Mystical systems
Ancient Astronauts
Direct answer
Ancient Astronauts: The ancient astronaut idea holds that visitors from the sky shaped early civilisations and their monuments. It dates from books of the 1960s and 1970s and is rejected by archaeologists.
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At a glance
- Also called
- ancient aliens, ancient astronaut theory, paleocontact, chariots of the gods
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Anunnaki, Nibiru, Pseudoarchaeology, Atlantis
The ancient astronaut idea holds that visitors from the sky shaped early civilisations and their monuments. It dates from books of the 1960s and 1970s and is rejected by archaeologists.
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Who started the ancient astronaut idea?
The claim takes several forms. One says the monuments were too large or too exact for the people of their day, so someone else must have built them. Another reads old myths and pictures of gods descending as reports of machines. A third, set out by Zecharia Sitchin, says that humankind itself was bred by visitors named in Sumerian texts.
Archaeologists answer on two grounds. On evidence: the quarries, tools, ramps, workers' towns and written records of the builders have been found, and no object of unearthly make has. On fairness: the examples are nearly always the works of Egyptians, Native Americans and Pacific islanders, and the theory takes those works from them.
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What sets Ancient Astronauts apart
The idea has a recognisable method. It begins with an object shown out of its setting, a carving, a wall, a line on a desert, and asks how primitive people could have made it. The word primitive does the work: the conclusion is assumed in the question. Its examples cluster outside Europe, and critics have noted that Gothic cathedrals, which are just as hard to build, are almost never credited to visitors.
- Best known book: Erich von Däniken, Chariots of the Gods?, 1968
- French forerunner: Pauwels and Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians, 1960
- Sumerian version: Zecharia Sitchin, The Twelfth Planet, 1976
- Early scholarly reply: The Space-Gods Revealed, 1976, foreword by Carl Sagan
- Unearthly artefacts found: none, at any excavated site
Often mistaken for something else: Pseudoarchaeology is the wider habit of skipping evidence about the past; the ancient astronaut idea is its most famous single claim.
The story behind Ancient Astronauts
The theme appeared in magazine fiction and in the books of Charles Fort before 1950. The Morning of the Magicians by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier (1960) made it fashionable in France, and Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? (1968) made it a worldwide bestseller. Sitchin's The Twelfth Planet followed in 1976, and a television series begun in 2009 has kept it in view. Replies include The Space-Gods Revealed (1976), with a foreword by Carl Sagan.
Why Ancient Astronauts matters
It is the most widely repeated claim about the ancient past, and its method, a striking picture with the digging left out, recurs in many others.
How to read Ancient Astronauts
Readers test it one site at a time, asking what excavators found there and whether the people of the place left tools, plans and graves.
Ancient Astronauts in practice: an example
Shown a photograph of a great stone wall and told nobody could have built it, a reader can look up the quarry it came from.
Where readings of Ancient Astronauts go wrong
The idea denies ancient peoples their own achievements; the house does not repeat it as true.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- ancient aliens, ancient astronaut theory, paleocontact, chariots of the gods, ancient alien theory
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
Who started the ancient astronaut idea?
It grew from mid-century magazine writing and a French bestseller of 1960, and it became famous through Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? in 1968. Zecharia Sitchin added his own version in 1976.
Is there evidence for ancient astronauts?
No. No artefact of unearthly origin has been found at any site, while the tools, quarries, records and settlements of the human builders have been. Archaeologists regard the claim as unsupported.
Why do archaeologists object to it so strongly?
Besides the lack of evidence, it credits the works of Egyptians, Native Americans, Pacific islanders and others to someone else. Many scholars point out that this repeats older habits of doubting what those peoples could do.
