Now that the US government has acknowledged UFOs exist, modern skeptics and others with a faith in mediocrity may want to reexamine ‘ancient aliens’ evidence. The following 10 classical close encounters range from lights in the sky to craft on the ground and even sightings of the pilots. And most of them were identified by a NASA scientist as the least explainable by weather, meteorites, and so on…
10. Golden balls – Central Italy, 91 BC
One morning in 91 BC, Romans up early would have seen “about sunrise a ball of fire [shining] forth from the northern region”. Accompanied by a “loud noise” (perhaps a sonic boom), this event is thought by modern astronomers to have been a bolide—an unusually bright meteor that explodes in the atmosphere.
But it might have been something else entirely. The same year, near Spoletium (modern-day Spoleto, 126 kilometers north of Rome), traveling Romans saw a golden ball roll down from the sky to the ground, where it increased in size. It then ascended toward the rising sun, which it was large enough now to block out. Although ball lightning has been suggested to explain this encounter, the object was clearly much larger than ball lightning’s average diameter of 23 centimeters
In any case, there are striking similarities between this golden ball and those associated with crop circle formation. Not only have they been seen descending on fields and leaving crop circles behind, but in Wiltshire—the crop circle capital of the world—several places mysteriously have “golden ball” in the name.
9. Shining white men – Northern Italy, 214 BC
In 214 BC, over the Estruscan city of Hadria (modern-day Adria), an ara (altar) was seen overhead with “men dressed in shining white.” Similar forms had been seen at Amiternum four years earlier. In neither case, apparently, did they approach anyone.
What’s interesting about these encounters is their similarity to a 1959 report from Papua New Guinea. Missionary Father Gill, along with 25 others, watched four “human” figures on top of a UFO with two more craft nearby. According to Gill, two of them seemed to be making adjustments to something out of view, while another stood with hands on the rail. The figures knew they were being observed; when the people on the ground started waving, the figures in the air waved back.
8. UFO battle – Bavaria, 1561 AD
One morning at the height of the German Renaissance, the skies above Nurnberg (Nuremberg)—one of the most important cities of the Holy Roman Empire—were ablaze with a spectacular display. UFOs of various shapes, sizes, and colors were engaged in a ferocious battle. Spherical objects, rods, arcs, and crosses whizzed about fighting each other, some in formation, others alone.
It started at 4:00 a.m. with the appearance of two blood red arcs in the middle of the Sun and continued for over an hour. Eventually the objects, apparently “fatigued” (according to the broadsheet report), crashed outside the city with “immense” billowing smoke. But the spectacle wasn’t over. There followed the arrival of a huge black spear-like craft pointing east to west. And five years later over Basel, Switzerland, a similar scene played out on three separate days.
Inexplicable as these encounters seem at first, they have been “debunked” as just weather. Setting aside the sensational religious interpretations of the time, the scene may be consistent with sun dogs (prisms of ice in the atmosphere), halos, and fall streaks (smoke-like ice crystals accompanying cirrus clouds). Even the huge black spear at the end could be explained as either a crepuscular ray or the shadow of a fall streak—all of which phenomena tend to occur together. Still, this explanation is only a theory.
7. Peacekeeping pithoi – Phrygia, 74 BC
The Roman historian Plutarch recorded one of the most convincing classical encounters. In Phrygia (an important region in modern-day Turkey, thought by the ancients to have been the cradle of civilization), a battle was about to commence between Roman and Pontic forces. Suddenly “the sky burst asunder” and a huge object touched down between the two armies. Resembling a pithoi (storage jar) but of a color “like molten silver,” it so astonished the soldiers on both sides that they separated.
Given the credibility and sheer number (thousands) of witnesses, including the Roman general Lucullus and King Mithridates VI, there’s no doubt about the encounter’s occurrence. But there’s no mention of any noise suggesting the impact of a meteorite—which, in any case, would be black not silver. Even if there had been a noise, and the object was indeed some kind of space rock, its impact would have been catastrophic. It was after all large enough to be seen from a distance.
Also, meteorites were revered in the ancient world—and in Phrygia especially. The magna mater, for example, a specimen the size of a fist, was worshiped as the mother of the gods and transported to Rome with great pomp and ceremony. Yet this much larger, silver object is not among the meteorite records. So what was it?
6. Multicolored beast – Central Italy, 150 AD
Between Rome and Capua in AD 150, Pope Pius I’s brother Hermas saw what may have been a large UFO—or even a huge ET. Arriving in a “cloud of dust,” it resembled a beast “like some sea-monster” 100 feet in length—but with a “head” as if of ceramos (pottery) and multicolored. “From its mouth fiery locusts issued forth” noted Hermas, leading modern ufologists to think he saw “fiery rays.”
Although the beast was fearsome, when Hermas got close, it merely stretched on the ground and stuck out its tongue.
This encounter, described in detail in Hermas’s Shepherd, is thought to have been just another of his mystical visions. The text is replete with encounters and conversations with angels and emissaries of God. However, there’s an eerily convincing quality to some of these “visions” that sets them apart as something else—something more like true close encounters. Once he’s away from the beast, for example, he continues to fret about whether it might be behind him. And his response to another encounter bears similarities to abduction reports: “a fit of trembling seized me, and my hair stood on end; and a fit of shuddering came upon me.”
5. Circle of fire – Egypt, 1440 BC
The most ancient encounter on this list is also, understandably, the least reliable. Only scant, unverifiable details remain of the so-called ‘Tulli papyrus’, named for the Vatican scholar who owned it before he died, at which point the papyrus was lost. But the only known translation, by one Prince Boris de Rachewiltz, is compelling and warrants a mention.
“In the year 22, in the third month of winter, in the sixth hour of the day, the scribes of the House of Life noticed a circle of fire that was coming from the sky.” The object was apparently silent (“it had no voice”) but “from the mouth it emitted a foul breath.” The scribes, confused, threw themselves to the ground then, coming to their senses, informed the pharaoh Thutmose III. After a few days, more and more of these objects were seen, coming and going in such numbers that they “extended to the limits of the four angles of the sky.” Eventually, with the pharaoh and his army watching, they ascended higher and flew off to the south. In their wake came a shower of fishes and birds.
4. Silver rain – Rome, 196 AD
Some close encounters are more subtle. In AD 196, for example, the ancient Roman historian Cassius Dio found a strange silvery substance that had fallen from a clear sky on the Forum of Augustus. After plating some bronze coins with it, he said it disappeared after three days.
What links this report to UFOs is that it could be referring to ‘angel hair’. Variously described as cobweb-, gossamer-, or jelly-like in texture, it is sometimes said to fall to the ground after UFO sightings. Although it’s said to be slightly radioactive, it disappears without a trace shortly after.
Earlier mentions of “rains of chalk” (one at Cales in 214 BC and one at Rome in 98 BC) may also have been describing this phenomenon.
3. Sky army – Judea, 65 AD
In 65 AD over Judea, “there appeared a miraculous phenomenon.” Before sunset, “chariots” and “armed battalions” swarmed across the sky, “hurtling through the clouds and encompassing the cities.“
Calling to mind the battle over Nuremberg 15 centuries later, this encounter happened just before sunset and was seen “throughout all parts of the country.” The event has been unconvincingly “debunked” as a case of fata morgana—the mirage effect where ships in the distance look like they’re floating just above the horizon. While it could have been, as Nuremberg could have been, a case of sun dogs et cetera, in this case the record seems credible. The Nuremberg battle was recorded in print in the era’s equivalent of a tabloid; but in Josephus’s account, there’s a reluctance to share the experience. Describing it as fable-like and “passing belief,” he feels it necessary to add there were many other eyewitnesses.
Then again, this was a time and place—just before the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD—when eyewitnesses were primed to see portents. A cow giving birth to a lamb was another from around the same time (though ETs do allegedly tamper with cattle…).
2. Flying shields – various
Classical sources often likened UFOs to familiar objects. Hence we find numerous references to flying shields—especially round metal ones like parmas and clipei—the ancient flying saucers. In one report from Rome in 100 BC, a clipeus emitted sparks as it zipped across the sky from west to east around sunset. In another, from Lanuvium in 173 BC, a whole fleet was seen in the sky. It ought to be noted that the ancients were capable astronomers. The Greek philosopher Posidonius, writing in the first century BC, observed of the clipei flagrantes (burning shields) that they persisted longer than shooting stars.
Another thing to note about these and the many similar reports is the rigorous way they were gathered. At great expense, Roman authorities took the time to investigate each report. Sort of like the ancient ‘men in black’, this meant interviewing witnesses and examining any physical evidence. This may be why the overwhelming majority of reports are from in and around the capital Rome. It also suggests there may be something in them. After all, there were no “weather balloons” back then.
1. Sky sailors – Ireland, 748 AD
According to the Annals of Ulster for 748 AD, the monks of Clonmacnoise had their prayers interrupted when a flying ship appeared in the air above them. This was no flying saucer but an otherwise typical sailing ship, complete with a human crew. It even had an anchor—which, dragging along the ground, hooked into the altar rail of the oratory and rocked the hull to a standstill. This was apparently not part of the plan; a crewman “shinned and grappled” down the rope to try and release the anchor, but to no avail. The abbot on the ground, realising the sailor wasn’t just struggling with the anchor but drowning in the air as though underwater, rallied his monks to help. Wasting no time, they dislodged the anchor and watched the ship sail off into the sky.
This strange encounter, believe it or not, was not so unique back in those days—or in the following millennium. In the late 1800s, they were said to be especially frequent around Land’s End at the south-western tip of England, with ships frequently flying inland through the valleys of Cornwall.
These “folk tales” as skeptics see them have been linked to the old idea that the ocean curves like a Moebius strip, so that ships sailing one way would eventually “shoot the gulf” as it was known and come back around in the sky. It’s a concept that dates back to Babylon.
But, assuming the physics of nautical navigation were the same then as they are now, it may be that what people were seeing were extraterrestrial craft. Perhaps, like the Romans and their chariots, shields, and indeed ships (navium) of their own day, contemporary sailing ships were just the closest semi-rational likeness.