UFOs and Airpower Before the Age of Flying Saucers
Frogs, Wheels Within Wheels, Airships, and Comet Trouble
Questions and assumptions about peculiar objects in the sky have encouraged the human brain to ponder unidentified flying objects for a long time . . . and to regard such things with a certain dread. Although the term “UFO” was coined recently—around 1956, by U.S. military man and Project Grudge/Blue Book director (1951–53) Edward Ruppelt—the idea of UFOs is older than recorded history. Legends of Akakor, a mythical lost city located somewhere near the borders of present-day Brazil and Venezuela, hold that sometime between around 13,000 BC and 10,400 BC, fair-complexioned gods from the planet Schwerta landed in an enormous saucer to greet the indigenous Ugha Mongulala people. The Ugha accepted the knowledge offered by the aliens, and parlayed that into the later Mayan civilization. Another group located farther south, and also influenced by alien thought, became the Incas.
Besides ancient astronauts, the legend of Akakor invokes thirteen crystal skulls that will provide the aliens’ message of salvation when mankind is on the verge of self-destruction. (Much of this is dramatized in the 2008 adventure film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Ancient-astronaut proponent Erich von Däniken invoked Akakor [and other places] in his 1973 book The Gold of the Gods, and inspired some conversation until Däniken’s sources proved not to be credible.) The “end times” aspect of the Akakor narrative—complete with intercession by superior beings and superior wisdom—is very much in line with later Christian thought.
As Christianity approached, accounts of unidentified objects in the sky entered legend around the globe. In 583 BC, the prophet Ezekiel wrote of a “wheel within a wheel” that he saw in the skies at the Cheber River in Chaldea (present-day Iraq). Did Ezekiel witness a UFO, or did he see (as some biblical interpreters insist) God’s angels or cherubim? Or could it be that biblical invocations of angels and cherubim were inspired by UFOs and the crafts’ alien operators? Did alien craft create the pillars of cloud and fire that led the Children of Israel through the wilderness? Is it possible that the star that guided the Three Wise Men wasn’t a star at all, but an alien spacecraft?
Cicero reported that during battle between Locrians and Crotoniates at the Sagra River (present-day southern Italy) in 498 BC, warriors heard the disembodied voices of “Fauns,” and saw deities so clearly that all but the “senseless” and “impious” acknowledged the presence of the Gods. Meanwhile, in India in 500 BC, witnesses were astonished by vimanas—piloted, and deadly, flying machines.
In China around 300 BC, an oversized jade “chariot” interrupted poet Chi Yuan’s visit to the grave of an emperor, lifted the poet from the ground, and spirited him to distant mountains.
At Amiterno (present-day Italy) in 218 BC, the sun grew small, and white figures were seen in the sky. In areas nearby, witnesses saw phantom ships, a flying shield, two moons, and the sun “battling” the Moon. A few years later, at Hadria (present-day Adria, in northern Italy) in 213 BC, a shining altar manifested itself in the sky. Some witnesses reported seeing an imposing figure in white.
A “great fleet” was sighted in the skies above Lanuvio (southeast of present- day Rome), in 173 BC. An account from Pliny’s Natural History, Volume II describes “celestial weapons from East and West meet[ing] in battle” above Ameria and Tuder (central Italy), where “the sky was on fire, and often seemed that the clouds had caught fire.” The encounter dated to 104 BC. The same volume of Pliny notes an event at Tarquinia in 100 BC, where Roman consul Lucius Valerius Flaccus saw “a burning shield scattering sparks” move across the sky at sunset from east to west.
Accounts of ancient-era UFOs can be forceful, and are often expressed as elements of battlefield encounters. One possible inference is that the mysterious craft manifest themselves during periods of crisis. Perhaps the crafts’ occupants objected to violent human behavior. Perhaps they wished to encourage a stronger moral code, or even warn us.