Cueva de los Tayos is a cave located on the eastern slopes of the Andes mountains in the Morona-Santiago province of Ecuador and became infamous for reportedly having 'golden plates' that contains the history of Mankind. It owes its name to being the home of the native nocturnal birds called Tayos, which live in numerous caves in the Andean jungles of South America. The cave shot up in popularity thanks to the writings of Erich von Däniken and the 1976 BCRA expedition that Neil Armstrong took part in. Despite numerous expeditions, these plates have never been recovered or photographed. The consensus from the archeological community is that the Golden Library was a hoax.

Erich Anton Paul von Däniken is a Swiss author of several pseudoscientific books which make claims about extraterrestrial influences on early human culture, including the best-selling Chariots of the Gods?, published in 1968. Von Däniken is one of the main figures responsible for popularizing the "paleo-contact" and ancient astronauts hypotheses.