Erich Von Daniken

This time... World-famous "Chariots of the Gods" author Erich Von Daniken...

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Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world, on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes, and this is The Return of the Unexplained.
With a very, very special guest for the third edition of 2015, a man whose name I think if you're interested in these things, you probably have heard.
If you haven't, you're in for a treat.
His name is Eric von Daniken.
He's a man who is not easy to get on shows like this.
He doesn't do a lot of interviews these days, and it's always a real event when he does do one.
So thank you to Roger Saunders in California for his help setting this up.
If you've never heard about him, I'll tell you about him in just a moment.
Just a couple of things to talk about before we get into the interview.
Not going to do any shout-outs because this is going to be a big show and no time at the moment, but I'll do them next time.
Just to say, I've had a few emails recently about various guests and your objections or some emailers' objections to various points of view that they have which have not been expressed in the interview and were nothing to do with the subjects we've talked about.
In one case, one guest was criticized for supposed anti-environmentalist views that I don't know anything about.
Other guests have been criticized for political views of the left or the right.
The only thing that I would say is that, you know, if you start ruling people out on the basis of things that you think they've said about subjects that are not connected with the subjects we're discussing, then we're going to rule an awful lot of people out of this show.
And I cannot know every detail of everybody's life that I interview.
Of course, if they are a major league criminal, I will have found out about that, and we won't be talking to them.
But if they have views that some people may find unsavory or they don't particularly accord with their political views, how am I going to know that?
And how is that relevant to the unexplained is the only thing that I would say.
So if you object to a guest's political views that are not expressed on the show, not part of the show, please contact them about those because, you know, we are here to talk about the subject in hand.
And that's what I want to do.
Thank you very much for your emails, the nice things you've been saying.
So still getting some New Year's greetings coming in.
Thank you for those.
Please keep the donations coming as well.
The website www.theunexplained.tv.
And that website, designed, created, maintained, and kept cranking by Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool.
Okay, the guest on this edition, Eric von Daniken.
This is his biography.
Just in case you're one of the people who haven't heard of him, born April 14th, 1935, Swiss author of a number of books that make controversial claims about extraterrestrial influences on early human culture, including the best-selling Chariots of the Gods, published in 1968.
And I can remember an awful lot of people when I was a kid had read the book, were about to read the book, or were talking about the book.
It was that big and continues to be so.
The biography says Danikin is one of the main figures responsible for popularizing the paleo-contact and ancient astronauts' hypotheses.
The ideas put forth in his books are largely rejected by scientists and academics who categorize his work as pseudo-history and pseudo-archaeology.
But then, as I said on the last show, as Uri Geller once told me, nobody successful is uncontroversial.
Most people who are successful have a certain amount of controversy about them.
So Eric von Daniken coming soon.
Please keep your emails, your guest suggestions, and your thoughts about the show coming in, www.theunexplained.tv.
And I've already got a long, long list of new guest possibilities and I'm pursuing those at the moment.
And as I've said on previous shows, if there is somebody you want to hear on this show and you really desperately want to hear them, do make contact with them and start to oil the wheels for me before I do.
All the help that you can provide, gratefully received.
Thank you very much.
Okay, let's cross now to continental Europe and talk with Eric von Däniken.
Mr. Von Däniken, a great pleasure to have you on this show.
Well, it's a pleasure to be with you.
Now, whereabouts are you?
Are you in Switzerland?
I heard that that looks like the dial code for Switzerland that I called for you.
It really looks.
You see, I'm sitting in a place called Interlachen.
It's in the mountain and it's blue sky at the moment.
It's absolutely great.
I'm happy to live here.
Well, when I was a kid, I never went on any of them.
But there were a lot of school ski trips organized to Interlachen, and my friends at school always used to come back and say they had a great time.
So it sounds like a fun place to be.
It is, it is, and it is growing and growing.
And here in Interlachen, you find hotels for every price.
You see very luxurious hotels and very, well, poor hotels.
Everything is here for every tourist.
Okay, well, I'm sure the tourist sport for Interlach and Eric, we're very pleased with you for that, since we have listeners all over the world.
I've been digesting your biography here.
And look, you are, and you've thrived on it, it seems to me, but you are a controversial man.
I've seen a number of versions of your life story.
And I'm going to try and winkle out which one you prefer and which one is closest to the truth.
Of course, I'm a controversial man.
I mean, I have published some controversial books, and I absolutely understand that some people don't like my ideas, others adore it.
It's like in politics.
You may like a politician, and you may hate the other one.
That's true.
And I mentioned at the start of this program, which you wouldn't have heard, but Uri Geller I know quite well.
And he shared with me something that I think is very, very true.
That anybody who is successful, by definition, their success will carry with it controversy because everybody will suddenly take a view about them.
That's exactly correct.
I know Uri Geller very well.
In earlier years, we were often together.
In the past three or four years, I hear nothing from him.
Okay, well, he's moved from Berkshire in the UK now.
He's living in Israel now.
Okay, when you have him on the phone, give him my best regards.
I will.
Actually, I will send him an email after this, and I will suggest he gets in touch.
Now, Eric, let's start with this.
Your biography makes interesting reading, and you tell me if I'm completely wrong about this.
But it seems to me that you had your younger years were, what's the word I'm looking for, were a little difficult.
You had some problems.
Is that so?
Of course, I always had problems when I was young because I was a very enthusiastic and a non-confirmed young personality.
Okay, In other words, you wouldn't play the game, play ball.
Well, not in every rule, yes.
I don't know whether you want to talk about this, but there are a couple of references to a couple of convictions, we call them here, one for theft and one for fraud.
Anything to say about those?
Yeah, that's really, to say it is really nonsense.
It is a fact, it is true.
Some about 40 or 45 years ago, I was convicted in Switzerland for a so-called fraud.
It was a tax fraud.
But in reality, but everyone says this, I never did it.
And some years later, the highest court in Switzerland, the Supreme Court, give me right.
So I have absolutely no criminal records.
Right.
And in fact, I'm reading further down, you successfully entered the plea of nullity on the grounds that your intentions were not malicious and that the credit institutions involved were at fault for failing adequately to research your references.
Of course, yes.
But the picture that it gives me is of somebody who didn't have the easiest beginnings in life.
Is that right?
Well, you see, I was educated in a Swiss Catholic school led by Jesuits in Freiburg.
This is a city in Switzerland.
And of course, Jesuits are very strong personalities.
And in my boarding school, we had to translate parts of the Bible from one language to the other.
And I was very, very critical.
When I was 16 years old, I always said God, whatever God is, is the greatest thing in our universe.
But God has to have some qualities.
For example, God makes no mistake.
Or God would never use a vehicle to move from point A to point B. God is all over.
Or of course, God should be out of time.
He's timeless.
So God would not need to make an experiment and then he has to wait what the result is.
So all this was in my mind when I was around 16, 17 years old.
And then we had to make these translations in the Bible.
And there I realized that the God of the Bible does not have these qualities.
The God of the Bible uses vehicles in which to move around.
He did not know about the future.
He made experiences and so on.
So I simply had doubts in my own education.
I was not sure anymore if I was on the right side.
And I wanted to know if other communities in antiquity have similar stories as we have it in the Christian and Jewish tradition.
And that's how it all started.
And running parallel with this, at least if some of these biographies, and we've said that some of them may not be entirely correct, if some of these biographies are to be believed, that running parallel with this was an interest in UFOs and what today we call ufology.
Well, I was never a UFO seeker or researcher in reality.
And I never had a contact with UFOs.
But of course, I know a lot about UFOs.
Due to my profession, I have to read UFO books to speak about it.
And I met quite some personalities who claimed they have seen UFOs.
But I myself, I was never a UFO researcher.
And in my books, and in the meantime, I have published 36 books, UFO is just a little few paragraphs in it.
It's not a big part of it.
So the biggest element in your thinking at the time was the thought that what you'd been told, and you went to a school that would try to inculcate those thoughts and beliefs within you.
And I'm sure that most of your colleagues at school went away towing the party line, but you thought more deeply about it and you felt that God couldn't exist in the way that you were being told that he or it or whatever God might be existed.
Of course, yes.
You see, it all started with the Bible, as I said before.
In the Bible, for example, in the beginning, you read that the Lord descends on the holy mountain.
But before he descends on the mountain, he gives order to Moses to construct a gate around the mountain so that the people would not come close by, because if they would be too close to the mountain, they would be destroyed.
So Moses constructs a gate around the mountain, and the Israelites are far away, and then the Lord descends with smoke, fire, loud noise, crumbling, etc.
So I said, what kind of a God is this?
My God would not need to give an order to construct the gate first.
He can protect himself in another way.
So all these doubts become bigger and bigger and bigger.
The same story later in the Bible when you read the prophet Ezekiel.
Ezekiel, he's on the end of the Old Testament.
He describes a vehicle coming out of the cloud and he does not only describe the vehicle, what he sees, like the legs, the wheels, the wings, he also describes the noise which the vehicle makes.
He compares the noise with the thundering of a waterfall.
So in my opinion, this was not God.
Of course, the priests, the professors, the educators in my school told me that they have to see all these things in a sense of a vision.
Ezekiel had in a vision, he saw the Lord on his throne, on his chariot sitting.
But I was not happy with this explanation, so I was looking for other possibilities.
So the priests and the masters of the school were wanting you to take a more literal view of this.
And you were starting to believe, and I bet they weren't happy with you, you were starting to believe that these accounts, these biblical accounts, were more metaphors for something else.
Exactly, yes.
And soon as you compare them with other religions, especially with the old Indian traditions, you see, I read all these old Indian books, of course, in English translation, like the Mahabharata and these things.
And then you hear similar stories.
Some gods descended from the sky.
They had some sort of spaceships in the orbit around the Earth.
Of course, the old Indians do not call them spaceships.
They had not a word like this.
They call it cities in the sky.
And out of these cities in the sky, smaller vehicles came down to the earth.
The old Indians call these smaller vehicles the Vimanas.
Some of the humans were taken up by these Vimanas to the cities in the sky.
And when these people returned to our planet, they of course described what they have seen.
And all these things you find in old Indian literature, but also in Tibetan literature and other literature.
So it is quite comparable to what we read in the Bible when the God descended.
Even in the Bible, you have cases where some of the people were taken up in a fiery chariot.
In the beginning, for example, the prophet Enoch, Enoch was the seventh patriarch before the great flood.
He was taken up in a fiery chariot and he disappeared.
Later, the prophet Eliah also disappeared in a fiery chariot.
So in religious tradition, they say, well, they were taken up to heaven.
But what is heaven?
Heaven, I was teached, is the place of happiness where we all come after when we die, when we were nice and serious and correct and not lying and killing, when we were, excuse me for my English, when we had a fair life.
But in the same heaven, there was a war.
Maybe you remember, there was a so-called archangel with the name of Lucifer.
And Lucifer, one day, he went to the throne of the Almighty God and said, we don't serve you anymore.
Then the Almighty God ordered the Archangel Michael to destroy Lucifer, to put him out of the heavens.
To be cast out.
Yeah.
So if we have a war in heaven, heaven is not the place of happiness.
So I asked myself as a young man, why don't we change the word heaven into space?
Or we have in all holy scriptures, we have beings coming down in our religion, they are called the angels.
Now the angels are messengers.
They are coming down, they help the humans, they give order to the humans, etc.
But the same angels, including in the Bible, just read Moses, I guess it's the first book of Moses 1, chapter 6.
These angels had sex with humans.
So real angels would never have sex with humans.
Why don't we change the word angel into extraterrestrial?
Now we have changed two words.
Heaven into space, angels into extraterrestrial.
And this goes on.
If you only change about 10 words, keywords, then you change the whole meaning of the text.
Now, to a lot of people, younger people I'm thinking about, Eric, what you're saying to us now is what a lot of people, philosophers and writers on these subjects, are saying.
But we've got to put this into context because in the time when you were having these thoughts, and this would have been, what, early 1960s, thereabouts?
Okay, early 60s, this wasn't quite the time for that.
There needed to be a catalyst, and it looks like you were the catalyst.
This was not a common view then.
Well, I mean, at my time, of course, there were science fiction books and brilliant science fiction authors who often came up with the suggestion, what happen if humans visit another solar system, if they come in contact with the natives of another solar system, what happens if these natives were still in a primitive stage, like let's say Stone Age people.
Now these primitive people would look to our astronauts as the gods.
Of course they are no gods, they are just astronauts.
So in the science fiction literature this existed already.
What I tried to find some proof, to find some indications in the old literature and also in archaeology, is there something which we can present that something like this happened to us, that our planet was visited by extraterrestrials, and our Stone Age people believed that these extraterrestrials are some kinds of gods.
Of course, there are no gods.
It's all a misunderstanding.
But that's what I was looking for.
And the result was my first book, Chariots of the Gods.
Which I want to talk about in a moment.
I'm just amazed at the context and the circumstances in which you came up with all of this.
You know, I have this idealized view of Europe in the 1960s coming out of the war, a time when educated young people had time to go to coffee shops and think and debate and discuss.
And it sounds like you might have been part of that, or maybe you were so beyond the pale that you weren't part of that.
Where were you on the scale?
Well, I was definitely part of it.
As I said, I had doubts in my own religion.
I was not one of the young boys who was playing football, running around.
I was one of these young boys who were looking in libraries, looking in books, learning, being astonished.
So I was part of my generation, of course, but not the same young man as the others were.
I was a little different.
Did you discuss your ideas with them, the ones who played football, and maybe some of your teachers and masters as well?
I also discussed it with my professors.
And strange enough, they were not against it.
You saw these theologians, in my case, they were all Jesuits.
They were brilliantly educated.
And they told me, well, Eric, you don't understand this, but please go to the library, look for this and that book, and then you will probably understand it closely.
So I did.
But the outcome of my research was still different than the result of the theologians.
So they tried to bring you into line, but you just researched it even more and your convictions became firmer.
Yes, that's true.
And the result, you know.
Well, from the biographical information here, you wrote one piece in 64, and that was almost a precursor to Chariots of the God.
It was as if you were on some kind of glide path.
Yeah, you see, in 1964, I was together with my family, I was in Canada, in British Columbia.
I was there, I must explain, I came from a family of the hotel business.
And first, I learned, I was a waiter, I was a young cook, I was a young man on the reception desk, I visited some hotels, schools, etc.
So in 1964, With my family, I was a head waiter in Canada, in British Columbia, on Vancouver Island.
And there already I wrote articles about my topics, my special knowledge.
And there was a Canadian newspaper in Winnipeg with the title Dear Northwestern, the Northwestern.
And they published in December 8th, 1964, a full page from Erich von Deniken with the title, Were the Gods Astronauts?
So that was four years before my first book, Chariots of the Gods, came on the market.
Now, we didn't have the internet then.
Communication was by crackly telephone lines, or you'd have to get on a boat or a plane to physically go to a place.
So I would imagine those ideas that you expressed in Canada in 1964 didn't exactly catch fire early.
No, no, not.
It all started really in 1964.
And it was a hard time because most of the people I talked with, be it my family or be it my friends, they were very, very skeptical.
And most of them said, well, this is all a little crazy, Eric, what you do.
It's not what we believe or it's not what the scientific community knows.
And then when in 1968 the first book came on the market, I was criticized and crashed down practically from everyone.
But the situation has changed.
Well, the situation has changed.
More and more people began to listen to you.
And I can tell you that, you know, I was a young guy in the 70s.
And it was the cool thing to do to read your books and talk about them.
You know, the chariots of the god was the gods was, for those who were into these kind of things, was a kind of gateway for people to make them think in a different way.
Yeah, it was an eye-opener.
And, you know, at that time in 1968, I was often accused by journalists.
They say, well, Erich von der Eniken said, and Erich von der Eniken said, in reality, if you read Chariots of the Guards, I had 238 question marks in the book.
No one read the question marks.
So it's some misunderstanding.
So what were you trying to do?
Clearly, from what you just said, you were not trying to interpret necessarily.
You were trying to, at that stage, put a seed of a question in there.
That's exactly what my point was.
By the way, it still is in some belongings.
But in 1968, I simply wanted to ask, were we visited by extraterrestrials?
Is there something in our religion, in our mythologies, which could support this silly idea?
Could we maybe even find archaeological traces?
I mean, if extraterrestrial were there, they had obviously their weapons, they had their building methods, they had their tools, which were different to the tool of our Stone Age people.
Is there something in archaeology which we could prove that this is not handmade by our Stone Age people?
So this was the question of the book, Chariots of the Gods.
So at that stage, you were in the realm of thought.
You were thinking about these things.
You read a lot and you were interpreting.
I suppose the next stage of your story has to be to go to places to see if you can find evidence that backs that up.
That's true.
I was in all the places where I have written.
I was before, of course.
I saw everything with my eyes.
I photographed it.
I had to smell it.
And before I go to any archaeological places, I always first read the local archaeologists.
What do they say about their mystery?
How do they explain it, etc.
And in many cases, well, something is wrong in the past.
We have gigantic buildings which official archaeology says it was made by Stone Age people.
But in reality, the Stone Age people had no tools and no technology to do it.
So who did it?
And to make this clear, it is not my idea that extraterrestrials, for example, they constructed a pyramid.
Of course not.
It's always the human who did it.
It is not my idea that extraterrestrials made gigantic temples.
No, no, no.
They never made their hands dirty.
It's always the humans who did it.
The question behind this is, why have the humans done this?
The normal answer is they did it for the gods.
Okay, which gods?
Well, the gods in nature, the lightning, the earthquake.
They were afraid of natural happenings.
So they created natural religions, which is fully understandable.
But then in some cases, the so-called natural gods start to speak.
They give clearly information, for example, about astronomy, about the moon, to our Stone Age humans.
And natural does not discuss, there is no information of a scientific way from the natural.
So somebody else was talking.
Somebody else was giving information to the humans.
So slowly and slowly, a building has been constructed by myself.
And in the meantime, as I said, it's now 37 titles.
And you sold 62.
Well, it depends on who you read and believe.
Is this 62 or 65 million books, Eric?
Yeah, that's true.
But I still never have become a rich man.
How come?
Is it the publishers who made the money?
No, no.
Of course, I was never complaining.
And every year I was happy and still I'm happy.
Every year I made about 200 or 30 or 400,000 Swiss francs, which is quite a lot.
But every year I spent this money again.
I always had expeditions which were expensive.
I always had an archive.
I always had an office.
I always had people who worked for me, which of course you have to pay in a fair way, etc.
So the money came in and the money went out.
And they say that if you want to accumulate, or rather if you want, yes, if you want to accumulate, you have to speculate.
So you put the money out and then the money comes back in.
Of course, yeah, money comes in, the money goes out.
You know, expeditions, for example, when I'm in Brazil or I was in Colombia, I heard about the temple somewhere in the jungle.
Now it was not possible to go to this temple on a horseback because there was no way.
So Eric von Denniken simply got in tact with the government and asked, could I hire a helicopter?
Now, in Colombia, for example, these helicopters belong always to the army, to the air force.
Okay, at the end, I had my helicopter, but they had to pay 50,000 Swiss francs for it.
Boy.
And I presume that you always run the risk of stepping on some vested interest toes in the places that you go to.
Definitely, yes.
I was like a journalist in these years.
I had always five cameras around my neck.
And in the meantime, in my archive at home, we have over 250,000 pictures from archaeological places all over the world.
Talk to me about Stonehenge.
Before we talk about the pyramids, I'm very interested in Stonehenge because it's only 70 kilometers from where I'm speaking to you now.
And I go there quite a lot as a place of solitude and peace.
You know, if you go there when the tourists, when there are fewer tourists there, so it's got to be in the wintertime, really, or the spring.
It is a place of great spirituality.
And there's a feeling.
It's the locus of a lot of things, I think.
Definitely, yes.
And I mean, you local people, you British, you know about Stonehenge much more than Eric Verdeniken knows.
All what I know is what I know from literature.
Of course, I was there three or four times.
I admired the monolith.
In the meantime, you have a gate around it, so tourists cannot come close by anymore.
And of course, I studied are there mythologies about Stonehenge?
And there are mythologies which says that in Stone Age time, some people from sky descended again.
And Stonehenge was a place for heaven.
Not only in astronomy, they did it in honor of the heavenly visitors.
So there are some mythologies, but nothing which you can prove completely.
Because of course, a lot of orthodox scientists here say that there are ways that those stones could have been pulled from the West Country to Stonehenge and could have been erected there by people doing it off their own back without extraterrestrial or other kind of influence.
It is possible they say to do that.
Yeah, I agree with you.
You know, extraterrestrial did not make Stonehenge.
It was our humans.
The question is, again, why?
With what power?
With what help?
Has somebody maybe told them it is easier to move these stone blocks if you do it in such and such way.
But for Stone Age people to transport really big stone blocks for about, I don't know, 40 or 60 kilometers, and it's not only flat, there are hills on the ground.
So it's not easy.
But humans did it, not extraterrestrial-made Stone Age.
So really the question is, as you've said rightly, we're talking about primitive people a long time ago.
Something or someone had to give them the thought that this would be a good idea to do.
And the good idea are we?
Look, I have to explain something.
In my opinion, we were visited some thousands of years by extraterrestrials.
And these extraterrestrials, one day, they disappeared.
By the way, with the promise to return in the far future.
But before they disappeared, they left somewhere on our planet or maybe in our solar system a proof.
We were here.
Now, I don't know what this proof is.
I call it maybe a time capsule.
Something which is undestroyable, which cannot be destroyed by earthquake, by great flood, by ants or animals or humans or whatever.
A so-called time capsule.
So you put this time capsule somewhere on our planet.
But that was 5,000, 6,000 years ago.
Now you have to take care.
How do we manage that mankind of the far future, 5,000 years in the future, go and look for this time capsule?
If you don't know that there is something somewhere, you never go and look for it.
And that's the reason why, for example, Stonehenge is in the field.
They knew exactly that the humans of the future would see this stone circle.
They would realize that it has to do something with astronomy.
They would start to ask questions.
Why have our forefathers taken the pain to do these gigantic things, to move these blocks around?
And sooner or later, some idiot like Eric von Deniken came up and ask, well, could it be that extraterrestrials were here?
Then the next question is, well, if they would be here, they would of course have left the proof.
They did not disappear just like this.
Well, and that's the situation we have today.
Because of Stonehenge, because of the pyramids, because of other absolutely great mysteries on Earth, mankind of today start to ask question, what is wrong in our past?
And something is wrong in our past.
But we ask the question only because these monuments exist.
Without these monuments, we would not ask the question.
And now it's time, but we in a scientific matter start to ask the question, what is the proof?
What is the time capsule?
Where can we prove closely, definitely, that they were here?
You used an interesting phrase, Eric.
That was, what is wrong in our past?
Did you mean by that, what is anomalous in our past?
Yeah, exactly.
By the way, I have to excuse me, you, for my English.
You see, I'm Swiss.
I grew up in Switzerland.
My mother language is first German, and the next language was French.
So English I just learned by coincidence.
But more or less, I hope you can understand me.
You know what the Brits are like.
The Brits are terrible for not learning languages.
I speak a little bit of schoolboy French, and I love France, and I love the language, but I was lazy.
Lazy to the point where I didn't bother to learn any more French.
And that's terrible.
At least where you are in continental Europe, you were encouraged to learn a few languages.
And your English is great.
Well, I live in Panama Zambia.
And you see, in Switzerland, we speak four languages anyhow.
So English is number five now.
How do you ever get anything done there?
Oh, I get what?
How do you ever get anything done there when people are speaking so many languages?
Well, the main language, you still have your mother language, which is German.
Then my school, which I said, my boarding school led by Jesuits, that was in the French part of Switzerland.
So I grew up with French and German at the same time.
So, je pal français ecom d'Alma, I speak French like German without any accent.
And then, of course, because In Switzerland, we have the Italian language too in the south of Switzerland.
So you learn more or less Italian, not perfectly, but it's part of our school.
And then comes other languages while traveling.
By the way, in the boarding school, we also had to learn for six years Greek and Latin.
In the meantime, I lost most of it, but it's still helpful to understand some of the phrases of Adikoti.
Now, let's bring you back to the work.
And the principal work is, of course, Chariots of the Gods.
One critique of you, and it's a very specific one, and I'm sure you've seen this many, many times.
You wrote that an iron pillar in India, in Delhi, with something to do with extraterrestrials.
And then somebody said, no, that's not possible because it rusted.
And the method of construction, we understood very well.
It wasn't given to us by anybody.
We just had evolved that.
What do you say to that?
Of course, in 1965, a long time ago, I was in India.
I was in Delhi.
I was in that temple and I was standing before this iron pillow.
And there the locals told me the pillow is not rusting.
So I came up with the speculation and say, well, it's not rusting.
They told me the pillar stands here for hundreds of years.
I said, this is crazy.
Why is it not rusting?
Is it maybe an extraterrestrial artifact?
It may be extraterrestrial have, as a gift, made this present to some of our forefathers so that the future generation will ask, why is this pillar not rusting?
But in the meantime, this piece is rusting.
So I was completely wrong.
And I suppose what your critics need to know is that it is in the nature of humanity and being human that you're going to get it right or correct sometimes, and sometimes you will be wrong.
Of course, this is normal.
And you know, when you are young, as a young man, you are enthusiastic and you believe everything easily.
You believe things which it helps you, if it serves you, you believe it.
You are not uncritical as a young man.
Later you learn to be critical.
And I of course learned that in so many cases the critics were right and I was wrong.
So in chariots of the gods there are quite a few of these things which later I said forget about it.
The iron pillar is just one example.
Another example is from Egypt.
I was as a 19 year old young man.
I was for the first time in Egypt and we were in Upper Egypt in Aswan and there in the Nile is an island called Elephantin and the guide up there told me that this name Elephantin comes because seen from the air the island has the shape of an elephant.
So I wrote this in chariots of the gods.
In the meantime of course I know that this is all garbage.
This island does not look like an elephant from the air.
It simply has the name Elephantin because elephants were on the island.
That's all.
So you're in an area where there is not the possibility to be completely precise.
Of course there isn't because this is real groundbreaking stuff.
You're never going to be completely correct.
And that means, as we said at the very head of this interview, you will always attract controversy and there will constantly be people out there trying to debunk you.
Of course, this is normal and I understand this absolutely.
Because an idea like mine is not normal.
You see, I suggested that this planet was visited by extraterrestrials.
Now first, the astronomers came and said, what is he talking about?
Does he not know that the stars, the distance from one star to the other, is measured in light years?
And does he not understand, Mr. von Deniken, that there is no technology to reach these distances of light years?
In the meantime, we know it is possible, and we know how it was possible.
Or in my books, I suggested that these extraterrestrial visitors, they had similarity to humans.
So they had a head, they had eyes, they had a mouse, they had arms, so they had the body of humanoids.
And the critics said, even if we accept that some life might be out there, they would definitely not look like humans, because evolution has complete different ways.
That was all correct at that time.
In the meantime, we know that it works, because we could be the offsprings of another solar system.
This theory is called panspermia.
So after Chariots of the Gods, I tried, of course, becoming older and with every book becoming better and to avoid all mistakes.
With every book, I tried that the scientific community can control it and can prove it.
Of course, there is still another opinion, which is normal, and I adore, in the meantime, the critics and the other opinion.
We just have to come together and to discuss softly and in a honest way, and then we find a communication.
I like the direction you're coming to all of this from, Eric, and it's a pleasure to talk with you.
The pyramid, the Great Pyramid, you came under a lot of criticism over that because you claimed that it would have taken whoever built the Great Pyramid a long time to cut blocks and drag them to the place where this thing was being built in only 20 years.
And then scientists came back, and I think there was a documentary came back and said, actually, this was perfectly feasible and perfectly possible.
Where did that leave you?
Well, I am still sure that the pyramid was not constructed by Cheops.
Cheops was the pharaoh who ruled about 2500 BC.
Cheops was the man from the 4th dynasty.
And Egyptologists say we know for sure it was Cheops.
But Egyptologists do not know or they don't use it.
There are old writings, old Arabian writings.
For example, a British historian called Ibrahim Abdul al-Mas'udi, he wrote about the Great Pyramid and said the pyramid was constructed before the Great Flood.
Another Arabian historian, his name is Abdul al-Makritzi, he clearly said it was made before the Great Flood by a king with the name of Saurit.
Now Saurit, Al-Makritzi, the author said, Saurit is the same figure which the Hebrew call Enoch.
Now Enoch again, I'm very familiar.
I know the book of Enoch.
Enoch was the seventh patriarch before the great flood.
And Enoch has written the book, the book of Enoch.
And the book of Enoch exists in the first hand.
So the I form.
I did, I heard, I saw.
Enoch clearly says he was taken up into heaven and not into the heaven of Christianity.
It was a heaven where teachers were there.
They taught him in astronomy, in all kinds of things.
They dictated him books and he descended to our planet Earth before he left the planet.
And he gave all these books to his son.
The name of his son was Metusalah, the one who became so old in the Bible.
And now the old Arabian historians said it was constructed by Saurit, but Saurit is the same which the Hebrew call Enoch.
And also in old Arabian writings it says that in and under the pyramid we find some holes with books, books written by Enoch.
In the meantime, until today, we have only one book of Enoch.
That's the Ethiopian book of Enoch, found in an Ethiopian convent.
But Enoch has left over 300 books.
That's what he says to his son.
He says to Methusalem, now I give you all these books written by your father's hand.
Keep it and be warned before the great flood, because after then the great flood was coming.
Now I still believe that the father of Cheops did not construct the great pyramid.
And in the meantime, you know, by modern technology, we know for sure that in the pyramid we have different shafts and holes.
I have good photographs of two of these shafts.
Now, if we know the position of these shafts, you may ask, well, why don't nobody goes in there?
It is not possible in practice because these shafts are very small.
You know, they have a side length of about 14 centimeters.
So nobody can scrap in there.
You always can do it by electronic meanings, by robots and so on.
And this is expensive, and the Department of Antiquity, in most of the cases, does not accept these modern technologies.
Plus, of course, Egypt, if we're talking about Egypt, has been in a certain amount of turmoil for a while, so that isn't conducive to exploration and scientific discovery.
You brought me very neatly to what I wanted to ask you, though.
If we talk about the Great Pyramid, it is now increasingly said by a lot of people, who I'm sure you'd be very cheered to know that they're saying this, that the Great Pyramid has secrets which it has yet to give up, which is what you've just been saying, that there may be things within, indications, and like you talked about, Stonehenge being built by, or rather being built in the direction of an ancient civilization, extraterrestrials involved in this.
And to be put there, so that we were given a signpost in later years, so we'd ask what exactly is this for?
Similarly, with the Great Pyramid, it is said today that there are secrets within that will give us further clues to the theories that you've been espousing for all of these decades.
You see, there was two and a half thousand years ago, there was a Greek historian with the name Herodotus.
Herodotus was in Egypt for quite some years.
And he, two and a half thousand years ago, he published two volumes about Egypt.
And in his second volume, he clearly says he was in Tabis.
Tabus is today's Luxor on the Nile.
And he clearly says the high priest showed him 241 statues.
And the high priest made an explanation to every one statue.
He said, no, this one was a ruler from that time to the next time, etc.
And at the end, Herodotus writes that the high priest confirmed him that these 241 statues represent 11,340 years.
And at that time, the gods from the firmament were living among the humans.
Since that time, they have not returned.
Everyone can look at this, look at Herodotus, a second volume, chapter 241 and 243.
Now, archaeology did never take these dates of 11,341 years into consideration.
The same historian Herodotus said that under the Great Pyramid there is a lake, a sea, a small sea with absolutely clear water.
And in the water, there is a sarcophagus.
Also, that statement was never taken for real by Egyptologists.
In the meantime, this lake under the pyramid has been found.
I was there, I was down there, I made the photograph.
The water is absolutely clear.
And in the water, covered by the water, there is a sarcophagus.
They told me that the sarcophagus was empty.
So some rubbers must have been there before today's archaeology.
But what I want to make clear is Herodotus was right.
He said there is a lake under the Great Pyramid and the lake is there.
But nobody took him for serious.
The same thing with the 11,341 years.
So we should take these ancient writers.
There is not only Herodotus, Diodore, Platon, Strabo, all these historians around 2,000 years ago, they were all in Egypt and they all give complete different dates to the Egyptian kingdom than what we believe in our archaeology.
Egypt is much older than we think.
Do you believe that there was a civilization that predated the Egyptians, that were almost the power behind them, which died out, and then the Egyptians...
I mean, this goes to the point of Atlantis and so on.
You can never exclude that.
It's all possible.
But even if we had a high civilization a long time ago, that would not exclude the visit by extraterrestrial.
I mean, this high civilization could have been in contact with extraterrestrials.
It's been an awful long time, Eric, though.
Why?
All right, we get UFO reports and all the rest of it and constant pictures appearing on social media.
Why have the extraterrestrials not come back?
They will come back.
How do you know that?
About 420 years ago, the Spanish conquerors went for the first time to Central America.
It was Hernando Cortes.
He came to the upstakes.
The upstakes believed that Hernando Cortes was the expected God.
They were already waiting for somebody.
In their tradition, they are waiting for some gods coming back.
The same thing happened in South America.
Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru.
At the beginning, the Natives believe that he is the expected God.
The same thing happened with the British conqueror, the British explorer James Cook.
When he went to the South Sea, to Hawaii, at the beginning, the Natives looked at him like a god.
Later, they learned that he is just a human.
But in the beginning, they admired him like a god.
So this expectation of somebody returning existed long before Christianity.
It is not an invention of our Christian religion.
And what do we have today?
I'm educated as a Catholic, and we believe that Jesus will return one day.
But the Muslim society has the same story.
They believe that their teacher with the name of Mahadi will return to earth.
As we know, the Buddhistic society is waiting for the return of their Buddha.
The great Jewish community is waiting for the returning of the Messiah.
So every today's living religion still has this expectation that somebody will return.
I simply think, yes, somebody will return, but neither Messiah or Buddha or Jesus, simply extraterrestrials.
Okay, now within this chronology that is unfolding through time, where do you think we are now on that calendar?
How close to the return of extraterrestrials do you believe we are, bearing in mind the problems we have now?
But long before, I mean, maybe in this year or in the next year, our scientific community, our astronomers, the brilliant people, they will find definitely traces or proofs that extraterrestrial life exists.
You know, until about five years ago, we always believed that the Earth is an absolute exemption in our universe.
We are not too close to the Sun, it's not too hot.
We are not too far away, it's not too cold, etc.
We have water, and this is something extraordinary.
In the meantime, we know that only in our Milky Way, there must be about 5 billion Earth-like planets.
So the possibility of forms of life similar to us grows and grows.
And I'm sure our satellites will find that the traces of life out there.
And sooner or later, we will receive signals of them.
And the next step is then a visit.
What about Mars?
Do you think that Mars has some place in this unfolding story?
Not anymore.
Mars might have had a civilization, some unknown millions of times ago.
Nobody knows.
But at the moment, at least, Mars is a completely dead planet.
And as we know, it's too cold.
There is no oxygen, so nobody could survive on Mars.
And what about those people who say, look at the pictures that we've had beamed back in this last year or two from the surface of Mars?
There are people who say, look, there's evidence of regular geometry, of a civilization that may have been there that crumbled, of a civilization that may have left that planet and traveled somewhere else.
I know these pictures.
There was something which was called the face on Mars.
Yes.
And later it was denied by NASA.
They say if we take the same shot from another situation, the face disappears, does not exist anymore.
Or there is something like a pyramid on Mars.
And this is still there.
But I mean, we only can prove it if our satellites make a shot very, very close from different angels.
Or if one of our robots go there and make a good photo.
Then we would have a proof of an ancient civilization.
At the moment, we don't have it.
What about our relationship with the moon, Eric?
We went there as explorers.
We're only starting to think about going back again.
What do you think the moon has to tell us?
I'm sure, I repeat myself, that we were visited by extraterrestrials in the deep past.
And these extraterrestrials also made a stop on the moon.
So we would probably find some proofs, some traces of whatever it might be on the moon.
But of course, at the moment, the moon has no life at all.
It's a dead planet.
They're talking about putting life back there, aren't they?
Yeah, that's possible.
It's also possible to put life back on Mars.
But still on Mars, for example, we have two...
And Phobos and Deimos are very strange moons because they are, one of them is circling exactly over the equator of Mars.
And the moon is surrounding the planet Mars faster than the planet turns itself.
So there are still theories that maybe this moon, this moon on Mars, is an artificial object, and it could be empty.
But nobody knows it before we were there to make our exact measurements.
So it's obviously for you, as it has been for me, the recent developments in our exploration of space must have been very exciting for you.
It is very exciting.
And we will find, you know, I adore the scientific community, astronomy and astrophysics.
They will find definitely the truth out sooner or later.
There is another question.
We come back to these UFO cases.
Many people and also serious people believe that there is something out there.
There are people like the ex-governor of Arizona who says they saw with his own eyes these kind of thing.
So maybe we are already in contact and somebody tries to hide this before the public because we will maybe get into panic.
But you're Eric von Daniken.
You're famous.
Don't you think somebody would have quietly and privately contacted you to Say, Eric, by the way, this is happening.
They tell you, they wouldn't tell me.
I'd be happy if something like this happened.
But you're connected.
You know, I'm not connected.
You're connected.
They would tell you, wouldn't they?
Well, until today, I never had the visit of an extraterrestrial.
I would be extremely happy and grateful if I would meet somebody.
Until today, nothing like this happened.
Are you frustrated in the respect that, you know, here we are, you're 80 years of age now, aren't you?
Yeah.
So it's a big birthday for you.
I think, have you had that big birthday or is it?
Next year in April.
Next year, April.
Okay, so you're 79.
Does it frustrate you that the time of revelation where all of this will be revealed where the extraterrestrials return, you may not see it, I may not see it.
Is that frustrating?
In a way, yes.
But on the other hand, you see, I have moved a lot after my first book, Chariots of the God.
Many, many authors around the world, they have started with their own research.
And in the meantime, there are about 100 persons worldwide who are on the market with their own books which support the case.
At the same time, in the United States, there is the TV channel called History Channel.
They show since three years, they show a series called Ancient Aliens.
Although I do not accept every part of this series, it helps to bring up the question, were we alone?
Are we alone in the universe?
Were we visited?
So this idea is growing and growing more and more.
I also have some scientific books where some scientists came to the same conclusion in the meantime.
So even when I die in the next years, which is normal for humans, then the idea which I brought to the world will not die.
This idea continues.
There are too many researchers in the meantime who work on this case.
Quite a few years ago when I was a trainee, I went up to the northeast of England to a place called Sunderland to interview a man who was a very big fan of yours.
He was a civil servant.
He worked with tax affairs.
But his private life, he spent writing about the kind of things that you write about.
His name was W. Raymond Drake.
Oh, yes, I knew him.
Marvelous man.
Absolute, marvelous man.
He published a lot of books.
He was an absolutely sage person.
You know, he knew everything about mythology, about old history.
I admired him.
We were together at least two or three times.
Well, I was a young man and I traveled a long way to go meet him.
I couldn't drive then.
I didn't know how to drive a car, so I had to get a train and travel a couple of hundred miles, 300 kilometers or so to go and see him there.
And I spent a summer afternoon with him talking about all of this, trying to get my head around it.
Somewhere I've got the old taped interview with him, but I will never forget walking along a long beach in Sunderland, eating ice creams together like a couple of schoolboys, talking about all of this, Eric.
He was a wonderful man.
He absolutely is.
I adored him.
And also his books, he was absolutely the first in the English world.
And also in Germany, by the way, his books exist in the German world.
So the ones who work in this field, they know the name of Drake.
But the problem with it for him was that these ideas were seen to be so outlandish that the only way he could get these books published was to publish them in India.
He couldn't get them published in the UK.
Well, I didn't know about that.
Exactly.
Somewhere I've got one of the books.
You know, you asked me about frustration.
I'm frustrated.
Not because I don't see how the gods, the so-called gods, return, but in a way you are frustrated because you realize that the scientific community is still not taking into consideration this possibility of an early visit.
There are some scientific conferences.
One was in India four weeks ago, and another one somewhere in the United States, where they talk about SETI.
SETI means search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
And they were also coming up with the question, where we visited this planet long time ago.
And most of the scientists say this is all garbage, this is all rubbish, this can't be taken for serious.
Also, I admire these scientists in this field.
They are ignorant.
They know nothing.
I am an 80-year-old man.
I know so many of the mythologies of our forefathers around the world.
I know so much about the old religion of our forefathers around the world.
And I know there was an influence.
Somebody was talking to some of our humans.
There was a scientific community.
Some information was coming from up down to us.
And these scientists who say, this is all garbage, they do not know about that literature.
They really should read the latest books of Eric von Denison.
As everybody should.
Eric, do you believe that there will be some kind of focusing or cataclysmic event here on Earth that will prompt the extraterrestrials to reconnect with us?
I really don't know.
I mean, we could all time have a natural catastrophe.
It could be that the meteorite crashes on the planet and then we are all gone.
It could be that some viruses destroys the planet.
But other ways of cataclysm, you could have the next world war.
We know about all the garbage and terrible things which some of the fanatic Arabs do in the name of their religion.
So you never know what comes next.
But generally speaking, I'm an optimist.
I think that we are too intelligent and we are too clever and too smart.
We will not destroy ourselves.
And if something terrible happens, we will find a way to survive and to calm down again.
Also from outside, a meteorite, if some meteorite would come close to the Earth, our astronomers would know it in advance and we would find a way to destroy it.
So I'm an optimist.
I think that we have a great future.
And you have tremendous, just from your voice, tremendous vibrancy and dynamism about you, Eric.
What is 79-year-old Eric von Daniken, seller of 65 million books, working on at the moment?
Well, you see, I have, in all my books in the past, I was talking about archaeology and mythology.
I was pointing to some ruins which could not be made by the humans, etc.
What I'm doing now at the moment, I'm working on a new volume.
This is the stories behind the stories.
You see, Eric von Der Eniken was in all places of the world as a researcher.
How came?
Who invited me?
How did I paint this?
What secret did I find there which I did not publish in my books?
So this is not a biography.
It's just the stories behind the stories.
What scientists did I meet?
How were they towards me, friendly or negative, etc.?
What have I changed?
So this is what I'm working at the moment.
Well, that will be fascinating because that's, and I only put the question to you very clumsily at the beginning of this, that's the thing that fascinated me about you.
The things that went on in your brain and the influences that there were upon you that made you do the things that you've done.
And this will be the story of the people you met and those influences.
So that will be interesting, Eric.
You see, as I said, next April, I will be 80.
But if you would look at me, excuse me, I am still smoking and I am still drinking.
The gods love me.
So if anybody was to ask you, what is your secret then for longevity, what would it be?
No, the secret is just working, working, just be alive.
Never are lazy.
You see, even on Saturday, Sunday, I go to my office and it's never a must.
My work is a pleasure.
And that's probably what keeps me young.
And the people who like to debunk you and the people who still today in the 2000s like to say that really you haven't got hold of anything that's important for us to know, what would your message be to them?
They should first read Mondenik.
I know some books against my books, and for me, it's really to debunk them again.
So they don't know enough about this field.
This is what I have done, is, so to say, a new science.
I'm sure that within the next 10 years, at some universities, we open a new branch, which is called probably paleovisitology.
And then we start in a scientific way to clarify the situation.
But all these critics, these debunkers, I have the impression they have not read my book.
They simply come with the usual arguments.
Extraterrestrial could not be humans, they could not reach the distance, etc., etc.
But they do not know enough about the subject.
By the way, I like the debunking.
When I have critics in my office or when I meet some of these people, I'm happy to drink a glass of wine with them and to discuss with them because I always feel I have good arguments and in some cases better arguments than the other sides.
And we're into 2015 now.
And as we stare down the barrel of this new year with all that it might hold for us, are you going on any trips?
Are you going exploring?
Yes and no.
Yes and no.
I have speaking engagements in Brazil for a whole month of May.
I will have speaking engagements in June in Australia.
I go again to the United States.
I speak on universities with great audiences.
And in the meantime, of course, I work.
As I said in the book, Stories Behind the Stories, and so on.
So I'm absolutely active.
And in the field that you're in, you are a bit of a rock star.
I mean, you are the original.
You are the big name.
When people hear that I've got you on this show, they're going to listen.
How easy is it to keep your feet on the ground and try not to think of yourself as maybe you do, but try not to think of yourself as a big star.
I always was a simple figure.
I never had a villa with swimming pool.
I never wanted to have a Ferrari as a car.
I'm living in Switzerland in my mountains in a hold, in a house which we call Chalet.
Chalet is a wood house with my wife.
I am married now with the same wife since 57 years.
Wow.
And I'm very happy.
I never wanted to be a star and I am not a star.
I am a simple figure with an idea which I think I can prove more or less.
But I am not something extraordinary.
I am like everyone.
How would you like to be remembered, Eric?
Well, as the one who comes up with an idea and had good arguments and defended as good as possible.
You're doing a few interviews this year.
Do you relish doing interviews like this one?
Yes, but of course I prefer to make the interviews in my mother language, in German, because there I have much more words.
My vocabulary is bigger in the mother language than I do it in English.
Well, I think you've expressed yourself very clearly and quite superbly, and you make me very ashamed of the fact that I really only have my mother tongue and a little bit of French.
You wouldn't like my French.
What would I say?
The amount of French I know it's unpe.
Is that right?
What's the word?
Only a little, unpeu.
Um peux, yes, a little.
A little.
That's all I know.
Oh, boy.
I need to get learning German.
Eric, thank you very much indeed, and I hope that one of these days we're able to speak again.
I hope one of these days I'm back in England and have a speech somewhere in your wonderful country.
Okay, well, maybe we can meet then and I can record something in person.
If people want to know about your work, you do have a website, don't you?
Of course.
Just go into Eric von Deniken Yo and then you will find everything automatically.
Eric, thank you very much indeed and give my love to lovely Interlachen.
It was a pleasure to discuss with you.
Thank you for your patience.
Bye-bye.
Well, a special event here on The Unexplained, Eric von Däniken.
And I'll put a link to him and his work on my website, www.theunexplained.tv.
During this year of 2015, I hope to have more big-name guests here.
If you can help to steer me in their direction, if you can make provisional contact with them on my behalf, all of that would be gratefully received.
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