But in practice, it is irrelevant: who needs the approval of officialdom when you can harness the power of speculation? Chariots of the Gods? might be farcical but it’s not fiction. They may have given us more than their technology: “Does not this seriously pose the question whether the human race is not an act of deliberate ‘breeding’ by unknown beings from outer space? Otherwise what can be the sense of the constantly recurring fertilization of human beings by giants and sons of heaven, with the consequent extermination of unsuccessful specimen.” In theory, the UAP report is good news for the Von Danikens of the world.

First published in English in 1969, Chariots of the Gods? proposes that aliens visited early humans, giving them advanced technology and sending us on our earth-conquering ways. The main thrust was that “the government should give us more money and resources so we can data science the mystery out of these unidentified thingos, some of which may be owned and operated by foreign adversaries gathering intelligence on us with whizz-bang new technology.”Ĭompare the tone of caution of Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena with the abandon of Swiss writer Erich von Daniken’s millions-selling book, Chariots of the Gods?. The main thrust of the report (speaking of deflating balloons) was not that super-intelligent giant bugs with antennas and wielding earth-destroying weapons are waiting in their great big ships on the far side of Mars to invade us. The report concluded that one UAP under review was a deflating balloon-so, unidentified no longer-but that the rest were “unexplained.” But unexplained doesn’t mean unexplainable unidentified doesn’t mean unidentifiable. But while UAP might be beyond our comprehension, they are not apparitions: “Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors.” The doggedly bureaucratic term UAP-not a UFO in sight, certainly not a flying saucer-is accurate, presumably, because the phenomena in question might not be “flying.” It might be doing something else entirely, perhaps something that does not yet have a name. It based its conclusions on accounts received from “military aviators” and picked up by “systems we considered to be reliable.” In other words, if you, a member of the public, have seen strange lights while taking a rural stroll on a clear night after polishing off a bottle of bourbon, your intel is not “reliable.” Heavy on acronyms and light on detail, it confirmed the existence of what it called unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP. In 2021, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a dry, short, preliminary report-11 pages, including two appendices-that delivered startling if vague news. –Erich von Daniken, Chariots of the Gods?

“Isn’t it possible that things which ought not to exist do in fact exist?”

Aerial phenomena