Thinking about it, it's also interesting to compare classic flying saucer shapes with tumuli and other related earthworks - low, rounded bowls and mounds, secret spaces entered into for strange and mysterious rituals. There's a very consistent iconography there.

Anyway... it set me thinking about how we engage with the alien. Did the fairy 'mazed run into the same thing that alien abductees did? Is the alien so alien that when we encounter it we can only process it through our own, pre-existing cultural paradigms? Are there limits to how much novelty we can process? When we look to the stars, are we really only reaching for a bigger mirror?

Though apparently the aliens really did drop in in '47, hanging out with the US government. So maybe they are tangible after all...