I was thinking of something more current but in the same ballpark. Von Danniken made a cultural splash in the early 70s with a ridiculous crackpot book. I read it back when it was hot and forgot it along with everyone else as the rebuttals accumulated.
The ancient Egyptians left a lot of records which we relearned to read with the decipherment of heiroglyphics in the 19th century. Since then, there has accumulated a body of work on Egyptology that doesn't blow away with every little breeze.