Expert: Ralph Salier - 8/15/2007

Question
Hi Ralph,
im currently rereading a book of my fathers, which was written in the 60's by one Erich von Daniken, titled Chariots of the gods, was god an astronaut?, which is basically an outline of Erichs thesis that in the remote past earth was visited by a space faring race of hominoids who may well have speeded up our understanding of technology dramatically. I am currently reading a section which concerns the egyptians and their uncanny ability to produce either incredibily conincedental ratios and dimensions to their works (i.e. the pyramid of cheops giving the figure of PI when the area is divided by twice its height, or when said height is times by 1000 million it give the figure which is equal to the distance between the earth and the sun, some 93 million miles and so on). Also in this book it is claimed that even with a great deal of resouces this structure still could not be reconstructed in any resonable length of time and certaily not the same degree of accuracy (apparently blocks were accuratly joined to 1000th of an inch), my question to you is, how true is the above statements, are they credible?   many thanks,
James McElhinney

Answer
HI James,  

The basic answer is NO. Mr. Von Daniken was very liberal with his interpretations and math.  Also the Egyptians were masters at observation if nothing else and even with the rudamentry tools they possesed, their engineering skills were quite remarkable but not beyond their capability.  We, today are no smarter then they were but have more tools.

Were we visited by aliens? I suppose it is with in the realm of possibility but as an Archaeologist I am very cautious in assigning pictographs, science or other very human capabilities to aliens.  Quite frankly, IF we were visited, they would not have interfered.