THE FLEECE AS UFO
But Nephele caught him and her daughter up and gave them a ram with a golden fleece, which she had received from Hermes, and borne through the sky by the ram they crossed land and sea. -- Apollodorus, The Library 1.9.1
With the invention of the airplane in 1903, some began to wonder whether the Golden Fleece could possibly be related to a prehistoric flying machine. After all, the prehistoric peoples of India had written of flying machines in their mythological epics, and the Golden Ram flew across the sky; therefore, flying creatures in myth must therefore be some type of flying machine. Over the years, this idea would gradually metamorphose from a symbolic to a literal flying machine, and from a human to an extraterrestrial invention. Early in the twentieth century, the flying ram was seen as a mythic progenitor of the airplane and a worthy patron saint for pilots, as this excerpt from an article on the history of manned flight from 1908 explains: |
The modern application of ballooning to scientific purposes has caused a widespread interest to be taken not only in balloons, but also in flying machines and other inventions of mechanical genius given to mankind in his endeavours to become the conqueror of space.[...] We are first of all reminded of the myths of ancient folklore which tell us how Phrixos and Helle flew over the sea mounted on the ram with the golden fleece, how Icarus ventured too near the sun with the aid of a pair of wings, and of the legend which tells of Xerxes being borne through the air by eagles harnessed to a winged throne.
Source: Review of Airships Past and Present by A. Hildebrandt, Indian Engineering, March 4, 1908: 176.
Source: Review of Airships Past and Present by A. Hildebrandt, Indian Engineering, March 4, 1908: 176.
Two years later, Charles Lawrence Edholm wrote a poem comparing the modern flying men, the aeronauts, to their mythic counterparts, the Argonauts, imagining an airplane as a pioneering Argo of the air, a harbinger of a golden age to come:
Sail forth, winged Argonauts of trackless air.
And as upon your homeward course you fare
Bring heav'nly treasure. Neither gold nor steel.
Nor gross and earthly wealth weight your light keel:
Man's Brotherhood, bring that as Golden Fleece
On sun-blest wings, bright harbingers of peace.
Source: Charles Lawrence Edholm, "Wings," Aircraft 1 (Apr. 1910): 66. (Orig. pub. Popular Mechanics)
And as upon your homeward course you fare
Bring heav'nly treasure. Neither gold nor steel.
Nor gross and earthly wealth weight your light keel:
Man's Brotherhood, bring that as Golden Fleece
On sun-blest wings, bright harbingers of peace.
Source: Charles Lawrence Edholm, "Wings," Aircraft 1 (Apr. 1910): 66. (Orig. pub. Popular Mechanics)
However, in the agenda-driven world of "alternative" archaeology, these sorts of metaphors took on an all-too-real cast. Drusilla Dunjee Houston wrote one of the first works of Afrocentric history, attempting to prove in Wonderful Ethiopians (1926) that the wonders of the past were the work of sub-Saharan Africans. To do so, she needed--and asserted--that Greek myths were literally true:
[We will discuss the] "Wonderful Ethiopians," who produced fadeless colors that have held their hues for thousands of years, who drilled through solid rock and were masters of many other lost arts and who many scientists believe must have understood electricity, who made metal figures that could move and speak and may have invented flying machines, for the "flying horse Pegasus" and the "ram of the golden fleece" may not have been mere fairy tales. [...] We seek for the place and the race that could have given the world the art of welding iron. The trail reveals that the land of the "Golden Fleece" and the garden of the "Golden Apples of Hesperides" were but centers of the ancient race, that as Cushite Ethiopians had extended themselves over the world.
Source: Drusilla Dunjee Houston, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Cushite Empire (Oklahoma City: Universal Publishing, 1926), 4-6.
Source: Drusilla Dunjee Houston, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Cushite Empire (Oklahoma City: Universal Publishing, 1926), 4-6.
Her assertions would continue to be repeated in Afrocentric circles down to the present day.
Meanwhile, in France the science fiction author Robert Charroux (Robert Grugeau) turned to nonfiction and began asserting that the works of Greek myth were not the work of ancient humans at all but were in fact the lost technology of extraterrestrial visitors, whom he called the Initiators:
Meanwhile, in France the science fiction author Robert Charroux (Robert Grugeau) turned to nonfiction and began asserting that the works of Greek myth were not the work of ancient humans at all but were in fact the lost technology of extraterrestrial visitors, whom he called the Initiators:
An important detail is that the golden fleece was that of a flying ram, traditionally identified with a flying machine used by Initiators. This particular relic, which no doubt was the wreck of an airship, was to be located in Georgia.
Source: Robert Charroux, The Mysterious Unknown, trans. Olga Sieveking (London: Neville Spearman, 1972), 210.
Source: Robert Charroux, The Mysterious Unknown, trans. Olga Sieveking (London: Neville Spearman, 1972), 210.
This single sentence was the most important for the contemporary pseudo-historical theory that the Golden Fleece was a crashed UFO.
Charroux's work inspired that of Erich von Däniken, a Swiss hotelier who popularized the so-called Ancient Astronaut Theory. Though it took him thirty years to do so, in his 1999 book Odyssey of the Gods (English trans. 2000), von Däniken reinterpreted the Argonauts' voyage as a Greek memory of the time when the aliens landed on earth and forced their genetic hybrid offspring to retrieve the wreckage of their flying saucer from a hostile faction lest the technology get loose:
Charroux's work inspired that of Erich von Däniken, a Swiss hotelier who popularized the so-called Ancient Astronaut Theory. Though it took him thirty years to do so, in his 1999 book Odyssey of the Gods (English trans. 2000), von Däniken reinterpreted the Argonauts' voyage as a Greek memory of the time when the aliens landed on earth and forced their genetic hybrid offspring to retrieve the wreckage of their flying saucer from a hostile faction lest the technology get loose:
The greatest ship of the time [the Argo] is supposed to have been built, and sons of gods and kings to have freely offered their services, in the quest of a ridiculous bit of fur? [...] No, definitely not, for the Golden Fleece was a very particular skin with astonishing properties. It could fly! [...] So the Golden Fleece was some kind of flying machine that had once belonged the god Hermes. [...] Sometime or other, many millennia ago, an alien crew landed upon earth. Our forefathers[' ...] simple minds must have regarded the aliens as 'gods'--although we all know their aren't any gods.
Source: Erich von Däniken, The Odyssey of the Gods: The Alien History of Ancient Greece, trans. Matthew Barton(Shaftsbury: Element Books, 2000), 5, 27
Source: Erich von Däniken, The Odyssey of the Gods: The Alien History of Ancient Greece, trans. Matthew Barton(Shaftsbury: Element Books, 2000), 5, 27
In 1976, Robert Temple wrote the longest and most sustained attempt to link the Argonauts to extraterrestrials, The Sirius Mystery, suggesting that the entire Jason myth originated in a memory of amphibious space frogs from a planet orbiting the star Sirius arriving on earth to teach humanity the arts of civilization. In my free eBook Golden Fleeced I explain how Temple misrepresented and misused the Argonaut myth as false evidence of alien contact.