19 May 2008
UFOs in Religious Art? Nope.
Posted by MSH under: Ancient Astronauts .
Well, it isn’t the ancient world, but it still fits the kind of thing I’m doing on PaleoBabble. I keep getting links and emails related to the “compelling” evidence for UFOs in Renaissance art, so my annoyance meter has passed the tolerable level.
The UFOs in Renaissance art nonsense primarily extends from Matthew Hurley’s website. An informed rebuttal to this has been out on the web for some time, but it apparently hasn’t been widely discussed or circulated — likely due to the fact that most of it isn’t in English.
Art historian Diego Cuoghi (yes, a real art historian) has a website devoted to analyzing the paintings on Hurley’s website. Sorry, they aren’t extraterrestrials and space ships. The main site is here, but it’s in Italian. But Parts 1 and 5 have been translated into English. I highly recommend them – very interesting and informative, but not for those who are fundamentalist ETH’ers (ExtraTerrestrial Hypothesis).
You definitely need high speed for all these images, too.
13 Comments so far...
Another Aaarrrggghhh! Award Candidate: UFOs Influencing DaVinci! | PaleoBabble Says:
10 February 2009 at 6:21 PM.
[...] those new to PaleoBabble, in an earlier post I directed readers to a real art historian who’s looked into [...]
Clay Says:
16 July 2010 at 4:43 PM.
Im very open minded and look at things from every angle before I choose sides. Some of your arguements just don’t add up. Ancient aliens were here. The evidence is too great, and actually much more plausible then the theories you have
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Anonymous Says:
26 August 2010 at 5:06 PM.
You seem like just another sun venerating Christian nut on SUN-day looking to justify your own brainwashing, no different than people who believe everything Sitchin says. You all have an agenda to “prove”, one way or the other, notice the quotations around “prove” because you don’t “prove” anymore than Sitchin does.
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MSH Reply:
August 26th, 2010 at 5:58 PM
thanks for the reply — I love it when such coherent, tightly-reasoned responses things like this get posted because they will live forever on the site.
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yesenope Says:
7 September 2010 at 12:48 AM.
Sarcasm really is the lowest form of wit and I find it absolutely astounding how poor your grammar is , considering you claim to be a linguistic scholar . I have studied this site , its categories , blogs and your other site , Sitchiniswrong . All religions are nothing but spiritual theosophy born out of mans’ fear of the unknown, the world we inhabit and an ingrained inferiority complex. Sitchin and Eric Von Daniken and all other proponents of the ancient astronaut THEORY are doing nothing but offering an alternative to the story of the zodiac , on which all religions lean heavily on , for systems of social , agricultural and moral control .
You pick holes in the translation of aramaic and hebrew texts by pointing out grammatical errors , which you seem to think can dispel the theories of others . Yet in your above post you clearly have a problem with sentence construction in the English language . Does this invalidate all your work ?
We live in an age were text speak is common place and proper grammar has all but been forgotten. Do you think in 5000 or 10,000 years , scholars of that age will be studying the conjugation of our verbs and sentence structure, taken from our current communication systems (which also vary by locale ) and be able to translate verbatim and grasp completely the times we now live in ?
The ancient astronaut theory has no greater merit than the New Testament , the Talmud , the Koran or the Egyptian book of the Dead but it certainly has no less .
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MSH Reply:
September 12th, 2010 at 10:36 PM
I’m not writing for publication, but for speed. If that’s what you’ve got, it’s pretty hollow.
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yesenope Says:
7 September 2010 at 2:55 AM.
Here is a quote from the Srimad Bhagavatam book of India , ” … tells of a demon race which invaded the three planetary systems. Opposing the demons was the Hindu god Shiva , who possessed a powerful weapon that he fired at the enemy airships from his own . ”
There are thousands of similar references to be found throughout sacred holy texts the world over . Stichin IS wrong in his translation when he states nephilim means ” those who came down ” as the correct translation would be ” those who were cast down ” .
Whether one takes this to refer to aliens , angels or simply a metaphorical analogy , the ambiguity of the text and mans’ never ending search for enlightenment ensures we will always have more questions than answers . However, I would always question the motives of someone who pours scorn on others search for the truth , yet offers no truth of their own .
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MSH Reply:
September 12th, 2010 at 10:36 PM
is this supposed to prove aliens in any way? That an ancient people believed in supernatural entities is hardly news.
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PaleoBabble » Recent YouTube Video Debunking “UFOs” in Ancient and Medieval Art Says:
27 July 2011 at 11:48 PM.
[...] back in 2008 I blogged here about the work of art historian Diego Cuoghi. His website is a very good source of information [...]
Nick Says:
26 August 2011 at 12:15 PM.
yesenope
Thats a non-argument. Surviving ancient texts would have been too important to quickly scribe paying no attention to grammar, in fact I always assumed writing was reserved for matters of high importance. Meaning, scholars should not fear coming across a spelling mistake or misrepresentation when studying ancient art or text. This web site may well be poorly edited, but there is enough scientific evidence here to show that the ancient summarians did not concern themselves with planet x.
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Zenphilosopher Says:
31 January 2012 at 9:39 PM.
An honest intelligent and clear minded person does not need a PHD to prove their research, what they do need is funding and support, peer review and an opportunity to substantiate their claims. To often “fringe” science is scoffed at and ignored because it threatens to rewrite the social norm. The fact of the matter is that none of us have a definite answer for what the ancients were getting up to back then, we only have small fragments that have survived the ages and limited understanding based on SOME real scientific research and the rest based on socioeconomic(more like sociopathic) and cultural biases. As long as scientists are limited by funding and the opinions of the establishment then only half the story will be told. It is very true what Yesenope said about validity of interpretations:
“The ancient astronaut theory has no greater merit than the New Testament , the Talmud , the Koran or the Egyptian book of the Dead but it certainly has no less.”
What exactly is hoped to accomplish by justifying a specific stance on something based solely on credulity? Meaning that credulity is waved around in the form of a degree. I could go get a doctorate in Evolutionary Biology and then go tell the world about my theories on Creation Science. I could also be someone like Nikola Tesla, Jacque Fresco, Willhelm Reich, *Gasp* Erik Von Daniken or thousands of other researchers (with and without degrees) who have time and time again been able to show validity to their case, Then shunned, ignored, thrown to the maze of scientific bureaucracies, left to run into walls at every turn, or even shut down and had technology and research stolen from them or “confiscated” because some poor fool thought that money and power was more important than discovery and understanding. The fact of the matter is that you are just as reliable if not less than any other researcher, linguist, archeologist, whatever. Oh yea I checked out the art website, it was interesting, but his ideas were simply that, just ideas, just like Sitchin or any other researcher. Again, the only thing science has going for it is the inherent ability towards self correction, meaning that as a scientist, if you can’t conclusively prove something with repeatable tests, you still have a lot more riddles to solve. “Ancient Astronaut Believers” and so called “Scientists” are in the same boat, we are all looking for answers, and you would have to be an idiot or a tool not to think that some of the ancients might not have been talking only about cultural and mythological interpretations of celestial, biological and geological events. Most people who follow Sitchin or UFO’s, the Ancient Astronaut hypothesis, Different Interpretations of Ancient History and Symbology, people doing Consciousness Research Etc, Etc, Etc, are not a bunch of irrational, lazy or stupid people, we are people who realize that the nature of science is ever changing and that the scientific establishment has proven itself to be only half reliable half of the time. Physicists can’t even “equate” a unified theory for Relativity and Quantum Mechanics? Dr. Zahi Hawass equates the Bolivian Pyramids to piles of rubble. And unfortunately, you and your art critique friend are attempting to use classical interpretations of history to disprove a hypothesis that has validity, needs more research and is simply incomplete.
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MSH Reply:
February 2nd, 2012 at 11:58 AM
the guy had his career before the UFOs in art nonsense came along. And data are data.
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MSH Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 11:36 PM
so…what is the evidence for ancient aliens? It doesn’t appear that you’ve read through much of this blog, or my http://www.sitchiniswrong.com site. You might want to do that first and then return here.
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