Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken Page A

ago. Has mankind learnt anything as a result? Only a few decades ago Hitler had books burnt in the public squares and as recently as 1966 the same thing happened in China during Mao's kindergarten revolution. Thank heavens that today books do not exist in single copies, as in the past.
    The texts and fragments still available transmit a great deal of knowledge from the remote past. In all ages the sages of a nation knew that the future would always bring wars and revolutions, blood and fire. Did this knowledge perhaps lead these sages to hide secrets and traditions from the mob in the colossal buildings of their period or to preserve them from possible destruction in a safe place? Have they 'hidden' information or accounts in pyramids, temples or statues, or bequeathed them in the form of ciphers so that they would withstand the ravages of time? We certainly ought to test the idea, for far-seeing contemporaries of our own day have acted in this way—for the future.
    In 1965 the Americans buried two time capsules in the soil of New York so constituted that they could withstand the very worst that this earth can offer in the way of calamities for 5,000 years. These time capsules contained news that we want to transmit to posterity, so that some day those who strive to illuminate the darkness surrounding the past of their forefathers will know how we lived. The capsules are made of a metal that is harder than steel; they can even survive an atomic explosion. Apart from 'daily news' the capsules also contain photographs of cities, ships, automobiles, aircraft and rockets; they house samples of metals and plastics, of fabrics, threads and cloths; they hand down to posterity objects in everyday use such as coins, tools and toilet articles; books about mathematics, medicine, physics, biology and astronautics are preserved on microfilm. In order to complete this service for some remote and unknown future race, the capsules also contain a 'key', a book with the help of which all the written material can be translated into the languages of the future.
    A group of engineers from Westinghouse Electric had the idea of presenting the time capsules to posterity. John Harrington invented the ingenious decoding system for generations yet unknown. Lunatics? Visionaries? I find the realisation of this project beneficial and reassuring. It's nice to know that there are men today who think 5,000 years ahead! The archaeologists of some remote future age will not find things any easier than we did. For after an atomic conflagration none of the world's libraries will be of any use and all the achievements that make us so proud will not be worth twopence, because they have disappeared, because they have been destroyed, because they have been atomised. It does not even need an atomic conflagration to ravage the earth to justify the New Yorkers' imaginative action. A shifting of the earth's axis by a few degrees would cause inundations on an unprecedented and irresistible scale—in any case they would swallow up every single written word. Who is arrogant enough to assert that the sages of old could not have conceived the same sort of idea as the far-sighted New Yorkers?
    Undoubtedly the strategists of an A- and H-bomb war will not direct their weapons against Zulu villages and harmless Eskimos. The will use them against the centres of civilisation. In other words the radioactive chaos will fall on the advanced, most highly developed peoples. Savages and primitive peoples far away from the centres of civilisation will be left. They will not be able to transmit our culture or even give an account of it, because they have never taken part in it. Even intelligent men and visionaries who had tried to preserve an underground library will not have been able to help the future much. 'Normal' libraries will be destroyed in any case and the surviving primitive peoples will know nothing of the hidden secret libraries. Whole regions of the globe will become