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On NASA Scientist Richard Stothers's Evaluation of Roman UFO Sightings

5/3/2015

34 Comments

 
On Friday’s edition of Ancient Aliens the show claimed that NASA published an “official” paper on ancient UFO sightings in the Roman era. As always, Ancient Aliens got it only half right. The paper was actually an article by Richard B. Stothers from the Classical Journal 103.1 (2007), which was reprinted by NASA because Stothers, who died in 2011, was a mathematician and astrophysicist who worked at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He came to the study of ancient history through his work investigating ancient chronicles to help document climate change. Since I had never heard of Stothers’s “Unidentified Flying Objects in Classical Antiquity,” it’s worth taking a look at Stothers’s argument and evidence.
The article gets off to a good start when Stothers recognizes that early ancient astronaut literature was essentially “long, uncritical lists” of anomalies from ancient sources, perhaps inspired by astronomer Donald Menzel’s work interpreting portents from Pliny astronomically. Stothers’s also points to the 1968 Condon Report’s criticism of the ancient astronaut theory by Samuel Rosenberg. One of the key sentences from that report:
It soon becomes clear that it would take years of full time research to track down and verify the thousands of “ancient” reports included in the nearly 1600 books and articles about UFOs. This means, then, that the general reader, who rarely ever bothers to verify what he reads, is merely given the option to trust or distrust the scholarly accuracy and motivations of the writers who offer him the impressive-looking lists of UFOs sightings.
Now, given that the report was paid for by the United States government and was republished by the U.S. Air Force as a U.S. government document, I believe that means that it has fallen into the public domain. However, because the University of Colorado asserts that it owns the copyright but has made the text available for non-commercial reprinting in whole or in part, I have included their copyright disclaimer in my reprint of the ancient astronaut section in my Library.

Needless to say, when Rosenberg spot-checked the reports, he found, just as I have, that they are a pack of hoaxes, misinterpretations, distortions, and lies. He even goes on to document how several ancient astronaut “ancient texts” were fabricated, including one that was a 1950s hoax by some school kids, accepted uncritically by one author after another! It’s a fascinating read, especially when we remember that this document was written just as Chariots of the Gods was being published in Germany. I’ll probably have more to say about the Condon Report ancient astronaut section in a future blog post.

Anyway, back to Stothers. He proceeded to review ancient texts for space aliens and UFOs by eliminating everything he could attribute to known astronomical phenomena and then cataloging the rest according J. Allen Hynek’s classification of close encounters. However, Stothers begins to lose credibility with me in determining that Livy’s list of prodigies is necessarily accurate because ancient people would never report or record something that didn’t happen! “In view of the time-consuming and costly procedures required by the Roman authorities to investigate witnesses, verify claims and physical evidence, and expiate the more unusual portents, most modern scholars who have troubled to analyze the prodigy lists have come to regard them as trustworthy and accurate.” In fact, he later argues that the “practical” Romans simply reported squarely, without recourse to Greek “theorizing”! The Romans were among the most superstitious of ancient peoples, a trait passed down to their Italian descendants unto this very day! If Stothers truly believes that a government would never manipulate information for political gain, then it seems we owe Dick Cheney an apology over those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Thus, for Stothers, Livy’s report of a shining phantom navy (21.64.4), round flying shields (22.1.9), and a flying rock (25.7.8) are just as accurate as reports of a suicidal ox that hurled itself from a third story window (21.62.3)—even though Livy wrote centuries after the events in question. He is particularly taken with Flavius Josephus’s account of a phantom army in 65 CE that he believes are flying saucers:
Besides these, a few days after that feast, on the one and twentieth day of the month Artemisius, [Jyar,] a certain prodigious and incredible phenomenon appeared: I suppose the account of it would seem to be a fable, were it not related by those that saw it, and were not the events that followed it of so considerable a nature as to deserve such signals; for, before sun-setting, chariots and troops of soldiers in their armor were seen running about among the clouds, and surrounding of cities. (Wars of the Jews 6.5.3, trans. Whiston)
Stothers neglects to note that this prodigy, meant as a premonition of war (written, of course, after the fact) comes in the middle of a list of wonders and prodigies, including a cow that gave birth to a lamb, a sword-shaped star, and a comet that stayed visible for a year. You’d think a year-long comet would have made news, but other reports of the comets of 64, 65, and 66 CE (the last being Halley’s comet) did not make them year-long. Perhaps Josephus had conflated two or three? If so, what would this say about the accuracy of the other prodigy accounts?

But even Stothers concedes that most of the mysterious reports of fireballs that he cites from the usual suspects are meteors. To which: Why include them if he had planned to eliminate any reports that could be dismissed as astronomical? When he questions the details of some—like an account of a meteor five centuries after the fact that suggested it was visible for two hours, unlike most meteors, which burn fast—he displays a touching faith that eyewitness accounts are perfectly accurate in all their details centuries after they occurred. Try comparing the various accounts of the life of Alexander the Great or the four Gospels to see how difficult a claim that is to sustain.

Stothers also covers accounts of meteorites, which again are astronomical and therefore cannot be UFOs. I’m surprised he doesn’t know about Pindar’s encounter with a meteorite from the scholia to Pythian 3, but as I read his sources it becomes plain that he knows mostly the major authors, his major sources. His primary example is a meteorite that landed between the armies of Lucullus and Mithradites in 74 BCE and was still hot and glowing when they saw it (Plutarch, Life of Lucullus 8.6). Again, not alien. He also talks about a weird rain of silver (Dio Cassius 76.4) but not the one of blood (Dio Cassius 63.27), neither of which, unless I am missing something, is a UFO since spaceships are not liquid.

Stothers finishes up by rehearsing one of ancient astronautics’ favorite Roman sightings, the altar surrounded by priests in white recorded twice in Livy (21.62.5; 24.10.10). Stothers offers no commentary except to claim an identical sighting occurred in New Guinea in 1959. Again, it is almost humorous the faith he places in accounts recorded centuries after the fact, accounts that have specific religious and political motivations at the time and place where they occurred. If someone told you his grandfather had seen four dudes at a distance, would you therefore conclude they were space aliens? It’s important to note that Livy himself considered the reports to be so much hogwash: “once men’s minds have been excited by superstitious fears they easily believe these things” (21.62.1; trans. Rev. Canon Roberts). Stothers owed it to his readers—and to the future scholars—to note that his own faith the accuracy of these reports is belied by the ancient authors themselves, who were more skeptical than our scientist author.

34 Comments
David Bradbury
5/3/2015 08:15:51 am

Jason, I think you're beingh a bit hard on Stothers over the example of the smoking star visible for two hours.
He actually gets it about right, thanks to his footnote, albeit for the wrong reasons. Theophanes (probably epitomising a now-lost 4th century text such as the Continuatio Antiochiensis Eusebii) states specifically that the star was seen in the year of Emperor Constantine's 30th anniversary celebrations (July 335 to July 336) which makes Stothers' c334 date unnecessarily wrong, but pushes the apparition into the time-frame of the comet mentioned in the footnote. Chinese sources refer to the sighting of a comet in February/March 336, seen from China in the west in the evening, in their equivalent of Andromeda/Pisces (which would be near the horizon at that time of year). The suggestion editors of Theophanes have made, therefore is that the two-hour viewing period should be taken as meaning for two hours each day, over an indeterminate period.

Because this is only an educated assumption, it was reasonable for Stothers to mention it as a sighting of unclear significance.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
5/3/2015 09:05:26 am

But what does it have to do with aliens? It seems as though we can explain it fairly well as a comet, which would seem to disqualify it from his search for the inexplicable.

Reply
David Bradbury
5/3/2015 07:56:30 pm

But from his specific viewpoint (date c334, only reported from Antioch, duration 2 hours etc.) it seemed a very dubious candidate for a comet. Had he noticed the Constantine 30th year celebrations refererence, he could confidently have made the 336 comet connection, but without that, I think he was correct to mention it as a puzzle, with 336 in a footnote.

spookyparadigm
5/3/2015 10:03:48 am

That's an extremely interesting paper, though not for any specific "case". It makes several points

- The "phenomenon" has not changed in any substantial way, except for the explanations. Some ufologists recognize this, many do not (they may argue it has been around a long time but don't admit it has always been wispy and vague). That's probably the least interesting finding

- In the Classical world, unusual things seen in the sky were reported

(a) most often during times of war

(b) and were described in terms of war (shields, swords, spears, and even armies)

(c) even though the technology that period was incompatible with flying vehicles

Curtis Peebles concluded in _Watch the Skies_ that UFO flaps happen at times of "unease" including war. I have made fun of that finding before. But if one recognizes that UFO reports are now made all the time (more on that in a second) as background noise but looks at particularly important flaps, they do correlate with times of war or war crisis, especially when wars are beginning or unending (giving back Peebles his uncertainty). In the America-centric narrative of big UFO waves, the core ones that stand out are the Foo Fighters of WWII (especially the end of the war) that lead into the ghost rockets and the flying saucers. Then there are the waves of the early 1950s, coming to an end by 1954. The next really big wave in the US is in 1966, with another in 1973. The last two waves everyone in ufology seems to cite are the black triangles of 1989-1990 and the Mexico City flap of 1991 (which even a lot of ufologists will admit was due to people pointing video cameras and attention to the sky for a solar eclipse, and then subsequent interest driven in no small part by Jaime Maussan).

That history does correlate with war or war-crisis fairly well, with a wave peaking after the invasion of France, another two as the Cold War emerges, the next wave fits nicely during the Korean War, the next one coincides with the ramp-up of American involvement in Vietnam while the next one coincides with the ramp-down from Vietnam and the Yom Kippur war which nearly tuned nuclear and helped create a major economic shock. The next wave happens predominantly in Europe as the Iron Curtain tumbles, and after that we don't really get waves anymore.

The discussion of UFOs in military terms in the present has typically been chalked up to experimental aircraft. But there were no Roman experimental aircraft, yet the reports were in military terminology and occurred during war crisis. That's really interesting, I think. And it makes even more sense of pre-UFO "anomalous" waves, including the 1897 airship wave (in many cases the report describes the crew saying they were flying a new aircraft to defeat Spain in the impending Spanish-American war) and the phantom airship sightings in Europe in the years prior to WWI.

Noticing things we don't normally pay attention to, or thinking that we're noticing them, during a time of potentially fatal crisis, and persistently classing them as threatening/combat imagery even if we don't immediately feel frightened of the object = UFO. I don't know the mechanism (is it a specific thing our brains are more likely to do in terms of perception; is it a psychological reaction to stress; is that people are more likely to spread rumors of threats; don't look at me, I just comment here). But I think that's interesting.

It also points out aspects of the "UFO" phenomenon that aren't necessarily part of it, and have only been jammed together with it today. Many ufologists as well as more skeptical observers have noticed that occupant/abduction cases bear strong resemblances to stories of ghosts and spirits (fairies, etc.), and that most such cases are not directly tied to anomalous things seen in the sky.

One might also notice that discussion and reports and interest in such cases is somewhat inverse to sightings of things in the sky. Occupant and abduction cases during the UFO era were largely more common in the 1950s and into the early 1960s with the Hill abduction case. The Hill case was reported in the press on later in the 1960s, but abduction didn't start to really snowball until later in the 1970s and blew up in the 1980s. I would also argue that supernatural/paranormal conspiracy theory is more popular in these "in-between times" and especially in contexts of lower-intensity everyday non-existential conflict.

In other words, there is nothing about UFOs that makes them particularly involved with the nuclear age, the expansion of military aviation capabilities (such as the lame "all UFOs are the U-2/SR-71" excuse), or the space age. In other historical contexts, times of war produce more reports of potentially threatening anomalies or are more conducive to people taking such reports more seriously, including in contexts where such reports could not be rationally associated with military technology but were connected to war nonetheless. Maybe this only occurs in

Reply
spookyparadigm
5/3/2015 10:15:02 am

Huh, must have hit a word limit. What I continued to say is that the key difference is not the UFO, but ufology. Once people like Fort seize the symbols of science and begin to make non-supported links between "anomalies" and begin to build a secret history, these things are tied together when they would have once been individual signs and portents. The UFO is seen during times of war crisis, and rumors of conspiracy proliferate in a context of vaguer and less-immediate concern rather than direct threat. But it is only with the response to science and the rise of anomaly "research" in a mass-print society that someone writes can collate and write all of these things down in ways that make sense to their counter-narrative.

Seeing threats that aren't there, encountering spirits, believing in secret witchcraft (conspiracy), a part of the human experience. Cutting out newspaper clippings and connecting it all as "research" only makes sense in a literate society with organized inquiry.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
5/3/2015 11:43:23 am

Yeah, there's a character limit.

While it's interesting how UFO sightings seemingly correlate with wars, I think we have to issue a caveat: With ancient material, the ancient historians tended to focus on war, so those were the prodigies most likely to be recorded. No one bothered to remember failed prodigies that ended up predicting nothing. Therefore, the records may seem to correlate UFOs with war due to a bias in the sources rather than what people were actually seeing or thinking they saw.

spookyparadigm
5/3/2015 12:21:43 pm

Reminiscent of modern attitudes in government towards UFOs. You get people in government interested for either

1.) Personal religious or mystical reasons, but this is typically handled on a very subrosa sort of way. This is the general/president/senator who has a personal interest in UFOs, or Noah's Ark, or whatever, and when they get power, they go looking for whatever the government knows about the topic. Which is generally nothing.

2.) or, are UFOs a threat to national security. Despite all of the conspiracy mongering, other than the occasional working group of interested insiders (that ends up going nowhere), the persistent pattern of interest in investigating UFO sightings is to determine if they are a foreign threat, and if they aren't, forget it. The caveat to that is the occasional use of the UFO as an intelligence tool to throw foreign intelligence off of real programs or trace sources of intel (say like throwing info about aliens at Area 51 out to UFO enthusiasts, and seeing if other aspects of the same tale show up in foreign intelligence reports).

The typical ufologist finds it deep and persuasive that "UFOs" are reported since the beginning of time in the same way they are today. By contrast, it is the biggest piece of evidence, IMO, that it is just one persistent way humans describe their environment, with the explanation for the description changing based on cultural context. Any explanation involving aliens or cryptoterrestrials (Shaverian underground dwellers) makes no sense. To be honest, the best explanation after "perception+culture" is angelic/demonic/spirits (or something so different from biological life as we conceive of it to be supernatural, aka Great Old Ones). While completely divorced from any material aspect, at least that has an explanation for why it would be unchanging since the dawn of humanity.

Hypatia
5/3/2015 06:51:14 pm

spookyparadigm
I think you're right, that stress and war trigger these events. In more peaceful times, we get visions of Jesus' face on Mars and on pieces of toast, of the Virgin Mary peaking through a window, and of various angels, winged rainbows and pink elephants floating through the clouds. Nothing much gets recorded for posterity, even though some of it could certainly claim UFO status.

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David Bradbury
5/3/2015 08:19:34 pm

There's also the 20-20 Hindsight factor. For example, the "crinitam stellam" which, according to the Roman historian Eutropius had foretold the death of Emperor Constantine I, was actually seen well over a year before the Emperor's death.

Tara Jordan link
5/3/2015 11:17:42 am

Although I don't believe in visiting "aliens from outer space",it is undeniable that the phenomena known as "unidentified flying objects" is real.You have the right to live in denial,Jason.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
5/3/2015 11:37:34 am

Denial of what? It implies nothing about the reality or unreality of objects seen in the sky to suggest that accepting uncritically accounts written centuries after the fact is a fool's errand.

Reply
Tara Jordan
5/3/2015 12:28:00 pm

I am not talking about Jacques Vallée and similar pseudo historical concoctions,but modern day "unidentified flying objects".We have civilian/military pilots,air control/radar operators,credible and reliable witnesses,who have seen something inexplicable by science standards.Even if you reject 99% of the accounts,you still have the one percent,that needs to be answered.

Jerky
5/3/2015 04:00:59 pm

Just because some one sees a "U.F.O." does not mean no one knows what it is. My sister is in the U.S. Air Force yet she has never seen a radar return for a B-17 from 1945 until just last month. She reported it as a U.F.O. until it was pointed out to her that it was a ventage war bird belonging to an Aviation museum out on its once a month maintenance flight.

I have yet to see a U.F.O. report that proved true yet stumped me. I don't count radar sightings. There to problematic and it would take to much time to get into it here.

Tara Jordan
5/3/2015 04:30:49 pm

"Just because some one sees a "U.F.O." does not mean no one knows what it is".
That`s precisely why there is a need for serious investigations.
Serious minds are not providing answers,they ask questions and investigate through rigourous scientific protocols

V
5/4/2015 01:01:16 am

Tara, the "phenomenon" is frankly very easily explained by the human brain's pattern-matching and link-building functions. People connect things that aren't necessarily related, and come up with an incorrect conclusion (ie, UFO). Or else, they see something they just don't have a pattern for and they attribute that to something entirely unrelated anyway. In other words, there is no "phenomenon," just normal human functioning. Individual incidents may deserve investigation, but you're the one in denial if you think there's a pattern of incidents that make up a specific, external "phenomenon."

Reply
Tara Jordan link
5/4/2015 03:35:18 am

Fair enough.Please visit the NARCAP (National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena) website,and keep on pretending that all these individuals (scientists,former aviation professionals,pilots, engineers,technicians and the like) "live in denial".The debate is not over aliens from outer space and similar insanities,but about a genuine phenomena.

V
5/4/2015 11:05:04 am

1. Being a scientist, former aviation professional, pilot, engineer, technician, or "the like" does not automatically mean that one is immune to the weaknesses inherent in the operation of the human mind. My father's an engineer and he has ALSO seen more than one UFO--all of which have ultimately proven to be normal, rational, everyday things. Like the B52 bomber, before the program was announced, and a hummingbird casting an odd shadow.

2. To repeat: the only "phenomenon" that exists in this case is the one where people insist that a number of disparate events that are COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO ONE ANOTHER form some sort of pattern.

3. I even already admitted that SPECIFIC incidents may warrant further investigation. So what? That doesn't make any incident part of a "phenomenon" anymore than two people dying means they were both killed by a serial killer. It is entirely AGAINST the principals of serious, rigorous scientific investigation to ASSUME a cause, and particularly to assume the SAME cause for multiple and widely different incidents. That, my dear, is the definition of BAD science. Present real, serious evidence, in properly vetted format, that all the disparate incidents are connected to a single cause, and I will reconsider. Until then, I am going to unequivocally state that there is NO SUCH THING as "the UFO phenomenon" outside the realm of brain farts. Get some brain Gas-X, my dear. You need it.

Tara Jordan link
5/4/2015 11:51:10 am

"Get some brain Gas-X, my dear. You need it.".
That`s an amazing rhetorical argument,especially from someone positioning himself on intellectual high ground.
You had your 5 minutes of fame.Do you feel lucky?

Platy
5/3/2015 02:45:30 pm

Funny you bring this up since I was going to ask you if you heard of or watched the documentary Mirage Men. I haven't watched it yet, but I'm probably going to check it out at some point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfR18lm4ADs

Reply
spookyparadigm
5/3/2015 03:33:14 pm

I had heard of it, of course, but I hadn't revisited the topic in a while. To me it seemed like a johnny-come-lately attempt to get in on some of the journalistic and scholarly work done on ufology in the last decade or so.

I'm watching the trailer right now, and I recognize Howe, Doty, Dolan, Boseley. Wow, caveat emptor.

My take is not quite as harsh as "FlyingTeacup" at this link, but it isn't that far off

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread961139/pg1

I think anything involving Moore, Doty, and the Aviary (Roswell, MJ-12, Bennewitz/Dulce, whatever lines of bull were being fed to Howe) is probably at least partially disinfo that was partly for a "good" reason, and partly for giggles (as we've seen with things like Abu Ghraib and many other situations, once you're in a situation governed by secrecy and deniability, sadism etc. can be nearly freely practiced).

I suspect this went farther, and those in charge of Groom Lake were happy when the UFO lore began to be attached to the facility since it served a number of useful purposes.

But I don't buy that any of it covered extraordinary technologies of the sort we're not familiar with (no zero-point antigrav, no "sports model" discs, no big black triangles), or some particularly huge conspiracy.

I buy that from 1947-1965 the military and intelligence community in the US saw UFOs as a psychological threat (the "Orson Welles Panic" scenario), and occasionally used it in a similar manner (promoting silly UFO and other human interest stories to fill the news in Guatemala during the run up to PBSUCCESS for example).

With the UFO peak of interest in 1966 and concerns focusing on the real space race and Vietnam, the community got out of the UFO business and wanted nothing to do with it from about then until the mid-1970s.

After that time, and especially during the expansion of the Soviet and US militaries beginning in the later 1970s, UFO stories were opportunistically used as I note above, to sniff out spooks and mask activities.

They seem to have even given up on this in the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union probably for several reasons. First, signals intelligence (hacking, interception) came to be much more important than human intelligence, so there just wasn't much profit in the shenanigans that Doty used to pull. Second, related to this, most of the technology that might be hidden under UFOs such as spy and stealth planes, just weren't as important as they had once been. In no small part that can be chalked up to fourth, the US power structure bought into the whole unipolar world thing, and found it wanted to show off a lot of what it had unless the technology had a very specific mission (some of the satellite and submarine tech designed for very specific quiet missions, hacking tech like Stuxnet, and of course the massive growth of signals intelligence being deployed against Americans). And lastly, so much of the new shiny tech was being pioneered not by traditional military contractors, but by Silicon Valley and the new IT world. Not only is that harder to hide, but they bought into the whole hype-system. Look at stuff like the Land Warrior project, or the actual I-shit-you-not tie-ins with the Iron Man and other movies and military exoskeletons.

The biggest lie is that there is some super-powerful dark government that has supertech and super-capabilities and is masterful at hiding it. But we're terrible at keeping secrets anymore, because nobody really cares. Who wants to be a good Company man anymore when you're just going to cash out to work for an actual company that then subcontracts your skills and access back to the DoD at three times the price and half the background checks (can you imagine someone like Snowden getting the access he had in 1960)?

Reply
spookyparadigm
5/3/2015 03:40:06 pm

And probably the funniest/saddest thing, I think, is how irrelevant all of the old spygames-UFO stuff has become culturally. The audience for that is graying out, with the younger audience wanting to either be told about the Illuminati, demons, or both, though even there the references are less the old occultists like Keel and more pop culture (that Nick Pope hasn't worked Slenderman into his gigs astounds me).

Expect much gnashing of teeth from the community when the "Roswell Slides" are unveiled in Mexico City on Cinco de Mayo, though maybe it won't be so big as so much of the community has already gone to disowning them.

Reply
Platy
5/3/2015 04:26:04 pm

Interesting points all around! "The audience for that is graying out, with the younger audience wanting to either be told about the Illuminati, demons, or both, though even there the references are less the old occultists like Keel and more pop culture (that Nick Pope hasn't worked Slenderman into his gigs astounds me)." With that situation, it might even just be a matter of curiosity, in that those people might not even believe in it.

Platy
5/3/2015 04:42:35 pm

Here's the Guardian article where I found out about it. I'm sharing it because I found this part to be interesting:
"On a Guardian webchat in 2010, relating to Wikileaks' release of the US embassy cables, Julian Assange asserted that "many weirdos email us about UFOs" but he'd come across nothing concrete. There were references to UFOs in the cables, he noted, but mostly to do with UFO cults rather than UFOs themselves – in the same way that GCHQ's Art Of Deception slideshow references UFO cults."
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/aug/14/men-in-black-ufo-sightings-mirage-makers-movie

spookyparadigm
5/3/2015 05:03:51 pm

Not believing what one sells to the alternative crowd? Would never happen. My names is Charles Berlitz, and you can take that to the invisible warship and carefully fuzzed and cropped alien pictures bank.

Tara Jordan
5/3/2015 03:56:04 pm

Jason.I have a question for you. We all know that 99% of the stuff out there is absolute garbage,but why don't you,for once,focus on the serious part of the equation.The one percent.

Have you ever visited the NARCAP (National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena) website?.
As far as I am aware,these individuals are not crackpots.Some of them are scientists,former aviation professionals,pilots,engineers,technicians et....They don't make any profit from their researches,and do not associate with UFO buffs,and the lunatic fraudulent subculture.They neither pretend to know nor to bring any answer,but merely performing rigorous technical investigations.

Reply
terry the censor
5/3/2015 05:20:50 pm

> why don't you, for once, focus on the serious part of the equation. The one percent.

Tara, Jason is providing a valuable service by commenting on fringe claims that are related to his fields of interest, usually ancient and medieval texts, and archeology.

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to ask your question to an expert on aerial phenomena?

Reply
Tara Jordan
5/3/2015 05:48:03 pm

Terry.I am not asking or expecting Jason to provide me answers. I am perfectly capable of doing my own researches.I was merely suggesting that you guys,could extend your area of curiosity.

Tara Jordan
5/3/2015 05:55:51 pm

Dont get me wrong,I dont think I have to justify myself.I do not associate "unidentified aerial phenomena" with visiting aliens from outer space,or similar nonsense.I am a natural born skeptic/atheist,but there is something intrinsically mysterious, going on out there (at high altitude),which I believed, is deemed of interest

terry the censor
5/3/2015 06:00:30 pm

Tara, fringe topics are plagued by hobbyists and skeptics who spread themselves too thin and try to discuss matters for which they have no background.

Reply
Tara Jordan
5/3/2015 06:17:31 pm

You have a point.

terry the censor
5/3/2015 04:12:17 pm

I just happened to have read this paper a couple weeks ago, though not as closely as you have, Jason. However, I do think you are a little hard on Stothers. You make many valid criticisms but I should like to take exception to two related charges.

> Stothers begins to lose credibility with me in determining that Livy’s list of prodigies is necessarily accurate

You are right to highlight Stothers' surprisingly credulous statement about the prodigy lists, but it should be noted that Stothers qualifies his judgement in the next paragraph. Stothers writes, "Livy did note a measure of mass hysteria, and even hysterical contagion, among the populace." (p 82) That resulted in an increased number of prodigy reports: "a psychological product of fear caused by the war with Carthage." (footnote 10)

> Stothers owed it to his readers... to note that his own faith [in] the accuracy of these reports is belied by the ancient authors themselves, who were more skeptical than our scientist author.

Stothers asserted Livy's skepticism explicitly: "Although Livy voiced skepticism about some of these reports, he did not specify which ones he doubted." (again, footnote 10)

Reply
Phillip
5/3/2015 07:24:57 pm

"...the general reader, who rarely ever bothers to verify what he reads, is merely given the option to trust or distrust the scholarly accuracy and motivations of the writers who offer him the impressive-looking lists of UFOs sightings."

This is quite possibly the best blanket statement (minus UFOs) for the entire fringe movement. Without blogs such as this one and a few other good sites, fringe nonsense would go mostly unchallenged.
Thanks to documentary style television, who will now air ANYTHING to sell ad time, and that ANYONE can publish a book, the lazy fringe audience has instant validation of their feelings. The word gets spread at school, work, church, etc.. Then people like myself are reduced to saying "Go to Wikipedia" to every co worker every week. I actually heard the word Nephilim this past week...in the conference room at a f*cking Newspaper!! From the opinion editor while discussing Common Core! ----Earth is Doomed, I think---

Thank you Jason, for this tiny corner of the web for me to untangle my brain and process my disappointment for the human race

Reply
Only Me
5/3/2015 07:25:08 pm

This line from a comment on the Guardian article Platy linked to sums up EVERYTHING in fringe world:

"I pulled it out of my ass and why would my ass lie to me?"

Reply
Peter N.
5/7/2015 10:16:55 am

Wow, I'm reading this article now, but I also glanced over the Condon report, and I'm shocked to find a number of basic mythological mistakes any of my students would be able to correct. I have a half a mind to let some classics or art history undergrads grade this report with a red pen. Since when is Helen Menelaos' daughter? That really messes with the family dynamic. Since when is Horus the sun god (even when he looks like Horus he is Re in the form of Horus, Re-Horakte)?

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        • The Watchers and Antediluvian Wisdom
      • Medieval Texts >
        • Medieval Legends of Ancient Egypt >
          • Medieval Pyramid Lore
          • John Malalas on Ancient Egypt
          • Fragments of Abenephius
          • Akhbar al-zaman
          • Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah
          • Murtada ibn al-‘Afif
          • Al-Maqrizi on the Pyramids
          • Al-Suyuti on the Pyramids
        • The Hunt for Noah's Ark
        • Isidore of Seville
        • Book of Liang: Fusang
        • Agobard on Magonia
        • Book of Thousands
        • Voyage of Saint Brendan
        • Power of Art and of Nature
        • Travels of Sir John Mandeville
        • Yazidi Revelation and Black Book
        • Al-Biruni on the Great Flood
        • Voyage of the Zeno Brothers
        • The Kensington Runestone (Hoax)
        • Islamic Discovery of America
        • The Aztec Creation Myth
      • Lost Civilizations >
        • Atlantis >
          • Plato's Atlantis Dialogues >
            • Timaeus
            • Critias
          • Fragments on Atlantis
          • Panchaea: The Other Atlantis
          • Eumalos on Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Gómara on Atlantis
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • Atlantis and the Sea Peoples
          • W. Scott-Elliot >
            • The Story of Atlantis
            • The Lost Lemuria
          • The Lost Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Africa
          • How I Found Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Termier on Atlantis
          • The Critias and Minoan Crete
          • Rebuttal to Termier
          • Further Responses to Termier
          • Flinders Petrie on Atlantis
        • Lost Cities >
          • Miscellaneous Lost Cities
          • The Seven Cities
          • The Lost City of Paititi
          • Manuscript 512
          • The Idolatrous City of Iximaya (Hoax)
          • The 1885 Moberly Lost City Hoax
          • The Elephants of Paredon (Hoax)
        • OOPARTs
        • Oronteus Finaeus Antarctica Map
        • Caucasians in Panama
        • Jefferson's Excavation
        • Fictitious Discoveries in America
        • Against Diffusionism
        • Tunnels Under Peru
        • The Parahyba Inscription (Hoax)
        • Mound Builders
        • Gunung Padang
        • Tales of Enchanted Islands
        • The 1907 Ancient World Map Hoax
        • The 1909 Grand Canyon Hoax
        • The Interglacial Period
        • Solving Oak Island
      • Religious Conspiracies >
        • Pantera, Father of Jesus?
        • Toledot Yeshu
        • Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay on Cathars
        • Testimony of Jean de Châlons
        • Rosslyn Chapel and the 'Prentice's Pillar
        • The Many Wives of Jesus
        • Templar Infiltration of Labor
        • Louis Martin & the Holy Bloodline
        • The Life of St. Issa (Hoax)
        • On the Person of Jesus Christ
      • Giants in the Earth >
        • Fossil Origins of Myths >
          • Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephants
          • Fossil Elephants
          • Fossil Bones of Teutobochus
          • Fossil Mammoths and Giants
          • Giants' Bones Dug Out of the Earth
          • Fossils and the Supernatural
          • Fossils, Myth, and Pseudo-History
          • Man During the Stone Age
          • Fossil Bones and Giants
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
        • Fragments on Giants
        • Manichaean Book of Giants
        • Geoffrey on British Giants
        • Alfonso X's Hermetic History of Giants
        • Boccaccio and the Fossil 'Giant'
        • Book of Howth
        • Purchas His Pilgrimage
        • Edmond Temple's 1827 Giant Investigation
        • The Giants of Sardinia
        • Giants and the Sons of God
        • The Magnetism of Evil
        • Tertiary Giants
        • Smithsonian Giant Reports
        • Early American Giants
        • The Giant of Coahuila
        • Jewish Encyclopedia on Giants
        • Index of Giants
        • Newspaper Accounts of Giants
        • Lanier's A Book of Giants
      • Science and History >
        • Halley on Noah's Comet
        • The Newport Tower
        • Iron: The Stone from Heaven
        • Ararat and the Ark
        • Pyramid Facts and Fancies
        • Argonauts before Homer
        • The Deluge
        • Crown Prince Rudolf on the Pyramids
        • Old Mythology in New Apparel
        • Blavatsky on Dinosaurs
        • Teddy Roosevelt on Bigfoot
        • Devil Worship in France
        • Maspero's Review of Akhbar al-zaman
        • The Holy Grail as Lucifer's Crown Jewel
        • The Mutinous Sea
        • The Rock Wall of Rockwall
        • Fabulous Zoology
        • The Origins of Talos
        • Mexican Mythology
        • Chinese Pyramids
        • Maqrizi's Names of the Pharaohs
      • Extreme History >
        • Roman Empire Hoax
        • American Antiquities
        • American Cataclysms
        • England, the Remnant of Judah
        • Historical Chronology of the Mexicans
        • Maspero on the Predynastic Sphinx
        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
        • Fortean Society and Columbus
        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
        • The Skyfort Document
        • Whirling Wheels
        • Denver Ancient Astronaut Lecture
        • Soviet Search for Lemuria
        • Visitors from Outer Space
        • Unidentified Flying Objects (Abstract)
        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
        • Ancient Astronaut Society Telegram
        • Noah's Ark Cables
        • The Von Daniken Letter
        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
        • UFOs in Ancient China
        • CIA Report on Noah's Ark
        • CIA Noah's Ark Memos
        • Congressional Ancient Aliens Testimony
        • Ancient Astronaut and Nibiru Email
        • Congressional Ancient Mars Hearing
        • House UFO Hearing
      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
        • Premodern UFO Sightings
        • The Moon Hoax
        • Inhabitants of Other Planets
        • Blavatsky on Ancient Astronauts
        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
      • Interdimensional Flying Saucers
      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
      • Sublime and Beautiful
      • Voltaire on Vampires
      • Demonology and Witchcraft
      • Thaumaturgia
      • Bulgarian Vampires
      • Religion and Evolution
      • Transylvanian Superstitions
      • Defining a Zombie
      • Dread of the Supernatural
      • Vampires
      • Werewolves and Vampires and Ghouls
      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
      • King Solomon's Mines
      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
      • Sredni Vashtar
      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
      • The Corpse on the Grating
      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
      • James Dean's Scrapbook
      • James Dean's Love Letters
      • The Amazing James Dean Hoax!
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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