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NASA publishes report detailing ancient Roman UFO accounts
Sunday, May 18, 2014 15:57
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NASA has published a report detailing ancient Roman UFO accounts. The report is titled UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY, and includes some very interesting accounts.
The following is an abstract from this report.
Abstract: A combined historical and scientific approach is applied to ancient reports of what might today be called unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Many conventionally explicable phenomena can be weeded out, leaving a small residue of puzzling reports. These fall neatly into the same categories as modern UFO reports, suggesting that the UFO phenomenon, whatever it may be due to, has not changed much over two millennia.
Here is an interesting excerpt from Roman records that the author describes as “highly credible” (because of the time and effort that the Romans invested in questioning witnesses). These examples are drawn from official Roman government records, what might be similar to police reports today, or Congressional investigations. I have left various footnote references in the citation but have not included the notes here.
The following three reports were made under the considerable
pressure of the Second Punic War, when prodigies were most likely sought more frequently and carefully than usual. The observers are unknown, but were probably many in number, which may account for the spike in prodigy reports at this time. No compelling reason exists to infer an epidemic of mass hallucination in central Italy, although Livy did note a measure of mass hysteria, and even hysterical contagion, among the populace because of the looming Carthaginian threat.10
pressure of the Second Punic War, when prodigies were most likely sought more frequently and carefully than usual. The observers are unknown, but were probably many in number, which may account for the spike in prodigy reports at this time. No compelling reason exists to infer an epidemic of mass hallucination in central Italy, although Livy did note a measure of mass hysteria, and even hysterical contagion, among the populace because of the looming Carthaginian threat.10
• At Rome in the winter of 218 BC “a spectacle of ships (navium)
gleamed in the sky” (Liv. 21.62.4). Franklin Krauss, for lack of an
alternative explanation, speculated that the “ships” were clouds or
mirages, although suggestive cloud formations had been longunderstood,
familiar features.11
• In 217 BC “at Arpi round shields (parmas) were seen in the sky” (Liv. 22.1.9; Orosius 4.15). A parma was a small round shield made partly or wholly of iron, bronze or another metal; we do not know whether the luster of these devices (and not just their shape) was intended to be an element of the description. Mock suns are an unlikely explanation, since in the Roman prodigy lists these were routinely described as “double suns” or “triple suns” (i.e. two mock suns on either side of the real one).
• In 212 BC “at Reate a huge stone (saxum) was seen flying about” (Liv. 25.7.8). The implication would seem to be that the object in question was a stony gray color; that it is said to have moved irregularly (volitare) leaves open the possibility that the object Livy describes was a bird or some kind of airborne debris.
Sporadic reports of similar objects continue to appear after this
in the Roman prodigy lists. The immediate sources are again Livy
and his extractors Pliny, Plutarch, Obsequens and Orosius:
• In 173 BC “at Lanuvium a spectacle of a great fleet was said to have been seen in the sky” (Liv. 42.2.4).
• In 154 BC “at Compsa weapons (arma) appeared flying in the sky” (Obsequens 17). The term refers to defensive weapons, especially shields.
• In 104 BC “the people of Ameria and Tuder observed weapons in the sky rushing together from east and west, those from the west being routed.” Thus Pliny (Nat. 2.148) who uses the term arma; Obsequens’ (43) version is essentially the same. Plutarch (Mar. 17.4) calls the weapons “flaming spears and oblong shields,” but may be merely glossing and expanding; since he noted the time as night, the phenomenon in question might be the streamers of an aurora borealis.
• In 100 BC, probably at Rome, “a round shield (clipeus), burning and emitting sparks, ran across the sky from west to east, at sunset.” Thus Pliny (Nat. 2.100), although Obsequens (45) called the phenomenon “a circular object, like a round shield.” The clipeus was a round shield similar to the parma, but bigger. Seneca (Nat. 1.1.15; 7.20.2), quoting Posidonius (1st century BC), referred to a class of clipei flagrantes, saying that they persisted longer than shooting stars.12
Nothing in the ancient reports forbids that these were spectacular
bolides (meteoric fireballs), which move across the sky more slowly than ordinary shooting stars, but enormously faster than genuine comets, which are seen for days or weeks.13
• In 43 BC at Rome “a spectacle of defensive and offensive weapons (armorum telorumque species) was seen to rise from the earth to the sky with a clashing noise.”14 It might be possible to visualize in this report a bolide exploding while rising above the horizon.
• Historically, the most famous “sky army” appeared in the spring
of ca. AD 65 over Judea. The historian Josephus reports:
On the 21st of the month Artemisium, there appeared a miraculous phenomenon, passing belief. Indeed, what I am about to relate would, I imagine, have been deemed a fable, were it not for the narratives of eyewitnesses and the subsequent calamities which deserved to be so signalized. For, before sunset throughout all parts of the country, chariots were seen in the air and armed battalions hurtling through the clouds and encompassing the cities.15 Although Josephus probably viewed this phenomenon himself and apparently did research on it, he appeals to eyewitness accounts to bolster his credibility. The phenomenon does not seem to have been an aurora, cloud patterns or meteors, but does resemble the “aerial fighting” of modern UFOs.
Source: http://www.ascensionearth2012.org/2014/05/nasa-publishes-report-detailing-ancient.html
