Ancient Nuclear Warfare

Are the Indian remains of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, their sudden abandonment and the apparent discovery of an ancient site with a layer of radioactive ash the best available evidence for the possibility that our ancient ancestors possessed a highly advanced technology – which might have included atomic warfare?

Did an ancient advanced – if not extra-terrestrial – civilisation exist on Earth? The question is very intriguing and despite the academic ridicule that has been bestowed on the likes of Erich von Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin, the idea has caught the world’s imagination, with the help of Hollywood and shows such as Stargate SG-1.

But apart from a battle for our hearts, there is also a battle for our minds: is there evidence that ET visited and lived here, millennia ago? Many possible scenarios and theories have been put forward, from statements that Atlantis was a high tech civilisation, leaving us an as yet undiscovered Hall of Records and the pyramid complex at Gizeh, to the possibility that the Nazca lines might be a prehistoric airport.

In 2007, the latter was voted as one of the Fortean Wonders of the World. Nazca’s popularity is almost singularly due to Erich von Däniken, whose approach in his quest for serious consideration of the “ET question” has been to point out various anomalies, resulting in a pool of evidence that is then queried as to whether together, this could – should – be seen as evidence of either an alien or a highly technologically advanced civilisation.

What his approach has revealed, is that science in the 1960s thought it had all the answers, but largely had to perform much additional research. Today, this has meant that some of the sites, such as Nazca, have received a more proper scientific study.

In a larger context, von Däniken’s “body of evidence” has also enabled easier acceptance of sites such as Caral, which truly have made the “New World” as “Old” – if not older – revealing many parallels between the two continents. To some extent, von Däniken has fought “their battle”, eased the scientific acceptance of Caral and like.

It is therefore clear that von Däniken has had an impact on archaeology, but, equally, since first airing the question whether or not we have alien ancestors, the answer has remained a negative: there is, four decades later, no hard evidence ET landed on Earth.

Another popular ancient astronaut author is Zecharia Sitchin, who, in origin, decided to focus on a more specific area, the Sumerian civilisation, and analysed every detail of its myths and history, claiming the devil was in the detail: that hidden inside these myths, when properly translated and explained, was clear evidence of an alien component of this civilisation, which he then set out to write down in a series of books, The Earth Chronicles, beginning with The Twelfth Planet in 1976.