Odyssey of the Gods

by Erich von Daniken

  Remarkably enough, Apollo is also said to have built the unvanquish-able walls of Troy. He was worshipped as “protector of the ways and roads,” and with his heavenly vessel made regular trips to other peoples, in particular the Hyperboreans who lived somewhere “beyond the North winds.” Even at Herodotus’ time the Greeks did not know who these ominous-sounding Hyperboreans were. Hesiod and Homer mention them, and Herodotus finally gives up trying to track them down (IV, 36): “If the Hyperboreans exist, then there must also be people living in the farthest reaches of the South. I have to laugh when I see how many people have drawn maps of the world.”

  And I have to smile when I think for how many millennia mankind has been stumbling about in the fog of mythology. These stories may be a great source of poetry—and all the “gods” offered rich pickings for human fantasy to expand on—but unfortunately they are not true. What remains of the myths is not datable history, is little upon which to build accurate fact. Yet they still contain a most decisive and essential core of truth which has survived all wars and catastrophes in the form of a nebulous folk memory, which ultimately transforms itself into stone and can be traced at all “mystical” sites. Things are no different nowadays. Places of pilgrimage arise without exception from little events which someone or other says they have experienced: a Mary miracle perhaps; or an astonishing, sudden cure; a spring or an incomprehensible natural phenomenon. Other people, astonished to hear of such a thing, start to visit the site where it happened, out of curiosity. Then comes the first pub, the first chapel, the first church, always at the place where something apparently inexplicable occurred. Buildings arise where folk memory is at work.

  Everyone should go and see Delphi. The complex spreads out under Parnassus, surrounded by the gentle slopes of mountains which at evening shroud the landscape in cascades of color, light and shadow. Pausanius, the traveller from 1,800 years ago, describes his impressions in reverent words, and does not forget to mention the many and disputed tales about Delphi. Close to 3,000 statues, he says, are said to have flanked the holy street.28 In his day the “Sayings of the Seven Wise Men” still stood chiseled in stone on the wall of the antechamber of the main temple. They were pieces of wisdom which came from various visitors to Delphi and which still possess relevance today:

  • Know thyself.

  • Most people are bad.

  • Practice makes perfect.

  • Seize the day.

  • Nothing in excess.

  • More haste less speed.

  • No one escapes their destiny.

  The temples of Delphi were destroyed on many occasions by earthquakes and landslides, and rebuilt each time over the ruins. The “Delphi business” was hot property. The Pythia murmured her oracles, sitting upon a tripod above a chasm in the earth, from which steam poured forth. There has been much speculation about this, and recently geologists have even announced the discovery, in the temple area, of geological fault zones, under which there are layers containing hydrocarbon: “Such formations often emit gases such as ethylene’s, methane and hydrogen supplied.”29 These gases could, it is said, have induced in the Pythia a “kind of drugged state and stimulated her visions.” I don’t believe a word of it. No one knows precisely what occurred in the temple of Apollo, although all Greek writers turned their attention to it. The Greek historian Plutarch describes the oracle process “but Plutarch adhered to what was a matter of course for all priests of Apollo: to breathe no word about what happened in the house of the god.”30 Each tourist who clambers up the slope on zigzag paths ought to take a closer look at the foundations of the (often renovated) temple of Apollo. The antiquity of the megaliths oozes from every crack. And the mighty slabs of stone which nowadays cover the ground, and on which columns formerly stood, make one think immediately of a helicopter landing platform. This platform dates back to the 6th century BC. The foundation, the so-called “Polygonal Wall,” is older. I recommend everyone to pause for a moment at this spot, to sit down on a step of the Delphi theatre, and let the past come to life before one’s inner eye.

  Looking outwards from the semicircular amphitheatre all Delphi lies at your feet. (Above on the slope there is another sports arena which dates back to Roman times.) The Delphi below you consists of the ruins of buildings in which people once thronged, amongst them petitioners and people in despair, politicians and delegates, priests, and tradesmen on the look-out for a fast buck. One thing alone united them all: a belief in Apollo and his power. I doubt if they also believed in the oracle, for it seems to have been more a sort of guide or help, rather like our newspaper horoscopes. Each person could take from it what he wanted.

  Below, 13 statues of gods and heroes once stood, as well as the treasure houses of the Sicyon’s, Siphniens, Thebans, and Athenians. There were statues, marble pillars and the bronze statue of the chariot driver (now in the Delphi museum). And of course we must not forget to mention the 52-foot (16m) high statue of the god Apollo standing before his huge temple. Pausanius writes that the temple of Apollo was probably originally made of metal.

  And in the midst of all this, between treasure houses, temples, round buildings, and marble pillars, one notices a very strange, longish stone in the shape of a beehive. Upon it is engraved a confusing network of lines, most of which intersect with other lines at equal intervals. This is the omphalos, symbolizing the navel of the world. An imitation from Roman times nowadays stands in the Delphi museum. The original omphalos had precious stones at the lines’ intersection points, and over this egg-shaped stone hung two golden eagles. With this stone carving, Apollo, or the priests, or if you like a petrified mythology, hit the nail on the head—whether intentionally or by chance.

  I must recall something which I first suggested in 1979, in my book Prophet der Veryangenheit (“Prophet of the Past”).31 In 1974, I gave a lecture in Athens, during which a bald-headed man came to my attention because he was taking copious notes. As everyone left the room he came up to me and inquired politely whether I knew that most Greek shrines and sacred places were sited in an exact geometrical relationship to one another.

  I smiled and said that I couldn’t really believe that, because the “ancient Greeks” did not have geodesic surveying techniques at their disposal. In addition, I said, the temples were often many miles distant from one another, and the mountains of Greece would have made it impossible to get a direct view from one holy site to another. Lastly, thinking I knew better, I said that the sacred sites were sometimes situated on islands, often as much as 60 miles away from the mainland, and could therefore not be seen with the naked eye. I was thinking of the distances to Crete, or Izmir, previously known as Smyrna, in Turkey. So what could this friendly gentleman mean?

  Two days later we met again, this time not on a public occasion but at a lecture given for members of the Athens Rotary Club. After the discussion he invited me into an adjoining room, where land and aerial maps were spread out on a large table. The gentleman introduced himself as Dr. Theophanias Manias, a brigadier in the Greek air force. What did such a high-ranking military fellow have to do with archaeology? We drank tea together and he explained. It was usual, he said, for military pilots to undertake monitoring and practice flights over the mountains, or shooting exercises over the sea. Afterward they had to draft a report, which included, among other things, the amount of fuel used. Through the years it had dawned on a lieutenant who entered these data in a book that the same distances and fuel consumption recurred again and again, although the pilots flew different routes over different regions. The lieutenant thought that he had tracked down some kind of fraud, or that the pilots were perhaps too lazy to write up the correct amounts in their log books and were just copying from each other.

  This was investigated, and finally the file landed on the desk of Colonel Manias—he became brigadier later. He took a pair of compasses, placed the point on Delphi and drew a circle through the Acropolis. Strange to say the circumference of the circle also touched Argos and
Olympia. These places were equal distances from each other. A strange coincidence, thought Colonel Manias, and then placed the compass point on Knossos at Crete. The circumference of this circle also touched Sparta and Epidaurus—strange! Colonel Manias continued. When the centre was Delos, Thebes and Izmir lay on the circumference; when the centre was Paros, it was Knossos and Chalcis; when the centre was Sparta, Mycenae and the oracular site of Trofonion were on the circumference.

  Dr. Manias demonstrated this to me on the maps he had spread out, and I was staggered. How could that be? Although Dr. Manias had far more accurate maps available to him than one can normally buy in the shops, I decided to try this out for myself at home. The brigadier noticed my astonishment and asked me if I had heard of the “golden ratio.” I shook my head rather despondently: although I had vague memories of hearing about a “golden ratio” in some long-past geometry lesson, I couldn’t remember what it was. Patiently he explained it to me: “In the golden ratio, a distance is divided into two sections, so that the smaller section relates to the larger as the larger does to the whole distance.” Because I did not understand a word of all this, I grabbed my daughter’s geometry book when I got home and read:

  If a distance A-B is divided by a point E in such a way that the whole distance relates to its larger section as this larger section does to the smaller, then one says that the distance A-B is in “golden ratio.” If one increases a distance divided in golden ratio by the length of its larger section, the new distance is once more divided into golden ratio by the endpoint of the original distance. This process can be continued ad infinitum.32

  I felt sorry for my daughter. This was as comprehensible to me as Chinese! I started to try to work it out on my desk with bits of paper. My secretary Kilian looked on with a rather concerned air as if he feared I was losing my marbles. After fiddling about with larger and smaller sections for a long while, I finally grasped what the golden ratio was all about. I recommend my readers to try the same “hands-on” method. Dr. Manias showed me tables and demonstrated it on his maps, and everyone who checks this out will be bowled over:

  • The distance between the cult sites of Epidaurus and Delphi corresponds to the greater portion, that is 62 percent, of the golden ratio distance between Epidaurus and Delos.

  • The distance between Olympia and Chalcis corresponds to the greater portion (62 percent) of the golden ratio distance between Olympia and Delos.

  • The distance between Delphi and Thebes corresponds to the greater portion (62 percent) of the golden ratio distance between Delphi and the Acropolis.

  • The distance between Olympia and Delphi corresponds to the greater portion (62 percent) of the golden ratio distance between Olympia and Chalcis.

  • The distance between Epidaurus and Sparta corresponds to the greater portion (62 percent) of the golden ratio distance between Epidaurus and Olympia.

  • The distance between Delos and Eleusis corresponds to the greater portion (62 percent) of the golden ratio distance between Delos and Delphi.

  • The distance between Knossos and Delos corresponds to the greater portion (62 percent) of the golden ratio distance between Knossos and Chalcis.

  • The distance between Delphi and Dodoni corresponds to the greater portion (62 percent) of the golden ratio distance between Delphi and the Acropolis.

  • The distance between Sparta and Olympia corresponds to the greater portion (62 percent) of the golden ratio distance between Sparta and the Acropolis.

  I was knocked sideways! Dr. Manias informed me that there existed in Greece an Association for Operational Research whose very educated members had held lectures about these geometrical curiosities, for example on June 18, 1968, in the premises of the Greek Technical Association, as well as at the headquarters of the Greek air force. The audiences had been as baffled as I had been. I later got hold of a document in two languages put out by the Association for Operational Research, which had been written with the active support of the Military Geography Department.33, 34 Dr. Manias also gave me a handsome brochure, which documents all these mathematical impossibilities in a way which even a layman like myself can check.35 Dr. Manias expressly asked me to draw attention to these geometrical aspects for, as he said, the archaeologists behaved as if they did not exist.

  They do exist—and how! The conclusions to be drawn from these geometrical facts, which cannot be ignored, and which everyone can measure for themselves, are fantastic. But first a few appetizers:

  • How great is the probability that three temples in mountain regions lie on a straight line by pure coincidence? That might perhaps occur in two or three cases. But in Attica-Boetia (central Greece) alone, there are 35 of these “three-temple lines.” This rules out mere chance.

  • What chance is there that the distance from one holy site to another is the same in several instances (measured as the crow flies)? In central Greece this occurs 22 times!

  • And Delphi, the “navel of the world,” occupies a position within this network equivalent to a central airport. Either starting from Delphi, or involving it, the most incredible geodesic measurements arise. For example Delphi is equidistant from the Acropolis and Olympia. One can draw a perfect isosceles triangle. At the midpoint of the “leg” (one of the two shorter sides of a right-angled triangle) lies the holy site of Nemea. The right-angled triangles Acropolis-Delphi—Nemea, and Nemea-Delphi—Olympia, have hypotenuses of equal length, and their relationship to the common line Delphi-Nemea corresponds to the golden ratio. You may think this is confusing enough, but it gets worse!

  A line drawn through Delphi which is vertical to the Delphi-Olympia horizontal crosses the oracle site of Dodoni. This produces the right-angled triangle Delphi-Olympia-Dodoni, with the line between Dodoni and Olympia as the hypotenuse. The “legs” of this triangle are once more in golden ratio proportions.

  What on earth is going on? You may think it is all artificially imposed, but there is method in this madness. The distance from Delphi to Aphea is the same as the distance from Aphea to Sparta. The distance from Delphi to Sparta is the same as the distance from Sparta to Thebes, and by chance also half the distance of the Dodoni-Sparta and Dodoni-Acropolis lines. Equal distances also apply to lines drawn between Delphi and Mycenae, Mycenae and Athens, Delphi and Gortys (a megalithic ruin on Crete!), and Delphi and Milet in Asia Minor. To sum up we can see that Delphi stands in geodesic/geometric relationship to Olympia, Dodoni, Eleusis, Epidaurus, Aphea, the Acropolis, Sparta, Mycenae, Thebes, Chalcis, Nemea, Gortys, and Milet. I would like to thank Dr. Manias and the Association for Operational Research for pointing out these extraordinary relationships. But that is still not the whole story.

  Everyone can picture an isosceles triangle, and such triangles joining cult sites cannot just arise by chance. Someone must have had an overview. In ancient Greece many such triangles can be drawn, and always with two proportions in regard to the length of their sides. For example:

  • The Dodoni-Delphi-Sparta triangle: The distances between these places are in the same relationship to one another as Dodoni-Sparta to Dodoni-Delphi, Dodoni-Sparta to Sparta-Delphi, and Dodoni-Delphi to Delphi-Sparta.

  • The Knossos-Delos-Chalcis triangle: The distances between these places are in the same relationship to one another as Knossos-Chalcis to Knossos-Delos, Knossos-Chalcis to Chalcis-Delos, and Knossos-Delos to Delos-Chalcis.

  • The Nicosia (Cyprus)-Knossos (Crete)-Dodoni triangle: The distances between these places are in the same relationship to one another as Nicosia-Dodon to Nicosia-Knossos, Nicosia-Dodoni to Dodoni-Knossos, and Nicosia-Knossos to Knossos-Dodoni.

  All these triangles are the same. There are more such baffling examples, but I would prefer not to overwhelm my readers with geometry.

  Using maps on a scale of 1:10,000 and with help of the Military Geography Department, the Association for Operational Research discovered more than 200 equal geometrical relationships, resulting from the same number of isosceles triangles. In addition
they found 148 golden ratio proportions. Anyone who still speaks of coincidence needs his head examined. Of course, one can always join two places by drawing a random line, and discover that other places lie on the same line “by chance.” However, we are not talking of any old names on a map, but exclusively of ancient, or, to be more precise, prehistoric cult sites. The planning which underlies this phenomenon is incomprehensible. Unless of course the network was not planned as such, but arose from a quite different, compelling reason. But before we come to that, we need to draw breath for a moment.

  Professor Fritz Rogowski, of Braunschweig Technical College, told himself that it was quite easy to construct right-angled triangles in the landscape, and set off to prove it. In Greece’s mountainous terrain he found small stone circles here and there, then looked around for additional markings; and lo and behold, in many cases he discovered a second stone ring within his field of vision.36 Professor Rogowski then extended the line of these two marking points, and at the end of such a sequence occasionally found a cult site. So had the riddle been solved?

  No, it hadn’t. Too many of the lines joining ancient cult sites pass over the sea. A line of the Delphi-Olympia-Acropolis triangle bridges about 12.5 miles (20km) of sea. The same is true for the Dodoni-Sparta line. It becomes even more absurd with triangles such as Knossos-Delos-Argos, for Knossos on Crete and Argos are separated by about 190 miles (300km) of sea.37 This small-scale surveying method would have been just as impossible when applied to the stretch of sea between Greece and Smyrna. I also seriously doubt whether this surveying technique even works on dry land. There would be no problem if we were dealing with a flat and even landscape, but there certainly is a problem in mountainous terrain and in a landscape carved by countless bays and inlets, such as Greece supplies. So what purpose did the small stone rings serve which Professor Rogowski found? I could imagine that they might be signs to help travellers find their bearings. After all, there were no roads as such in prehistoric times, and tracks and paths might soon be washed away by storms and floods.