# If UFO's are real, how come virtually no mention of them until the mid 20th century
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [August 27, 2003, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010 "2003-08-27T16:53:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Kewk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kewk)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2003, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/41 "2003-08-27T23:17:23Z")
[http://www.ufocasebook.com/phoenix31397.mpeg](http://www.ufocasebook.com/phoenix31397.mpeg)
This video sucks but here is the Arizona video I spoke of.
“March 13, 1997, Phoenix, Arizona, USA. One of the most celebrated, yet controversial events of the 1990s was the fly over of anomalous objects in Phoenix, Arizona. Seen by literally thousands of residents in the metropolis, the film taken at that time is almost indisputable proof of UFOs. Debunkers have offered every imaginable explanation for the bright, circular object or objects that stirred the imagination of onlookers, but nothing short of UFO will do.”
[http://ufocasebook.com/bestufovideos2.html](http://ufocasebook.com/bestufovideos2.html)
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### Author:  [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2003, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/42 "2003-08-27T23:46:06Z")
I can’t say as I find that video particularly compelling. It’s just some lights in the sky that could really be anything from hot-air balloons with lights to a large meteor breaking up. It ain’t aliens, I’ll tell you that much.
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2003, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/43 "2003-08-27T23:56:37Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Kewk \*
> **What’s to say these “angels” are not alien beings that genetically created us?**
Common sense?
> [@](#):
>
> **There is strong evidence for both.**
I’d like to see it. As a rationalist, I find strong evidence quite compelling. But so far, what the ufologists have offered can be called strong the same way waving a single ground of coffee at a cup of cold water makes a strong beverage.
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### Author:  [@godzillatemple](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/godzillatemple)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2003, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/44 "2003-08-28T00:16:46Z")
I think you guys are missing the obvious answer here. There’s virually no mention of UFOs visiting Earth before the mid 20th century because that’s when they _started_ visiting us. Duh!
😃
Barry
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### Author:  [@Kewk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kewk)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2003, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/45 "2003-08-28T02:17:30Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Cervaise \*
> \*\*Common sense? \*\*
Common sense is subject to ones upbringing, culture, gender, and race even. I doubt the validity of a common sense at all. No such thing exists to me really.
Point being: What is common to you and your people is not common to the next.
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### Author:  [@Super\_Gnat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Super_Gnat)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2003, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/46 "2003-08-28T02:45:37Z")
**Meatros**! I didn’t even notice you had posted. Some people think you’ve disappeared
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### Author:  [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2003, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/47 "2003-08-28T03:38:57Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Kewk \*
> \*\*To add on the video taped UFO encounters…
>
> I have seen a lot on of them on the various UFO TV shows on scifi and all variations of the history channel. While there are plenty that look authentic none of them are anywhere near as compelling, to me, as the Arizona sitting about (and im making a very vague guess) 5 years ago.
>
> If I remember correctly there were 6 glowing lights in the sky and were there for quite sometime. Everyone saw them, period. All the various news channels covered including local and national. Possibly worldwide.
>
> It was dismissed as military. lol.
>
> From all the video shown of the event there is no way I can believe that.
> \*\*
The official story of this sighting (which **Kewk** ridicules) is that the lights were flares of some sort dropped on parachutes by a military plane some distance from Phoenix. One reason this was not taken seriously by some people was that many witnesses reported that the lights were directly over the city. Also, the pattern of lights, which from some points of view looked like a wedge, allowed some people to “connect the dots” and imagine a huge solid structure supporting all the lights.
But the Discovery Channel, TLC, or one of those networks, did a show in which they took one of the tapes, which seemed to show the lights suddenly blinking out one at a time, and superimposed on it a daylight shot, from the same location, of the mountain range in the distance (not visible in the nighttime tape with the lights, of course.) Every time a light went out, it was _exactly_ as it passed behind the line of the remote mountains. QED.
The flares were extremely bright and human vision has a hard time accurately placing very bright light sources in a dark sky with no other frame of reference. Hence the many reports of meteors hundreds of miles away as nearby UFOs.
IIRC, the waters were also muddied by an early (incorrect) denial by the Air Force that military planes were flying in the area at the time.
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### Author:  [@DasUnterMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DasUnterMensch)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2003, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/48 "2003-08-28T05:25:10Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by BogieBlanca \*
> \*\*Smartass answer: Because the vast majority of people who claim to have witnessed UFO’s are of the backwoods hillbilly variety and are unlikely to own a video camera, being much more likely to spend their money on improvements to their still.
>
> Non Smartass answer: Because a great number of UFO sightings convieniently seem to take place in very deserted places/in the middle of the woods/very late at night, when people aren’t likely to be carrying around video cameras. \*\*
Not to mention it being the best time to be under the influence of the product of said still.
Having partaken of such produced by the Appalachian side of my family…HoooWeeee! Blind ain’t the only thing it can make ya.
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### Author:  [@Arcite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arcite)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2003, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/49 "2003-08-28T13:07:48Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by BogieBlanca \*
> \*\*IIRC the first _flying saucer_ report was by Kenneth Arnold in 1947 in Washington state and even that was misconstrued as Arnold didn’t claim to see saucer shaped objects, but rather gleaming silver objects, which I believe turned out to be military aircraft.
>
> It just seems highly suspicious to me that there is little or no mention of UFO’s until humanity takes to the skies, and even then it takes up until the age of jet aircraft for sightings to start, not to mention the whole “alien abduction” phenomena. Plus there was all the paranoia of the Cold War.
>
> Or am I missing something? \*\*
Like **godzillatemple** said: the aliens visiting us didn’t invent their flying saucers until the period of time we know as the 20th century. Before that, they were driving around in their internal combustion engine cars, flying in their conventional aircraft, and surfing their version of the internet, just like us! 😉
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### Author:  [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2003, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/50 "2003-08-28T15:52:11Z")
The hamsters were looking up in the sky at some bright lights over Chicago the last time I tried to do this, so let’s try it again:
Off to Great Debates.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
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### Author:  [@Bruce\_Daddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bruce_Daddy)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2003, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/51 "2003-08-28T16:02:59Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Q.E.D. \*
> \*\*. . . but I’m \> 99.9999% certain \*\*
So you’re telling me there’s a chance. . .
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### Author:  [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2003, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/52 "2003-08-28T16:19:34Z")
Are some of these UFO believers the same guys who chime in with comments about “Magical Sky Pixies” whenever anyone indicates a beilef in Christianity?
Just askin’
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### Author:  [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2003, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/53 "2003-08-28T16:48:29Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Super Gnat \*
> \*\ ***Meatros**! I didn’t even notice you had posted. Some people think you’ve disappeared \*\*
😃
You **never saw me** …understand…
😃
Eh, I just got a new job and it’s keeping me busy, which sucks…I need my dope fix…
😃
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### Author:  [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2003, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/54 "2003-08-28T18:05:16Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Bruce\_Daddy \*
> \*\*So you’re telling me there’s a chance. . . \*\*
Sure. It’s possible that some time during the Earth’s 4.5 billion-year history that a bunch of alien dudes visited in some sort of spacecraft. Unlikely as hell, yes, but still possible.
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### Author:  [@stick\_monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stick_monkey)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2003, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/55 "2003-08-28T18:37:52Z")
\*\*
> [@](#):
>
> And another thing…I can only think of one thing that we do not have a live video of…a good video of a UFO. We have live footage of murders, airplane crashes, tornados, explosions but no decent UFO…I wonder why?
\*\*
I do not believe in UFO’s.
However, until very recently, there was not live footage of (non-staged) murders, airplane crashes, or car crashes for that matter. For while they may happen hundreds or thousands of times a day, not many people carry video cameras around with them all the time, and they aren’t always on, or pointing in the right direction. Only when we started installing stationary cameras on high-traffic roadways, and it became common for people to carry video cameras to airshows and the like did we start catching regular occurences of these things on film AS they happen.
While, like I said earlier, I don’t believe in UFOS (at least not the whole ‘little green men’ idea, though i will admit that there are often occurances of people seeing something and not knowing what it is, hence the unidentified part); _ **if** _ they do exist, they would be extremely rare (space is pretty big, and the number of species that could possibly even travel interstellar space is pretty small), much rarer than a plane or car crash certainly. And the likelyhood that they would occur where any one person would see them, would be much lower statistically. And the likelihood that one person would have a camera, on, with film, pointed in the right direction, for the few moments it would be around would be much lower. And the likelihood that same person wouldn’t have something in his past to suggest he may have made it all up, even more low.
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2003, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/56 "2003-08-29T02:02:40Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by stick monkey \*
> **However, until very recently, there was not live footage of (non-staged) murders, airplane crashes, or car crashes for that matter…**
While your point is noted (and likewise I acknowledge that you are not arguing in favor of the UFO-as-flying-saucer position), it’s worth considering that, of everything we routinely point cameras at, the sky is one of the most-photographed and most-scrutinized subjects, certainly far out of proportion of the number of actual things in it to scrutinize. Meteorologists, air traffic controllers, astronomers, [Alfred Stieglitz](http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o69332.html) ;)… Their days are _full_ of looking up.
And yet, the overwhelming majority of flying-saucer reports do not come from these people who spend so much time looking at and recording the sky. They know what Venus looks like and where it’s typically found. They know better than to mistake a V of migrating geese brightly lit from the ground as an edge of lights on a triangular craft. No, the largest fraction of UFO reports comes from people who, based on lack of experience, are the least likely to know what they’re looking at, or to record it accurately with whatever apparatus or device they have at hand.
That’s telling, I think. So while there is something to what you say, I must say I don’t find it the most compelling argument in the advocate’s arsenal.
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### Author:  [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2003, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/57 "2003-08-29T02:32:22Z")
There have been many mysterious reports of lights in the sky, angels, succubi, night hags, all the modern reports are replicated in mythology and in strange folk tales , or reports gathered by interested parties like Charles Fort;
this basically means that the psychological mechanisms that lead to reports of flying saucers and close encounters today were active then.
Misinterpretation of natural phenomena, sleep paralysis, delusions, lies amd misreporting happened then and they still happen today.
Oh yes, there are aliens on other worlds; that much is almost certain.
They are not here.
* * *
SF worldbuilding at
[http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html](http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html)
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### Author:  [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2003, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/58 "2003-08-29T02:34:32Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Arcite \*
> \*\*Like **godzillatemple** said: the aliens visiting us didn’t invent their flying saucers until the period of time we know as the 20th century. Before that, they were driving around in their internal combustion engine cars, flying in their conventional aircraft, and surfing their version of the internet, just like us! 😉 \*\*
What about the FTL Drive or Dimesional Portal or whatever the hell they use to get here? 🙂
---
### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2003, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/59 "2003-08-29T03:36:16Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by BrotherCadfael \*
> \*\*Are some of these UFO believers the same guys who chime in with comments about “Magical Sky Pixies” whenever anyone indicates a beilef in Christianity?
>
> Just askin’ \*\*
IANA UFO believer but this would not necessarily be a contradictory position. Aliens from another planet would at least be a _natural_ phenomenon as opposed to a _supernatural_ belief.
Actually, given the vastness of the universe the evolution of life on at least _some_ other planets would seem to be a mathematical certainty. The notion that life would uniquely arise on one planet, alone among trillions of star systems is actually almost absurd in its unliklihood. It would probably require supernatural intervention for there _not_ to be other life in the universe.
Now, having said that, interstellar travel is a _much_ different proposition and much more unlikely. Whatever intelligent life there is would likely be so sparse and so scattered that it would be virtually impossible to traverse the immense distance between “populated” star systems. It would take hundreds or thousands of years even at the speed of light…and that’s assuming that one species would have some way of even determining that planet X, in a star system 367,000 light years away, has intelligent life on it.
I would certainly hope, given the tremendous expenditure of time, technology and “human” resources it would take to launch such an endeavor, that once the aliens got here they would have some more significant motive than to kidnap hillbillies and ram metal rods up their asses.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s inconsistent to be atheistic or agnostic yet believe that life can arise on other planets. I _do_ think that interstellar travel is next to inconceivable as a practical possibility, regardless of sci-fi inventions like “warp speed.”
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### Author:  [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2003, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ufos-are-real-how-come-virtually-no-mention-of-them-until-the-mid-20th-century/198010/60 "2003-08-29T04:46:03Z")
**Dana Scully** : UFOs. Extra-terrestrial visitors from beyond who apparently have nothing better to do than buzz one mountain for 700 years.
**Fox Mulder** : It sounds like crap when you say it.
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