Ancient Extreme Weather

May 14, 2014.

He remembered a summer when the sky was overcast for three months straight. The days were as dark as the nights. the sun never showed itself, and people began to believe that a jealous god had extinguished it. In the months when usually it was hot, that year it snowed. The trees never bloomed and their branches remained bare. There was no grass, and oxen, cows, horses, sheep, and pigs all died of hunger. The vines produced no fruit and the earth no vegetables. Entire tribes starved to death. Even the fish in the rivers perished, since they, too, needed the earth's plants. A sorceress* foresaw that the end of the world was coming. But suddenly the sky cleared and the sun shone. One day it was winter, and the next, summer came. That night old women saw a brightly lit ship in the sky, with shimmering sails.

*PGO Note: A "sorceress": aka "clergy"/ "mystical entrepreneurs".

-The King of the Fields, Part 3. 1988. Isaac Bashevis Singer

 PGO: 
I have an artist cousin named Walter Fields who was the proprietor of his own gallery, The Jacklight Gallery in lower Manhattan. I do not know if he is still living. He was a great character and free spirit. One Christmas he sent me a card that he had design which depicted an old sailing ship in the sky beneath which, in the landscape, sat a small and ancient church with a ship's anchor in front of it displayed prominently. 

A description on the card told of a legend of ancient times when a wooden ship had been observed sailing across the sky. Allegedly this ship had dropped it's anchor. I believe this was supposed to have happened somewhere in the British Isles. Legend was that to this day the ancient and mysterious anchor that had fallen to earth was still preserved in the church as a hallowed relic.

It seems that until modern machine propulsion theory and advanced steel technology gained momentum in the late 19th century and was popularized by H.G. Wells and other early science fiction authors, "UFO's", as they are now known reflected the known technology of ancient times: sailing ships, chariots and horses flying across the sky. It seems that human imagination did not create the alleged "flying saucer" until our technology enabled this notion.