Reality Check: Insolvent Mysteries [ Erich von Däniken's Mystery Park ]

Archaeology ^ | Volume 60 Number 2, March/April 2007 | unattributed (probably Mark Rose)

[SunkenCiv]

Erich von Däniken's Mystery Park has closed its doors. The pseudoarchaeological Disneyland opened in Interlaken, Switzerland in 2003 and was billed as the ultimate expression of von Däniken's theories, made famous by such books as Chariots of the Gods? ("Letter from Switzerland" January/February 2004). The Swiss hotelier became a best-selling author on the strength of his claim that aliens had a hand in virtually every ancient achievement, from the Giza pyramids to the Nasca lines.

If you didn't make it to the park, a bizarre hodgepodge of pyramids and space-age pavilions surrounding a geodesic sphere, you weren't the only one. Attendance fell far short of the projected 500,000 per year, and Mystery Park filed for bankruptcy late last year.

But no worries. Switzerland's Laténium, an archaeological park at the important Celtic site of La Tène, isn't closing any time soon. You won't find henge-building aliens there, but it has its fair share of mysteries.

[SunkenCiv]

---

(Courtesy Mystery Park AG)

---

[SunkenCiv]

The Wiki-wacky-pedia said that "a mere" 200,000 visited the park, which isn't too bad, really. Click the image to view the video:

---

---

[LiteKeeper]

DR Clifford Wilson wrote a book called _Crash Go The Chariots_ where he clearly demonstrated that everything in Van Daniken's was a lie. Totally discredited the book.

[pillut48]

Paging Dr. Daniel Jackson! Dr. Jackson, please pick up the white phone in the lobby...
;-)

[SunkenCiv]

I'm not too sure anyone needed another book to tell them that "Chariots of the Gods?" wasn't founded on fact. :')

---

Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von Däniken

---

[SunkenCiv]

Heh... von Daniken actually appears on the super-duper version of the DVD of "Stargate" (the movie), in a short extra called "Is there a Stargate?" (or perhaps "Was...", I don't remember).

[SunkenCiv]

ZetaTalk: Whiplash
ZetaTalk | written Apr 14, 2004 | Nancy Lieder
Posted on 12/30/2005 8:47:27 PM EST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1549609/posts

[ccmay]

That was a pretty absorbing book and movie for a nerdy pre-teen in its day. Remember the Mayan 'astronaut' stone glyph?

Complete bunk, of course, but entertaining bunk.

-ccm

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, that was pretty cool lookin'. :')

[tanuki]

Thanks for posting that. Sorry I didn't make it there.

[Mobile Vulgus]

Amusing that this guy thought there enough Art Bell clones that would visit this place!!!

[jwh_Denver]

Van Daniken admitted in an interview he mada a lot of stuff up.

[Al Simmons]

I enjoyed reading his books when I was a teenager in the 1970s. Entertaining science fiction they turned out to be.

I doubt that even then too many people took them as gospel.

[LiteKeeper]

Wilson's book came out about a year after Van Daniken's book. Dr Wilson, by the way, is an Australian archaeologist of some repute.

[AU72]

He should have taken L.Ron Hubbard's cue and started a religion.

[SunkenCiv]

Heh... that has been tried a number of times before and after LRH. It's surprising to me how many cults arise around hypothetical extraterrestrials (Unarius, Urantia, Nation of Islam, etc)