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But von Daniken claims he was successful, that Moricz took him into the caves. "When I first saw the pile of gold, I begged to be allowed to take just one photo," says von Daniken. "Once again I was refused. The lumps of gold had to be levered from the pile and that might make a noise and start stones falling from the roof like an avalanche." You see, he had previously been prevented from taking photos with his flash camera for fear that the cave entrance would "suddenly close." "Would my flash ignite a synchronized laser beam?" he asks. "Would we never see the light of day again? Childish ideas for men engaged in serious investigation?" That last suggestion seems the most sensible proposition in the book.

Just what the hell is von Daniken talking about? Is this his poor excuse for not giving us photos of this fabulous wealth and the interiors of the caves? No, there is a much better reason than that. When that excellent German magazine Der Spiegel became curious and went off to Ecuador to interview Juan Moricz, the man was flabbergasted. He told them that though he remembered von Daniken's visit (there are plenty of photos of the two together), the writer never visited the caves, let alone saw the gold! In fact, it is difficult to get Moricz to say exactly whether he himself has seen any treasure! I think that we are beginning to see an answer here: There are no treasure caves, and there is no gold.

True, there are caves. And true, they are most impressive. In addition, they seem to have artifacts inside them. It is also a fact that metal artifacts are to be seen, and these can be quite convincing to the uninformed, for they seem to imply outrageously strange events that contradict all orthodoxy. When we have examined these matters, we will begin to understand just how easily a man like Moricz can convince himself that he did not misrepresent the matter, even if von Daniken did.

Moricz, von Daniken tells us, promised him that he would be permitted "to photograph plenty of gold later, but not in such vast quantities." Then, to von Daniken's delight, Moricz took him to the Church of Maria Auxiliadora in Cuenca, where he met Father Carlo Crespi, an ancient Catholic priest who had a huge museum there in three rooms. The third room, "which he seldom shows anyone, and then unwillingly," is full of gold, we are told. Von Daniken was admitted to this holy spot and saw treasures beyond description piled to the ceiling, brought there "during past decades" by the local Indians, of whom Father Crespi is "a trustworthy friend." The collection "is indeed pure gold that has now been brought to the notice of an incredulous and astonished world."

The Gold of the Gods is filled with photos of the Crespi collection, and even the most casual student is stunned to see that on many of the metal pieces appear relief representations of elephants, hippopotami, horses, camels (not the "South American camel," as the llama is often called), and pyramids—Egyptian style! It is not at all difficult to see that if these artifacts are genuine, we have a complete revolution in the fields of archaeology, anthropology, history, and some half-dozen other disciplines, for in light of thoroughly accepted and established facts such animals and such a structure could not show up in ancient representations native to South America. True, the mammoth and the horse were common on that continent more than six thousand years ago—the horse was only reintroduced by the Spanish conquistadores—and I harbor a secret notion, admittedly without a grain of good evidence, that somewhere in the Mato Grosso of Brazil roams the remnants of a herd of mammoths, but along with these anachronisms we find Egyptian pyramids inscribed and rendered in relief on metal artifacts preserved by Father Crespi in his museum! Were these ideas and figures brought to those shores by "ancient astronauts," or were the ancient Ecuadorians actually Egyptians? How very exciting these ideas are! And how very salable. But true? I am perhaps somewhat better qualified than others