Erich von Däniken Passes Away at Age 90

Erich von Däniken, the Swiss author whose claims about ancient astronauts influenced generations of pseudoscientific thought, died on January 10, 2026 at age 90 according to an announcement on his official website. Best known for his 1968 book Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, von Däniken proposed that extraterrestrial visitors interacted with ancient human civilizations, interpreting religious texts and archaeological artifacts as evidence of alien contact.

Von Däniken's central thesis asserted that advanced beings from other planets visited Earth thousands of years ago, and that humans misinterpreted their technology as divine manifestations. In his final statement on his website titled "My aspirations and why," he maintained: "Extraterrestrials visited our Earth many millennia ago... Our Stone Age ancestors could not grasp what happened back then. They wrongfully believed that the extraterrestrials were gods."

Despite selling over 65 million books translated into 32 languages, von Däniken's work faced consistent rejection from mainstream archaeologists, historians, and scientists. Major flaws in his methodology included:

1. Selective interpretation of archaeological evidence while ignoring contextual data
2. Misrepresentation of radiocarbon dating and stratigraphy
3. Dependence on long-debunked claims like the Nazca Lines being "alien runways"
4. Frequent logical fallacies including post hoc reasoning and argument from ignorance

The scientific community uniformly classifies his work as pseudohistory lacking empirical support. A 1974 analysis by the American Anthropological Association concluded his claims "ignore the existence of a vast body of anthropological and archaeological data" and demonstrate "a consistent failure to employ standard methods of scientific inquiry."

Von Däniken's legacy includes spawning numerous derivative works in pseudoscience and pop culture, including the History Channel's Ancient Aliens series. His organization, the Research Society for Archaeology, Astronautics and SETI (A.A.S.), continues promoting his theories despite their rejection by SETI researchers and mainstream science.

Official obituary notice (German)

Critical analysis of ancient astronaut claims

Peer-reviewed debunking of Chariots of the Gods claims