Retraction of Ancient Astronaut Theories
In Gods of the New Millennium (1996 & 1997), Alford drew the attention of the British public to the theories of the ancient astronaut writer Zecharia Sitchin. The book was a commercial success. However, less than two years later, Alford began to contradict his mentor by arguing that the gods personified the explosion of a heavenly planet which had shaped the creation of the earth.
Alford's doubts about Sitchin's theory emerged while reading the Pyramid Texts as research for his book The Phoenix Solution (1998). In so doing, he found little evidence to support the ancient astronaut theory, but rather found correspondences between the Egyptian myths and the ‘exploded planet hypothesis’ of the American astronomer Tom Van Flandern. Alford affirms that the key to his U-turn was the realisation that "the gods personified the cataclysmic powers of creation". Nevertheless, many of his readers prefer the conspiracy theory that Alford was silenced by the CIA.
Having realised his mistake, Alford began his own investigation of the Mesopotamian mythological texts. The result was When The Gods Came Down (2000), in which he refined and extended his cataclysmic theory of myth while penning a hard-hitting rebuttal of the ancient astronaut interpretation. Coinciding with the publication of this book, Alford published on his website an extensive ‘Self-critique’ of his first book Gods of the New Millennium. At this time also the paperback edition of GOTNM began to carry a new foreword in which the author expressed his reservations about chapters 6 to 16.
In The Atlantis Secret (2003), Alford attacked the Euhemerist and Von Daniken theories of myth, arguing that the Greek gods were not deified heroes or astronauts but personifications of cataclysmic events from the beginning of the world. As for the ancient belief that the gods had granted the gifts of civilisation to man – a myth commonly cited by ancient astronaut writers – this was a natural extension of the ‘birth from the earth’ myths which were popular in ancient times.
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