Another dose of meaningless drivel from Mr. von Daniken.
Honestly, the sad thing is that sometimes he does ask the right questions, and I do agree with him that far more research does need to be done in certain areas. I would also rather live in a world that spent billions on archaeology and research than on the defense industry. But his conclusions are so biased and he is completely and 100% blinded by his own pet hypothesis that he ignores the obvious to shoehorn it into his narrative. And he loves to kick the can down the road without answering the question. He seems to now be on the "Earth was seeded with live from space" idea - except he never seems to question where that life would have come from. This is not an answer, it's just a transfer of an answer back another step. He also seems to completely misinterpret the idea of the Big Bang.
As an example, near the end of the book he shows a hieroglyph of a "bee god" and refuses to see it as that, claiming that it must be an alien astronaut wearing an elaborate headdress with two bombs behind if. Yet, I can clearly see the bee imagery. The "headdress" is of an elongated oval shape, complete with stripes and it ends in a stinger and the the "bombs" angle off to the side like a bee's wings do. Its like looking at a bee from above - which makes sense for a stone carving. One can't really get into perspective and shading and 3d modeling with chisel and stone.
At any rate - this book spends about 30 pages on its main premise - this supposed gold-filled, plastic statue bearing, underground flood bunker, and the rest explaining how ancient myths and legends can't mean anything other than ancient astronauts. And yes, the whole reason ancient people built underground was to create bunkers to survive either a) the biblical flood (which is 100% factual according to von Daniken - and now probably had to do with changes to the Earth's axis the destruction of a supposed fifth planet, where our asteroid belt is now), or b) a catastrophic nuclear war between two separate groups of ancient astronauts (see aforementioned "fifth world destruction").
The man can't even keep his own pet hypothesis straight...