That's a personal favorite of mine as well.

I was going to bring up the same. I feel like a lot of art particularly from Renaissance on took some artistic liberties and we may be applying our views and perspectives to mold what we're seeing. There's still intriguing art there that makes you wonder why the choice was made for certain objects to be included, so we shouldn't dismiss it.

However, the incident in the art you cited of Nuremberg was supposedly witnessed by many people. What it was is still up for speculation. But, this event and art are what come to my mind first when thinking of pre-Roswell potential sightings.

That's a great example. I've seen it before but forgot how detailed it was and how many saw it.

There’s a surprisingly good chance that the whole aliens thing is a phantom in the human gestalt

Absolutely. And it doesn't even have to be a social phenomenon, I'm not dismissive of social engineering as cover ups for i.e. hyperadvanced but very human military technology.

There's a long line of explanations based mostly in the knowledge or superstition of the time, revised with every new bit of knowledge or commonly accepted superstition. My conclusions might very well be a product of this.

I'd still argue there's a difference in the approach of "modern" historians, investigators and the likes. Where we used to have a belief, confirmed by observable phenomenons, we (or at least more than before) now have a lack of belief with our worldview built upon observable phenomenons and verification through reproducibility.

Yet we're in the intersection between the differing worldviews; I think those who hold the possibility of extraterrestrial, intelligent origins for unknown phenomenons are closer to the truth than those who know it's aliens.

There's still a lot of superstition in modern Ufology.

Ancient accounts of ‘UFOs’ are no different than ancient accounts of angels or demons. There’s reasonable evidence that they are descriptions of known phenomenon and zero evidence that they are paranormal.

I believe this is the logical stance to take; however, it's enjoyable to speculate. If UAPs are of non-prosaic explanations, then perhaps it would be perfectly reasonable to look back at our history, specifically at these ancient depictions, through a different lens.

There’s reasonable evidence that they are descriptions of known phenomenon

From the descriptions of the vimanas of ancient India to the depictions of celestial crafts in meso-america, I'd argue there are quite a lot of material that falls outside of "reasonably explained". I'll even argue that disputes over the original function or intention of ancient objects are not uncommon, even outside the "potential alien stuff" category.

I'm also a bit surprised you put both UFO's and angels/demons in the same category. Would you not agree that there's a lot of evidence accepted by modern science for UFO's, not so much for angels and demons?

the Wandjina site

That's pretty interesting. While depictions like that might be too abstract to give us an accurate depiction, I think it might show us some of the general visual impressions the artist was left with. But after what? Meeting aliens or tripping on shrooms in front of a camp fire after listening to stories about spirits?

When there's echoes in history like you mention about the Ariel School episode, I think it's worth looking in to, or at least be aware of. I've heard about the encounter, but not in relation to any ancient stuff.