Original subtitles

An ancient desert covered in hundreds of pyramids.

A massive earthen hill hiding a sacred and deadly spring.

And a controversial discovery hidden deep beneath the Alaskan wilderness.

For thousands of years, civilizations around the world built monumental

structures made of stone and brick that we call pyramids. In Africa, Asia,

Europe, and the Americas, ancient engineers created surprisingly similar

constructions while having no knowledge of what other cultures were crafting.

How is this possible?

Were pyramids meant to be tombs or temples?

Or was there a greater purpose to some of these incredible works?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

Cairo, Egypt.

Towering over the limestone desert sands of the Giza Plateau stands the oldest of

the seven wonders of the ancient world.

It is called the Great Pyramid of Giza. Built in 2600 BC, the monolith

is flanked by two smaller but equally colossal pyramid structures.

The Giza complex is a monumental achievement in ancient engineering and a

marvel that has confounded scientists and researchers for centuries.

The Great Pyramid on the Giza Plateau is an astonishing construction.

There's 2.3 million blocks of limestone in the structure itself.

I mean, it takes an hour to walk around it, at least.

But it's also the fact that you have these giant platforms, megalithic

blocks, perfectly created.

Inevitably, people want to ask how on earth a civilization thousands of years

ago could have achieved this.

The right angles of the corner are almost absolutely bang-on 90-degree

angles. The length of the sides are almost perfectly equal on all four of

them.

They are closer to perfect than would be required for modern buildings. It is

an unparalleled achievement.

It's possible we'll never completely understand how the great pyramids were

constructed with such remarkable precision.

But perhaps an even greater mystery is why were they built in the first place?

The Great Pyramids of Giza are one of the great untold mysteries.

We're not quite sure how they were used, but what we see today in the Pyramids of

Giza are sort of the bones of these buildings in Egyptian antiquity.

Pyramids of Giza were encased in white limestone and presumably

polished.

And so during the daytime, you would have seen these sort of white mirror

-like surfaces.

What we're missing is a limestone covering and a golden top piece.

But the pyramids themselves don't have any particular explanation of why they

were built or the symbolic purposes of it. So part of the mystery is trying to

figure out what is this thing.

Ultimately...

There are more questions than answers when it comes to the pyramids on the

Giza Plateau.

Some of them were used as tombs, but in my own opinion, that was a secondary

function for many of them.

If the Great Pyramids weren't strictly used as tombs, as most mainstream

Egyptologists maintain, then what was their fundamental purpose?

The Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt.

This massive building houses the largest collection of ancient Egyptian

antiquities in the world.

Among the many treasures is a 3,800-year-old capstone from the pyramid

of King Amenemhat III that some believe is connected to a mythical

Egyptian object known as the Benben Stone.

In the Cairo Museum, there is a pyramidion, which is made of a beautiful

black basaltic type of rock from a pyramid that seems to be

our best representation of what the Ben Ben Stone was like, according to the

ancient Egyptians. That Ben Ben Stone goes back to maybe 1850 or so BC, so

it's not the original one, but it represents...

what the original one was in ancient dynastic egypt there was a literal

ben ben stone that ben ben stone has long been lost unfortunately but some

people have suggested maybe it was a meteorite that was pyramidally shaped

and by the ancient egyptians it has sacred power

While some believe the original Benben stone was a meteorite, legends from

ancient Egypt suggest it was a place of divine creation.

Egyptian mythology says that there were once just waters of chaos.

And then what broke through the waters of chaos was an island in the shape of a

pyramid called the Benben.

And it was here.

that the sun god Ra came to Earth and began life.

When they built the first pyramids, it seems that they were trying to recreate

this Benben stone.

Interestingly, on top of many of the early pyramids, they actually had a

recreation of the Benben stone on top of them, a capstone, which was covered in

electrum, which is a...

alloy of gold and silver, so that it shone in the sunlight.

All this showing that the pyramids are connected with the sun, and gaining the

power of the sun, or the sun god, Ra.

There's also these ideas that these Benben stars were actually some kind of

power collector.

Some people suggest they attract lightning.

There's different ideas about this, but it has been suggested in Egyptian

tradition that placing such a thing on top of a pyramid would almost be like

connecting with the solar energy, but also connecting with the cosmos.

Could the Great Pyramids have been some type of ancient power plant?

Perhaps clues can be found in the 21st century research that presents an

extraordinary plan.

March 2025.

After analyzing satellite data, a team of Italian scientists make an

extraordinary, yet controversial announcement.

They claim to have identified a vast underground complex extending

beneath the Great Pyramids of Giza.

One of the most fascinating...

discoveries that could potentially rewrite the history of egypt and the

world are the discoveries that have been made beneath the pyramids on the giza

platter now this is the work of the kafre research project using satellites

to actually penetrate into the ground with a mix of other technologies what

they claim to have found is a series of shafts going over 600 meters down into

the ground Then there's these giant square chambers and many other chambers

and many other systems across the entire Giza plateau, underneath all the

pyramids and even underneath the Sphinx as well.

They're now claiming that there's a whole veritable underground city beneath

Giza. But then the question becomes, why did they do this?

And we can't obviously tell exactly what's down there until we fully

investigate.

But it would seem that this influenced the positioning of the pyramids actually

on the surface.

Could there be an entire city hiding beneath the great pyramids of Giza?

Only time will tell.

And while Egypt's colossal creations are awe-inspiring, these remarkable

structures represent a mere fraction of all the enigmatic pyramids found.

on nearly every continent on Earth.

Pyramids have captured our imagination just because of their sheer

monumentality. The biggest of them are among the biggest buildings human beings

have ever built.

They are monumental, serious achievements.

Very, very beautiful. That, to me, is absolutely awe-inspiring.

Pyramids were built by different cultures.

at different times with the earliest pyramids probably going back to the

beginning of the third millennium BC.

But I suppose the bigger question is why build pyramids?

Was there some reason different cultures have done this all over the world for

many thousands of years?

We need to know. Why?

Among the ever-shifting fans of the Nile Valley stands a remarkable achievement.

Hundreds of ancient pyramids that stretch about 150 miles across the

desert.

These UNESCO World Heritage Sites contain what are known as the Nubian

Pyramids.

What often surprises people is that there are more pyramids in Sudan than

there are in Egypt.

more than 200 known structures.

Most of them are clustered around El Kourou, Nouri, and Meroe. A few are

found at Jebel Barkal, near the sacred mountain.

These pyramids functioned as tombs for the dead, but also a statement

of authority and continuity in ancient Sudan.

Often there was an offering chapel placed At the front of these pyramids,

they had a distinct Nubian character to them.

What's really interesting about them is the fact that they're like solid stone

constructions. They don't have any chambers within them, but they have

chambers deep underneath them where the kings and queens are said to have been

buried with staircases around the side of them leading down into them.

Construction on the Nubian pyramids began around 750 B.C. and continued for

about 1,100 years.

These steep structures range from 20 to 100 feet tall and are made from a

combination of sandstone, rubble, and mud bricks.

And the mysterious lost civilization that made them is known as the Kingdom

of Kush.

Kush was a kingdom to the south of Egypt. They seem to have been very much

influenced by the Egyptians.

It flourished from around the 8th century BC down to the 3rd or 4th

century AD.

In that very early time, 8th century into the 7th century, Kush became

powerful enough to invade Egypt and take it over.

A Kushite king took control of Egypt and made himself recognized as the

pharaoh. He was able to maintain control of Egypt, and in fact his successors

were as well.

And this line of Nubian kings came to rule Egypt as the Egyptian 25th dynasty,

and they remained in control for the best part of a century.

But we don't understand in all the details exactly how this happened.

As powerful as the kingdom of Kush once was, Much of their story remains

unknown, because scholars have yet to decipher their puzzling system of

writing, known as Meroitic.

But some believe the key to understanding this mysterious kingdom

could still be hiding beneath one of its pyramids.

Nuri, Sudan, 2018.

A team of scientists begin an unprecedented investigation of the

ancient necropolis that consists of around 20 Nubian pyramids, including the

pyramid of King Nastassin, the last Kushite king to be buried here in 315

BC.

King Nastassin reigned during a very interesting time of political

transition. The fact that he was the last to be buried at Nuri And then the

Kushite capital was moved deeper in the desert. That makes his tomb an

interesting capsule of maybe what was happening during this time.

The Nuri Archaeological Expedition began work in 2018 to start excavations

at this massive 170-acre site.

We had a possibility that there was an intact tomb for Nastassin.

And so I was brought on to work with the skeletal remains that may be found on

site.

Over the centuries, rising groundwater has left the three burial chambers of

King Nastassin's pyramid completely flooded.

To access the tomb, an experienced dive team was needed to explore the pristine

and unpredictable environment.

The tomb of Nastassin has remained untouched from looters.

Due to it being flooded, the water has acted like a protector for the tomb.

No one's going to be able to swim and hold their breath and swim all the way

into Chamber 3 and retrieve these objects.

So it's kept them safe over the last 2,500 years.

What wonders could the flooded pyramid of King Nastassin still hide below?

In 2019, Justin Schneider became one of the first people in thousands of years

to enter its unknown depth.

The water in the front of the tomb is a brownish sand color from all of the

outside sediment and all the rock falling into it.

You come in through chamber one, which is a long hallway. Water goes all the

way to the top.

Once you go into chamber two, you can actually put your face out of the water.

You can see inside this tomb.

It was a little scary to see how much of the ceiling had collapsed.

That chamber was pretty chaotic, but you could still make out the size and shape

of that chamber. And we were finding shabtis, these small figures that have

hieroglyphics on them.

These little shakti figurines, they're these tiny doll-like carved statues.

They are five to six inches.

They're made of clay. They're beautiful. They're ornate. Just touching the stuff,

to touch history is incredible.

While the team discovered a number of small artifacts, the real prize was

believed to be inside the pyramid's third and final chamber.

Within the third burial chamber, while it was difficult to see, there was a

large rectangular slab that was about in the middle of the chamber that we

would estimate to be either a sarcophagus or a burial bed.

They're swimming through this water, this murkiness, and then finally getting

to chamber three, the burial chamber.

It was breathtaking to see what you know is a king's burial.

There is a pharaoh, there is a king buried inside of this.

It's a time capsule that's just waiting to be opened.

We just can't blatantly go in there and start digging. We have to figure out how

to take that out in order to be preserved.

Unfortunately, before the team could enact a plan to safely open King

Nastassian's sarcophagus, civil war.

broke out in Sudan, and all excavations have since been halted.

It is my hope that the political situation can be resolved.

The Nubian pyramids are tantalizing clues to understand a path in the Nile

Valley that has typically been overlooked when studying the ancient

world. There is so much more to be discovered.

It's fascinating to imagine the kingdom of Kush covered in more than 200

pyramids.

But halfway across the globe, there is a massive structure that stands alone.

It's the largest pyramid in the world.

And for centuries, it was hidden in plain sight.

Cholula, Mexico.

In the shadow of an active volcano stands a massive grass-covered hill

crowned by an impressive 16th century Spanish church.

And buried below hides something few would expect, the Great Pyramid of

Cholula.

This is an interesting one. The Pyramid of Cholula, its name in Nahuatl means

man-made mountain.

So there's already an acknowledgment that this thing is big, and this thing

is really big.

It is, in fact, contrary to many people's expectations, the largest

pyramid in the world. It's not the tallest.

The Great Pyramid of Giza is, in fact, taller, but by volume. The Pyramid of

Tallulah is the largest pyramid that humans have ever constructed.

Scientific archaeology really began in the late 1920s with the

Proyecto Cholula, a project that was directed by Ignacio Marquina. And

Marquina explored the pyramid through eight kilometers of tunnels that the

archaeologists dug. These tunnels uncovered murals, and archaeologists

discovered that there were actually multiple construction phases.

So the pyramid is sort of a layer cake with platform that come out from the

sides, all largely unexcavated.

Today, walking through the tunnel, you absolutely get a sense of the weight of

the pyramid above you because it is massive.

The pyramid sorted out as a smaller pyramid.

Later on, that got covered over by just sort of putting a new one on top of it.

And then that got covered over there, like eight or nine layers to this. And

over time, it got bigger and bigger and bigger.

And then when the Aztecs took over, they had no idea how it got this big. And it

was just as much a mystery to the Aztecs as it was to us.

Well, it's believed the pyramid was first constructed about 200 B.C.

and later built upon by Mesoamerican cultures like the Olmecs and the

Toltecs, local legends.

Describe the original builders as monumental in stature.

One of the most fascinating traditions relating to the Pyramid of Cholula is

that of the Quinomethian giant.

This was this very ancient era going back potentially thousands of years.

These giants, who were said to be up to 12 feet tall, constructed the Cholula

Pyramid because it's so vast, so big.

No one could imagine how any humans could have constructed it themselves.

While it's intriguing to think that giants built the first iteration of the

Great Pyramid of Cholula, the legend itself suggests that even centuries ago,

the structure was only hard to explain, but also a place of profound ancient

reverence.

This has been a temple at every stage, so I think one of the things we see

here... It's a recognition of the holiness or the sanctity of this place.

That a temple followed by another temple followed by another temple being topped

with a church.

In Cholula we see this unintentional collaborative process that builds upon

the sanctity of this unbelievably holy place.

Cholula's importance to many Mesoamerican cultures.

has led to another fundamental mystery.

Why was the largest pyramid ever constructed hidden under piles of dirt?

Some people suggest that it wasn't necessarily just abandoned.

But the Aztecs and the indigenous people, knowing that the Spanish were

coming to conquer them, they wanted to cover it up. So there's some suggestions

that they may have tried to plant plants on it, hide it, disguise it. By the time

the Spanish came, apparently they thought it was a natural hill. They did

not recognize it as a pyramid.

Was the Great Pyramid of Choluda deliberately disguised to hide it?

from Spanish invaders?

And if so, what were its guardians compelled to protect?

According to legend, right at the base of the Cholula Great Pyramid, there was

a natural spring, and it is seen as the waters of life emerging from the

place of first creation.

It was said that Cholula was built.

Shortly after the time of a great flood, a deluge that had ended a previous world

age.

So, did this really happen? Is this a memory of some of the first people to

create the earliest stages of this pyramid?

Very possibly.

Could the Great Pyramid of Cholula be built atop a powerful sacred spring?

It's a belief that was still in existence in 1519.

when Spanish invaders led by Hernan Cortes first reached the ancient city

of Cholula.

One of the myths from the time of the conquest was that the indigenous allies

that were accompanying Cortes on the attack on Cholula were afraid of

entering the city because they believed that anybody attacking Cholula would be

washed away, when the pyramid burst forth with earthly waters.

But we don't know. Chalk it up to a mystery.

We don't know who built it. We don't know the details of their mythology or

their cosmology. But we see this recognition of sacredness in this

location.

It's significant that what was built here at every stage was a temple.

It's common knowledge that the Cholula Pyramid was built to be a sacred

religious site and it successfully served that purpose for over a thousand

years.

But the same cannot be said for a collection of rectangular pyramid-shaped

structures found in the remote Canary Islands, whose very existence has

baffled scientists for decades.

Tenerife, the Canary Islands.

More than 200 miles off the northwest coast of Africa, this remote island

rises from the Atlantic Ocean.

And here stand six enigmatic structures made of stacked volcanic stone

known as the Steppe Pyramids of Guimar.

These are pyramids that there's a lot of controversy about.

People have suggested that these are very ancient pyramids, a very ancient

site.

So there's been a lot of mythology and speculation about them.

Modern legends have developed about these pyramids.

But these pyramids may only go back to the 19th century. They may be nothing

more than the result of people clearing their fields and stacking them up and

making pyramids out of them.

So just how old are these mysterious structures?

Well, some believe the most compelling clue could be their connection to the

summer solstice, the longest day of the year.

These pyramids are perfectly aligned towards sunset at the time of

the summer solstice.

And this was actually confirmed by archaeoastronomers under the leadership

of Juan Belmonte.

who actually lived on the Canary Islands.

So this is a very special phenomena, and it could be behind why these

pyramids were constructed in the first place.

Were the Guimar pyramids built to mark the summer solstice?

If so, the theory that they were simply stacked by 19th century farmers after

clearing their fields seems too simple an explanation.

And more intriguingly, Some claim the pyramids on Tenerife share striking

similarities to other pyramids around the world.

There are other alignments to stars, exactly as we find in the Egyptian

pyramids, and we also find in the pyramids of Central America.

The native people who lived on Tenerife before the Spanish arrived in the 1500s

had seemingly been living in isolation for thousands of years.

How could they possibly be building the same kind of things as people either

side of the Atlantic, unless there was some connection between them?

Are the pyramids of Guimar connected to other pyramids around the world?

Well, according to one world-famous explorer, the link could be more

significant than we've imagined.

Thor Heyerdahl was a Norwegian explorer who was most famous for his Contiki

voyage, which aimed to show that people could use quite simple rafts to conduct

long-distance sea travel.

Heyerdahl travelled to Tenerife in the 1990s and was particularly intrigued by

the idea that ancient navigators would have had a very good understanding of

the stars to help them navigate.

and that as they travel, ideas would be spread around geographically.

So mapping that theory onto the pyramids of Weimar, Heyerdahl thought, well, if

there are pyramids here in the Canary Islands, which is between Europe,

Africa, and the Atlantic Ocean, why can't there have been this sort of cross

-pollination of ideas around the world?

share their knowledge throughout the ancient world, across vast oceans?

It's a fascinating theory that may suggest that the pyramids of Guamar

really were constructed in antiquity by the original inhabitants of the Canary

Islands, a now extinct culture known as the Guanche.

The Guanche are indigenous people to the Canary Islands.

They're very mysterious on many levels.

Modern scholarship suggests that they actually are an offshoot from North

Africa that got to the islands in the first millennium BCE, living there

until the Spanish ultimately conquered the Canary Islands in the 15th century.

The Guanche had...

A lot of what appears to have been advanced knowledge in terms of

mummification and the rituals they carried out.

They lived in caves and stone huts. But there's this whole modern, should we

say, hypotheses and legends and suggestions that somehow they were

descendants of Atlantis, a legendary civilization that was decimated

by natural events.

Bottom line is the Guanche are a real mystery.

There is something that needs more study.

Absolutely fascinating.

Could the early inhabitants of the Canary Islands have some connection to

the mythical island of Atlantis?

It's fantastic to consider. But more importantly, were the Guanche people

once part of a network responsible for the proliferation of pyramids around the

world?

The builders of these pyramids on Tenerife were pretty sophisticated.

They were building these quite elaborate blackstone constructions. They were

aligning them to specific movements of the sun and the stars as well.

It does appear that there was a common architectural language being spread

across the world in ancient times.

We find very similar pyramid styles in all these different places, often step

pyramids. It was almost like an ancient code being embedded within these

permanent structures in all these different parts of the world.

So this gets into the argument of, was there knowledge being passed around? We

don't know. There's just a lot of mysteries about pyramids when it comes

right down to it.

Could the astrological alignments found at the Canary Island structures

be evidence of a universal pyramid code spread around the world?

Perhaps time will tell.

Which may also be the case for a controversial claim that a powerful

pyramid lies hundreds of feet below the Alaskan tundra.

Alaska.

With over 57 million acres of designated wilderness, which is more than all other

U.S. states combined,

And with civilization found in less than 1% of its total landmass, there have

been many claims as to what's hiding in this remote frontier.

But perhaps one of the strangest tales revolves around an alleged dark pyramid,

obscured beneath Alaska's frozen wasteland.

The Dark Pyramid is a presumed pyramid that is hidden under the

ice and tundra of remote areas of Alaska.

This pyramid is near Mount Denali in the heart of what's known as the Alaska

Triangle. The Alaska Triangle is a very anomalous area which stretches from

Juneau in the south to Anchorage in the middle and Yukiovic at the top, formerly

Barrow. And it's much like its namesake, the Bermuda Triangle, in which there's a

lot of strange activity that happens in this area with the dark pyramid right at

the heart of it.

If a pyramid is hiding beneath the ice in one of the most remote regions of

Alaska, how would we even know about it in the first place?

Well, according to the story, it was detected in 1992.

when China was testing weapons of mass destruction beneath a dry lake bed known

as Lop Nur.

In 1992, the Chinese government initiated underground nuclear testing.

The United States knew about this. Our geologists set up a bunch of seismic

equipment.

to be able to detect the shock waves from this explosion.

And when that explosion occurred and the seismic equipment was going off, they

discovered this strange pyramidal shape near Mount Denali in Alaska.

To this day, no public record has confirmed the discovery of a buried

pyramid beneath Alaska.

But some are convinced that the lack of evidence...

is purely intentional.

Because it's said that when news of the Dark Pyramid was released, it was

immediately covered up.

It was broadcast on the local news, Anchorage Channel 13, that this had been

discovered. And there was a young service member, Doug Butchler, in the

Army who saw this particular broadcast.

And he was so fascinated by this.

Doug Mutchler worked in counterintelligence for the Army in Fort

Richardson in Anchorage.

That particular night, there were 40 guys, and they're watching Channel 13,

and it shows a pyramid structure underneath the ground in Alaska.

So he approaches the general manager at Channel 13. The general manager said, I

don't know what you're talking about.

And Doug said he started arguing with the general manager. I was with 39 other

guys, 40 of us. We watched this. And the general manager said, well, you are

mistaken.

Doug turns around to leave, and coming around a corner is a man who took hold

of his arm and says, I know what you're talking about.

Yes, we have that film, but we have been told that we are not.

to broadcast it or talk about it anymore.

Was the story of the dark pyramid deliberately buried?

And if so, why?

For some, the answer is simple. The dark pyramid isn't really a structure at all,

but a 550-foot-tall, top-secret machine.

There are a few different theories about the dark pyramid.

One is that it was some sort of ancient power plant that has been hidden under

the surface of Alaska.

When we look at the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the suggested ideas of what

it was was a possible ancient power plant.

Now, the Dark Pyramid is supposed to be taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza,

so how much more energy than the Great Pyramid of Giza?

Could this dark pyramid be harnessing?

Why would a 550-foot solid black pyramid be underground?

What is it doing in the backcountry of Alaska, and how long has it been there?

I think there's no question the government of the United States didn't

want anybody to know anything about this dark pyramid. Did they know about the

pyramid before the 1992 Lop Nor bomb test?

Oh, I think so.

Mars, 1972.

As NASA's Mariner 9 spacecraft photographs the red planet,

It captures something unusual in a region called Elysium.

Formations that appear at least from orbit to resemble pyramids.

One of the images that they took in the Elysium area of Mars actually showed

what appeared to be three-sided pyramids.

They were noticed by a scientist by the name of Mac Gibson.

He actually had a science paper published in Icarus Journal.

titled Pyramidal Structures on Mars.

So early on, there was a lot of scientific investigation.

Real scientists were looking at Mars, saying, oh, possibly there's structures

here, structures that look artificial.

Could there actually be artificial pyramids on Mars?

Well, it sounds far-fetched. In 1976, NASA's Viking 1 orbiter photographed yet

another strange formation that researchers named...

The D&M Pyramid.

The D&M Pyramid looks like a five-sided pyramid, which is unusual unto itself.

Other pyramids in Martian photographs look like they have three sides. But

people made claims these must be artificial structures that came from

some, you know, civilization on Mars.

And I'm not opposed to the possibility of there being...

extraterrestrial sophisticated civilizations, but we have to be very

careful when we think we see artificial pyramids.

Nature also forms pyramids and pyramidal-type structures. You can

have symmetry in nature. As a geologist, I see symmetry all the time. What are

some of the most symmetrical things?

A pyramid.

Without visiting the red planet ourselves for a closer look, it's

impossible to know whether the alleged pyramids on Mars are just natural

formations or artificial constructions.

But with so many mysterious pyramids that continue to fascinate us right here

on Earth, perhaps it's simply part of human nature to become enamored with

these iconic, awe-inspiring structures.

Humans have always wanted to build the biggest thing that lasts for the

longest. So if you're an ancient culture, this is a pyramid because you

have the stable structure, which allows you to build quite high.

I therefore think that the fact you have pyramids in Mesoamerica, in the Canary

Islands, and in Egypt, is just a reflection of how different cultures

come up with similar solutions to similar problems.

How do we build high? How do we build big? A pyramid is your answer.

Each of these things that we call pyramids has a code.

Whether we understand that code or not, that's part of what scholarship is

trying to sort of figure out.

How were these places used? And that's the stuff that scholarship is made of.

But whether we know the code or not, that's another question.

Could pyramids really exist on other planets?

Who knows?

For now, it's the remarkable structures we have here on Earth that continue to

captivate us and challenge our understanding of human history.

The Giza Plateau may be the best-known pyramid complex, but it's only one

example of this extraordinary engineering.

found all around the world. Will we ever know how and why some pyramids were

built? The secrets surrounding these mysterious structures are innumerable

and may forever remain unexplained.