My take on Erich Von Däniken's theories.

I have seen plenty of documentaries on Erich Von Däniken and read parts of his book chariots of the gods.
As a UFO skeptic who gives the benefit of doubt, I think of his theories that ancient civilizations came into contact with extraterrestrials are quite probable. Indeed, he does use strong evidence to support his claims, unlike most other UFO believers.

But as far as he goes on genetic engineering taking place in ancient Egypt by aliens or weather these sophisticated "astronauts" were even aliens, I recently developed second thoughts.
Regarding the genetic engineering in ancient Egypt, he bases his claims on artifacts that depict humans with animal heads or vice versa. Take the following images from ancient Egypt as examples:






This is rather far fetched since many ancient civilizations from Celtic to Vedic depict animals and sometimes people in them. Sometimes the animals are mythical. At other times real or sometimes they are joint with humans (ie. mermaids), so for ancient Egyptians to create similar depiction is nothing strange.

But coming to his main points, that ancient humans were visited by aliens based on the findings of technological artifacts such as model planes, runways, carvings of creatures in "space suits," I think they could be modeled after aliens or advanced beings- originating from Earth.

Let's start with the examples of the gold made model planes recovered from the remains of the Inca Civilization. Pictured below are the artifacts that were recovered:






To me as an aviation enthusiast, they deeply resemble slightly older fighter planes from the 1960s and 70s, single tailed planes to be exact such as the F-16 Falcon or the F-14 Tomcat (I'm not too familiar with military planes I'm more into airliners). From their shapes & designs, I can already tell they are definitely not modeled after any flying animal that I know of nor can their wings be flapped from that design, which most flying living things do to get airborne.
Flying fish and bats do not count since they glide and do not really fly.

Compare the Inca gold models to the F-11 Tiger:

Or even check out other artifacts that Mr Daniken presents of strange beings appearing to wear space suits.
There could be a possibility that they may very well be extraterrestrials, but maybe not. Maybe they were built by sophisticated Earthly beings. If modern-day humans can suddenly build machines that can fly faster than sound for the first time in their recorded history, why not before?

Many myths of advanced civilizations going to war as far back as 15,000 years ago are mentioned in various sources. What if this minority of advanced humans traveled world wide by planes and through underwater to the rest of mankind, creating these cargo cults. What if these "space suits" found on some artifacts by Mr Von Daniken are actually diving suits used by ancient humans to explore the seas?

That could be answer, or maybe not, since many ancient sources discussing these "gods" speak of them coming from the sky.
Many artifacts depicting these beings are also non-human looking.

In short, I would say his theories are convincing, even for skeptics. But some of these theories are far fetched like the ones mentioned above.