MYSTERY OF THE ANCIENTS by Eric and Craig Umland

We're going back to our roots with today's entry, some eminently readable nonsense courtesy the Umland brothers, riding on von Daniken's coattails with a special focus on the Maya and their irrefutable outer space connection! Rare enough for this genre, the Umland boys attest that the Maya peoples are still alive and well and living on planet Earth ... which makes it even odder when they pull out the usual unknowable "mysteries," as if we couldn't just pop down to the Yucatan and ask somebody about the Mayan moon bases! 

That's right, moon bases. The Umlands bring in some timely NASA coverup action - why did NASA and the USSR both put the kibosh on their lunar photography projects with only 10% of the moon covered? What were they afraid of finding, or what had they already found? And why won't the modern Maya admit their brothers are still up there, ready to invade at a moment's notice?

There's also death rays, Nazca lines, pyramid power and levitation, and assorted other super sciences which we've seen before many a time. But at least it's fast and fun, bringing to mind Warren Smith's beautiful pseudonymous piffle piece Gods, Demons, and UFO's. Much is made of Mayan sculpture and statuary supposedly portraying global peoples, which is the kind of gloriously loose pseudoscience reasoning that would take von Daniken twice as long to strangle out in one of his bloated books, with half the verve. The Umlands simply sum up von Daniken (and others like Robert Charroux) short and sweet.

This was the Umland brothers' only book, but it must have sold well because it received multiple editions. More silly details include flash frozen mammoths, von Daniken's fraudulent ancient Ecuadorean caves, Planet X blowing up into the asteroid belt, and the ancient Mayans spurning the wheel in favor of jet power! All of this in just 151 pages, plus a bibliography! It's mix and match mystery mongering at its best, shamelessly dumb, dense and dirty. Not bad, Eric and Craig!

Some other editions

Mystery of the Ancients is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Signet Books, 1975 (original pub. 1974)

LOST CITIES OF THE ANCIENTS - UNEARTHED! by Warren Smith

A tome for the ages, Warren Smith's ultimate Zebra special clocks in at a whopping 395 pages, over twice as long as his other entries. There's a dirty little secret at the dark heart of his jungle escapade though: he only wrote the half of it! Smith's pulled a neat trick by excerpting huge passages from "ancient scribes" etc, amounting to 143 pages of 395 being quoted text. The final line of the book encapsulates his approach to these quotations: "I leave it to you, the reader. What do you think?" There's little in the way of analysis and absolutely zero fact checking or research going on beyond presenting these strange tales in bulk, but it's strangely hypnotic.

Smith's scribes and their contributions:

- Hiram Bingham, "The Discovery of Machu Picchu" article from Harper's, 1913 (approx. 4,000 words quoted)

- William Montgomery McGovern, Jungle Paths and Inca Ruins, 1927 (approx. 11,000 words)

- John T. Short, The North Americans of Antiquity, 1880 (approx. 6,300 words)

- Willard Barbrooke Grubb, An Unknown People in an Unknown Land, 1911 (approx. 12,000 words)

- E. G. Squier, Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Inca, 1877 (approx. 990 words)

Smith also uses heavy quotations from Dr. A.M. Renwick's Wanderings in the Peruvian Andes from 1937, and reprints an interview with Morris K. Jessup from his inaugural Zebra special Secret Forces of the Pyramids. Ivan T. Sanderson and Gordon Creighton are cited for musings on UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle. 

It's effective mystery mongering and a tribute to Smith's talent how far he can spin a yarn off of some anecdote from a dusty archive. Newspaper articles also contribute some weird monster tales, with Patagonian plesiosaurs, the tongue ripping terror of the mapinguari, and the brutal El Sisemite making sketchy appearances. It wouldn't be a Smith special without another appearance by that goddamn Venezuelan vicious hairy dwarf, either! Some monsters are only too human, as the Wrath of God himself Lope de Aguirre proves.

Another ripping tale: Erich von Daniken's Ecuadorean caves of wonder, which supposedly housed impossible ancient tech and records. Smith runs with von Daniken's story for a whole chapter on secret tunnel systems and lost precursor civilizations. The simple fact that von Daniken fabricated these caves from whole cloth is no matter to Smith, even when von Daniken admitted as such in a 1974 interview for Playboy, two whole years before this book's 1976 publication. Smith brings in a story from Ray Palmer's Search magazine for some Shaver Mystery tinge too.

Smith's thesis, such as it is, follows the basic ancient astronauts/lost civilization template of "White gods" bringing civilization to the savages, with special focus on Quetzacoatl, the plumed serpent who's been interpreted as a white European man on down since the conquistadores. These racial/colonial frameworks obviously have resonance to this day, as far flung as doctrine for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to the inspiration for a modern million dollar TV boom.

True to penny-pinching form, Zebra's proud proclamation of FULLY ILLUSTRATED amounts to 11 grainy black and white photos interspersed through the text.

Table of contents:

Preface: South America, Mystery Land of the Ancients  (i)

1.  The Lost Cities of the Ancients (5)

2.  The Lost World of El Gran Paytite (22)

3.  The Marauding Monsters of South America (36)

4.  The Patagonian Plesiosaur and Other Mysterious Monsters (57)

5.  Mysteries of the Incan Builders (75)

6.  The Mysterious City of the Clouds (92)

7.  An Ancient History Carved in Stone (110)

8.  The Enigma of Pre-Columbian Explorers (148)

9.  Witchcraft, Wizards and Indian Magic (171)

10. Mummies, Tomb Robbers and Ancient Cities (211)

11. Mystery of South America's Subterranean Tunnels (246)

12. Amazon Warriors of Ancient America (264)

13. The Riddle of History in Stone (289)

14. Machu Picchu: City of Mysteries (309)

15. Mysteries of the Megalithic Monuments (321)

16. The Tantalizing Enigma of Tiahuanaco (339)

17. Incredible UFO Activity in South America (354)

18. Space Gods and Miracle Workers (372)

Lost Cities of the Ancients - Unearthed! is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Zebra Books, 1976

ATLANTIS RISING by Brad Steiger

Steiger zooms about on a whirlwind tour gathering all manner of weird things into the Atlantis Mythos, including the Shaver Mystery, Hollow Earth, and that old scamp Springheel Jack! Some wild fun, but like many of the cheaper paperbacks it would have benefited from some illustrations and/or maps.

And a lovely painted cover from Sphere Books, 1976.

Atlantis Rising is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Dell Publishing, 1973

EXTRATERRESTRIAL VISITATIONS FROM PREHISTORIC TIMES TO THE PRESENT by Jacques Bergier

What's packaged as a straightforward Ancient Astronaut piece is really far more outre. Every strange humanoid, hairy beast, and whats-it that populate the paperbacks are in fact Creatures from the Inner Sphere, dispatched by the ultra-terrestrials as inscrutable experiments on humankind. The out-of-place artifacts and impossible ancient wonders listed on the cover are evidence of more of the same. Jacques Bergier previously coauthored The Morning of the Magicians, the Ancient Astronaut ur-text from which all the Chariots sprang, von Daniken's included.

The very French text for Extraterrestrial Visitations was translated into English in 1973 by the famous conservative publisher the Henry Regnery Company.

Signet Books, 1974 (original pub. 1970)

NAZCA: JOURNEY TO THE SUN by Jim Woodman

Does for the Nazca Lines what Kon-Tiki did for trans-Pacific crossings, condemning the Ancient Astronauts in favor of ancient hot air ballooning. Admirable perspective and engaging narrative in the Heyerdahl vein.

Pocket Books, 1977