Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon

by Michael P. Masters

Could “UFOs” and “Aliens” simply be us, but from the future?

This provocative new book cautiously examines the premise that extraterrestrials may instead be our distant human descendants, using the anthropological tool of time travel to visit and study us in their own hominin evolutionary past. Dr. Michael P. Masters, a professor of biological anthropology specializing in human evolutionary anatomy, archaeology, and biomedicine, explores how the persistence of long-term biological and cultural trends in human evolution may ultimately result in us becoming the ones piloting these disc-shaped craft, which are likely the very devices that allow our future progeny to venture backward across the landscape of time.

Moreover, these extratempestrials are ubiquitously described as bipedal, large-brained, hairless, human-like beings, who communicate with us in our own languages, and who possess technology advanced beyond, but clearly built upon, our own. These accounts, coupled with a thorough understanding of the past and modern human condition, point to the continuation of established biological and cultural trends here on Earth, long into the distant human future.

Genres: Nonfiction, Paranormal, Space, Time Travel, Audiobook, Science

319 pages, Paperback

Published March 2, 2019

About the author

I received a B.A. in Anthropology and French in 2000 from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and completed my Ph.D. at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio in 2009. I’ve taught biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, archaeology, economic anthropology, sociology, and cultural diversity at various colleges and Universities in central Ohio and Southwest Montana.

I have participated in archaeological excavations at a 3.5 million-year-old site in Makapansgat cave, South Africa; an Upper & Middle Paleolithic site in Southern France, and have directed archaeological field schools at a 5,000-year-old Bison kill, butcher and habitation site, and a separate 6,000-year-old Native American habitation site, both in Southwest Montana.

My current research centers on investigating human ocular, orbital, midfacial, cerebral and neurocranial morphology, and how competition among these features may act to constrain the eye and surrounding ocular tissues during ontogeny, as it relates to the disparate incidence & severity of juvenile-onset myopia. This interdisciplinary research uses MRIs & associated clinical data from a large sample of humans, and is carried out using multiple imaging, statistical and geometric morphometric tools.

Further research interests center on investigating hominin biocultural evolution, astrobiology, astronomy and the physics of time as they relate to the UFO phenomenon. My new book, Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon, cautiously examines the premise that “UFOs” and “Aliens” may simply be our distant human descendants, using the anthropological tool of time travel to visit and study us, as members of their own hominin evolutionary past. This text challenges readers to consider new possibilities while cultivating conversations about our ever-evolving understanding of time and time travel.

Reviews

[Ashley Candelaria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book for anyone who is interested in the scientific theories that no one wants to talk about. Its a fascinating study of who and what aliens may actually be (if they do exist at all).

[Dodie Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Masters has written a book that is completely different from most UFO type books on the market today. He is a biological anthropologist with a Ph.D. and a professor of Anthro in Butte, Montana.
His hypothesis states that the UFO seen in our skies and the entities in them are in fact people from our future not from other planets. He goes at great length to explain the reasons for his thinking. This hypothesis is well thought out and very well researched with a very extensive bibliography and index.
I am quite impressed with his work. I have an MA in Anthro so do know most of his jargon, and there is a lot of jargon in the book which is all explained.
It is a good book and I think it is an interesting addition to the UFO/IFO (as he states) debate/discussion.

[Owlseyes]

https://www.space.com/aliens-time-tra...

[Kushagra Pathak · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.3
Certainly comparable to or rather better than SAPIENS as far as paleoanthropology is concerned.The author tries many ways to prove his theory of 'future humans coming back via time travel to take genes to maintain future genetic diversity' correct by providing evidence in the form of citing of research papers,a good number of close-encounter stories like Rockwell incident '47.The good part is his trying to dissect a particular encounter incident from all angles.The language is pretty succint,something akin to Hawking's "A brief history of time".
The scene in the movie "Interstellar" where the astronaut Matthew McConaughey witnesses/touches his future self seems all the more real and thrilling after reading this book.
It should take guts to challenge and maybe refute Stephen Hawking's stand on time-travel,but Dr.Masters seems to have done it quite beautifully with some key 'evidences'.
Extra-terrestrials or extra-tempestrials,time-tourists or temponauts only time will tell!!

[George Kanakaris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Michael P. Masters is a professor of biological anthropology and wrote an excellent book about the idea that ufo's are 'us from the future'.Using an academic approach firmly rooted in anthropology, astronomy, astrobiology, and physics he tries to prove that the 'greys' or 'aliens' are time travellers.He asks : why should extraterrestrials look just like us ?Having two legs , two arms , a head with eyes , ears and even know our language ?I would say : highly recommended .

[Eric Wojciechowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

What if some, and I mean some, (as Stanton T. Friedman used to emphasize during his lectures, pointing his finger in the air, making underlining motions), some UFOs turn out to be real aircraft piloted by an intelligence that isn’t human? It’s the question that gets all of us UFO fans into this subject. And while aliens from outer space is the go-to answer for many, us skeptics of that theory think there are more prosaic answers to most cases.

But what if, just what if, some UFOs really are amazing wonderous machines with pilots? What if we got conclusive proof of just this much? We’d have to explain that and that’s what this book sets out to do.

Unlike most UFO books where a preferred hypothesis is declared up front with data shoehorned in to fit, Masters doesn’t claim his hypothesis is the answer. He appears to still be on the fence as to whether or not this is real, taking a scientific approach of letting the data speak for itself and we’ll see. And based on the data so far, here’s what Masters hypothesizes.

Masters makes a case that if some UFOs turn out to be real aircraft with real pilots, the best answer for them is not aliens from outer space but future humans returning to the past for study.

Masters brings to the table his education and expertise in several fields. According to his bio at Montana Tech University, he’s a professor of anthropology. He earned a Ph.D. in the subject from Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio in 2009. He’s taught, “…biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, archaeology, economic anthropology and globalization, sociology, and cultural diversity…”. There’s more but let this suffice to say his take on the matter is an educated one.

Masters’ seems most qualified in his discussion of the creatures people claim to have encountered. His education in the matter of human evolution and evidence based conclusions on what humans could look like in the future is impressive and he provides a lot of information that suggests we really could grow into the alien greys that have come to dominate the UFO literature and witness accounts. When discussing UFOs, most people will use the generic term aliens but Masters calls them Extratempestrials, meaning humans who have traveled back in time.

There was one caveat I considered while reading this and it was that the alien greys are only one of so many different creatures people claim to have encountered. Just look at the Alien Timeline prepared by Joe Nickell (first published in the September/October 1997 Skeptical Inquirer).

Masters does, however, at least address the numerous differences and notes we could be dealing with human evolution from many different times. Perhaps there’s travelers from twenty-thousand years in the future to millions of years. And looking at this timeline it’s clear the majority are anthropomorphic. Who knows what humans will eventually evolve into (through natural and artificial selection) in the future.

Speaking of anthropomorphic, Masters spends a lot of time showing that the extraterrestrial hypothesis fails on numerous levels, a lot having to do with these aliens looking very much like humans. The chances of extraterrestrials evolving on a different planet in a different star system with different factors influencing the organism is simply impossible to have created two (let alone more) creatures that are bipedal, anthropomorphic. Even if you come away from this book unconvinced of the time traveler hypothesis, I believe Masters has annihilated an extraterrestrial hypothesis.

And that would leave either Masters’ time traveler hypothesis or a purely human generated, psychological hypothesis to explain the UFO phenomenon.

Masters also spends a lot of time showing that time travel is theoretically possible. And while the arguments here are impressive, I must admit physics is where I’m seriously lacking in expertise, or even basic concepts. I’m simply not qualified to determine if the arguments presented are correct, impractical or needing serious revision. This area is where smarter people than I will have to comment on. But at the very least I’m aware that we can never say never because experts have done so in the past regarding other matters only to be proven wrong. Who knows? Maybe time travel will be possible in the future.

Masters discusses some cases in UFO lore that could show proof of his time traveler hypothesis. These were not entirely convincing to me. Some of them have other more logical and less extraordinary explanations. But I’m a skeptic on most UFO cases because each case someone decides to take a deep dive on either either ends up with a quality mundane explanation or doesn’t have enough information to be solved. I’m partial to the work of Robert Sheaffer here and consider it mandatory reading of his book, Bad UFOs, if you want to be well rounded in studying this phenomenon.

But this doesn’t damage Masters’ time traveler hypothesis. It’s very possible time travelers will one day arrive even if there were no such things as UFOs. And his analysis on what these future human travelers could look like is a really good educated guess. It’s a fun back of the envelope, hobby, research project to see if we can find any really good evidence this has happened. This is what Masters sets out to do in this book and who knows, maybe some cases are time travelers. The problem to date is that no cases show conclusive proof of amazing machines with amazing pilots. So as of now, this is a good theoretical hypothesis needing more proofs.

What would be ideal is a crashed saucer with bodies to examine and Masters brings up Roswell often as a possibility. If we had in hand evidence like this, then we could spend a lot of time and speculation on where they came from and who they are. But until then, we’ll have to deal with only an assumption some UFOs are real craft with real pilots. And I think if it turns out this is true, Masters is probably more right than wrong. As I said above, I think at the very least, an extraterrestrial hypothesis can be ruled out.

So why does Masters use the term IFO instead of the more commonly understood, UFO? The purpose is to remove the baggage the term UFO carries. Also, his hypothesis suggests an explanation to the UFO phenomenon; therefore, Identified Flying Objects.

This is a worthy contribution to the subject matter of UFOs. It’s a good scientific, theoretical analysis that if some really are real fantastic machines with odd looking creatures, it could really have an earth-based explanations, not one from outer space.

[Diganta Chakrobarty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Consider a hypothesis: that the extraterrestrials that we are all familiar with are not from other planets; instead they are descendants from the distant future. In other words, they are not aliens of space, but aliens of time.

Sounds nuts, right? I mean, space travel is not only within the realms of scientific possibility, but is already an established phenomenon. On the other hand, time travel is consummate science fiction. Not only does physics forbid time travel, but it also violates our intuition. It's just impossible.

However, the author explains with sound arguments why, in fact, time travel is much more plausible than interstellar travel. And why the so-called aliens are time travelers rather than space faring ETs (the author calls them "extratempestrials"), and the flying saucers are time machines rather than spacecrafts (the author calls them "identified flying objects").

This is one of the central premises of the book. The other premise is how the aliens, especially the greys, who are actually humans, have come to look like what they are. The author draws on a wealth of information from various scientific fields, chiefly anthropology; but also sociology, evolutionary biology, anatomy, etc. He chiefly uses the concepts of anthropology to demonstrate how humans have changed (physically and otherwise) over the ages, and speculates how they might continue change in the future. I, for one, was mightily impressed and you might call me a believer. Some of the explanations were a bit technical and you might have to reread or skip them altogether. I promise you those parts won't hinder your understanding of the text. In general, the anthropological ideas were convincing and it's not hard to imagine that one day humans might come to look like the greys.

Things get a bit murky when you come to the physics of it. For one, the author is not a physicist and his explanations start to get a bit more difficult to follow. I sometimes felt that the author was himself not to sure of what he was writing about. That is excusable since he only cites experts in the field rather than mindlessly speculate. But the thing is, the physics of it is wholly theoretical and even then a lot of it is debatable. Even if we get the theory right, we are nowhere nowhere near the kind of technology that would enable us to achieve time travel. It's extremely speculative and nowhere near on the technological horizon.

However, like the author says, human ingenuity is boundless, and given enough time, there is nothing that human intellect cannot achieve. Can't fault that logic. Mind you, we are talking about thousands of years into the future. Given the exponential rate of technological progress, we might get there sooner.

Dr Masters gives us a range of reasons as to why post-humans might time-travel. Curiosity is the obvious one. But he says maybe they are future anthropologists who are looking to study the past of the human race. When he is dwelling on this idea, he always gushes at this marvellous possiblity that one day humans may be able to study live specimens of our ancestors instead of painstakingly digging fossils and then having to come up with wild speculations to explain our past. He says that there could be no better anthropological tool than being able to actually observe a specimen in its native state.

But they may also be future scientists looking to save the dying human race (due to lack of genetic variation) by harvesting DNA from our ancestors. Hence the recurrent stories where abductees claim they were "experimented" on.

And if you think that time travel violates causality because it allows us to change our past, the beautifully explains why we can never change our past, even if we have time travel. He goes into the concepts of time loops and closed timelike curves and other remarkable objects that preserve the single wordline. It follows that there is no free will, and the universe is strictly deterministic and has always been from the start. What has happened will always happen, and what will happen has happened. Sorry if that didn't make sense. Some things are difficult to explain :-) Go ahead and read the book.

Okay, now the nays. The biggest issue of this book, and I think the only one, is the complete lack of evidence. Plausibility does not imply truth. All the arguments are very plausible and I must say convincing enough, but in no way does that mean that is the only possibility. It certainly does not follow that the fact is transparently what the author says it is. In a way, the entire book is one giant non-sequitur. So, yeah, all that stuff is very much possible but where is the evidence. Nowhere, is the answer.
For all we know, the entire phenomenon is one giant hoax perpetuated by a collection of governments for some obscure reason. Or there might be some psychological reason, some underlying genetic factors that can explain why humans throughout the ages have observed ETs. Unfortunately, the author did not look into these factors. He did not evince the kind of skepticism that we expect from a scientist, and he got realllyyy carried away. He says that his theory is scientific because it satisfies the requirement of falsifiability. We will eventually know if his theory works because time machines will either be built or not. I don't know if you can call a theory falsifiable if you have to wait thousands of years to test its hypotheses.

I give the book four stars because it was an enjoyable read.

[Anthony Zappia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave this book a 3 out of 5 because it’s a fresh look at this perplexing phenomenon. Masters is coming at this topic from a biological anthropologist’s point of view and his hypothesis is that UFOs (or IFOs – Identified Flying Objects – as he calls them) are from humanity’s future. In other words the aliens aren’t extra-terrestrials but us…from far in the future. Or Extra-tempestrials as Masters calls them. I happen to think that SOME of these craft are likely to come from our future, but note my emphasis on SOME. Masters in this book has adopted a ‘one size fits all’ approach and I think this is the failing in this book. The UFO phenomenon (as we’ve come to know it) is about 80 years old and I don’t think there is one explanation for this complex mystery. Some of these craft may be from the future, some may definitely be extra-terrestrial in origin. We also have to consider that some may be exotic military technology, i.e. top secret U.S. government programmes. Then there other cases that have a decidedly paranormal bouquet and point to something spiritual or extra-dimensional in origin. In short I don’t think there is one answer.

Using his anthropological background, Masters uses the trends in human biological development over the past few million years to show how if these trends continue (e.g. the development of the human skull) we are likely to see the kinds of humanoids reported in UFO encounters and abductions. He postulates how these visitors are likely to be anthropologists using time travel to study the developments in our species in a way that anthropologists today can’t do. He adds that they may also be trying to obtain DNA, sperm cells and human eggs in order to supplement a gene pool that in thousands of years’ time may have become too homogenized and lacking in genetic diversity.

I don’t know if Masters’ research into UFO encounters is very poor or he has deliberately ‘cherry-picked’ the cases and evidence that back his hypothesis, but he has ignored so many cases that just don’t fit his hypothesis. Has he not heard of the Hopkinsville Goblins of 1955 or the Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker abduction case of 1973? These entities were not very human at all. Nor did the Hopskinsville Goblins behave like any sort of time-travelling anthropologists. In the Betty and Barney Hill case of 1961, the aliens hailed from Zeta Reticuli (People may recall the map which the abductees saw in that craft). And what about all the Contactee cases of the 50s where the Ufonauts hailed from Mars, Venus or Saturn? And the Nordic looking beings from the Pleiades and other star systems? Would time-travelling anthropologists be communicating with select people with a ‘message for all mankind’? Masters postulates that time can’t be changed (hence the grandfather paradox doesn’t come into play and there’s no risk of altering the timeline). Hence why would so many of these Ufonauts pretend to be extra-terrestrial instead of announcing themselves as time-travellers?

Masters counters the fact that not all the entities in abduction/contact cases appear the same, by arguing that the differences in appearance indicate that beings are coming back from different time periods. My response to this is "would all the extra-tempestrials really need to keep coming back, to the same time period, over hundreds or thousands of years"? Wouldn't they have all the data they need from expeditions carried out previously? And why the focus on our particular time period? We don't really hear of alien abductions from the 30s and 40s for example. Or the 19th century. This is another question he doesn't address. Why have the extra-tempestrials picked our time? Masters even goes as far as to argue that extra-tempestrials from different time periods could be collaborating on expeditions. But again, would they really need to?

Masters expends two chapters looking at why interstellar travel and communication are just too difficult, but why time travel may be a strong possibility for the future. Personally I don’t think his research on interstellar space travel research may be exhaustive. As for interstellar communication, why would advanced civilizations necessarily use radio, microwave or even light to communicate? What about mind? We know that many extra-terrestrial encounters and contacts have been carried out telepathically (an ability which he concedes late in his book) or through channelling. Mind is definitely faster than light. And we know of the phenomenon of non-locality from quantum physics, where objects affect one another from a great distance instantaneously. These ideas aren’t entertained in the book.

The whole issue of time being set and unchangeable will also be sure to ruffle feathers, because in essence everything that has ever happened and will ever happen cannot be changed; hence we cannot accidentally or deliberately change the past. But likewise we cannot avoid what comes in the future. So free will is just nonsense. Coming from a spiritual background I don't agree with that. Personally I think this view (and his evolutionist stance) is revealing a reductionist-materialist leaning on the part of the author. Evolution is what Masters uses to defend and build his idea of how present day humans could develop into the humanoids that will eventually develop time travel to come back to our time. At the same he believes that the odds of evolution producing human-like aliens in other parts of the cosmos to be improbable. Hence Ufonauts must be from our future. Personally I think that there are lot of question marks over evolution but that is a whole subject in its own right. What I will say is that if one goes with the premise that the universe has a spiritual underpinning then the existence of human-like beings in different parts of the cosmos could indicate the possibility of intelligent design at work. Certainly much of what has been coming out of quantum physics over the last few decades certainly seems to point to the existence of some kind of intelligence or consciousness connects the universe.

One last thing I noted was that Masters (and perhaps I'm wrong) gave me the impression that he viewed positively the whole idea of anthropologists using time travel as a 'tool' to investigate man's development in the past. I don't know about other readers, but I find the idea of future scientists taking people against their will for lab tests to be rather callous and immoral. I'm not aware of anthropologists nowadays going into the Amazon and kidnapping natives for 'testing' and further study. This doesn't seem to bother Masters. Masters also discusses the possibility that extra-tempestrials are returning in order to obtain our genetic material in order to save the future gene-pool (hence the alien hybrids). Either way you look at it, our future doesn't seem so bright. It’s interesting but over a hundred years ago, Rudolf Steiner, indicated that thousands of years into the future humanity would split into two distinct races and that humans would no longer be able to create offspring. Perhaps Steiner was right and these 'Greys' that are abducting our people are not visiting us as curious anthropologists but rather to try and reverse a drastic situation in the future. The question is why our particular time in history?

In terms of writing style, there are sections of the book that I did find difficult to read – I think the book is clearly directed at other scientists rather than the lay-person – however there is plenty that non-scientists will be able to get out the book. In summary, I think that Masters' hypothesis certainly needs to be considered in light of many of the cases that have come to light in the past decades, however he should have argued from the outset that his theory alone cannot explain all facets of the UFO phenomenon

[Chris Salmonsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! Would recommend reading. Dr. Masters goes into great detail on understanding time, IFO's, and human history.

[Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before you roll your eyes, consider this: what if all the hoopla regarding visiting aliens is not exactly on the right track?
In order to visit this planet from some other far distant habitable planet one would have to travel for a very long time. Generations of aliens would come and go while their vessel crossed the cosmos. Think: food supply, medical issues, teaching the next generation, etc. All the nitty gritty life issues which no one really thinks about would have to be addressed along the way.
Highly unlikely, right?
What if they're already here? Stationed in the ocean. Stationed on the moon. Or...perhaps they are a version of us from the distant future.
Dr. Masters is a professor of biological anthropology who focuses on evolutionary anatomy and human variation who not only puts up his theory about the UFO phenomenon, but also backs up his thinking with ideas on where we came from evolutionally and where we'll likely be going.
This book represents a compelling argument for what is going on from what I believe is virtually every viewpoint. It is definitely worth the read if you are interested in any aspect of this topic.
Thanks, Michael, for all the effort. I like the way you think.

[Harry Steinmetz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pushing for a new perspective

If you like a book that will challenge conventional wisdom and will really make you think, this book is for you. Dr. Masters lays out his arguments very well and has compiled a great deal of data and information from different disciplines to support. I find his major premise very compelling. Unfortunately, the book suffers from readability issues and lack of a good editor. If you are willing to put in the time,this book will change your view on Alien visitation.

[Fred Fanning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Identified Flying Objects is an entirely different take than I have ever heard about UFOs. I was not expecting to read as much science as the book contains. Some of it is over my head, but it was interesting. The author answered the most common questions about UFOs in light of his theory of the sightings of Identified Flying Objects. I don't want to spoil the book, so that I will leave it there. I learned a lot from the book, and I enjoyed it a great deal.

[George Mossessian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Skimmed in 45 minutes.

“Dr. Masters” writes as though the pinnacle of literary form is the five-paragraph essay from sophomore year of high school. If the goal was to write a non-laughable argument, he has failed to measure up to it along every axis of space and time.

Unfortunately the joke is on me, for daring to hope for anything better.

[Bryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually came up with this theory when I was 15 and the idea has always continued to intrigue me. I'm happy to read a researcher's exploration of the idea. The material was too dry for my taste, but I definitely enjoyed reading the book and connecting with a like-minded individual through the power of the page.

[Dennis Milsom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Logical and scientific

Reasonable support for a different perspective on the growing UFO interest. An anthropologist approach gives it an interesting analysis that is thought provoking.

[Bryan Garcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative and intriguing.

I read this book cause im interested in this subject.

This book gave some good ideas for my fist story im working on.

I myself want to become an author one day

[Francesco Rando · Rating 5 out of 5]

a must have in anyone's collection who is dedicated to UFO research. discusses the possibility that current UFOs and alien visitors are future version of our current human species.

[Chester Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting take on the actual origin of UFO/UAP occupants. That they are us from a different future time.

[Ed D'Emilio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting take on the UFO/UAP phenomenon.

[Steve Harvey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fasinating read on a hidden subject that is, as the author so elegantly critiques, highly plausible. But the text is _way_ too long-winded. Could have been summarised in a book half its size.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this incredibly fascinating.

[Katrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Andy Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fresh, unique take on the paranormal subject of "UFOs". Rather than grand speculation, the book focuses on applying a multifaceted scientific approach to the subject. In addition to being an interesting hypothesis, a layman can gain an insight into anthropology, evolution, physics, astrology and philosophy making this a must read for those interested in those subjects.

[W. Hartman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I appreciated the book. The take on UFOs as time travel relates makes sense.