Read Online The Gold of the Gods by Erich von Däniken - Free Book Online Page A

worldwide traditions! The creation of man by extra-terrestrial intervention does not interfere with the theory of our ancestry or the theory of evolution.
    Now there are two questions. Firstly, what event set off the process of becoming man? Secondly, why did
homo sapiens
alone of all the kinds of hominids become intelligent?
    There are many answers, but none of them is convincing. About a million years ago all hominid types of ape had a brain capacity of about 25 cubic inches. If the climate drove the apes down from the trees during the following millennia, that must have included all kinds of apes and not just the one which was selected to produce
homo sapiens
. But if the ability to produce tools had been a prerequisite for development and further evolution, there should not really be any apes left today. “Is it absolutely essential to become man in order not to die out?” asks Oskar Kiss Maerth in his book
Der Anfang war das Ende
(The Beginning was the End). With regard to the problem of the origin of man, Maerth puts exciting questions like this:
“If one race of monkeys was forced to stand on its hind legs for fear of wild animals and because it was easier to feed themselves, why did not the other apes, too, stand on
their
hind legs, for the same reason?

“Basically all hominid apes were and are vegetarian . . .

“So were man’s ancestors; they only became meat eaters during the process of becoming man . . . Meat eating is supposed to have been a sign of increased intelligence and therefore an advance, because man could nourish himself ‘better’ and ‘more easily’ on meat. For this compliment thank the wolves and wild cats, who had been carnivores many millions of years before.

“Why did meat eating suddenly become an ‘easier’ form of nourishment for man’s ancestors? Since when has it been easier to kill a gazelle or a bison than to pluck fruit from a tree?

“During the last million years many dry and rainy periods alternated . . . all the great apes were able to withdraw to the remaining woods to continue leading their usual way of life. Why did all the great apes do this, except those from which man is supposed to have originated later?”
     
    There is really nothing in the theory of evolution to explain the mighty leap by which
homo sapiens
set himself apart from his family of hominids. All we hear is that the brain suddenly became efficient, acquired technical know-how, was capable of observing the heavens and establishing communication in social communities. In terms of the history or evolution this leap from animalistic being to
homo sapiens
took place overnight. A miracle? Miracles just don’t happen.
    The assertion that the intelligence of our earliest ancestors had already begun a million years ago and developed nice and slowly once they lived in communities does not hold water. All mammals live in groups, flocks and herds; they hunt and defend themselves communally. Have they become intelligent on this account? Even if a being resembling man has produced primitive tools, that in itself does not make him a
homo sapiens
. Professor Leakey of the National Research Center for Prehistory and Paleontology, Nairobi, refers to finds near Fort Ternan, which showed that
Kenyapithecus Wickeri
produced edged tools and that
homo habilis
used simple tools two million years ago. Leakey also tells us that Jane van Lavich-Goodall investigated chimpanzees in their natural surroundings and established that these distant cousins of man regularly make and use a variety of simple tools. Who is willing to admit these chimpanzees, which meet the criteria for membership of
homo sapiens
, into the circle of intelligent human beings?
    Beings resembling man that made and used tools have always existed. Beings resembling man who worshipped and feared the gods, painted cave walls with frescoes, sang songs, had a feeling of shame, cultivated friendship and buried their fellow-men—
those kinds
of beings have not