10,000 B.C.
Along the Chinese-Tibetan border, the Dropa Stones indicate what some believe to be an ancient alien crash-landing. While exploring some curious caves in the Himalayas, an archeological professor and his students came across small tombs, which held the skeletons of several 4′ 4″ creatures. There were no gravestones but instead hundreds of foot-long disks with holes in the center and grooves spiraling out from the holes. Beijing’s Dr. Tsum Um determined the grooves contained hieroglyphics that told a tale of a group, the Dropas, who crashed on earth. The Dropas attempted to befriend local tribes but were instead killed by the primitive humans who shunned them for their inhuman appearance.
3000 B.C.
The word Vimna has multiple meanings in Sanskrit including flying machine. In multiple ancient texts dating back to 3000 B.C., Vimnas are described as flying not just in our own atmosphere but beyond, into space. Often used as vehicles for Hindu gods, perhaps the Vimnas were in fact vehicles for space creatures.
1300 B.C.
Ancient hieroglyphics tell of a supernatural event that took place in Egypt during the rule of Pharaoh Thutmose III. According to the carvings, a circle of fire appeared in the sky one night and then multiplied over the course of the next few days. The circles then ascended into the sky, headed south, and disappeared. Is this one of the first written accounts of alien visitation?
1180 A.D.
700 years before the West began using the term “flying saucer,” the Japanese reported seeing flying “earthenware vessels.” One such object was seen in the Kii province where it appeared near a mountain, reversed and disappeared into the horizon leaving behind a glowing trail of smoke. The Japanese government even conducted an official investigation into the repeated sightings but, in what may be the first instance of a government lying about UFOs, the official outcome of the investigation was that “it is only the wind making the stars sway.”
Late 1400s
Tear your eyes away from Mother Mary’s serene expression in “The Madonna with Saint Giovannino” by Domenico Ghirlandaio and direct your attention to the back right corner. There in the sky is a disk floating in mid-air and, below it, an earthbound man and his dog (silhouetted) looking up agog at what could be an early depiction of a UFO.
1710
In the painting by Flemish artist Aert De Gelder, “The Baptism of Christ” (1710) depicts Jesus and John the Baptist bathed in a warm light beamed down in rays from a disk in the sky. While some think that De Gelder was incorporating a UFO that he saw with his own two eyes, others suspect that De Gelder never saw an alien ship, but was instead inspired by a long history of extraterrestrial paintings hidden away by the Church.