Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClane Smith, where
Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories
Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the previous show. In last week's episode, New
Speaker 1: Dawn Fades, we traced the origins of what is commonly
Speaker 1: referred to as the Roswell Incident. When researching for the episode,
Speaker 1: I was surprised to learn that, considering how well known
Speaker 1: this event is, that it wasn't actually until Major Jesse
Speaker 1: Marcel made his claims some thirty years after the fact,
Speaker 1: that this incident gained the reputation it has today. Despite
Speaker 1: its notoriety, however, many UFO enthusiasts considered the Roswell incident
Speaker 1: to be one of the less compelling examples of a
Speaker 1: possible extraterrestrial event. It may be then, that the reason
Speaker 1: and it continues to enthrall is not so much the
Speaker 1: UFO element, but rather how the event fits into a
Speaker 1: wider narrative of government cover ups and conspiracy theory. In
Speaker 1: this sense, we find in this later repositioning of the
Speaker 1: Roswell Incident an example of how often our response to
Speaker 1: a UFO sighting will often mirror the culture and general
Speaker 1: thinking of the day. Had Major Marcel made his claim
Speaker 1: of a military cover up back when the initial incident occurred,
Speaker 1: for example, we might well have been summarily dismissed and
Speaker 1: the event well and truly forgotten. By the time Stanton
Speaker 1: Friedman began his investigations in nineteen seventy eight, however, the
Speaker 1: American public broadly speaking, was still reeling from the revelations
Speaker 1: of the Watergate scandal. As such, people were perhaps far
Speaker 1: more inclined to entertain the idea of a military and
Speaker 1: government cover up, with the status of the Roswell incident
Speaker 1: becoming elevated as a result. Interestingly, when we look back
Speaker 1: at the way in which UOFO events have been interpreted historically,
Speaker 1: we find a similar pattern emerging, and paradoxically, such sightings
Speaker 1: often end up revealing far more about ourselves than anything
Speaker 1: about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Reported sightings of unknown
Speaker 1: objects in the sky have been dated to as far
Speaker 1: back as at least the third century BC. In a
Speaker 1: paper published in a two thousand and seven edition of
Speaker 1: Classical Journal titled Unidentified Flying Objects in Classical Antiquity, NASA
Speaker 1: scientist Richard Stothers charts the history of these ancient UFO sightings.
Speaker 1: As Stothers points out, most observations around the beginning of
Speaker 1: the Common Era, recorded by individuals such as Roman historians
Speaker 1: Livy and Pliny the Elder, have since been easily explained
Speaker 1: by ventional scientific ideas. Reports of ships gleaming in the sky,
Speaker 1: flaming spears and oblong shields, for example, are thought to
Speaker 1: be merely an unusual cloud formation, and the streamers of
Speaker 1: an Aurora borealis, respectively. Here we find the notion of
Speaker 1: the UFO limited by the general understanding of space and cosmology,
Speaker 1: but also the interpretation of what has supposedly been seen
Speaker 1: limited and distorted by the language used to describe it.
Speaker 1: As Stothers puts it, the military terminology reflects the most
Speaker 1: advanced technology known at the time, a tendency found also
Speaker 1: in modern UFO reports in which a witness gropes for
Speaker 1: a familiar technical vocabulary and perhaps a rationalization to describe
Speaker 1: an unaccountable phenomenon. That many ancient reports were made during
Speaker 1: wartime may partially explain this military terminology, But additionally, despite
Speaker 1: our ancestors elaborate descriptions, rarely in antiquity, do we find
Speaker 1: such sightings being associated with extraterrestrials in the way we
Speaker 1: might find to day. The simple reason for this is
Speaker 1: that such a thing was inconceivable on account of our
Speaker 1: limited knowledge of the cosmos. The concept of cosmic pluralism,
Speaker 1: the idea that there may be other inhabited worlds beyond
Speaker 1: our own, had been discussed and considered by many thinkers
Speaker 1: from as far back as pre Common era times. In fact,
Speaker 1: many Islamic thinkers and scientists, such as Imam Muhammad Albakir,
Speaker 1: who wrote of God creating thousands and thousands of worlds
Speaker 1: as far back as the seventh century c E, were
Speaker 1: particularly open to the idea, and in the second century
Speaker 1: c E. Novel True History, written by Lucian of Samosata,
Speaker 1: we find alien people from the Moon and the Sun
Speaker 1: depicted at war with each other. However, most people's understanding
Speaker 1: of space was based on the aristote alien ideas of
Speaker 1: geocentrism and the sublunary sphere. This idea, with Earth at
Speaker 1: the center of the universe, suggested that laws of physics
Speaker 1: as they were understood then only existed in the sublunary sphere,
Speaker 1: an area roughly incorporating everything from the ground up to
Speaker 1: the moon. Anything beyond this was considered fixed and unchanging,
Speaker 1: as part of some kind of celestial ceiling. Although as
Speaker 1: far back as four hundred and fifty BC, the Greek
Speaker 1: philosopher Anaxagoras had speculated that the small lights in the
Speaker 1: sky were actually sun's most rejected this theory. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until the eleventh century CE, thanks to the ideas of
Speaker 1: Ibn Alhitem, that we really began to consider this as
Speaker 1: a genuine possibility. Even as late as sixteen hundred CE, however,
Speaker 1: astronomer Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for asserting
Speaker 1: that the Sun was just a star. Are you always
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Speaker 1: the early morning of April fifteen sixty one, citizens of Nuremberg,
Speaker 1: Germany awoke to an extraordinarily strange event occurring in the
Speaker 1: sky above the city. Small globes were witnessed seeming to
Speaker 1: come out of the sun before lining themselves up in
Speaker 1: a variety of geometric shapes, as described by a witness
Speaker 1: at the time, in between these globes there were blood
Speaker 1: red crosses, between which there were blood red strips becoming
Speaker 1: thicker to the rear and in the front malleable like
Speaker 1: the rods of reed grass. Among them were two big rods,
Speaker 1: one on the right, the other to the left, and
Speaker 1: within the small and big rods, there were three also
Speaker 1: four and more globes. These then started to fight among themselves,
Speaker 1: so that the globes which were first in the sun
Speaker 1: flew out to the one standing on both sides. Thereafter,
Speaker 1: the globes standing outside the sun in the small and
Speaker 1: large rods, flew back into the sun. The globes then
Speaker 1: fought with each other for over an hour, and when
Speaker 1: the conflict was most intense, they became fatigued to such
Speaker 1: an extent that they fell from the sun down upon
Speaker 1: the earth as if they had all burned, and wasted
Speaker 1: away on the earth with immense smoke. This event, known
Speaker 1: as the fifteen sixty one celestial phenomenon over Nuremberg, was
Speaker 1: recorded and illustrated in a wood engraving by local printer
Speaker 1: Hans Glasser. For some, this event remains one of the
Speaker 1: most inexplicable UFO sightings. Others have explained it away as
Speaker 1: merely a SunDog. For Hans Glasser, however, and presumably many
Speaker 1: others who had witnessed it, the incident was a clear
Speaker 1: sign from God. It is an unsurprisingly common explanation for
Speaker 1: many UFO stings up to this point in time. But
Speaker 1: then things slowly begin to change. It is ten years later,
Speaker 1: in fifteen seventy two, when astronomer Tico bra observes a
Speaker 1: brilliant supernova traveling beyond Earth's atmosphere. It was the first
Speaker 1: verifiable proof ever that the heavens were not quite what
Speaker 1: we thought they were. Only forty years later and Galileo
Speaker 1: Galilee publishes Sedarius Nuncius, a highly controversial treatise which built
Speaker 1: on Copernicus's earlier findings that the Earth revolved around the
Speaker 1: Sun and not the other way round. And with this
Speaker 1: begins the gradual untethering of our belief that the Solar
Speaker 1: System was at the center of the universe. As the
Speaker 1: Age of re takes hold, triggered in part by Galileo's
Speaker 1: heretical proofs, our understanding of space and the universe expands exponentially.
Speaker 1: With Darwin's theory of evolution to boot our sense of
Speaker 1: the age of the Earth, and consequently the universe also
Speaker 1: begins to change. And with this the horizons of our
Speaker 1: cosmological knowledge were vastly expanded, and so too did the
Speaker 1: horizons of our imaginations begin to expand. In sixteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: author Margaret Cavendish pends her pioneering novel, the Description of
Speaker 1: a new world called The Blazing World. The book, which
Speaker 1: has been described as a forerunner of science fiction, depicts
Speaker 1: a utopian kingdom on what is essentially another planet, and
Speaker 1: by the late nineteenth century, writers are really beginning to
Speaker 1: get to grips with the possibilities of outer space, with
Speaker 1: stories and ideas epitomized by H. G. Wells's War of
Speaker 1: the Worlds, and soon our interpretations of UFO sightings begin
Speaker 1: to follow suit, shifting from a theological framework to one
Speaker 1: that incorporates our newly expanded ideas of space. By the
Speaker 1: end of the nineteenth century, sightings are routinely being discussed
Speaker 1: in terms of spaceships with alien entities at the helm,
Speaker 1: and in the eighteen nineties we see some of the
Speaker 1: first reports of alien abduction being recorded, With advances and
Speaker 1: radio technology, rocket science, and even our own first ventures
Speaker 1: into space developing in tandem with an ever increasing sense
Speaker 1: of the size of the universe, a golden age of
Speaker 1: science fiction explodes. Soon we are routinely imagining not only
Speaker 1: other species, but entire civilizations, intergalactic warfare, and technologies beyond
Speaker 1: our comprehension, and Consequently, no longer are UFOs observed passively
Speaker 1: flitting about in the sky, but instead begin to speculate
Speaker 1: about their intentions. Are they here to harm us or
Speaker 1: simply observers, we wonder, or do they not even notice
Speaker 1: us at all? As more abstract scientific discoveries such as
Speaker 1: Einstein's theory of relativity and the exotic realm of the
Speaker 1: quantum world begin to filter into the public consciousness, our
Speaker 1: interpretation of UFOs shifted again. No longer were they being
Speaker 1: considered as merely interstellar craft, but interdimensional two And with
Speaker 1: some of the more recent ideas about how the purpose
Speaker 1: or simply the mechanism of UFOs may be beyond our
Speaker 1: distinctly human thought processes, ironically, we find the conversation coming
Speaker 1: full circle back to the theological ideas of not being
Speaker 1: able to comprehend gods. This way in which UFO observations
Speaker 1: are often informed by the social and psychological states of
Speaker 1: the day is often referred to as the psychosocial hypothesis.
Speaker 1: This idea was explored in depth by Carl Jung in
Speaker 1: his fascinating nineteen fifty nine book Flying Sources, a Modern
Speaker 1: Myth of Things Seen in the Sky. As he put it, then,
Speaker 1: the starry vault of Heaven is, in truth the open
Speaker 1: book of cosmic projection, in which are reflected the mythologyms
Speaker 1: of our species. Perhaps, for example, we fear the purpose
Speaker 1: of UFOs because we know only too well what their
Speaker 1: intentions might be if it were humans of the helm
Speaker 1: of an interplanetary reconnaissance mission. Or perhaps we dream of
Speaker 1: them because the universe is too incomprehensibly large that the
Speaker 1: thought of the creatures of Earth being the only sentient
Speaker 1: life forms out here is too crushing to bear. Or
Speaker 1: perhaps when we see those alien aircraft in the sky,
Speaker 1: we see not visitors from outer space, but visions of
Speaker 1: our future instead. As such, although extra terrestrial life may
Speaker 1: well exist out there, and for all we know it
Speaker 1: has even visited planet Earth, it remains that much of
Speaker 1: what we see in the sky is not something from beyond,
Speaker 1: but from inside. If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and
Speaker 1: would like to help supporters, you can now go to
Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast dot com forward slash support. All donations, no
Speaker 1: matter how large or small, are massively appreciated. All elements
Speaker 1: of Unexplained are produced by me Richard McClain Smith. Please
Speaker 1: subscribe and rate the show on iTunes, and feel free
Speaker 1: to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding
Speaker 1: the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have
Speaker 1: an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You
Speaker 1: can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com, or
Speaker 1: Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com.
Speaker 1: Forward slash Unexplained Now, it's time to take care of yourself.
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