100,000 Years of Man’s Unknown History – Robert Charroux
Laffont Special Edition – 1970? (Originally published in French in 1963)
I’m sick of the Evolution versus Creation debate. Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that the human race appeared on Earth millions of year ago after a female alien from the planet Venus came here on vacation, fucked a pig and gave birth to a race of mutants. These mutants were stupider than her, but more intelligent than us, and they were able to understand and replicate some Venusian technology. After Orejona, their mom, went back to Venus, they started misusing this technology and ended up wiping most of their race out in some kind of atomic war (the same war that sank Atlantis). The survivors of this prehistoric nuclear holocaust vowed that they wouldn’t allow anything similar to happen again, so they started secret societies to guard the dangerous Venusian secrets. Many of the most important figures in history were privy to these secrets; it turns out that Moses was actually a nuclear physicist. The pyramids, the Nazca Lines, the Piri Res maps, the Bible and all mythologies provide abundant evidence for these claims.
That is the main idea behind this absolutely glorious book. I bought it as part of a collection (including Chariots of the Gods and Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain) a few years ago, and it had been quietly collecting dust on my shelf until last November. I picked it up on a whim and saw mention of Count Von Küffstein. This seemed odd; why would the elusive Count Von K., homunculator supreme, show up in a book about ancient aliens? Well, this book is a little broader in its scope that other ancient alien books. This one doesn’t focus on presenting evidence for the ancient alien theory; it assumes that the theory is true and uses it to explain the predicament of mankind. The first half of the book, while tremendously silly, follows the semi-coherent narrative of our Venusian ancestors, while the latter half descends into a muddle of chapters on alchemy, cults, nuclear physics, mummies, mutant hybrids, ESP, Satanists, Tunguska, secret societies and time-travel. There’s even a chapter on how successful people “of action and solid character” have smaller colons. If the second half of the book isn’t quite as focused as the first, it is still equally as entertaining.
So how convincing are the arguments put forth in here? Well, to tell the truth, they are not even remotely convincing. (I think I lost my faith in Charroux when, in maybe the first chapter, he described Eliphas Levi as a rationalist.) This book takes a similar approach to Morning of the Magicians, and even pays homage to that steaming pile of garbage. Facts can only get you so far, and like his countrymen Pauwels and Bergier, Robert Charroux is more interested in speculation; he takes that ‘let’s see what we can come up with if we ignore logic for a while’ approach that is frequently adopted by many of the authors that I review. The fundamental premise of the book, the claim that our descendants came from Venus, is slightly problematic. The surface temperature on Venus is nearly 500 degrees Celsius. It has been suggested that life could survive in the clouds that float 50km above the planet’s surface, but those clouds are full of sulphuric acid, so if there was life floating about up there, it would have to be rather different to human life and probably wouldn’t transition well were it to come to Earth. Who knows though, maybe the surface of Venus was very different back when Orejona made her trip.
I don’t think it’s normal to have 10 toes and 8 fingers, and why are they webbed?
Robert Charroux was obviously a bit mental, and like some of the other nutjobs who believed in ancestors from Atlantis, he believed in maintaining racial purity. Apparently his ideas have gone on to play a major role in the development of esoteric Nazism. I’m only after getting a copy of Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival by Joscelyn Godwin this morning, and looking in the back of it now, I can see Charroux’s name in the index and this book in the bibliography. I’m more excited about that than I should be.
Also, when I was reading the wikipedia page on Charroux, I noticed that he had a keen interest in the Rennes-le-Château mystery. I found this particularly intriguing considering his connections with the far-right and my current Grail obsession. I needed more info. There was a reference for a book called Treasures of the World, but on looking up this title, I couldn’t find an online/affordable copy. I put it on my to-buy-eventually list and tried to quell my curiosity by going on a walk. I ended up in the library, and more out of boredom than hope, I looked up Charroux’s name in the library database. Sure enough, they had a copy of Treasures of the World hidden away in the archives. I felt so cool asking the librarian for help accessing it. As we walked through the compact shelving, I imagined the middle-aged lady in a pink blouse who was helping me to be an aged sage dressed in a black robe, leading me into a crypt full of dusty tomes of forbidden lore.
Treasures of the World – Robert Charroux
Muller – 1966
I took the book out, but the section on Rennes-le-Château is only a few pages long, and despite Charroux’s proximity to the case (he interviewed the lad who bought the house from the woman who lived with the priest), it only gives the standard pre-Holy Blood, Holy Grail account of Bérenger Saunière’s mysterious wealth. It is pretty cool to see that there was actually a bit of speculation about that whole deal before Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh came along. I don’t have much of an interest in treasure that isn’t linked to mental conspiracy theories though, so I’m not going to read the rest of this book, but I have scanned the section on Saunière for future reference. Email me if you want to see it.
Robert Charroux was a fool, but 100,000 Years of Man’s Unknown History got me excited about reading garbage again. If I see any more of his books for cheap, I’ll definitely be picking them up.
Nocturnal Revelries 