PSEUDOHISTORY: Illusions, self-deceit, truth and lies09/16/2018 15:46Sometime in the late seventies, I and Rose went to an auditorium in the university town of Lund in southern Sweden, to listen to a lecture and watch colour slides presented by Erich Anton Paul von Däniken. The hall was filled and the atmosphere was expectant. The crowd was mixed; enthusiastic UFO nerds sat with their cameras prepared, while sceptical academics had small notebooks ready to write down the Swiss amateur researcher´s most outrageous claims.

A sturdy, calm and authoritative von Däniken entered, accompanied by excited applause, the podium and then displayed photographs of a massive, non-rusting iron pillar in New Delhi, the Cheops Pyramid, a large, sculpted slab covering a tomb in Mexican Palenque, monumental Moai heads from the Easter Island, Stonehenge, gold treasures and signs of UFO presence in caves in Ecuador, the Turkish Piri Reis map presenting the Antarctican coastline even before it had been discovered, the Tulli papyrus describing UFOs over ancient Egypt, the Peruvian Nazca lines and a host of other objects and sites proving that the earth had been visited by aliens from outer space, who had influenced and changed human culture and even our genetic composition.

von Däniken demonstrated how pineapples (though they are more likely pine cones) were depicted on Babylonian reliefs, far earlier than such fruits had been brought to Europe from the Caribbean.

There were pictures demonstrating how ancient Babylonians had used electric batteries. That Egyptians had used big light bulbs (more likely depictions of lotus buds enclosing snakes symbolizing their inherent fertility).

Space crafts from ancient India (actually heavenly temples).

Maya gods with space suits (head ornaments of wood and feathers).

The Kayapó people in Brazil, who during dance celebrations personalize ancient astronauts (actually shamans from the Mebêngôk people, among whom members of the Xikrin clan on specific occasions dress up as Bep Karoti´s mekakron, his spiritual double. Bep Karoti was a chief who sometime in the twentieth century introduced a new method of braiding carpets).

Tradução do Google: O povo Kayapó, no Brasil, que durante as celebrações de dança personifica antigos astronautas (na verdade, xamãs do povo Mebêngôk, entre os quais membros do clã Xikrin, em ocasiões específicas, se vestem como o mekakron de Bep Karoti, seu duplo espiritual. Bep Karoti foi um chefe que, em algum momento do século XX, introduziu um novo método de trançar tapetes).