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

Throughout the decades there have been many photos presented as evidence of UFOs and aliens. Such photos and films are countless, and they go way back through time, to before any sort of the photo manipulation methods we have at out disposal today. Here we will look at a selection of curious photos from the 1960s, which real or not have managed to make their mark.

In 1960 there is a case from the country of Argentina, which would soon become one of the most well-known UFO incidents in a country already considered a hotspot for the phenomenon. On July 3, 1960, Hugo F. Niotti, then a captain of the Argentinean Air Force (AAF), assigned to the Air Force School for Sub-officers located in the city of Cordoba, was out driving from Yacanto toward Cordoba when near the area of Villa General Belgrano he noticed a bizarre object hovering off the side of the road to his right. Niotti stopped his car and had the presence of mind to snap off a single photograph of the object before it suddenly shot off at astounding speed out of sight. He would say of what he had seen;

The object was conical in shape, with a height of 7-8 meters and a base diameter of 3-4 meters, with its axis almost parallel to the ground and its base facing the witness. The color of the object was a uniform dark gray. The surface was perfectly smooth without joints or rivets and had a definite metallic aspect. It was at a distance of 80 to 100 meters from his location and moving very slowly toward the south, perhaps at 10 KPH, always parallel to the ground. It was rotating, also very slowly. It then accelerated very rapidly, attaining a speed of perhaps 200 KPH in 3 or 4 seconds, and disappeared into the low cloud bank. This sudden acceleration without any sound was inexplicable.

The Yacanto photograph

The confused and awed Niotti would continue on to Cordoba, turning over what he had seen in his head over and over along the way, and as soon as he arrived, he had his film processed. What he saw in the picture astounded him, but he was not willing to release it because he did not want to tarnish his military reputation and career, but he eventually was persuaded to release it to the Servicio de Informaciones de Aeronautica (SIA), which deemed them to be authentic and then passed them along to the Air Force. The photos gradually leaked to the public and were widely dissected and discussed. UFO Dr. Willy Smith would conclude that the photograph was very compelling, and would give his own thoughts as follows:

A case with a single witness usually is not even considered, but in this instance we have two circumstances that allow an exception to the rule. First, we have a competent witness, trained by his profession to observe details, who did not lose his presence of mind when confronted with the unknown. On the contrary, he reacted promptly, snatching his camera and jumping out of his car to obtain a unique graphic document. And second, the photograph by itself lends enough credibility to the case to make it deserve serious consideration. Not only has the photo repeatedly been shown to be genuine, but it is inconceivable that the Air Force officer would compromise his career with a fabrication that would bring him nothing but problems and discredit. For those who know Vice-commodore Niotti, this option is unthinkable.

What does this photo show? Is it a hoax, and if so, why would a well-respected, high ranking military official do that? Or perhaps he was hoaxed himself? We may never know for sure. In 1965 there is another piece of photographic evidence from a traditionally reliable source. On August 2, 1965 in Sherman, Texas, a television cameraman named Robert Campbell was interviewing policeman Peter McCollum in the wake of a spate of sightings in the area of a massive glowing UFO that had caused a deluge of calls from panicked residents. Campbell had been alerted to this through scanning short wave radio conversations between two police highway patrols. Before long, during that interview the two men saw it for themselves as the glowing cylindrical object hovered in a stationary position nearby. Campbell was able to get a series of four photographs of the thing before it flew off. Unfortunately, the photos would come out overexposed, but no explanation has been forthcoming. Interestingly, the object was witnessed by numerous solid witnesses, including Highway patrolman Bill Quires and Department of Public Safety Dispatcher Jim Faglia. What does the photo show? It is hard to say.

The Sherman, Texas photo

Rather weirdly, just the following day there was another unrelated case from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where at 1:30 a.m. a Mr. A. L. Smith, his 14-year-old son Alan, and three other witnesses saw a brightly glowing, multicolored object in the sky. The mysterious object moved slowly towards the witnesses, before hovering nearby as if watching them, and it is then that Smith would snap off a photo of it before it shot off into the night. The resulting photo would heavily make the rounds at the time, appearing in Life Magazine and generating a lot of excitement due to its clarity, and many analyses done on it have been unable to conclude what it actually is.

The Oklahoma photograph

The 1960s can also claim perhaps one of the most famous supposed alien images ever taken. On 24th May 1964, Jim Templeton, a fireman in Carlisle in the North of England, was out with his wife and young daughter at a place called Solway Firth. They would report that the day had been a bit odd in that they had been constantly aware of a sort of electrical charge in the air, almost like a storm was coming despite the clear, calm weather at the time. The spent the day there taking various photos but despite that creepy electrical charge they didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It was only when they got home and had the film developed that things would get weird.

In the photo was seen to be a figure in some sort of silvery white “space suit” looming in the background over the daughter as she sits there holding a bunch of flowers smiling and completely oblivious to its presence. It was completely odd, as the Templetons would insist that there had been no one else there at the time and no rational explanation for it. When police were notified and the photo was examined, it was found to not be a double exposure, making it all very mysterious indeed. Making it even weirder still is that Templeton would claim that he was being visited by shadowy men who would pass by his house wearing black suits and driving a black car, and eventually come to his doorstep. These two men would act bizarrely, refer to each other with numbers, and allegedly ask Templeton about the photograph and the conditions that it was taken under, before telling him that he had merely taken a picture of a guy walking by to essentially photobomb the shot, something Templeton denied. The two mysterious men then became agitated and drove off in their unmarked car.

The Solway Firth Spaceman

The photo has since been widely picked apart and is mostly thought of as a hoax or a shot of someone simply walking by in the background, but what has come to be called the “Solway Firth Spaceman” has nevertheless gone on to be one of the most instantly recognizable and iconic supposed photos of an alien there is. It joins the ranks of mysterious photographs that have, whether real or not, set the stage for supposed photographic evidence from then on out, and whatever one wants to believe we can expect photos like this to continue coming in for the foreseeable future.

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With the pandemic and accompanying economic recession clouding 2020, it goes without saying that the year will not go down as the happiest for humanity. The archaeology world also felt the effects, as numerous digs were canceled or curtailed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the difficult year, many archaeological and historical discoveries came to light, including a sprawling geoglyph in Peru, a trove of mummies, the tomb of the legendary Romulus and more.

1. Cat revealed at Nazca

It took archaeologists about one week to refurbish the ancient cat outline.

(Image credit: Johny Isla/Ministerio de Cultura)

A 120-foot-long geoglyph of a cat discovered in Peru in 2020 is the most recent example of a Nazca Line to be found. The geoglyph was heavily eroded and barely visible, but conservation work revealed a more complete picture of the cat, which looks a bit like a child's doodle. Archaeologists estimate that the geoglyph was constructed sometime between 200 B.C. and 100 B.C., a time when many Nazca Lines were being built.

2. Amazon ice-age art

(Image credit: Marie-Claire Thomas/Wild Blue Media)

In 2020, archaeologists announced the discovery of an 8-mile-long (12.9 kilometers) "canvas" of ice-age art that dates back 11,800 to 12,600 years. Drawn using ocher, the images include depictions of mastodons, giant sloths and other now-extinct beasts that lived at the time. The images were drawn in the hills above three rock shelters in the Colombian Amazon.

The drawings also include human handprints, geometric designs, and images of deer, tapirs, alligators, bats, monkeys, turtles, serpents, porcupines, camelids and horses, among other animals. There are also drawings showing people hunting animals and interacting with plants and trees. The excavations were made possible thanks to a 2016 peace treaty that put an end to hostilities between the Colombian government and FARC, a rebel guerrilla group. With the onset of peace, the region became accessible to archaeologists.

3. Mummies galore!

(Image credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities)

More than 100 sealed coffins with mummies have been found at Saqqara, in Egypt. Excavations are ongoing, and more mummies will likely be found.)

Since summer 2020, Egyptian archaeologists have been excavating a series of burial shafts at the site of Saqqara and have found an ever-growing number of sealed coffins with mummies inside. As of Nov. 14, the count was up to over 100 coffins containing mummies, and as the excavations continue, more will likely be found. In Egypt, tombs were frequently robbed in both ancient and modern times, and to find so many undisturbed, sealed coffins with mummies is a remarkable find.

Numerous artifacts have been found within the coffins, including 40 statues that depict Ptah-Soker, a deity who was an amalgamation of Ptah, the god of Memphis, andSoker (also spelled Sokar and Seker), who was the god of Saqqara. All of the finds date to between roughly 712 B.C. and 30 B.C., a time when Egypt was often controlled by foreign groups, such as the Assyrians, Persians and Greeks.

4. Tomb of Romulus

(Image credit: Parco Colosseo)

In February 2020, archaeologists announced the discovery of the tomb of Romulus beneath the Roman Forum's Senate House. According to legend, Romulus founded Rome in the eighth century B.C. He and his brother Remus were supposedly abandoned as infants and raised by a she-wolf. When they reached adulthood, the two brothers got into a dispute over which hill Rome should be built on, and Romulus killed Remus. Today, most historians regard the story as mythological and doubt that Romulus really existed. However, the ancient Romans took it seriously and placed his tomb beneath the Senate House, the heart of Roman politics.

Inside the tomb, archaeologists found an empty 4.5-foot-long (1.4 m) sarcophagus made of a light volcanic stone, called tuff, that was quarried from the Capitoline Hill beneath the Roman Forum. The tomb has been 3D laser scanned, and future excavations may reveal more details about it.

5. Female hunters

Artistic reconstruction of a vicuña hunt in Wilamaya Patjxa.

(Image credit: Matthew Verdolivo (UC Davis IET Academic Technology Services))

In 2020, the idea that males did all of the big-game hunting while females gathered herbs and plants was proved wrong, as archaeologists found a 9,000-year-old burial of a female hunter in Peru. She was buried with a hunter tool kit that included projectile points and flakes, and she may have hunted vicuñas, wild ancestors of alpacas.

The archaeologists who excavated the woman's remains do not believe she was an unusual case. When they analyzed over 400 skeletons that had been previously excavated in the Western Hemisphere, the archaeologists found that 27 were buried with tools suitable for hunting big game and 11 of those individuals were female, suggesting that females often hunted big game in the Western Hemisphere.

6. Polynesians meet Native Americans around A.D. 1150

(Image credit: Ruben Ramos-Mendoza)

A large study that involved gathering DNA from 807 Indigenous individuals from Polynesia and the Pacific coast of South America has revealed that Polynesians and native peoples of Colombia not only made contact but also bred with one another around A.D. 1150. It's not clear how the groups met; the Polynesians may have sailed to South America or vice versa.

Either way, their descendants were living in the Marquesas Islands — about 4,350 miles (7,000 km) from the coast of Colombia — by A.D. 1200, and gradually branched out to other islands in Polynesia.

7. Biggest prehistoric monument in the U.K.

This map shows how the giant pits and the Larkhill Causewayed Enclosure circle around Durrington Walls and the smaller Woodhenge.

(Image credit: © Crown copyright and database rights 2019 (OS MasterMap® Scale 1:1250) and 2013 (OS Profile DTM Scale 1:10000); EDINA Digimap Ordnance Survey Service (100025252) http://digimap.edina.ac.uk)

The biggest prehistoric monument in the U.K. was revealed in 2020. Dating to around 4,500 years ago, during the Neolithic period, it consists of 20 giant holes that appear to mark the boundaries of an earlier enclosure circle. Each of the holes is 32 feet (10 m) in diameter and 16 feet (5 m) deep. The holes form a circle stretching 1.2 miles (2 km) and covering an area larger than 1.2 square miles (3.1 square km). It's so large that it has Durrington Walls, the largest henge in the U.K., at its center.

It's not clear why the giant circle of holes was created. It's possible that it formed a symbolic barrier that told certain members of society how close they could get to Durrington Walls. Another possibility is that the holes were used to hold water during the wet season. In any case, the circle of holes is one of a kind, with no comparable prehistoric monuments known elsewhere, archaeologists said.

8. Assyrian rock panels

(Image credit: Alberto Savioli/Land of Nineveh Archaeological Project/University of Udine)

Ten ancient Assyrian rock panels showing carvings of Assyrian deities were discovered at a canal that dates back more than 2,700 years. They include carvings of Ashur, the main Assyrian god, who is shown on a dragon. They also show Ashur's wife, Mullissu, who is seated on a decorated throne supported by a lion. Other depictions include the sun god Shamash on a horse and the moon god Sin on a horned lion. All of the deities face in the direction of the water that flowed in the canal.

The panels and canal were likely built during the reign of the Assyrian king Sargon II, who ruled from 722 B.C. to 705 B.C. In the rock panels, Sargon II is shown at the beginning and end of the procession of deities.

Archaeologists announced the discovery of the canal and rock panels, found near Mosul, Iraq, in January 2020. Work on uncovering the panels began in 2012, but when the terrorist organization ISIL (also known as ISIS or Daesh) approached the region,archaeologists hid the panels to prevent their destruction by ISIL. As a result the panels were not fully uncovered until recently.

9. Rich ninth-century Viking longhouse on Iceland

(Image credit: Bjarni Einarsson)

In June 2020, archaeologists in Iceland announced the discovery of a 130-foot-long (40 m) longhouse that was built in the ninth century. It is one of the earliest Viking structures in Iceland to be discovered and has lavish hoard of ornamental beads and coins archaeologists found.

The finds include Roman and Middle Eastern silver coins, as well as "hacksilver" — cut and bent pieces of silver that the Vikings and other peoples used as bullion or currency. The hoards also contained glass beads, rings, weights and a tiny fragment of gold. The Vikings who lived there may have acquired the goods by trading whale and seal meat and skins for them.

10. Mammoth structure

(Image credit: Alex Pryor)

A circular structure constructed out of the remains of at least 60 mammoths was discovered in Russia. Bones from reindeer, horses, bears, wolves, red foxes and arctic foxes, among other animals, were also used to build the structure, archaeologists said. Dating back around 20,000 years, the structure is 36 feet (11 m) in diameter and may have had a roof made of animal hides, the researchers said.

The purpose of the structure is a bit of a mystery. It might have been used for rituals, or possibly food storage. At the time, pieces of animal meat were still attached to the bones, which would have made the structure smelly. Archaeologists could tell that they had meat on them because some of the bones were articulated (joined together) in a way that could only have been done if flesh was still on them.