Humanoids at Zahara De Los Atunes, 1939

I was digging around the interwebs today reading ufo reports from over the years and found an account from 1939 by children in Zahara De Los Atunes, Spain. I had never heard this account and found it very interesting. Some of the details:

One day in 1939, several children – M. Jimenez Junquera among them – were looking after the cattle in Zahara de los Atunes (Cadiz) and noticed an unidentified flying object measuring some 18 meters in diameter. When the UFO flew over them at low altitude, they felt a sensation of heat. The object landed some 30 meters distant from them, kicking up a large dust storm. Subsequently, a door opened, and from within the object came two beings – one tall and the other short and stout, wearing one-piece outfits and with a rigid aspect, bearing torches that lit the surrounding area, despite the fact that it was midday. They wore “suspenders” that fastened a large backpack, from which protruded something like an antenna. The beings had large dark sockets in their heads instead of eyes. After walking some 20 paces from the UFO, they turned around and re-entered it. The encounter lasted some fifteen minutes, approximately. Upon takeoff, the object left an imprint on the ground which according to several researchers was visible until 1980.

There is a case from a year earlier, with some striking similarities:

Curiously, there is a case from 1938 contained in J.J. Benitez’s outstanding La Punta del Iceberg (The Tip of the Iceberg – Ed. Planeta, 1983) that dovetails in its own strange way with the CE-3 contained in Angel Carretero’s files. Mariano Melgar, born in 1931, was a restless seven year old who was sent by his parents to live with relatives in the town of Muñico in the province of Avila. While tending to the family cows one summer noon, he led the animals to a grazing area near a small wooded area with a clear, cold brook. According to Benitez, young Mariano was sitting in the shade when he heard a buzzing sound (a common feature in many UFO incidents) and saw a spark of light in the clear blue skies: it was a “round object, some 15 to 20 meters in diameter, with a small dome in its upper section...with colored lights all around it. The fuselage shone like burnished aluminum and it had two round windows, like portholes on a ship”

Two oddly-garbed entities descended from the craft, stepping a few meters away to fill what the boy took for a “sack” with samples of soil. A third entity remained by the craft’s doorway, and it was precisely this third “ufonaut” who fired a beam of light against young Mariano when – moved by childish curiosity – he came out of his retreat to approach the first two. “I hadn’t covered five meters when the one who remained at the hatch opening fired a flash at me that nearly knocked me backwards. It frightened me and I retreated back into the treeline.” Determined to get closer, the farmboy was repelled a second time by a flash that nearly blinded him.

I think this account is interesting to say the least, seeing as how it occurred in 1939, 8 years before the Roswell ufo crash and flying saucer hysteria hit the mainstream in the United States and carried around the world.

Source information here:
inexplicata.blogspot.com...

I always find these older anecdotes interesting from a Psycho-Social perspective as often the descriptions are fairly dated as a sign of the times, and what people thought space aliens should look like, behave, and dress were they to ever encounter them.

Descriptions are especially interesting before the Hill abduction case and several similar ones coming after that began to standardize reports from these early fantastic imaginings to the standard grey alien we all hear about today.


The above image is on the back cover of a Fantastic Adventures issue published in 1939.

If only we had space aliens landing, walking around, wearing backpacks with conspicuous antennae today where we ourselves don't even need antennae for reception on our cell phones, we could ask them why they affect such a retro-futuristic look.

reply to post by Druscilla


I agree, Druscilla. I love how alien invaders are pictured in old art and movies.

Originally posted by Rubicant13
reply to post by Druscilla

 

I agree, Druscilla. I love how alien invaders are pictured in old art and movies.

Then you are going to love this, here is just 3 out of 22 pics, enjoy..................
tetrahedra-of-space

Originally posted by Sublimecraft

Originally posted by Rubicant13
reply to post by Druscilla

 

I agree, Druscilla. I love how alien invaders are pictured in old art and movies.

Then you are going to love this, here is just 3 out of 22 pics, enjoy..................
tetrahedra-of-space

Not sure what those things are but they look messed up. Robot aliens...Eh...These are better...





-SAP-

reply to post by SloAnPainful


Haha

My 6-year old boy totally just agreed with you..............reckons Optimus Prime would destroy all the "squid robots" dad.

Out of the mouth of babes..........

Originally posted by Sublimecraft
reply to post by SloAnPainful

 

Haha

My 6-year old boy totally just agreed with you..............reckons Optimus Prime would destroy all the "squid robots" dad.

Out of the mouth of babes..........

Then it must be true! Smart kids 'ya got there pal.

ETA: Not sarcasm either Sublime.

-SAP-

reply to post by Sublimecraft


Frank R. Paul was indeed an illustrator of science fiction for his time.

What I like seeing, from the Psycho-Social perspective, is when witness reports of space aliens, flying saucers, and other such from these pre-1950s times match up in a mix-match of pulp science fiction illustrations, and ideas framed in fiction at the time.

It's like no one has an imagination their own, and is capable of only using parts or things they think of as 'alien', then mix them up into a whole new kind of alien, which is really only a poor patchwork.
Either that, or, like most space aliens depicted in film and, where people actually had television, the space aliens were, well, human but not really, because earth humans don't have funny haircuts, pointy ears, wear silvery skin tight jump suits, or have that color of skin.

It's like people are only capable of imagining and reporting Flash Gordon, Buck Rodgers, or Star Trek style aliens.

Even the invention of the Grey alien is just an extension in the social consciousness of TV space aliens.

Sure, there's arguments for the existence of Grey Aliens long long ago, but, what if the elephant trunk looking thing were adopted as the most popular archetype in social media where people described 'real' encounters, and even abductions by the puffy chested elephant face alien?
Arguments could then be said that Lord Ganesh from the Hindu pantheon was really an alien and walked the earth.
Pick your favorite pre-1950s pulp science fiction alien, then, if you search primitive cave paintings and pictures of crumbling ruins illustrated with fanciful carvings, you're near certain to actual find something close enough to your favorite pulp science fiction space alien enough to make the very same. if not similar arguments to the ancient alien proponents today.

I suspect that if vast distance space travel is feasible as is indicated in new findings regarding the feasibility of warp drive, and there are aliens using faster than light travel who just so happen to stop by for a 'hello', that we will find that real, actual space aliens are so totally alien that everything we ever imagined about aliens is and was wrong.

reply to post by Druscilla

I suspect that if vast distance space travel is feasible as is indicated in new findings regarding the feasibility of warp drive, and there are aliens using faster than light travel (edit) we will find that real, actual space aliens are so totally alien that everything we ever imagined about aliens is and was wrong.

That's exactly my thoughts as well.

Conceptualizing the unimaginable is, imo, the paradox of paradox's - as is this enigma of "UFO's and aliens". As time has advanced so has the perception of "otherworldly" visitors. Now we are entering into inter-dimensional concepts and the imagination tends to run wild - light as living energy and thought- even the very concept of "time" is being taken to task more rigorously these days.

Even the hoaxers have morphed - from Meier to the present YT freaks - they appear to reflect the "global conscience" of their time. The only thing that has remained consistent is this "presence" within our history.

What interests me is the rather mundane or puzzling things they're always doing. Soil samples? Really? Or how about getting out of their ship, standing around for a little bit, and then leaving?

"Should we stick around a while? This seems like a nice planet."
"Nah."

Originally posted by Blue Shift
What interests me is the rather mundane or puzzling things they're always doing. Soil samples? Really? Or how about getting out of their ship, standing around for a little bit, and then leaving?

"Should we stick around a while? This seems like a nice planet."
"Nah."

Very good point, Blue Shift. It kind of reminds me of how we have a lunar module on Mars doing the exact same thing - taking soil samples, photos and measuring atmospheric conditions.

reply to post by Druscilla

I suspect that if vast distance space travel is feasible as is indicated in new findings regarding the feasibility of warp drive, and there are aliens using faster than light travel who just so happen to stop by for a 'hello', that we will find that real, actual space aliens are so totally alien that everything we ever imagined about aliens is and was wrong.

Willy Ley in the 1940s (a saucer doubter), pointed out that visiting intelligent life would probably be similar to us through evolutionary drivers. Even numbers of arms and legs, two eyes and a head at one end of the alimentary canal. After all, complex life is a digestive system with the prerogative of motion. In order to build the technology to come from A to Z, it must have had the means of combustion and manufacture.

Manufacture would require an atmosphere suitable for supporting a naked flame. Such an atmosphere would have evolutionary consequences in genetic structure too - for example, lungs and airways.

Of course, evolution marches on and changes under environmental pushes and pulls throughout successive generations. This would mean that our provisional visitors might not take the humanoid form presently, but would have done at some point in their history. Breathable atmosphere and the genetic design for tool-use is key.

reply to post by Kandinsky


That is, assuming intelligent, evolving life can't exist outside the very small visible spectrum.

reply to post by itsallintheegg
Maybe, but the intelligent life, if visiting, would be dependent on the materials available in the visible spectra. Once again, there were evolutionary drivers that led to our seeing a broad swathe of the light spectrum and not all of it. Food and predators reside within the same band!

We've got technology now that can 'see' much more than we can and, as yet, no parallel intelligences rubbing shoulders with us.

It would be interesting to see the results of a computer simulation modeling the success of various species when granted human-level intelligence.

Overall, each species' morphology and aptitude towards intelligent behavior would dictate the results. Every species would figure out how to build the A-bomb, but how many would be able to carry it out?

Originally posted by Kandinsky

Willy Ley in the 1940s (a saucer doubter), pointed out that visiting intelligent life would probably be similar to us through evolutionary drivers. Even numbers of arms and legs, two eyes and a head at one end of the alimentary canal. After all, complex life is a digestive system with the prerogative of motion. In order to build the technology to come from A to Z, it must have had the means of combustion and manufacture.

Manufacture would require an atmosphere suitable for supporting a naked flame. Such an atmosphere would have evolutionary consequences in genetic structure too - for example, lungs and airways.

Of course, evolution marches on and changes under environmental pushes and pulls throughout successive generations. This would mean that our provisional visitors might not take the humanoid form presently, but would have done at some point in their history. Breathable atmosphere and the genetic design for tool-use is key.

I don't disagree that a course of evolution will have played a role in the development of any other life.
There are exceptions though, perhaps where in cases of manufactured, self aware, biological, Von Neumann machines, or any other machine (biological, silicon, combination, or otherwise) that may even be emancipated from its developers.

We, however, in cases of evolution, take a terrestrial bias in our view of how evolution takes place.
Let's, for instance look at the recent discovery of a free floating vapor cloud of water around a black hole.
Conditions for life may very well have some extreme variables where there could be life that evolves in microgravity environments where the kinds of locomotion and management of fire we know would be very very different.
Tale a look, for instance at the environment envisioned by Larry Niven in Integral Trees.

I don't deny that life from a terrestrial gravity well bias standpoint very well could evolve to look like us given similar conditions and environmental challenges in evolution.
There's the entire Panspermia debate to throw in there too, as well as the purpose-engineered by ancient aliens one as well.

Aliens could indeed look like us for a variety of reasons.

Still, for just as many reasons aliens could look like us, there's just as many where aliens would not look like us.

Take, for instance, dogs, horses, elephants, cuttlefish, African Grey parrots; all very smart animals evolved right along side us in the same local terrestrial environment.
Since this has gone in a what-if direction, What if any, and/or all of these species evolved comparable intelligence to our own right along side us?
Their phenotype expressions will all vary widely, even though they use Earth Terrestrial DNA, just like us, and each species solutions regarding tool usage/development, domestication of plants & animals, exploitation and cultivation of environmental resources will have taken a variety of different paths.

That's just Earth with a few species that are 'smart', which could, with artificial help, or by humans bowing out off the stage completely develop into the kinds of tool using intelligences we could relate to, though they'd look quite different from human in each case.

reply to post by Druscilla
Dru, I think you missed my point. I wasn't speculating on the wild turns evolution could take in the further reaches of unknown space or the novel outcomes dictated by differing gravities. No doubt these could stretch the imagination into shapes that would give us a headache.

I was pointing out that if an intelligence was to arrive here, it would presumably be via a craft. In that scenario, a humanoid template would be very likely.

Take, for instance, dogs, horses, elephants, cuttlefish, African Grey parrots; all very smart animals evolved right along side us in the same local terrestrial environment.

True, four-legged animals are smart. However they don't have the upright body to enable sophisticated tool-use. They don't have opposable thumbs for example. It's hard to imagine them striking rocks together to create an edge tool. Such an activity would be an unavoidable watershed moment in developing weapons or creating fire.

There are exceptions though, perhaps where in cases of manufactured, self aware, biological, Von Neumann machines, or any other machine (biological, silicon, combination, or otherwise) that may even be emancipated from its developers.

Possibly. Then again, the manufacturers of such machines would still have to pass through a stage of tool-use in an atmosphere amenable to fire creation. This brings us back to material beings exploiting their environment with the physical design to enable tool-use. If a self-replicating machine (for want of a better phrase) arrived here, someone, somewhere sent it and it's earliest iteration would need to have been manufactured. That would need infrastructure, industry, population and systems of education at a critical mass at a point in its history.

As an example, look at your coffee mug and consider the myriad stages that were required for humanity to pass through to get that one item sitting in front of you. Arguably, without an early hominid having the bright idea to pick up a rock, the mug wouldn't exist and we couldn't be having this discussion.

reply to post by Kandinsky


I'm still only in partial agreement.
Yes, anthropomorphic bilateral symmetry may very well pop up on meeting aliens.
Other phenotypal morphologies and expressions resulting from evolutionary selection under wildly different environmental pressures than our own, I feel are more certain than anthropomorphic expression.

As touched on previously, here, just on Earth, there are a wide degree of variations.

Look at Crows

So, it turns out that my irrational fear of crows might not be so irrational after all. Do you have any idea how clever these things are? They can use tools. they can make tools. They can recognize faces - and now they can work out the actions of people who are hidden. Someday they will take over the world, and I for one welcome our crow overlords.

Source

Crows Do it Again!

“We show that tool-making New Caledonian crows react differently to an observable event when it is caused by a hidden causal agent” than by an agent that could be seen or infered, the authors wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where they published their results yesterday (September 17). “This difference shows that the crows can reason about a hidden causal agent”—a cognitive ability previously only attributed to humans.

Certainly this isn't on par with building spaceships and flying to the stars, but, it's not too far a stretch of the imagination, less so a stretch than imagining something actually quite alien, to project such animals as crows, or something similar from another world, actually being intelligent tool using space faring beings and one day visiting us as we've already terrestrial evidence and indication of the avian solution for intelligence, cognitive reasoning, tool usage, social cooperation, and other traits desired for civilization building.

There's probably millions if not billions of planets like this one in the whole universe, probably with same atmosphere, same goes for different type planets and anything could be out there which could fry our brains (not with a laser gun but by it's genetic make up). Life is probably abundant in the universe in many different shapes and forms, some similar to us, others not, the scope is too massive to comprehend.

I totally get the connecting the popularity of Sci-Fi films and comics to some encounters. but what came first, the chicken or the egg? Sightings and encounters have been going on much, much longer imo.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
True, four-legged animals are smart. However they don't have the upright body to enable sophisticated tool-use. They don't have opposable thumbs for example. It's hard to imagine them striking rocks together to create an edge tool. Such an activity would be an unavoidable watershed moment in developing weapons or creating fire.

Elephant trunks are pretty dexterous. This shows a robotic elephant trunk.