Original subtitles

Gateways to other dimensions.

To the Mayans, this represented the passageway

to another world. Hidden dwellings

for strange beings. They were the

first inhabitants of Planet Earth.

Secret vaults of cosmic knowledge.

It's almost as though they're opening a

doorway to communicate with these divine beings.

Since the dawn of man, caves have been a source of

great mystery. But could the darkest recesses

of our planet really be hiding some mysterious power?

And within their depths, might we find evidence of

extraterrestrial visitors? In some

ways, exploring the underground cavern world of Planet Earth

is the final frontier. Millions of people

around the world believe we have been visited in the past by

extraterrestrial beings. What if it were true?

Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history?

And if so, might there be a connection between aliens

and the earth's forbidden caves?

Central India. July, 2014.

While exploring caves in the region of Charama-which are

known to contain prehistoric artwork dating as far back as

10,000 years-an Indian archaeologist, J.R. Bhagat,

makes a stunning discovery. The Indian

government and Times of India had a major story about rock

paintings found recently in Central India that seem to show

these tall beings, and they do not seem to have a nose or a

mouth, and nearby is this three-legged disk.

The Times of India actually proposed the

idea, what if what we have depicted here are some type of

extraterrestrials or at least some type of flying craft,

because it's the basis for much of the Hindu pantheon of gods.

Ancient Hindu texts like the Vedas and the Puranas

record stories about extraterrestrials existing on

other planets, and the Mahabharata-one of ancient

India's two major Sanskrit epics-contains stories about

gods coming to Earth in flying machines.

Even the legends specific to this region tell of a

mysterious race of beings known as the "rohela" who descended

from the sky and abducted local villagers.

Could the newly unearthed cave art be a visual record that

extraterrestrials really visited here?

There was an obsession of ancient human

beings to depict things that they saw,

and I think they did it with carvings on caves because that's

what they saw. But what is it

about caves that made them the ideal canvases for ancient

peoples to chronicle their experiences?

Caves are hugely significant in ancient

mythology and legends, especially about the gods.

They seem to be a kind of a luminal point, a boundary place

where the gods and humans can meet.

There is a whole hidden underground world

of Planet Earth that we're only just now beginning to discover,

and we don't know what's there. We could be discovering all

kinds of amazing things, and it's possible that there are

entire cities under the earth. Whole cavern metropolises that

are talked about in legends. But while ancient

cave art often reveals the type of animals our earliest

ancestors encountered and their means for hunting them, there

is a surprising number of depictions of strange-looking

figures and objects that defy any conventional explanation.

In Australia, the Wondjina people, they

painted images on their caves which eerily looks like the

so-called Greys of alien abduction lore today.

You have the strange petroglyphs in the

Hoggar Mountains of Southern Algeria.

You've got strange rock art, too, in the American Southwest,

and when you look at it, and even have the natives explain

it to you, they say things like, "Oh, yes, he's Martian god,"

or, "These are the star people coming from the sky."

How do we explain so many different cultures

across thousands of years and thousands of miles producing

such consistent visual representations?

The ones that were discovered in some of the

African caves, it's too similar to what has been

discovered on every continent for it to be complete

coincidence. So, it's this whole idea of the

spark of initial inspiration. What is it that they witnessed,

and could it be that they witnessed extraterrestrials?

One of the more intriguing aspects of the cave

paintings that seem to show aliens, is why are they inside

caves? This has sort of given rise to

the theory that maybe these aliens, perhaps, have permanent

bases on the planet underground. Maybe ancient man saw them

coming out of some of these caves and caverns

and then realized there was a relationship between the aliens

and the caves. In ancient times,

caves were places of shelter, but is it possible our

ancestors were also using caves to record and protect

information about extraterrestrial beings who

played a role in our existence? Perhaps the answer can be found

halfway around the world, in the American Southwest.

The Grand Canyon. This epic, 277-mile-long, one-

mile-deep fissure, exposes millions of years of geologic

strata. Imprinted onto this dramatic

landscape are petroglyphs that depict everyday life as

experienced by the first inhabitants of the region.

But in one of the most remote corners of the canyon is a

small cave covered with artwork that mystifies experts.

Some refer to it as the "Shaman's Panel" because it

appears to depict scenes of the supernatural.

All around the Grand Canyon are unusual sites

and sacred sites, and then you have the Shaman's Panel there in

the Grand Canyon, which seems to show these long, tall

extraterrestrial-type figures. Like the strange

looking beings found in the cave in Charama, India, the figures

depicted on the Shaman's Panel are oddly elongated and are also

thought to have been created as many as 10,000 years ago.

And just as in Charama, the native Hopi people here also

have detailed accounts of extraterrestrials who came down

to Earth. In the Southwest,

the Pueblo Indians, such as the Zuni and-and the Hopi, believe

that there is an entrance into an underground world and it is

located in the Grand Canyon. And it's this mythological

underworld, uh, of caves and extraterrestrials, the ant

people. The Hopi have

this concept of the ant people. The ant people are very thin.

They have elongated heads. And the ancestral Hopi people

did make pictures of these ant people which still survive

today. Is it possible the

rock art found here and elsewhere around the world is

evidence that the earth's first inhabitants had contact with

otherworldly beings? And if so, might there be some

significance to the fact that many of these strange

petroglyphs are found in and around caves?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest further

evidence can be found by examining the ritualistic

practices that continue to be performed inside caves even to this day.

The Himalayas, Northern India.

Every summer, hundreds of

thousands of Hindu pilgrims brave an arduous journey.

They cross many miles of deadly terrain to reach the Amarnath

Cave-a place of worship for thousands of years.

12,756 feet above sea level, in the

Himalayas, is the most revered holy pilgrimage site for all of

the people who follow the Hindu faith.

People die because of high altitude

sickness. Others simply fall off the

cliff. And still people go there

because it is considered to be the most holiest shrine.

According to local lore, this massive cave is where

the god Shiva revealed the secrets of immortality and the

creation of the universe to his wife Parvati.

To honor Shiva, worshippers pay

their respects to a sacred relic inside, an ice lingam, which

they believe is a physical manifestation of his generative

power. To reveal the secret

to transcending the flesh, the secret to true immortality,

makes that site of extreme importance to the people in the

Hindu faith. To the Hindu

faithful who risk life and limb to reach the Amarnath Cave, this

story is a real account of an otherworldly being who was at

this exact location here on Earth.

But why would Lord Shiva choose to divulge his divine secrets in

a cave? Could caves really hold special

properties that have made them places of worship throughout

history? Interestingly, the Amarnath Cave

is only one of hundreds of caves around the world that have been

at one time considered sacred. Archaeologists believe a

20-foot-long serpentine rock carving in Botswana's Rhino Cave

was the focus of religious ritual as far back as 70,000

years ago. And cave monasteries can be

found in France... Russia...

Thailand... Ethiopia...

and Hungary, just to name a few. >> REVEREND MICHAEL J.S. CARTER:

I don't think that this is a coincidence that places of

refuge, spiritual refuge, are inside caves.

This is where one can contemplate, one can hear one's

inner voice without the distractions of the day.

One thing about caves is they're

underground; they're unseen. Well, religion is about unseen

things. Going into a cave is going into

holy ground. Is the mysterious

nature of caves enough to explain why they have been

revered as sacred places by different cultures and religions

all over the world? Ancient astronaut theorists

suggest there may be a more profound reason, which can be

found by examining the stories behind our ancestors' rituals.

Yucat?n, Mexico, 2008. Mexican archaeologists exploring

just outside the capital of Merida make an historic

discovery: an aquatic underworld full of mysterious offerings to

the Mayan gods, including human sacrifices.

What they found was a system of 14 caves, and in

them were stone temples, and they were all linked together.

And it was thought that what they had discovered was the

Mayan underworld known as Xibalba.

Some of this work is underwater.

Divers would have had to hold their breath and go down and do

carving underwater to make this possible.

They were very devout to be sure.

Central to the heavily Mayan ritualistic

society was the belief that in order for them to rejoin the

gods in the next life, the dead must make their way through a

dark and perilous journey. In the mythology

of the Maya, we have these incredible references to

Xibalba, which means "the underworld."

And we can read about it in the Popol Vuh, which is the book

of the Jaguar priests. Some historians

believe that the caves discovered in 2008 are indeed

those caves that represented for the Maya the passageway to

Xibalba-the underworld. But ancient astronaut theorists

propose Xibalba has a more cosmic connection.

One of the most famous code breakers-her name

was Dr. Linda Schele. She dealt with the Maya language

all her life. She is actually one of the

people who have suggested that there is another meaning for

Xibalba, and that's "the Milky Way."

To the Mayans, who were very good astronomers,

this represented the passageway to another world, Xibalba-the

middle of the Milky Way. So when they refer to the

underworld, they're actually referring to the sky above.

This suggests that the cave could be a portal, in

which extraterrestrials are actually able to come and go

freely from their plane of existence to our own.

Is it possible that the Mayan stories of Xibalba

were not describing a passageway to the afterlife, but a portal

to another part of the universe? Ancient astronaut theorists

suggest that caves have become places of ritual because they

have a direct connection to extraterrestrials, and claim

that further proof can be found by examining the mysterious Sky Caves of Nepal.

Shikoku Island, Japan.

The eighth century AD.

A young monk named Saeki Mao was deep in the mountains doing his

spiritual training when he decided to enter a small cave

called Mikurodo and meditate. While inside, he had an

encounter that he would later credit with bringing him

enlightenment, and he emerged from the cave as Kukai-a high

priest who would become one of Japan's most important

historical figures. Many Buddhists

have reported enlightening experiences in caves.

And one of the most famous stories involved the monk Kukai.

He is the individual who brought esoteric Buddhism, Shingon

Buddhism, to Japan from China, and according to his

autobiography, he was meditating in a cave at Cape Muroto.

And he had fixed his eyes on the morning star.

The morning star flew towards him, entered his mouth and in

front of him he saw an image of the Bodhisattva Akasagarbha.

And Akasagarbha, in Japanese, is known as Kokuzo Bosatsu.

So we have this spiritual being, surrounded by light...

Perhaps he even used the light to travel there.

After this encounter, Kukai suddenly had

great wisdom, including the ability to comprehend 85,000

Buddhist texts. But what happened inside

Mikurodo Cave that allowed Kukai to enter this enlightened state?

Kokuzo appeared to Kukai in the cave

when he was in his trance and basically informed him that he

was a conduit to the universe. And it channeled through his

body and he could tell you anything about the stars, the

planets. It's almost as if he were tapped

into a database. Some even perceive

that the cave is similar to a womb.

So a human being enters as a normal mortal.

They engage in ascetic or meditative discipline within the

cave. And when they exit the cave,

they're no longer a typical mortal, but they're more akin to

a saint. Or even a Buddha.

But could the enlightenment found inside caves

be coming from an extraterrestrial source inside

the earth? Some ancient astronaut theorists

say yes and suggest evidence of this might be found

in the fabled nirvana known as Shambhala and the Sky Caves of

Mustang in Nepal. Some say Shambhala

is a mythical city that's located somewhere in the

mountains in the Himalayas. Its inhabitants are supposed to

be fully enlightened beings who have access to a great amount of

technology, which comes from the enlightenment itself.

Buddhism has always seen caves as more or less

a conduit to altered states of consciousness.

To other civilizations that may exist inside the earth.

The Sky Caves in Mustang are interesting because

they're a hundred or so man-made caves carved into the

faces of cliffs. And are only accessible by these

huge vertical shafts. And inside these caves, we have,

huge statues of Buddhas, bodhisattvas.

And Buddhists are not alone in this belief.

Hindus also revere caves as places where monks can go to

find wisdom. The Sadhu are Indian

holy men who, basically, lead a life of deprivation,

self-imposed exile in caves so that they can enter these

altered states of consciousness. They definitely believe that

caves are a conduit to communicating with

non-human entities. It's almost as

though they're opening a doorway into a spiritual consciousness

in which they are able to communicate with these divine

beings and hopefully become divine themselves.

Other important figures throughout history also

attribute their life-altering epiphanies to mysterious

encounters that happened in caves.

In the life of the great artist and

inventor, Leonardo da Vinci, he had some unusual but

important experience at the mouth of a cave.

Right after that, he disappeared for two years.

And right after that, he began this spurt of creativity that

was awesome. In art and in science,

he invented the first self-propelled vehicle and

imagined flying machines. Joseph

Smith wrote that an angel appeared to him with the name of

Moroni in the year 1827. Told to Joseph Smith he should

go to a certain little hill. He should pull the stone plate

away, and inside he would find a cave.

And in the cave he would find unknown writings.

As all good Mormons know, he found the golden

tablets, which contained a vast amount of data.

Why are there so many accounts of humans having

enlightening experiences inside caves?

Is there something about caves themselves that facilitate such

extraordinary experiences? Could it be that these people

are coming into contact with an extraterrestrial presence?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that cosmic knowledge

may be stored in the very walls of these caves themselves, and

that the proof can be found in Central America 1,000 feet underground.

Chihuahua, Mexico. April, 2000.

Miners excavating 1,000 feet

below the mineral-rich town of Naica drill through a cave wall

and make a stunning discovery a glittering cavern full of giant

crystals that are half a million years old.

The Cuevas des Cristales-or the Crystal Cave

of Northern Mexico-is a very unique site.

And we're talking crystals as big around as a car that

stretched from the floor to the ceiling of the cavern.

It's a remarkable thing to see. The incredible

Cave of the Crystals in Mexico was just accidentally found, and

the discoverers were completely astounded with these giant

gypsum crystals. It's fantastic and reminds a

person of the Fortress of Solitude of Superman, where all

this information is encoded into these giant crystals.

Now, the significance of this is extremely important

to the indigenous people of Northern Mexico-in fact, all

of Mesoamerica-in that the crystals themselves were

considered sacred. They vibrated.

And they believed there was also some properties involved in

crystals that would provide them a way to communicate with the

gods. Many ancient myths tell

us that there are magical apparatus that are made out of

rock or stone or crystal. If we look at

the properties of many of the caverns and caves, we see that

there's usually some type of lining of crystal or quartz, and

we know that crystal has a vast ability to store information.

Maybe some of these caves are actually storing information and

that ancient people who meditate in caverns are tapping into this

knowledge. Might caves that

are rich in quartz or crystal really possess some special

power that our ancestors were aware of?

Ancient astronaut theorists point out that the scientists

today are discovering that crystals do, in fact, have very

unique properties. Quartz and

other crystalline structures oscillate on incredibly

well-defined frequencies when you hit them mechanically, and

they can be activated electrically through an effect

known as the piezoelectric effect.

So you can put quartz in a watch and use it as a very accurate

timekeeping device. So quartz could be used in

conducting or communicating certain signals.

In the Silicon Valley of California, quartz is

used to manufacture the small integrated circuits found in

computers because of its strong semiconducting properties.

Computer chips are also made with a form of the mineral

quartzite, which is a highly-condensed form of quartz.

Today, computer engineers are working on how to physically

manipulate crystals so that digital data can be stored

inside them forever. The media has dubbed these hard

drives of the future "Superman memory crystals."

So, Superman is one of our superheroes who came

from outer space. He came from the planet Krypton.

It was in the process of being destroyed, so his parents saved

him and sent him in a spaceship to our planet.

One of the interesting things in the Superman story is that his

father was able to program a crystal that traveled with him

that he was able to use to construct the Fortress of

Solitude. And it was basically a crystal

structure, essentially a cave, where he could both get away

from things and he could use the crystals in there to get

information. So one of the things that's

interesting in the Fortress of Solitude is the way that the

quartz technology, or the crystal technology, seems to be

underlying everything. And so a future that we're

looking at is using light in computing.

You have to figure out ways to trap light and to store it,

basically to create bits on and off and have the light last

long enough that the signal stays there and the memory is

stored. Was the power of

crystals something the ancients not only knew about but utilized

by building structures that would harness and transmit it?

A lot of the pyramids had either granite or

some type of crystal-lined surface.

For instance, Giza, those great pyramids were topped with an

obelisk made of shiny granite crystal.

And when we look at an obelisk, it very much resembles some type

of power rod, maybe a Tesla coil.

Ancient times, the obelisk was always a symbol of power.

Maybe this wasn't just emotional power but actual physical power

that was being harnessed by these objects.

Crystals are transformers.

They hold energy. And, indeed, caves are thought

of as "hot spots," where you have Earth energy emerging from

the planet. If scientists today

are looking into the technological uses for crystal,

is it possible that there are extraterrestrial civilizations

that have already mastered this technology?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes and that the mineral

properties found inside caves have enabled some of the world's

most astounding miracles.

Bethlehem.

The Church of the Nativity, built around 330 AD by the first

Christian Roman emperor Constantine, is one of the

oldest continuously operating churches in the world, having

survived invasions, regime changes, fires, and earthquakes.

Many claim that the church is protected by a higher power,

because it sits above a cave that some Bible scholars believe

to be the true birthplace of Jesus Christ.

There are many books about the story of

Christ's life, Jesus' life, which never made their way into

the Bible, and one of them was called the Protoevangelium of

James. And in that story, Joseph and

Mary are approaching Bethlehem, and Mary says, "I'm going to

give birth." And he thinks for a minute.

He said, "Ah, I know a cave near here."

And they're met at the entrance to the cave by a brilliant

light. And when the light dissipates,

there is Mary holding Christ in her arms.

And if you look at Byzantine painting, the Nativity is always

represented in a cave. According to the

Gospel of Luke, Mary gives birth and places the baby Jesus in a

manger, but no actual location for the Nativity is given.

It is known, however, that caves at the time were commonly used

as shelter for livestock. Going back to the

third century, they-they started this idea that he was actually

born in a cave. But then they also describe the

tomb of resurrection as a cave, as a simple hollowed-out room

that had this circular stone at the entranceway.

The Bible does make a point that when Christ was

taken from the cross, then he's buried in a rock-cut tomb.

>> KATHLEEN McGOWAN COPPENS: There does seem to be a mystical

environment here, this idea of a cave being a place where someone

who is of divinity comes and someone who is of divinity

leaves. So it's almost as if passages

are happening in caves. Constantine's

building program of churches in the Holy Land began by building

churches over caves associated with key mysteries of the faith.

He built a church over the site of Jesus' birth.

He built a church over the site of Jesus' crucifixion, where the

Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands today.

And he built a church on the Mount of Olives over a cave

associated with the site of his ascension into heaven.

Is there some significance to the fact that

both Jesus' birthplace and resurrection may have occurred

inside caves? Some ancient astronaut theorists

say yes and claim there may even be physical evidence that what

happened within these caves was something other than miraculous.

>> McGOWAN: The Shroud of Turin is certainly the most important

relic of the Resurrection, this extraordinary imprint of the

crucified body on this cloth that no one has ever been able

to accurately explain or reproduce.

Jesus was in the tomb, and some believe there was an

intense burst of energy which created what we now call the

Shroud of Turin, some form of radiation which was very intense

and powerful. >> McGOWAN: We know with 21st

century technology that the Shroud of Turin is a first

century garment. And we know beyond a shadow of a

doubt that it could not have been painted or in any way

created. So the Shroud of Turin gives us

this exceptional piece of evidence that something powerful

happened in that tomb. And when people came to

see him the next day to view his body, he was gone.

Two shining beings, nonhuman beings, met these two witnesses

outside the tomb and informed them that Christ had arisen and

that he had departed. It's possible that

that cave was acting as a sort of a gateway or a portal,

because in many of these stories, the caves link earth

and heaven.

Could the Shroud of Turin really be evidence

that something of a technological as

well as a spiritual nature took place in the cave where many

believe Jesus was resurrected? Reports of humans encountering

the divine in or near caves come from all corners of the globe

going back thousands of years. We look at the

prophet Muhammad at Mount Hira. He's in a mountain in a cave.

He's praying and meditating. He hears the voice of Gabriel.

"Iqra, Iqra," which means "to recite, recite."

And so, he recites the Koran. According to the Hebrew

tradition the prophet Elijah, who existed around nine BCE,

lived in a cave. According to

Greek mythology, Zeus was born in a cave.

And caves are often understood, in religious traditions, to be

gateways to the underworld. So, caves are worshipped

throughout the Mediterranean, usually because a god is

associated with that cave. A god is worshipped in a cave or

in a grotto. Could the stories

of Zeus, Muhammad, and even Jesus be evidence that the

world's subterranean caverns might be portals that connect us

to other realms, as ancient astronaut theorists suggest?

Perhaps the answer will be found with new cutting-edge technology

designed to uncover secrets in cave walls not visible to the naked eye.

Santa Monica, California, 2014.

Here at xRez Studio,

visualization artists Greg Downing and Eric Hanson are

pioneering the use of photogrammetry and special

effects software to assist archaeologists in the global

effort to decipher ancient cave art.

We use a combination of techniques from

the fields of computational photography and graphics in

order to help the archaeologists reveal information difficult to

see just with basic vision when you're there.

The team recently traveled to the Grand Canyon to

compile a massive, in-depth photographic compilation of the

collection of strange petroglyphs known as the

Shaman's Panel. We were drawn to

the panel for two primary aspects.

One was the rich layering of the anthropomorphic figures.

And two is the kind of evocative, surreal nature of

their composition. This cave is maybe,

like, five or six feet deep. So, by using a photogrammetric

technique, we were able to get the detail across the entire

painting. The nice thing about

this technique is, we can separate the different dyes and

minerals that are used. And in this case, now we can

kind of see the layering expressed, we can see figures

that are simply lost by the naked eye.

Yeah, that brings it out.

Yeah, it's a complete difference.

Could modern techniques one day uncover even

more details about what ancient people really saw and hoped to

communicate with rock art? Some ancient astronaut

theorists believe one compelling clue that modern researchers

might be on the right track can be found, oddly enough, in

contemporary America. March, 1945.

Amazing Stories magazine publishes an article entitled "I

Remember Lemuria!" But according to the author,

this is the first piece to appear in the science fiction

magazine that is not fiction at all but an actual account of his

own alien abduction. Richard Shaver was

a man who surfaced decades ago with a story of underground

entities that were very hostile to the human race.

Terrible creatures that would kidnap and kill members of the

human race. They were the first

inhabitants of Planet Earth. When the sun became radioactive,

these people could no longer live on the surface.

Some left in their spaceships. Others went underground.

Could Richard Shaver's account of underground

extraterrestrials abducting humans be true?

Shaver proposed that the alien race that once populated the

earth had developed highly-specialized equipment

that allowed them to embed multifaceted imagery into

stones. Richard Shaver

believed that he had made the greatest discovery in the

history of mankind about the true nature of intelligent life on Earth.

So, this is an original Shaver

photograph of a rock book. And this multidimensional way

of making images in the rock books was something that Shaver

saw as a real sign of the superior intelligence of the

ancient races. Shaver believed that these

weren't mere rocks with random patterns, that these were

actually deliberately manufactured artifacts by the

ancient races who had been here 30,000, 100,000, who knows how

many years ago.

Might Richard Shaver have actually discovered real physical evidence that

extraterrestrials have been here on Planet Earth and might still

be here today? Whether or not

Richard Shaver's stories are true, it does dovetail with

legends across this planet of a race of beings that either

created humankind, or were, at least, our ancestors that had a

superior technology. If we're looking for

extraterrestrials, ironically, the heavens above might not be

the best place to look. We should perhaps even be

looking deep below our feet. In some ways,

exploring the underground cavern world of Planet Earth is the

final frontier. Is it possible that

some of the world's most mysterious caves really are home

to extraterrestrial beings? Could it be that the knowledge

of the universe has been left for us to discover right here on

Earth, once we have the technology to unlock it?

And might the crystals found within cave walls not only tell

us where we came from, but even provide the technology to access

the most distant corners of the universe?

Perhaps one day we will find proof that there is life beyond

our planet by searching deep within it.

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