....ancient texts like Sumerian and Babylonian cuneiform tablets, like those in the Šumma ālu series and other divination texts from the second and first millennia B.C., provide the first known recordings of potential UFO sightings, though these are interpreted as omens. These accounts describe changing shapes in the sky and black meteors, which, at the time, were regarded as religious harbingers. However, these texts lack visual depictions or illustrations.

In one example, residents of Nuremberg, Germany reported a strange aerial battle on April 14, 1561. They wrote about seeing orbs, crosses, cylinders, and a giant, mysterious black arrow-shaped object, which crash-landed in the distance. According to Hans Glaser, a local artist who made a woodcut depicting the event, the different objects in the sky "all started to fight among themselves" until "they became fatigued … fell from the sun down upon the earth 'as if they all burned' and they then wasted away on the earth with immense smoke." However, he didn't mention UFOs, only writing that "Whatever such signs mean, God alone knows.