W. Raymond Drake’s Gods or Spacemen? (1964) proposes that many civilisations of the ancient East preserved real accounts of advanced extraterrestrial visitors; Drake argues that these “space kings” ruled early humanity, fought high-tech sky wars, built megalithic monuments and were later worshipped as deities.12 The book appeared four years before Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods?, positioning Drake as an early voice in the ancient-astronaut genre.3 Across sixteen chapters he surveys myths, epics and archaeological puzzles from India to Babylon, weaving them into a single narrative of past interplanetary contact.2 Supporters hail his vast compilation of legends, while critics fault speculative leaps and lack of primary philology; nonetheless the title helped seed later UFO-centric popular history.45
Author and Historical Context Drake (1913-1989) was a British Fortean researcher who published nine ancient-astronaut books after decades of independent study in newspaper libraries.13 Gods or Spacemen?—his debut—ran roughly 240 pages and was issued by Neville Spearman in London, later reprinted by Sphere and in the United States.67 Drake framed the work as a challenge to “geocentric science” and a bridge between modern space research and mythic history, reflecting early-1960s public fascination with both UFO reports and the Space Race.2
Structure and Scope The official contents outline sixteen thematic chapters that move from cosmology to regional case studies and a closing synthesis.2
The table reflects Drake’s own chapter list.2
Principal Claims Drake contends that legends describing vimanas, fiery chariots, “weapons that could turn day into night,” and celestial rulers are garbled memories of spaceship technology, nuclear devices and alien governance.2 He links global flood myths and tectonic cataclysms to collateral damage from ancient sky wars, suggesting that survivors later regressed to barbarism yet retained cultural memories of their former mentors.2
Evidence Marshalled The narrative draws on Sanskrit epics (Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa), Tibetan and Chinese annals, Egyptian Pyramid Texts, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and selected Biblical passages, pairing them with mid-twentieth-century UFO sightings and Soviet–American space-probe data to argue for historical consistency of aerospace motifs.2 Drake supplements literary excerpts with references to megalithic engineering, asteroid craters and meteoritic amino-acid finds as physical traces of extraterrestrial contact.28
Reception and Influence Mainstream archaeology and philology rejected the book for methodological looseness and heavy reliance on translation fragments, yet it attracted a niche readership evidenced by later reprints and ongoing user reviews on Goodreads and other reseller platforms.59 Early UFO writers such as Brinsley Le Poer Trench cited Drake, and the work helped set the stage for von Däniken’s commercial breakthrough.31
Criticisms and Legacy Scholars point to selective quotation and absence of linguistic context, while skeptics fault the assumption that myth equals reportage.4 Nevertheless, the book remains a touchstone within ancient-astronaut circles for its wide sweep of Eastern source material and its attempt to correlate early space-age science with global legendry.36