UFO HUNTERS - Giant Triangles

History Channel - Original Air Date: 3/18/09

The crew adds a new member and investigates numerous reports of huge, flying triangles seen all over the world -- and especially in California.  They have the usual witness interviews, two of which are fairly impressive, and the usual grainy films of lights in the sky (though this time, one of the shots is in daylight).  The thing that makes this episode of UH more interesting is the addition of new, more skeptical crew member, Kevin.  Like me, Kevin sometimes rolls his eyes at Bill's wilder theories, and, unlike the other team members, even challenges some of them as outlandish.  Among the outlandish theories this week: aliens and the government are building UFOs together (or at least the government is back-engineering UFOs), UFOs are attracted to the gold in the California hills, and triangular aircraft have been seen in American skies back to pre-Columbian times.  (Though really these are not theories, they are hypotheses, or maybe suppositions.)  Part of the "proof" of this last supposition is the supposed delta-wing sculptures made by pre-Columbian artists.  One UFOlogist "expert" contends that the theory that these tiny sculptures were birds or insects is absurd because of the anatomy.  Two points from a former A+ student of art history on this: 1) artistic anatomy is frequently inaccurate to life; just look any given set of Egyptian tomb paintings, or the Venus of Willendorf, or the works of Henry Moore (to name very few), 2) I seem to remember that some art expert claimed that these decorative creatures might be fish, which is what they look like to me: stylized fish. The anatomy fits.  Further, I'll suggest that some research on the art of the people who produced these artifacts will likely reveal how stylized their art was; if they were doing human sculptures like Michelangelo and then these "aircraft," well...  Then maybe we have a case for accurate representation of flying machines on the tiny sculptures.  But, I doubt that's what you'd turn up in the art of these people.  (Enough art history lesson.)  An analysis of the daylight footage seems to prove the three lights seen are connected, though the show people don't seem to see the same level of "blooming effect" that I do (which makes areas outside of bright lights darker in video pictures).  They find nothing unusual checking gold mines for evidence of alien mining.  (Surprise.)  Then they fly a model of the pre-Columbian "aircraft" and it glides -- a little bit.  However, despite the model maker's insistence that he changed "nothing" in making his model, I don't see any of the bumps or ridges, or other "design elements" on the real item.  So, it's accurate exept the parts we don't like?  Despite what Bill says, it is not an exact replica; Kevin posits that it may be a replica of a flying toy of the time (like an Aztec paper airplane).  The rest of the team rejects this, and to me it still looks like a flying fish.  Yet, as the show points out, people are seeing strange triangular craft all over the world.  Personally, I favor Kevin's theory of secret government aircraft.  Remember the Blackbird is 50 years old, folks.  If they could make that then, what can they make now?