Cuenca, Ecuador
You have probably seen this image; it circulates every so often, presented as pseudoscientific evidence for the existence of aliens.
The image on the right is a carving of Assyrian God, Nisroch. It is about 2800 years old, from Mesopotamia in what is now Iraq.
The carving on the left was found in Ecuador. It is touted as being from the same time period.
So how do two very similar, three-thousand-year-old images, exist 8000 miles apart?
Aliens! Or at least that is what some people would have us believe.
I did some research on Nisroch; it turns out the alien story is true!
Here’s how it goes….
Father Carlos Crespi Croci was a Salesian monk who was born in Italy in 1891. He studied anthropology at the University of Milan before becoming a priest. In 1923, he was assigned to the small Andean city of Cuenca in Ecuador to work among the indigenous people. It was there that he devoted 59 years of his life to charitable work until his death in 1982.
Father Crespi was a well-intentioned, if somewhat eccentric, clergyman.
As part of his missionary work, Father Crespi encouraged his indigenous parishioners to create artwork with biblical themes. Crespi enticed them to draw or sculpt church iconography; he would give the artists a few coins in exchange for their artwork. By this method, Crespi accumulated a collection of almost 50,000 pieces of Ecuadorian indigenous art on behalf of the church.
Most of the collection was of little artistic consequence. Many of the pieces were created by children or by unskilled artists, but there were a few gifted sculptors among Crespi’s flock who created quality art pieces. One of the more skilled artists (nobody knows who) made a metallic replica of the Assyrian god Nisroch.
Nisroch is mentioned in the bible…
2 Kings 19:36-37:
“So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh. And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword…”
The indigenous artworks collected by Father Crespi, including the tin Nisroch, were stored in a vault at the Central Bank of Ecuador and largely forgotten for decades.
Until this shyster came across the collection.
Swiss author, Erich von Däniken happened upon the Ecuadorian art while researching material for a book on extraterrestrial life on earth. Von Däniken, a convicted fraud, forger, and embezzler, published a book, Chariots of the Gods, in 1968 in which he alleged that the artists of the two Nisroch carvings were connected through time and space via “ancient astronauts”.
In his second book, Gods from Outer Space (published from prison) von Däniken doubled down on the Nisroch fable.
Both books proved to be enormously popular despite a complete lack of evidence to back von Däniken’s outrageous claims.
“I know of no recent books so riddled with logical and factual errors as the works of von Däniken.” – Carl Sagan
Truth be damned, the books flew off the shelf. They were translated into 32 languages and sold more than 63 million copies! Movies, comic books, even an alien theme park followed, propelling von Däniken to pop icon status.
The scientific community even gave a name to the phenomenon, “Dänikenitis” – seen as humorous by skeptics and critical thinkers, but as an irrational common ground for a multitude of like-minded conspiracy theorists.
Unsubstantiated claims of extraterrestrials on earth never seem to end. Without exception, the stories unravel under the cold hard light of logic and reason, yet they persist.
Stories like the Nisroch legend are not authored by aliens from outer space, they are the product of the …
… Aliens Among Us.
Erich von Däniken, purveyor of pseudo-archaeological claptrap.
Father Carlos Crespi, luring children away from their god, to his.
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