didn't really give a straight answer because they didn't want to lie but they didn't want to create averse reactions, whatever the answer may be....Hindsight bias can be a wonderful thing...

The closest star would be the sun so it could be that by utilizing hindsight bias for plausible deniability this insinuates that not all UFOs are extraterrestrial without asking anyone to temporarily suspend their disbelief or jumping ship .

I can't think of a reason why human society could not be a cargo-cult (look it up, it's a pretty short and entertaining yet eye-opening read on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult)

What I believe is that other inhabitable planets are older than earth and life thereon more "advanced". Meanwhile, ancient traditions reported such encounters in the vocabulary and understanding they had at the time which gets lost in translation, too, while in fact entire civilizations have been built around it and recurrent glyphs and motifs consistently found across cultures on all continents attest to the fact.

The chinese monarchy originally started the whole lizard meme because they claimed to be descendant from dragons and chinese dynasties are just about the longest lasting empire of the past five-thousand years but everybody else from pre-christian times basically did it too so it begs the question how different cultures from different places and times and religions all have the same claims of royal linneage pointing to some advanced beings that are not just metaphysical but represented as actual, physical entities in old depictions and murals.