Erich Von Daniken - The Gold Of The Gods

6 - Rarities, Curiosities And Speculations
imagined to do."). The gods were often hot-tempered in their impatience; they were
quick to punish and wipe out the malcontents and those who did not follow the
biological laws laid down, "pour encourager les autres." The gods had no "moral"
feelings about such radical cleaning up operations for they felt that they were
responsible, as creators of men, for their future development.
12. But men were afraid of the gods and their punitive expeditions, especially once the
gods were no longer first generation gods, i.e. when they were their sons and daughters
to whom men believed they were already assimilated (proof: mythologies of the families
of the gods).
13. Then whole groups of men began to dig themselves underground hideouts out of fear
of divine judgment. Perhaps these groups of men still had tools available that they had
made under the gods' guidance-tools with which they could perhaps work stone more
easily than archaeologists can imagine today.
14. It is a fact that today more and more gigantic underground dwellings that are not
identical to the tunnel systems in Ecuador and Peru are being discovered annually all
over our globe. The subterranean human cities which are constantly being discovered are
obviously the work of many hands; they were not made with sophisticated technical
equipment such as the thermal drill. Such subterranean shelters, which men built out of
fear of "destruction from the cosmos," can be found, for example, at:
San Agustin, Colombia: underground sanctuaries with connecting passages.
Cholula, Mexico: underground temple with connecting passages. (Not to be confused
with the passages stretching for kilometers installed by archaeologists.)
Derinkuyu, Anatolia, Turkey: underground cities with several-storied "houses" and large
assembly rooms.
15. If men, namely our ancestors, built safety bunkers underground by hand, with the
expenditure of tremendous effort, they did not do so for pleasure, nor for protection
against wild animals, nor to the glory of their religious ideals. Nor did they do so out of
fear of some alien conquerors. Such excavations using simple tools and crude physical
strength would have taken years. Alien conquerors would have had no difficulty in
forcing these crazy defenders to surrender. They had only to sit down outside the cave
entrances and starve the inmates to death.
16. I say that there was only one reason for the underground caves built by human hands
and that was fear of attack from the air! But who could assail men from the air? Only
those whom they knew by tradition, those gods who had once visited them long, long
ago.
I know I am offering my head on a platter to every critic because of this daring