Erich von Däniken
Also known as Erich von Daeniken
Swiss pseudoscientific writer and ufologist (1935–2026)
AI overview
Erich von Däniken was a Swiss writer and UFO enthusiast who became famous for proposing that ancient human civilizations were visited and influenced by extraterrestrial beings, ideas he presented as alternative explanations for archaeological mysteries and religious texts. His work, while widely popular and influential in popular culture, has been rejected by mainstream archaeologists and scholars as pseudoscience lacking credible evidence.
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Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- IQ-TREE: A Fast and Effective Stochastic Algorithm for Estimating Maximum-Likelihood Phylogenies
· 2014 · cited 23,842x
- Reproducible, interactive, scalable and extensible microbiome data science using QIIME 2
· 2019 · cited 20,048x
- ModelFinder: fast model selection for accurate phylogenetic estimates
· 2017 · cited 16,476x
Article
Erich Anton Paul von Däniken (/ˈɛrɪk fɒn ˈdɛnɪkən/; German: [ˈeːrɪç fɔn ˈdɛːnɪkən]; 14 April 1935 – 10 January 2026) was a Swiss author of several pseudoscientific books which made claims about extraterrestrial influences on early human culture, including the best-selling Chariots of the Gods?, published in 1968. Däniken was one of the main figures responsible for popularizing the "paleo-contact" and ancient astronauts hypotheses.
The ideas put forth in his books are rejected by virtually all scientists and academics, who categorize his work as pseudohistory, pseudoarchaeology, and pseudoscience. Early in his career, he was convicted and served time for several counts of fraud or embezzlement, and wrote one of his books in prison.