UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

While it’s debatable whether it’s the cruelest or most painful form of execution, there’s no doubt that crucifixion is by far the most famous way to die at the hands of the state. While the biblical account goes into great detail with its description, as do other historical accounts of the brutal practices of the Romans, there is no proven physical evidence of that or any other crucifixion using nails to affix the condemned person’s hands or feet to a wooden cross, save for one. Until now.

Crucifixion, etc. (John Beaver, Roman Military Punishments, 1725)

“We found a particular lesion on the foot of a skeleton from an isolated Roman burial discovered by excavation in 2007 in northern Italy. Here we suggest crucifixion as a possible cause of the lesion, but this interpretation is complicated by the poor preservation of the bone surfaces and the damage and holes in other skeletal parts.”

In a new study published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, researchers from the universities of Ferrara and Florence in Italy discuss their analysis of the remains of a male found in Gavello, a small town in the Province of Rovigo about 60 km (37 miles) southwest of Venice. According to the Times of Israel, the corpse had been placed in the grave on his back “with the upper limbs at his side and the lower limbs outstretched” – a possible sign, along with the lack of any funeral artifacts, that this was an unusual death. The bones indicated the man died between the ages of 30 and 34, but they were too deteriorated for radiocarbon dating. However, nearby brick and tile pieces placed his death at about 2,000 years ago.

Then there’s the foot. Lesions on the right heel prompted researchers to study it with 3D imaging using a hi-tech digital microscope.

“The presence of an ellipsoidal depressed fracture on the medial side, but not on the lateral, suggests that the injury was inflicted peri-mortem and the blow was inflicted from medial to lateral, causing a breakthrough in the impact area (entry point).”

While not conclusive, that sounds like this foot, and probably the other one, were nailed to a cross with a circular nail. This type of nail was not as common as the traditional Roman square nail, which was found, with a piece of olive wood attached, in the heel bone of one of two males found during a 1968 excavation of tombs in a large Second Temple Jewish cemetery in Jerusalem. Once confirmed, that find was hailed as the first solid evidence of crucifixion. (Pictures of the nail-in-bone and the Gavello skeleton here.)

While the Romans pretty much own crucifixion as a form of execution, using it for nearly a thousand years until Constantine the Great abolished it in 337, they didn’t invent it. Crucifixion or impalement was used previously by the Carthaginians, Persians and Macedonians – Alexander the Great of Macedon was said to have crucified 2,000 Phoenicians after defeating their army. Once they learned about it, probably from the Carthaginians, the Romans perfected crucifixion by adding torture and humiliation and lengthening of the process.

With all of these crucifixions allegedly going on for centuries, why are there only two pieces of physical evidence? Most likely it’s because these gruesome executions ended with the desecration of the corpse by leaving it to decompose on the cross or be eaten by scavenger animals. The two skeletons with heels showing signs of crucifixion were buried for some reason, thus preserving them. The skeleton found in Gavello was isolated from the rest in the cemetery, indicating to study co-author Thun Hohenstein that the reason for his crucifixion was known.

“This kind of execution was generally reserved for slaves. The same topographical marginalization of the burial induces us to think that it was an individual considered dangerous and neglected by the society in which he lived that he was rejected by it even after death.”

Dead men DO tell tales.

As some of you will know, I don’t have much of a belief in the theory that UFOs have crashed to Earth (although, I certainly did until around the early 2000s). Indeed, I have written two books on Roswell which, collectively, provide a non-extraterrestrial theory for what came down outside of Roswell, New Mexico in the summer of 1947. There is also a body of data that suggests some tales of crashed UFOs were created by U.S. Intelligence in the 1950s. The reason: to try and convince the Russians that the government had got its hands on alien materials, wreckage and technology. That does not, however, take away the fact that there are still some interesting tales to address. One of them is a fairly obscure event that occurred in 1952, and which is the subject of today’s article.

Within the UFO files of the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations that are held at the National Archives, there is a USAF document which is dated July 23, 1952. It briefly describes an event that occurred in Maryland, only twenty-four hours earlier. The document reads like this:

“On 22 July 1952, Colonel Smith, Executive Officer, Directorate of Intelligence, USAF, advised that his office had just received a call from the above captioned individual, and that he was concerned over some object that had apparently fallen in a wooded area behind his home. According to Colonel Smith, Mr. [Deleted] resides on Layhill Road, Silver Springs, Maryland, and is employed by some Buick Company in the Silver Springs area. Colonel Smith further stated that Mr. [Deleted] reported this incident to the local police on 19 July 1952, the date the incident occurred, but having received no satisfaction decided to call the Air Force on 22 July 1952. I telephonically communicated the above information to Colonel White, District Commander, DO #4.”

While the matter was not resolved, there is one issue that is worth noting when it comes to this particular account. That issue is the time-frame. July 1952 was also when a UFO “invasion” occurred in Washington, D.C. It was an affair that disturbed elements of the military and caught the deep attention of the CIA. UFOs were not just seen: they were also tracked on radar. It was a major development in the UFO phenomenon.

Keeping in mind the D.C. wave of July 1952, and the “object that had apparently fallen in a wooded area” in Maryland in the same time-frame, it’s worth noting the words of a Canadian engineer named Wilbert Smith. According to Smith – who shared the story with U.S. Navy Rear Admiral H.B. Knowles – he knew of the recovery of a piece of a flying saucer that had “…been shot from a small flying saucer near Washington in July [1952].” Not only that, Smith claimed possession of that same “piece.”

Smith said, in an interview with UFO researcher C.W. Fitch in November 1961: “I showed it to the Admiral. It was a piece of metal about twice the size of your thumb which had been loaned to me for a very short time by [the United States] Air Force. As a general thing they differ only in that they are much harder than our materials. In reality a matrix of magnesium orthosilicate. The matrix had great numbers – thousands – of 15-micron spheres scattered through it.”

According to Smith, he handed the material over to an agency that he would only describe as being “much higher” than the Air Force. When asked if the agency might have been the CIA, Smith refused to say anything more, except that the debris was in “…the hands of a highly classified group.”

It’s important to note that much of what has been said about Smith has been distorted (see Paul Kimball’s on-target article “Oh Canada – Wilbert Smith & UFOs”), and particularly so certain issues relative to controversial tales of dead aliens and crashed UFOs. Kimball suggests that what Smith learned about crashed UFOs may actually have been disinformation, “aimed at the Soviets,” and possibly “designed to convince Stalin that the United States had access to advanced alien technology.”

Whatever the truth, it might be worth someone’s time to look further into the matter of the incident at Silver Springs, Maryland in July 1952, the UFO wave of the summer of 1952 in D.C., and the words of Smith. Maybe, somewhere, there’s a connection. Maybe.