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1. I. S. Shklovski and Carl Sagan, Intelligent Life in the Universe (Boca Raton, Florida, 1998), pp. 453-454. An important predecessor to the authors mentioned in this essay was Charles Fort (1874-1932). Fort's Complete Works are available online at sacred-texts.com, and are well worth investigating: Complete Works of Charles Fort. Fort's works are available as pdf downloads here: Book of the Damned (1919); New Lands (1923); Lo! (1931); Wild Talents (1933).

2. Two extracts dealing with remote and classical antiquity from Vallee's and Aubeck's important book Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times (New York, 2010) may be downloaded here. This material is not in the public domain and is presented solely for non-commercial educational/research purposes. Both extracts deal with the earliest periods only. The first is a selection of what we consider the most convincing myths Vallee and Aubeck collected which suggest extraterrestrial contact. The second extract is a selection of the most convincing historical events from their extensive Chronicle section.

3. Thomas E. Bullard, "Anomalous Aerial Phenomena before 1800" in Jerome Clark's UFO Encyclopedia (1992), p. 55-62. The full article may be downloaded here: Anomalous Aerial Phenomena before 1800.

4. Ibid., pp. 52-53. For another excellent study of early aerial phenomena and possible UFOs, see the writings of the late Richard Stothers, an influential scientist at the Goddard Center at NASA. His article "Unidentified Flying Objects in Classical Antiquity," from The Classical Journal, vol. 103.1, 2007 pp. 79-92 with important bibliography may be downloaded here: Unidentified Flying Objects in Classical Antiquity.

Additional excellent bibliographies are available at the website Archives for UFO Research in Sweden. Their material on antiquity is here: Ancient Cultures, Archeology and Ancient Myths. Additional reliable and thought-provoking material is available at Dimitris Hatzopoulos' Best UFO Resources website. See especially his Summary and Literature pages. There is an interesting article at Wikipedia on Ancient Astronauts, which includes much material we excluded from this essay.

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5. Bullard, op. cit., p. 50.

6. Bullard, ibid., pp. 50-51.

7. Bullard, ibid., p. 67.

8. J. Allen Hynek, The Ufo Experience: a Scientific Inquiry (London, 1972; reprinted many times), Part II, chapters 8-10. Hynek's study may be downloaded here: The Ufo Experience: a Scientific Inquiry. File size: 14.3 MB.

9. Eusebius' Chronicle, translated from Classical Armenian by Robert Bedrosian (2008) is available on another page of this website and may be downloaded there: Eusebius' Chronicle.

10. Eusebius' Chronicle, op. cit., pp. 3-4.

11. Ibid., p. 10.

12. I. S. Shklovski and Carl Sagan, op. cit., pp. 455-456.

13. Ibid., p. 459. Sagan's remark that "Each knows of the mission and accomplishments of his predecessors" is based on a fragment of the Greek original of Eusebius, preserved in a much later work of George the Syncellus (died after 813). That fragment adds "All these [Oannes creatures], says Apollodorus, related particularly and circumstantially whatever Oannes had informed them of: of these Abydenus has made no mention," I. P. Cory, Fragments ... (1832 edition), p. 31. An English translation of the fragments is available online at sacred-texts.com Cory's Fragments. The quotation referenced above is here. An expanded version (Cory's Ancient Fragments of the Phoenician, Carthaginian, Babylonian, Egyptian and other authors) appeared in London, 1876, by E. Richmond Hodges. A pdf download of this edition is available here. The quotation is on page 52 of this edition.

14. The detail that the Oannes creatures did not eat while on land is interesting, and suggests the possibility that they were intelligent machines, assuming they did not eat in the water either. In other words, though the source describes them as being part human and part fish, they may have been neither.

15. Entry Dagon from the Jewish Encyclopaedia (1906). The entry is available in pdf format here.

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16. Entry "Cecrops" from William Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (London, 1850; reprinted several times), volume 1, pp. 657-658. A download of the article is available in pdf format here. Several of Smith's encyclopedic Dictionaries are available on another page of this website, along with other useful reference materials for mythology, such as the Mythology of All Races series, and the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. See our Folklore, Mythology, and Heterodox Beliefs page.

17. For Persia/Iran, the guardians are fish, not half-human half-fish. Ten kar fish who do not eat and are spiritually fed, protect early creation. For a discussion see S. N. Kanga's article in the Spiegel Memorial Volume (Bombay, 1908), pp. 1-11. The article may be downloaded here: The Homa Tree and the Ten Kar-fish of the Bundahishn and the Trees of Knowledge and Life and the Serpent of the Bible: A Comparison. For India, Brahma and Vishnu/Matsya (from Wikipedia); for China: Fuxi (from Wikipedia).

18. Eusebius' Chronicle, op. cit., p. 5.

19. Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and others (Oxford, 1989), paperback 1991 (the edition cited in this essay), Introduction, pp. xv-xix and passim. This is an excellent and accessible translation of some important Middle Eastern myths with scholarly notes and bibliography by S. Dalley, a renowned archaeologist and cuneiformist. Dalley explains how aspects of Sumerian culture, including mythology, were adopted by other later peoples such as the Hittites, Babylonians, and Assyrians. The myths about Creation and the Flood are generally the same, with local place names, mountains, rivers, etc. substituted in the different versions, though there are important variations. All the myths in Dalley's book were translated from the Akkadian language. For our purposes, the variations in the different versions are not crucial, since all the versions contain the same information about the specific points we raise here. For Dalley's discussion of the differences in the myths of Creation and the Flood in Mesopotamia, the Bible, and the Greek world, see op. cit., pp. 4-8.

20. Ibid., pp. 18-28, 286, 288, 298.

21. Ibid., pp. 22, 27, 29-30, 110-112.

22. Gilgamesh is described as 2/3 divine and 1/3 mortal, son of a mortal king, Lugulbanda, and a divine mother, Ninsun, ibid. pp. 40-41, 51, 96, 99, 107. His comrade, Enkidu, was created from a lump of clay, pp. 52-53. Two other figures who were originally mortals, Utnapishtim/Atrahasis and his wife, were granted immortality by the gods as a reward, pp. 116.

23. Ibid., pp. 96-97.

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24. Ibid., pp. 4, 14, 228, 261.

25. The gods are mentioned as inhabiting and travelling back and forth in four zones: Heaven, Earth, the Underworld, and a watery deep called the Apsu. Ea, the chief deity and the wisest, resides in the Apsu (ibid., pp. 210, 223). Oannes-type entities appear as the Seven Sages or Seven Craftsmen who were believed to have been responsible for massive or cyclopean building (ibid., pp. 50, 120, 182). At some point the chief deity became displeased with these teachers and banished them to the Apzu (ibid., p. 291). The Seven Sages are sometimes referred to as "holy carp" (ibid., p. 292). Dr. Dalley in the Glossary entry for the Seven Sages writes:

"According to cuneiform traditions, known only from indirect references and from Berossus, Ea sent seven divine sages, apkallu, in the form of puradu fish (carp?) from the Apsu to teach the arts (Sumerian me) of civilization to mankind before the Flood. They were: Adapa (U-an, called Oannes by Berossus), U-an-duga, En-me-duga, En-me-galama, En-me-buluga, An-Enlilda, and Utu-abzu. Each is also known by other names or epithets, and is paired with an antediluvian king, hence their collective name 'counsellors', muntalku. In this capacity they were credited with building walled cities. Responsible for technical skills, they were also known as 'craftsmen', ummianu, a word which puns with Adapa's name U-an. They were banished back to the Apsu forever after angering Ea. After the flood, certain great men of letters and exorcists were accorded sage-status, although only as mortals. Deities other than Ea—Ishtar, Nabu, and Marduk—claimed to control the sages. In iconography sages are shown either as fish-men, or with bird attributes appropriate to Underworld creatures." ibid., pp. 327-328.

In the Mesopotamian myths, the gods seem to comport themselves with the decisions of their assembly. See, for example, the outrage of the gods at Ellil for unilaterally ordering the Flood without consultation (ibid., p. 115). The weapons of the gods consist of natural disasters such as floods, drought and disease (ibid., pp. 18-20). But the gods also possess rays and radiances which serve as weapons and, if lost, can hobble the god who loses them. The "Tablets of Destiny" may also serve as a shield of sorts, since when held against the chest, they will deflect weapons hurled at whoever holds them (ibid., pp. 215, 225, 237, 251, 293). Another weapon is the ability to change people's minds (ibid., 298-299).

A number of intelligent composite creatures appear in the Mesopotamian myths. These include Scorpion-men (ibid., pp. 96, 212, 224), fish-men, bull-men (ibid., 237) shape-shifting gallu-demons (212, 224), and others (see the drawings on p. 316). The god Marduk, though not composite, is described as having four eyes, four ears, and five fearsome rays (ibid., p. 236).

26. The half-divine half-human Nephilim are mentioned as being present after the Flood as well (Numbers 13.33). Yahweh also attempts to hobble humanity again after the Flood. In Genesis 11.1-9, humans were building a city "and a tower with its top in the heavens." "And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, 'Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.'" The Bible we use is The Oxford Annotated Bible, revised standard version (New York, 1962).

27. Bullard, op. cit., p. 67.