Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Zeus.

Surya.

Thor.

For thousands of years, ancient myths

have described gods who came down from the heavens.

-Always, you have someone who is descending

from the sky with loud noise, with thundering,

with fire, with smoke.

-They would have come from the most powerful and magical place

possible-- from the stars.

NARRATOR: But just who were these mystical beings that

ruled the skies with supernatural powers?

-You could wonder if-- these tales of Zeus's

thunderbolts, Thor's hammer, if these weren't real weapons.

NARRATOR: Did our ancient ancestors create the gods

from their own imaginations, or did they simply report

events they believed to be true?

-Our ancestors misinterpreted extraterrestrials as gods

because that was the only way that they

could explain away what they witnessed.

NARRATOR: Millions of people around the world

believe we've been visited in the past

by extraterrestrial beings.

What if it were true?

Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history?

And were the gods of our ancestors

actually visitors from other worlds?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Truva, Turkey.

For over 150 years, this small city

has been the center of one of the greatest

archaeological finds in modern history.

The possible discovery of the legendary city of Troy.

In 1868, amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann

set out to find what he believed was the city that

served as the basis for the Trojan War

as described in one of the greatest

pieces of classical literature-- Homer's epic poem, The Iliad.

Written in the 8th century BC, Homer's Iliad

tells the tale of a great war borne

of feuding and jealous gods.

While most scholars believe the story of the Trojan War

was a work of fiction, Schliemann

was determined to prove the myth was a reality.

-Heinrich Schliemann's discoveries

rock the archaeological world.

Armed with his copy of the Iliad, basically,

he just decided that he was going to find Troy.

And so he went and just dug a big hole.

And when he went, he discovered the real Troy.

NARRATOR: But if Homer's story of Troy was true,

what would it say about other Greek stories and myths?

Might those also be true?

Did powerful gods and goddesses actually exist?

And if so, where did they come from?

Hellas, also known as "Greece."

Each day, thousands of tourists visit temples and monuments

built to honor the gods of another age--

the Acropolis, Delphi, the Parthenon,

the Temple of Apollo.

These ancient sites reflect a powerful reverence

for beings that supposedly ruled the world thousands of years

ago.

-When you look at in many of the mythologies around the world,

they have these stories of gods coming down from the sky.

-There's a beautiful description of the way that the gods move.

Like when they kind come down to the earth,

you get the sense of them gliding down,

but the way that they move is kind of beyond time.

It just kind of happens.

NARRATOR: If the ancient Greeks invented

the stories of gods as a primitive attempt

to explain their universe, how can

we account for similar deities found

in widely different regions and cultures around the globe.

Was it mere coincidence?

Or was there a common origin for these gods who supposedly

traveled to earth from the skies.

-The earliest civilization we have-- 3,800

BC-- the Sumerians actually give us

visual descriptions of these beings and speak of this time

that they lived amongst their living gods.

They call their gods the "Anunnaki,"

and that term simply meant those who from heaven come to earth.

-Mythology is chockful of these episodes of gods

coming down to earth.

I mean, because mythology is so interested in the relationship

between gods and humans, there is necessarily

going to be a lot of communication and communion

between the two of them.

NARRATOR: In his book, Odyssey of the Gods, Erich von Daniken

argues that the world's sacred books are full of descriptions,

not of gods, but of supernatural beings interacting with humans.

-Some thousands of years ago, when our forefathers were still

primitive some extraterrestrials descended to our planet.

And because of misunderstanding, lack

of technology our forefathers thought

that these extraterrestrials must be some gods.

NARRATOR: Mount Olympus, Greece's highest mountain.

According to ancient myths, this site was the home of the gods.

It was here on Mount Olympus that Zeus sat on his throne

and determined the fate of mortal man.

-Whenever we have references to Mount Olympus,

it is described to be this magnificent palace on top

of Mount Olympus, allegedly, and the temple walls were always

gleaming of gold or gleaming with silver

and a lot of little lights that they described as jewels.

Well, if you look at that from a modern perspective,

what if that place, Mount Olympus,

wasn't necessarily the top of a mountain,

but it was, in fact, a spaceship?

Because it is described how sometimes there

was a big rumbling with Mount Olympus and the entire top

lifted off.

NARRATOR: But if Mount Olympus was home to alien visitors,

could Zeus have been their leader?

According to both the Iliad and the Odyssey,

Zeus was often depicted as wielding a lightning bolt.

-It appears to be a very powerful weapon

because he could destroy whole cities

with this thunderbolt weapon of his.

NARRATOR: Similarly, Zeus' brother,

Poseidon-- the god of the sea-- was armed with a trident.

-He was able to create tsunamis, tidal waves with this weapon.

The trident weapon of Poseidon seems

to have been something more than just a pitchfork.

-So is it possible that the lightning bolt and the trident

is some type of a direct energy device?

NARRATOR: Arguably, one of the most important

of the Greek gods was Apollo who rode

the skies in his chariot of fire.

-Apollo first was the teacher of the young Greeks living there.

He teach them how to make buildings on the mountain,

on the hillside.

He teach them how to make roads.

He teach them in astronomy.

NARRATOR: Centuries later, when Rome

ruled over Europe and the Mediterranean,

from the 1st century BC until the 7th century AD,

the Romans paid homage to gods similar to the Greeks.

Zeus was now known as "Jupiter."

Poseidon was called "Neptune."

But Apollo was known to both the Romans and the Greeks.

Coincidence?

Or as most ancient astronaut theorists believed, was it

the historical account of powerful beings that

came to earth thousands of years ago?

-We know that the extraterrestrials more

than likely are the source of what they call "gods."

How did they get here?

More than likely, in some type of craft.

-What we map into our myths and our legends

are incredible stories, incredible events.

And any extraterrestrial being, any ancient alien

who has come here on earth will be written down

into this account because it is such an extraordinary event

that it'll be marked forever.

NARRATOR: But if the stories of Greek and Roman gods are true,

can evidence of their existence be

found in other parts of the globe?

And if so, where did they go?

On the northwest coast of France, just south of Brittany,

lies one of the most important prehistoric sites in Europe.

At the seaside village of Carnac,

over 3,000 megalithic stones are placed in rows

over two miles long.

The Carnac stones were hewn from local rock formations

and erected between 4500 to 2500 BC,

at the end of the Stone Age.

They are the largest collection of standing stones

in the world.

-Archaeologists are baffled by the many megaliths at Carnac

here.

It's clearly a massive construction project

with blocks of granite weighing 50 to 100,

to even up to 350 tons.

Legends here say that giants built Carnac,

but you have to wonder-- What is the real purpose

of these giant megaliths?

And why would prehistoric people have

moved all of these massive stones

and placed them in their many alignments here at Carnac?

-Thousands of large stones have been

arranged in very interesting patterns.

They're arranged in intersecting lines

that form triangles that could only

be visible from above the earth.

These arrangements of stones may have

been a way of communicating with extraterrestrial beings.

NARRATOR: The ancient Greek poet, Pindar,

spoke of a mystical land called Hyperborea, far to the north

where the sun shined 24 hours a day.

Legends claim that Apollo visited Hyperborea traveling

in his chariot of fire every 20 years.

-Apollo, who tells the Greeks, OK.

I'm going to go see some other people.

I've got to go and teach them.

And they're like, Well, where are you off to?

And he's like, Well, I'm actually

going to a place that's beyond where the North Wind comes.

It's the land of the Hyperboreans.

NARRATOR: Although mainstream archaeologists speculate

that the Carnac stones are most likely tomb markers,

ancient astronaut theorists believed

these stones are intentionally laid out

in a unique geometric formation.

-Many speculations existed since centuries.

And only a few years ago, in France,

they started to photograph this whole French Brittany

by helicopters.

And when they put the pictures together,

all of a sudden someone realized,

Hey, this is not coincidence.

The distances of the lines are always the same-- 2,860 meters,

or exactly the half of 2,860 meters.

The angles are always the same.

It's Pythagorean triangles.

It's all a gigantic geometrical pattern

from Stone Age, which is impossible.

Our Stone Age people had no idea of Pythagoras' triangles.

Pythagoras was about 420 BC.

NARRATOR: Even though the geometric arrangement

of the Carnac stones predates the Pythagorean theorem

by more than 2,000 years, one question

remains-- Why were the stones arranged

in such a precise pattern?

-The Carnac stones are one of the few things

on the planet that can actually be seen from space.

And they're a perfect marker for any kind

of aerial vehicle looking down on the earth.

-Many of the tourists who come here to Carnac

claim that they can actually feel the energy emanating

from these granite megaliths.

How did these ancient people know about this energy?

And is it possible that they were

able to use this energy to even move and erect

these giant stones?

-I am of the opinion that they were made on purpose.

The extraterrestrials told our ancestor, Do this and this.

It's not the extraterrestrials who made the stone lines.

It's the humans who made it, but by the author

of the extraterrestrials.

NARRATOR: But were the Carnac stones

a sign post for an ancient astronaut

called "Apollo" as he flew his spacecraft high above the land?

-If the Greek god Apollo was really

some kind of ancient astronaut, it's

possible that the stones here at Carnac

were a directional finder pointing

the way to the far north, to the Hyperborea of the ancient gods.

NARRATOR: Over 1,000 miles north of Carnac

lies Scandinavian-- home to an ancient people

called the "Norse."

The Norse were tribal Germanic people

who lived in what is now known as Sweden, Denmark, Iceland,

and Norway.

Norse legends record the triumphs of great warriors

with advanced weaponry, sophisticated combat

techniques, and navigational prowess.

Like the Greeks, Norse mythology includes supernatural beings,

other worlds, and powerful gods.

But, like the Romans, could the Norse myths

refer not to different gods but the same gods as those depicted

by the ancient Greeks?

-There are a number of similarities

between Greek mythology and Norse mythology.

And many of the gods are almost identical,

and they do much the same thing.

NARRATOR: Descriptions of the Viking god

Odin-- the god of war, death, and knowledge--

and the Greek god Zeus bears striking similarities.

-Zeus and Odin are both sky father gods.

They travel through the skies in chariots

because they are akin to the solar divinities.

The precursor to many religious beliefs is sun worship.

The ancients knew that life came from the sun.

So that is a-- a great mystery and a source of great awe.

-What you're getting there is not just some minor deity,

but you really are nailing it down

to one of the chief deities.

This is a very important character.

And so whoever is behind Odin or Zeus

is obviously a person or a divine entity

which is shared by these cultures.

And it's clear that whoever inspired

the myth of-- of Zeus or Odin is somehow

somebody who had an extremely important contribution to make

to both civilizations.

So this entity was definitely known throughout Europe.

NARRATOR: Ancient alien theorists also

point to similarities between the sophisticated weapons

possessed by both the Norse and the Greek gods.

Among Odin's weapons was a spear that never missed its target.

The Norse god Thor-- god of storms, strength,

and fertility-- wielded a powerful hammer.

-Right there, we have a correlation,

a connection because, not only does Zeus have the thunderbolt,

but what does Odin have, and Thor?

They have a hammer.

Thor has a hammer with which he can

smash things, destroy things.

And, you know, the hammer idea is

pretty close with the description

to the lightning rod that Zeus has.

-So you have to wonder if these tales of Zeus' thunderbolts,

Thor's hammer, if these weren't real weapons.

Just like we have today, where we have directed energy beam

weapons or are developing some kind of literal thunderbolt

coming out of a spacecraft.

NARRATOR: But such similarities are not

limited to the Greek and Norse myths.

In India, the ancient epic of the Mahabharata

describes visitations from gods that

possess the advanced technology of space travel.

-There you can read, some thousands of years ago,

gigantic cities surrounded our planet.

They used the word "cities" because they

had no word for modern spaceship.

All of a sudden, out of these cities,

smaller spacecrafts came out.

Of course, in ancient Indian they

had no word like "spacecraft," so they called it "Vimana."

NARRATOR: The ancient texts of the Hebrew Bible

also describes a prophet who traveled

the skies in a sophisticated machine.

-Who is Enoch?

He was the seventh Antediluvian prophet in the Old Testament,

including in the Torah of the Jewish community.

Enoch is only described with two phrases.

That's all.

And it says that the lord took him away in a fiery chariot

into the heavens.

NARRATOR: But technology was not the only characteristic

these ancient deities had in common.

According to legends, the gods enjoyed intimate relations

with humans.

But if aliens did choose human women

as their sexual partners, what was their motivation?

And just what was the outcome of these very close encounters?

Ancient myths are full of stories

of gods descending to earth to mate with humans.

-According to many sources-- including Norse mythology,

Greek mythology, and even the Bible--

we have the stories of these sons of God

or actual gods from Mount Olympus or Valhalla.

And they're coming to Earth.

They find the daughters of men attractive.

-When all these encounters happened

and when women slept with those gods-- which

can be found in multiple texts all around the planet,

that those women actually had sex with extraterrestrials,

not with gods.

Because gods do not exist.

NARRATOR: According to Homer's Iliad, the citizens of Sparta

were renowned for their heroic warriors

and their beautiful women.

Zeus, the Greek god of the sky, admired a human named "Leda."

One afternoon, while Leda walked alone in an orchard,

Zeus changed into a swan, enveloped her

in his powerful wings, and made love to her.

Only later did Leda realize she had been impregnated by a god.

-When you look at Greek mythology

and-- and many of the mythologies around the world,

they have these stories of gods coming down from the sky

and have sexual intercourse with these humans and, in a sense,

create a new breed of human.

NARRATOR: The offspring of these couplings

were described by the ancients as demigods or half-gods.

Experts suggest demigods were supernatural hybrid-beings

of human and alien origin.

Ancient Greeks believed these beings were exceptional

and destined to perform extraordinary feats.

-It is a tradition in many civilizations

that there were certain human children who were somehow

not human but somehow had a connection to the stars,

to a realm beyond the earth.

And this specialness seems to be there from birth.

And it somehow seem to involve a-- a DNA component--

which maybe science needs to look at and needs to study.

NARRATOR: Some of the oldest accounts of gods and humans

interbreeding can be found in ancient Hindu texts.

-In the ancient Sanskrit writings of India,

we find this account-- A queen named

"Kunti" mated with a celestial being,

an extraterrestrial, who was known as the sun god.

The product of this mating was Karna,

one of the heroes of the Indian epic, the Mahabharata.

NARRATOR: Perhaps the most famous demigod

is the Greek hero Heracles, also known as the Roman Hercules.

Heracles was half-man, half-god conceived in the union of Zeus

and a mortal woman named "Alcmene."

Mainstream scholars have often dismissed the tales of demigods

as fantasy.

But ancient astronaut theorists believe

they reflect actual living entities.

-These types of accounts of the ancient wisdom traditions

have a modern equivalence in accounts

of alien-terrestrial hybrids, which

is part of the modern UFO-alien-abduction type

of account.

It's remarkable that we find in these modern reports

exact equivalents in the ancient accounts.

That suggests that we're dealing with realities here.

We're not just dealing with imaginary stories.

NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut theorists

say the term "star children" is another way

to describe the offspring of humans

and ancient extraterrestrials.

They claim that in the early traditions

of nearly every major world religion,

star children correlate to supernatural

beings known as "gods."

-"Star child" is an often-used reference in ancient texts when

a woman had a quote/unquote divine interaction with one

of the gods often resulting in a woman being pregnant without

having slept with anyone.

You know, is such a thing even possible?

Yes, it is.

Today, artificial insemination.

That's what happens today.

You no longer have to have sex in order to have babies.

We have the exact same description thousands of years

ago where women-- without sleeping with anyone-- all

of a sudden became pregnant.

And the question is-- How is that possible?

NARRATOR: Did aliens that came to earth in ancient times

use advanced fertility technology?

-Within Greek mythology, you have many strange stories

of centaurs, cyclops, weird genetic half-human,

half-animal creations.

And you have to speculate-- at least to a point--

that there's a possibility of strange genetic engineering

going on here and creating what are

literal monsters in the past.

-In some of the writings of ancient civilizations,

we see accounts of mating between extraterrestrial beings

and humans producing monsters or giants

or other similar types of beings.

And why is that?

I believe it's because it has actually happened in the past.

NARRATOR: Could these ancient tales

of enormous creatures-- half-human, half-beast--

be rooted in truth?

And if so, is there any evidence these giant hybrids really

existed?

Lovelock, Nevada.

In the early 1800s, local legends

passed down by the Paiute Indians

told of a race of giants who were

exterminated by their tribes.

It is said this was done by trapping the giants in a cave,

shooting arrows at them, and then starting

a large fire at the mouth of the cave.

Evidence of the slaughter lay undisturbed

until the early 20th century.

-Lovelock Cave was first discovered

by local ranchers who were looking for bat guano

to use in their fields.

NARRATOR: In need of fertilizer for their crops,

the ranchers remove nearly 10 feet of guano-enriched soil

from the surface of the cave.

-And then, they began finding human remains.

They found up to 40 or 50 people inside this cave.

One was allegedly 7 feet 7 inches tall.

They all had long, red hair and were literal giants.

NARRATOR: If these skeletons were

the remains of the legendary red-haired giants,

were they visitors from distant continents?

-Throughout the 19th century, many giant skeletons

were allegedly discovered in the Midwest,

also in parts of California and around Death Valley.

And the skeletons here found at Lovelock are one of the few

that were really excavated by an accredited university.

NARRATOR: Archaeologists from the Nevada Historical Society

and the University of California believe

the cave was occupied from approximately 1500 BC

until a few hundred years before white men appeared

in the Nevada territory.

75 miles from the cave site, a local museum

has preserved several skulls that some believe

are recovered remains of the giants.

-Inside this cabinet here are three skulls

from the Lovelock Caves.

When you first see these skulls, they

seem to be pretty much normal-looking skulls.

However, it's when we really start

to compare the jaw bones with this modern dental impression

of a normal adult male that we see

that these jaw bones are unusually large.

And these are really the skulls of giant people who

were perhaps 7, even 8 feet tall.

One of the odd things with these skulls

is that they're not actually put on display here at the museum.

And they're kept hidden in this cabinet.

Now, we don't know if that's really just out of respect

for the Native Americans or whether there's really

something unusual about these giant skulls

that they don't want them to display it.

NARRATOR: Are the Nevada bones evidence

of a race of giants that existed all

through early human history?

If so, could the giants be the descendants

of extraterrestrials?

According to the Hebrew testament,

one such giant appeared in the Valley of Elah 2,500 years ago.

Each morning, for 40 days, a Philistine giant

over 9 feet tall challenged the Israelites to a fight.

His name was "Goliath."

-David and Goliath is one of those episodes in the Bible

where you wonder, What is going on?

Is it just a metaphor?

Or are we dealing with a fundamental interpretation?

And in that sense, Goliath has to be a giant creature.

The question, then, is-- He cannot be human.

What is he?

NARRATOR: David's stunning triumph over Goliath

was considered a mere fable until archaeologists turned up

evidence that suggests this confrontation really

did happen.

On the outskirts of [INAUDIBLE] Israel,

scientists discovered a mote that

may have once protected the Philistine fortress.

Nearby, they found shards of pottery

inscribed with the name "Goliath."

Tests indicate the pottery is from the same time period

as described in the Bible.

Ancient astronaut theorists claim

this is unmistakable evidence of extraterrestrial giants

in biblical times.

And they say there is much more.

The most common megalithic construction known

is the dolmen.

Believed to be burial chambers, they

are found throughout Europe, the Middle East, South America,

and Asia.

Could these mega-structures be the ruins of giants?

-Archeology likes to use the word "dolmen,"

but they were formerly known in folklore as "giants' graves."

-A dolmen is shaped like the-- the Greek letter "pi"

with the top on it.

And they're made of enormous blocks of limestone.

And even today, it's-- we-- we are marveled that anyone could

construct those things and wonder how they got

the top on top of the uprights.

And those were built during the middle of Bronze Period--

which is roughly 2,000 to 1,500 before the Common Era.

So seeing things like that, people questioned.

Those must have been made by giants.

I mean, ordinary people could not have done that.

-Are we dealing with metaphors or are

we dealing with a hard evidence?

Are these physical creatures which somehow roamed the earth?

And I think on volume, we have to accept that some of these

were real.

The question, then, is-- How did these genetic freaks

come about?

-One of the main tenets of ancient astronaut theory

suggests that a long time ago extraterrestrials changed

our genetic makeup through a targeted mutation of our genes,

essentially in the lab.

So they took a couple of human beings, altered their DNA,

then reinserted those people back into the population.

So through procreation, those people

would pass on those new genetic alterations

to the entire population.

NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut theorists

suggest the evidence points to one conclusion--

that aliens changed the genetics of early human DNA.

-For an alien being to work with DNA

is so easy that just creating a new type

is not at all that difficult.

Even today, we have the capability

to create new types of animals.

The question is-- Were we created as such as well?

NARRATOR: But what reason could extraterrestrial

visitors have had for populating the earth

with mixed species and monstrous hybrids?

Were they the result of some kind of scientific experiment

gone terribly wrong?

Did ancient aliens have some reason

to experiment with human DNA?

The Galapagos Islands off the coast of South America

are known for their unique biodiversity.

In 1832, a naturalist named Charles Darwin

came to these islands to observe and record

several species of animals not seen before.

The result of his studies formed the basis

for his controversial book, The Origin of Species.

In it, Darwin proposed his theory

of evolution, which held that all life evolved

over time through a process of natural selection.

But even Darwin's theories could not

explain the developmental gap between apes and man.

There was-- it was believed-- a transitional species that

had to exist-- one which became referred

to as the "missing link."

-Homo sapiens have been around for 300,000 years.

And only in a few thousand years,

our brain size essentially tripled.

Now, that does not jive with ordinary evolution.

You need time-- a very long time.

However, today, biologists cannot quite put a finger

on how our brain volume tripled in a very short time period.

That is still a mystery.

NARRATOR: Could it be-- as many ancient astronaut theorists

believe-- that ancient aliens had

a hand in jump-starting human evolution on our planet?

-Science has been unable to find the missing link,

and maybe that's simply because earth

isn't able to offer that missing link.

Maybe the missing link is not of this earth.

Maybe the missing link is somewhere outside--

extraterrestrial.

NARRATOR: In 1996, medical science

took a giant step forward when geneticists successfully cloned

a sheep.

This revolutionary technology marked

a significant advancement in our understanding of DNA.

But could extraterrestrial visitors

have also possessed knowledge of genetics?

-In the Sumerian records of mythology,

they explain how they genetically engineered

the first human being.

And so it's very possible that extraterrestrials

did genetically engineer us.

-More and more creatures are being discovered

as science goes along-- a little case

or on little islands whereby DNA evidence clearly

shows that something else has been happening.

We're probably going to get the hard scientific facts

that something interbred with humans

on certain occasions, certain moments in time.

NARRATOR: Could the giants and monsters

described in the ancient myths be

examples of genetic mutations?

And if so, what purpose might they have served?

-There are actually accounts in the ancient Sanskrit writings

of India of how, in their original attempts

to produce living things in the universe,

the gods or the extraterrestrial beings

made mistakes and produced different types of monsters

and giants and things like that.

-Why should the so-called "gods" first

make such mixed creatures?

What's the purpose of it?

They observe a lion.

And they say to themself, Why don't we

mix the strongest of the muscle of the one animal

with the heat expellant skin of the other animal

to use it at some other planet which is different to earth?

So they start to make breedings.

They start to make mixed creatures.

NARRATOR: Scholars and archaeologists generally

agree that sometime around 3000 BC, during the megalithic era,

mankind took a quantum leap forward with regard

to civilization and use of technology.

According to myths and legends, human beings

gave credit to their gods for giving them this knowledge.

But if the gods were, in fact, alien visitors,

might mankind's quantum leap forward have

had a more intergalactic origin?

-It is clear that something affected multiple continents

on this planet around 3000 BC.

The pyramids began to be built at that moment in time.

Why?

What was that imperative?

Was it a global imperative?

Yes.

Was it an imperative which came from outside of this world?

Yes.

NARRATOR: If aliens intervened to speed

the advancement of human beings, is it also possible

that they have influenced mankind

at other critical junctures in history?

And if so, could they have continued to monitor us,

even today?

-It's very possible that, if there

was some type of genetic intervention

by an extraterrestrial race on humanity,

they would be very interested to see their experiment progress.

-I have often asked the question-- Is it not ridiculous

to believe that extraterrestrials should--

in a way or other-- look similar to us

or even sing similar to us?

No.

The question is wrong.

They are not by coincidence similar to us,

but we are similar to them because we are the product.

NARRATOR: But if alien beings did

interbreed with humans, why?

Was it to save their own species or perhaps

hide the genetic traces of their presence here on earth?

Could there even be aliens living among us?