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141 artifacts of an alien civilization, we too might be awed by the works of superior beings. Sagan proposed in 1963 that extraterrestrial civilizations exploring astro- nomical objects and their inhabitants would sample planets with intelligent life every 10 thousand years and those with advanced civilizations every thousand years. Consequently, there is a statistical likelihood that the Earth was visited at least once during historical times. Archaeologists should be attuned to the possibility that they might uncover extraterrestrial artifacts on the Earth.” Although he thought that the prospect of extraterrestrial visitation to our contemporary civilization was dim, Sagan wrote later, he still believed it possible that alien visitors had journeyed to Earth in prehistoric times. Scientists should examine ancient myths and legends for evidence of contact.”® Erich von Daniken expanded on this idea, claiming that the gods of many ancient cults and religions may have been extraterrestrial visitors. In his wildly successful book Chariots of the Gods, he asserted that there was good reason to trust stories about gods who came from on high, walked the earth, and freely distributed moral and technical advice to human beings. In his view, the God of the Bible was a primitive people’s image of an alien being.”° Many critics ridiculed von Daniken’s theories, arguing that they involve misinterpretations of archaeological data, plus a large dose of fabrication. Why were these ideas so popular? Psychologist John Baird suggested that alternative explanations of a bizarre and unusual kind are seen as more valid when applied to ancient events than when applied to current events of a similar level of complexity.” Despite deep skepticism about theories like von Daniken’s, folk memo- ries cannot be dismissed totally. Sagan found a plausible contact myth in some of the stories surrounding the origins of the Sumerian civilization in the fourth millennium B.C. That myth evolved into a religion that was almost totally oriented toward the stars. The contact myth did not die in Sumeria or Mexico; it continued to be told and experienced in medieval Europe and persists even today.”* Consider the example of a French expedition’s encounter with the Tlingit tribe in 1796. The tribe’s oral tradition contained sufficient information for later reconstruction of the true nature of the contact. Many of the incidents were disguised in a framework of mythology; the French ships were described as large black birds with white wings. To say that all past-contact inquiry is bad scholarship, argued journalist Chris Boyce, is like saying that Schliemann was wrong to look for Troy on the basis of myths.” Ancient Visitors to Earth Ancient Visitors to Earth