No peer-review articles quoted.

A good friend teaches Art History at the local University, one of his areas of expertise is ancient Mesoamerican art. He's had a lot of students cite von Däniken in their research papers. He's been forced to expressly prohibit citing such "sources" in his course syllabus, yet every year he has to reject papers for citing these junk sources.

Von Doniken been completely discredited? How did people thousands of years ago accomplish things we would have a problem doing today?

He was an embezzler and liar in Denmark, and his books used altered drawings to "prove" his theory that we couldn't tie our shoelaces until the aliens came along.

https://skepdic.com/vondanik.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken

primitive tools. How did they move 100 ton rocks when they didn't even have domesticated horses? It would take our heaviest construction cranes to build the pyramids today.

The Egyptian Pyramid builders were mostly farmers who would be idled by the Nile flooding each year, so they'd work on the Pyramids for their "God." (The Pharaoh.)

In the Pyramids REAL archaeologists found graffiti, "Work crew #5! We did it!"

No need for "aliens" to cut stones that fit together nicely, with lots of manpower.

Several people have also pointed out that Von Daniken had his "ancient aliens" helping Africans, Asians and Central and South American people, but Europeans didn't need any help according to Von Daniken.
Yes. It is racial.

"Von Daniken sold more than 45 million copies of his books, including one, 'Gold of the Gods,' in which he finds a hidden, enormous labyrinth in South America containing vast treasures of gold and such irrefutable proof of alien technology as a plastic chair."

"He wrote that he was driven away from the site by primitive, hostile Indians and couldn't ever find it again. Later still he admitted he made the whole thing up: 'That did not happen,' he said, adding pathetically, 'All the facts do exist but with other interpretations.' (As a young man von Daniken was described by a court psychiatrist as a liar and criminal psychopath just before serving a year in prison for forgery, embezzlement and fraud.)"

"Von Daniken's message was ultimately racist: He exploited the simple-minded idea that primitives in places like the Andes and Central America could not possibly have managed their engineering feats without some kind of outside help. You know how backward those people are! Aliens must have shown them how to build those pyramids."

"Debunker James Randi writes in 'Flim Flam!' that at no point does von Daniken cite such architectural marvels as the Chartres Cathedral, Stonehenge, or the Parthenon, 'because these wonders are European, built by people he EXPECTS to have the intelligence and ability to do such work. He cannot conceive of our brown and black brothers having the wit to conceive or the skill to build the great structures that they did leave behind.'"

https://www.deseret.com/1989/12/24/18839036/tale-of-outer-space-ancestors-is-literary-fraud

That was enough for me to tap out.

I turned to something else. Why the hell should I take seriously, anyone not an expert?

This is what got us here. Too many people listening to people that have no expertise.
Our president was taking advice from the my pillow guy and the overstock guy that got duped by a Russian spy. The media fawned over Jenny McCarthy and her anti vax foolery.