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.

Possible reasons why governments have been trying to cover up UFO cases and evidence.

When I was doing reading and comprehension exercises on main themes of short articles at a school back in 2001-2002, I came upon a short article on my list about Alien & UFO Phenomenon in the 1940s-50s and how Science Fiction soared in popularity.
According to the article, fictional stories about visiting aliens were taken seriously and broadcast in radios all over.

One radio broadcast in particular that was mentioned in the article gave out a false alarm in the 1940s, causing a city-wide panic. And though the news broadcast, repeatedly stated this alien invasion alert was false (the article highlighting this factor), people completely ignored the radio and still were in a state of panic.

This interesting article, made me think of all the alleged UFO cover ups that the American government has been allegedly involved in. We read about them all the time in magazines, books, websites, articles (search UFO cover ups on google) or in The X-Files.

I started to ask myself, is this the reason why governments, the American government in particular? To avoid mass panic created out of false alarms, hoaxes and rumors?
If so the answer makes total sense.
For a long time hard-core believers have been coming up with UFO stories without proof or evidence, sometimes accusing government of collaborating with aliens to control the human population.

From the point of view of the CIA or the American government, to try and hide physical evidence that would lead to these false alarms & rumors by those with the intent of manipulating this physical evidence to their advantage.

So let's suppose an alien spacecraft crashes on Earth. What could that mean? Hardcore believers & conspiracy theorists might scream "look aliens are coming to invade- look at the evidence: a wrecked spacecraft" when the reality might be the spacecraft belonged to peaceful explorers who had nothing to do with the government. Perhaps the craft never even intended to land on Earth and simply got caught in our orbit, causing it to crash. There could be countless reasons. Who knows?

But the point being, that because this has caused mass panic in the past, leading to false rumors, the US government might be doing what it sees right in preventing further damage being done by false conspiracy theorists.
At least this could be the explanation from their point of view.

What if alot of wrongly perceived "UFO crashes" like The Roswell incident is all the remains of a human-made craft. The claims of the debris being an alien spacecraft or probe could be set off by bored people looking for an adventure or people who actually believe it's a UFO crash because they cannot properly identify the vehicles components.

According to a UFO book I've been reading at my local bookstore, Mac Brazel, a key witness in the Roswell incident, was detained by the US military for a week.
After all, he also possessed the wreckage of the alleged spacecraft. What if his finding was simply a misunderstanding and led to what could become a widespread panic amongst the American population, or even worse, a spread in false rumors that would lead to turmoil, hence he was ordered into silence by the military during his detention.
Reports have indeed stated that he was not willing to speak of what he saw or knew about the alleged UFO after his detention.
This is what it could be all about.

This could be the whole reason for government attempts to silence/deny UFO cases.
And even if there is a case(s) of real UFO crashes on Earth, who could possibly know that the crash remains could be dangerous material, perhaps radioactive or composed of other substances dangerous to life on Earth.

Allowing a UFO case to go public would only lead to curious people exposing themselves and perhaps spreading dangerous diseases or other hazards from the UFO & alien remains, forcing the government to keep it silent, until they can guarantee, they pose no threat to Earth's population.
And let's not leave out the spread of false rumors. Though I am no skeptic and believe in life on other planets, I am not ignorant to the fact how many people and news agencies out there exist ready to exploit & exaggerate real or fake cases of UFOs, for fun or for profit.

And if my theories are correct, the government of America and of other countries around the world are justified in keeping these incidents secretive until they can fully guarantee these UFO wreckages/alien corpses pose no threat to the population.
Let's not forget the government's first responsibility is the interests of the people.

Though I also may endorse certain government attempts to limit/control the spread of UFO cases, it's their methods that I disagree with.
So far, from the stories/rumors we hear, they only end up adding fuel to the fire and aiding hardcore believers in their false rumor campaigns. ie. "why is the government trying to cover-up UFO cases by threatening people into silence- they are behind it or know something"
This is the typical claim of hardcore believers/UFO cults.

The government should instead expose the lies of those who create hoaxes and simply mark real/unknown cases as "unkown"
Or a second alternative would be to play along with the hardcore believers and their false rumors to show the world their stupidity. "Yes we're hiding UFOs buried under the ground dig and you'll see....ohh it looks like it turned out to be a World War Two plane...so sorry we assumed it to be a spacecraft" (:P)

But hiding something humans know the existence of is only bound to increase their curiosity. That's human nature.

My encounter with the unexplained

It happened to me when I lived in downtown Toronto. It was a windy night in the autumn of 2006.

I was in my room. I was waiting to fall asleep but was wide awake as I had just hit the sack.
The lights in my room were on.

The wind was howling outside but the windows were tightly shut. Everything in my room was still.
I suddenly felt a rush of air blowing in my face and hair out of nowhere and saw what looked like a perfectly straight string flying past me and straight into the wall vanishing into nothing.

I still don't know what it was till today. I'm not implying I exactly believe in the supernatural but all I know is I saw what I saw and was not dreaming. And I know that no science or logic can explain what I saw.