Humans are the result of genetic engineering
Like a number of fringe writers, von Däniken has immense difficulties with the origins of the human species, as well as of human civilisation. He finds the transition from archaic to modern forms to be too rapid to account for in evolutionary terms and is evidently troubled by the common assertion of religions that humans have been created in a god’s image. To him, this is evidence for the special creation o humanity. Where he differs from the creationists, though, is in his insistence that when ancient texts speak of ‘gods’, they actually mean ‘astronauts’ (hence the subtitle of the English translation of Chariots of the Gods?: Was God an Astronaut?). Humans were created in the (relatively) recent past by the selective interbreeding of spacemen with proto-human females.
More to come…