Hasnt died, just went home.
Used to love the books and although totally gaga they were among the first to challenge the established narrative.
Some food for thought at least sometimes.
RIP
I think he could have been on the right track, only without the aliens.
I find it conceivable to imagine a Phoenician, or Egyptian level civilization that existed before the floods (plural, meltwater pulse I and II) and was wiped out at the end of the younger dryas when sea levels rose by 140 Meters.
Society advances one death at a time.
A bit surprised that the underlying racism was never called out. Could brown guys build a pyramid 4+k years ago? No it was aliens. Homo Sapiens did not evolve slowly, really slowly. Modern progress and comfort is due to hard work and industriousness starting with the Industrial Revolution. Everything before? Aliens! Agriculture and animal domestication? Not that important. Metallurgy? Of course alien technology.
I guess Mr. von Däniken was never confronted in contemporary times because life’s to short to care about all the craziness and racism from the 1960s and 1970s. There’s enough contemporary quacks to deal with.
I think we’d have a hard time building them now.
As such, I would object to classifying it as racism. He had the same objections about Stonehenge and other megalithic sites, which were obviously not built by “brown people”.
Egyptians themselves don’t believe they were built by humans, for what it’s worth.
We have contemporary examples that a comparatively good salary and not caring much about workplace safety allows to build modern marvels.
About Stonehenge, centuries of folk tales link it to giants or magicians, anything but aliens. The aliens thing come from the 1960s-1970s UFO pop culture which the Swiss author took part.
Anyway, my take is too academic. I raise a stink when contemporary people thinks ancient people were too dumb to engineer anything. I’m not surprised if it’s acceptable to most people in Britain or Egypt, but it’s still pseudo-science.
Finally, from a marketing perspective anything that makes the people more attracted to the structure is fine. But, that’s just thinking about revenue, nothing else.
Can you imagine trying to build the pyramids in Germany?
The planning permits would take longer than the pyramids in Egypt have lasted.
Elon built the factory in Grünheide in a little over two years IIRC. And that was during COVID.
All you have to do is split the permits and build as they are waived through.