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