Original subtitles

0:00 [music playing] 0:02 NARRATOR: Guanghan City, China, 1986. 0:08 Construction workers unearth two sacrificial pits 0:12 that contain the relics of a long-lost civilization. 0:17 The cache contains hundreds of bronze and gold masks, statues, 0:22 and figurines, in addition to numerous marble and jade 0:27 artifacts. 0:30 Chinese historians consider the discovery one 0:33 of the most important finds of the 20th century 0:36 and date the site back between 3,000 and 5,000 years, 0:41 to the very start of Chinese civilization. 0:47 Before the Sanxingdui discovery, 0:49 Chinese civilization was understood 0:51 to have arisen from the Yellow River Basin, 0:54 basically one spot in China. 0:59 This discovery showed that there were other very advanced 1:02 cultures on the periphery of the Yellow River Basin 1:06 that also heavily contributed to the formation 1:09 of Chinese civilization. 1:12 JULIE LEE: Nobody wrote about the culture at Sanxingdui. 1:15 There's nothing that comes up in Chinese texts, 1:18 and the Chinese are very good at documenting their history. 1:22 So one of the most surprising things 1:24 is how a culture that was so sophisticated 1:27 could slide under the radar of history. 1:36 NARRATOR: The Sanxingdui culture left no written record. 1:40 No human remains have been found. 1:43 And according to their artifacts, 1:45 they appear to have only existed for 350 years. 1:53 JULIE LEE: For some unknown reason, 1:54 the artifacts were broken, burned, 1:58 and placed into two pits and covered 2:01 up, rendering them useless. 2:05 So it's very curious as to why that happened. 2:13 NARRATOR: Adding to the intrigue of the vanished civilization, 2:16 they left behind dozens of bronze heads with odd features. 2:25 On November 1, 2007, the official press agency of China 2:30 asked the question whether or not what we're looking at here 2:34 are ancestors or, in fact, extraterrestrials. 2:40 And my question is, what if what we have here is both? 2:45 If you check out this one right here, look at the eyes. 2:49 Now, why would any artisan carve or create something like this? 2:55 Because our eyes don't look like this. 2:59 The whole thing is very bizarre looking. 3:02 It is not necessarily human. 3:05 It is something else. 3:11 The masks look very unusual. 3:13 They have big ears, big eyes. 3:16 They don't look like normal human beings of today. 3:26 NARRATOR: Could it be that the masks found at the Sanxingdui 3:29 site are depicting ancient astronauts who visited 3:32 our planet in the remote past? 3:36 And if so, could this help explain 3:39 the abrupt disappearance of a seemingly 3:41 advanced civilization? 3:47 Ultimately, they vanish, and we don't 3:51 know what happened to them. 3:53 So were they some kind of extraterrestrial civilization 3:57 or human hybrid civilization?