1/1, March-April 1974-25/6, 1998.

150 issues. 4 pp.

The Ancient Astronaut Society was conceived of in January 1973 when Gene M. Phillips (1926 - ), an Illinois attorney, saw a television program on Erich von Daniken's efforts to find the pre-1947 traces of UFOs in world history and archaeology and was led to start the Ancient Astronaut Society to "search for the evidence which will prove that civilization, technology and intelligence originated in outer space." Von Daniken presented the society's first lecture at Northwestern University in Chicago in December 1973. While the journal initially focused almost exclusively on the "paleo-SETI" theory and the reinterpretation of ancient texts and monuments in that light, it inevitably broadened its focus to include the mysterious and "unexplained" generally (the "Manna-Machine" of the Bible, the "Mars Face," "out-of-place" artifacts, Noah's Ark, etc.) to which it was sought to give a technological explanation. The journal achieved an international circulation (in at least 87 countries) and featured learned contributions by many well-educated enthusiasts seeking to scratch an itch of curiosity about some item on the fringe of comprehensibility. The journal published excerpts from Zecharia Sitchin's work and regularly discussed it in its pages. The society in 1974 announced the fall publication of Ancient Life, Official Journal of the Ancient Astronaut Society, with Richard T. Crowe as editor, but it never appeared.