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I think there are in fact fairly numerous reports of UFO's dating back to medieval times and before. Jacques Vallee catalogued some of them, I believe.

I will look into his work, thanks. But many ancients believed comets and shooting stars were piloted by man as well. Unfortunately, some fools believe it to this day.

My analogy of savages in a jungle was meant to illustrate that the tribesmen, regardless of how they explain the presence of airplanes in the sky, probably do not actually deny their existence.

Because they still knew they did not have acess to the entire earth, and the sightings could be predictable based on scheduling.

I want to respond to your post about the "coincidence" of sightings (and abductions) coming at the time of flight.

Vallee, as mentioned before, discusses ancient beliefs on this subject. The point he is making (and also made by Carl Jung) is that our minds conceptualize based on what we know or already believe.

So, for example, an abductee who is Christian will think the aliens were talking about Christianity, a Hindu abductee thinks it is their religion being discussed. A middle ages Christian would believe they were abducted either by angels or agents of the devil based on how the experience went. :-)

The problem is that neither validates nor invalidates the experience. It is just the way our brains work.

There was a great quote on the show last night by one of the pilots.

He said "You just can't imagine what it is like to see something that is not supposed to be there."

Think about what that experience would do to anyone, whether you are seeing aliens or triangle shaped craft taking 90 degree turns or unicorns or whatever.

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Another topic that preoccupied Vallee in his later writings is the role of the world's intelligence services in both supporting and debunking the UFO movement.

Notice I said _both_ supporting and debunking.

The Clintons were experts at this technique.

Here is how it works.

Suppose you accuse a government official of stealing a billion dollars and hiding it in offshore accounts. You have witnesses, evidence of large bank accounts, and a lot of heavy-duty new spending by the government official. The unsophisticated perp will attack you with press releases, hit jobs in the media, lawsuits, you know, the usual.

But the slick official (particularly ones with an intelligence background) know that attack is just one approach and that it works best in combination with covert support.

The perp can secretly form an organization to investigate the scandal. He hires someone on his payroll to run it or influence it. Then this group claims to be investigating--and they produce volumes of absurd claims, phony evidence, wild speculation, that anyone with an IQ over 50 can figure out is bogus. (A variation of this theme would be create many such organizations, some crazier than others, but all ultimately following false leads.)

Now your investigation can be really pounded by claiming you are one of the fruits and nuts, you are making _another_ stupid claim, and you are just in it for the money like all the rest.

See how its done?

Vallee believed this is what happened to UFO research. (I believe this is what happened to the Vince Foster "suicide" investigation, for example.)

Fair-minded people just have to ignore the garbage and try to determine the facts regardless of the diversions and obstacles thrown in their path by the MSM and the disinformation specialists.