Video Review Guide

In Search of Ancient Astronauts, Parts 1 & 2

1975, 52 minutes-each part, color, Xerox Films

Summary

Rod Serling narrates a two-part video based on Erich Von Daniken's book Chariots of the Gods?. The video begins with a range of "mysterious" phenomena such as the Iraqi "battery" and the Piri-Ries maps. Showing a bit of who Erich Van Daniken is, The  film jumps from artifact to artifact and place to place. Crucial evidence is provided from Biblical comments about celestial objects.

Snippets of interviews with well known scientists associated with the space program such as Werner Von Braun are taken out of context and placed in a new context that seems to support the possibility of space travel and extraterrestrial contact.

The video makes crucial mistakes. For example, Teotihuacan is attributed to the Aztecs (their center was Tenochtitlan). Many other errors are evident and probable. As you watch the video also notice how some of the data that appear in this video also appear in more recent videos such as the Mysterious Origins of Man produced in 1995.

Questions:

1. Rod Serling was the creator and host of The Twilight Zone, the popular series of early 1960s. How does the choice of a narrator affect the credibility of the video?
2. How are reputable scientists used in the video? Can you tell that the segments used are taken out of context? What clues might there be?
3. How does the use of music affect your viewing?
4. Is the use of comparisons between living groups, as in the case of the Cargo cults, and prehistoric groups reasonable? What constraints should there be?
5. Notice what the narrator says about speculation, imagination and theory? Is there a deliberate effort to confuse the terms?

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larry-zimmerman@uiowa.edu
University of Iowa Anthropology
08/18/98