Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Human corpses preserved for thousands of years...

RAMY ROMANY: The ancient Egyptians were convinced that the dead

could and would reawaken one day.

NARRATOR: Strange relics placed on the bodies of the dead...

ED BARNHART: One of them had images of winged beings.

NARRATOR: And monks buried... while still alive.

WILLIAM HENRY: These funerary rites would be all about humans

becoming, not just like the gods, but gods themselves.

NARRATOR: Mysterious burial rituals and elaborate mummification processes

have been found on every continent on the planet.

But why?

Were the ancients simply trying to cheat death?

Or could there be another... more otherworldly... explanation?

DAVID WILCOCK: It is possible the mummies were being preserved

so that they may be reunited with the gods

that actually started their culture.

NARRATOR: 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 the ultimate proof be hidden in the secrets of the mummies?

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NARRATOR: Vatican City. April 2, 2005.

Pope John Paul II dies,

bringing his historic 26-year papacy to a close.

His corpse is chemically preserved

and transported to St. Peter's Basilica for public viewing.

In a funeral service watched by millions,

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

speaks of the beloved pontiff's soul

being guided to the "eternal glory" of Heaven.

His body is then interred in a large, underground tomb beneath the church.

HENRY: We can see that a great deal of care

was taken to preserve Pope John Paul's body.

And the idea is that death, in fact,

is just the beginning of this journey.

KEN JEREMIAH: Many modern funerals,

those that take place in Europe and the Americas,

many of the initial ideas actually have their roots in Ancient Egypt.

In ancient Egypt, bodies were mummified

and put into sarcophagi that resemble human beings.

And this is still done today,

in many religious traditions, including the Roman Catholic Church.

NARRATOR: Mummification is any process

used to prevent the decaying of the body

that naturally occurs after death.

The preserved body of Pope John Paul II is,

essentially, a mummy.

And, in fact, modern-day mummies can be found all over the world.

When Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin died in 1924,

Russian scientists preserved his body

by removing the organs and replacing them

with a secret system to simulate the movement of bodily fluids.

The process has kept him looking astonishingly lifelike

to this day, and was also used to preserve the bodies

of Joseph Stalin and Ho Chi Minh.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il,

President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines,

and Chinese emperor Mao Zedong also remain preserved in remarkable condition.

But it is not just world leaders who are being mummified.

Any body that is embalmed at a funeral home is, in effect,

undergoing a type of mummification.

But why do so many people

go to such great lengths to preserve the body after death.

JONATHAN YOUNG: Our ancestors believed in an afterlife

and that the proper ceremonial rites at time of death

allowed the departed to travel to the reward,

to the next life,

which was often imagined to be in the heavens, the stars,

and that this travel

allowed the person to come into their full reward.

JEREMIAH: All over the world,

people continue to preserve bodies

and it's because there is this idea of living forever;

that death is not the end, it's a beginning...

it's a transitory state.

For some reason, everyone has this idea that we need the body

to live forever.

If people truly believed there was a spiritual essence that infused the body,

that left at the moment of death,

they can't justify mummification.

NARRATOR: What can explain the fact that, for thousands of years,

in cultures throughout the world,

people have held a belief

that the preservation of the body

is necessary to transition into the afterlife?

Ancient astronaut theorists believe clues can be found

hidden beneath the desert sands of Upper Egypt.

The Valley of the Kings.

Located on the western bank of the Nile River

lies one of the most expansive burial grounds in all of Egypt.

The tombs were constructed between 1539 and 1075 BC,

for pharaohs and other nobility.

To date,

63 tombs have been discovered in the Valley of the Kings.

One of the best preserved is that of Pharaoh Ramses VI,

who ruled from approximately 1145 to 1137 BC.

ROMANY: More than 4,000 years ago,

King Ramses would have started digging this to become his tomb.

Or, as he called it, his "House of Eternity."

For Ancient Egyptians,

a tomb wasn't just a place where they would end up dead.

A tomb was a place where they would start their eternal life.

NARRATOR: The Egyptians believed that, in death,

the soul would split into several parts,

and begin the journey to the afterlife.

But to make this transition, it was essential

to reunite the soul with the physical body.

And while the Egyptians were not the first to mummify their dead,

no other ancient culture went to such great lengths

to preserve the body, and ensure entrance into the next life.

TORI RANDALL: Ancient Egyptians would put a body that needed to be mummified in a dry room.

They would first take out the internal organs,

and they'd pack that body with natron salt

to start the drying process.

And then they would remove the brain.

Then they would rinse the body with sweet-smelling oils

and cover the entire body in natron salt

and it would stay that way for about 35 to 70 days.

Once the body was all dried out, they would wrap the entire body,

putting amulets and other special jeweled objects

in the linen and then...

once it was completely wrapped...

and be done.

NARRATOR: The Egyptians understood the most important

factor in mummification...

the removal of fluids,

which ensures that bacteria cannot survive

and the body will not decay.

Although archeologists

have discovered much about how these mummies were prepared,

the Egyptians left behind no texts or instructionson mummification.

Just how the Egyptians came to create

this complex practice remains a mystery.

But they did leave behind extensive records

regarding their thoughts on the afterlife.

ROMANY: This right here is a very good depiction

of the journey of the afterlife with King Ramses.

You see him here on a solar barge

being protected by all the different gods behind him,

goddess Isis and god Osiris.

This right here is god Anubis,

and god Anubis is the god of the mummification.

YOUNG: The most important story in Egyptian mythology is the god Osiris,

how his brother, Seth, coveted his

brother's power and killed him.

Then...

his wife, Isis, in grief,

got help from Anubis,

who then helped Isis breathe life back into him,

to survive into the next life

with the help of Anubis the inventor of embalming and mummification.

DAVID CHILDRESS: The mummification process in Egypt

is often related to, uh,

the star Sirius which we call the Dog Star.

And the mummification rights were overseen

by the Egyptian god Anubis,

who was a jackal-headed god.

And so you have to wonder if Anubis

wasn't some real, physical, extraterrestrial god.

HENRY: The ancient Egyptian temple walls are...

are covered with images of transformation,

and what it reveals is that their core sacred science

was about human transformation or ascension into celestial beings.

So you wonder is it possible it's because

those who originally taught these concepts came from the stars?

NARRATOR: Could it be that the ancient Egyptians' beliefs

about the afterlife were influenced

by extraterrestrial visitors?

Was it from these visitors

that they learned the process of mummification?

And if so,

what was their ultimate agenda?

Perhaps the answers can be found

in ancient mummies that predate the Egyptians

by thousands of years.

NARRATOR: Arica, Chile. 1983.

Workers digging a trench in this coastal city

just seven miles from the Peruvian border

make a remarkable discovery.

They unearth a cemetery containing 96 mummies

from the prehistoric Chinchorro culture.

Scientists determine

that some of the remains date back over 7,000 years,

making these the oldest known mummies in the world.

JEREMIAH: The Chinchorro were fishermen

who lived along the ocean in Chile and Peru,

and in fact, 4,000 years before the ancient Egyptians started doing it,

the Chinchorro were mummifying their dead in South America.

BARNHART: The Chinchorros would open up the cavity of the body.

They would take out all the They would put

sand and grass and other things inside the body.

They would carefully cover it with mud

and then they'd make mud masks over their face.

It was a very elaborate system, embalming these things.

NARRATOR: The Chinchorro method of mummification

is strikingly similar to the process used by the Egyptians

thousands of years later.

But why was this strange burial ritual continued,

not just in Egypt,

but in civilizations across the ancient world?

El Castillo de Huarmey, Peru.

January, 2013.

Researchers announce

that they've discovered an archaeological rarity...

an untouched, 1,300-year-old royal tomb

from the Wari Empire.

A predecessor to the Inca,

the Wari civilization thrived in central Peru

between 600 and 1100 AD

before mysteriously disappearing.

Inside the tomb was a treasure trove of gold,

textiles, artifacts and 63 mummified women,

including three Wari queens.

BARNHART: From the three "royaled" women, one of them had

earrings that had images of winged beings.

These winged, anthropomorphic birds

that we see in religious art happen from the very

earliest art we know of in South America.

CHILDRESS: And that's something also that you see, uh, at Tiahuanaco,

where winged beings are running

towards Viracocha in the center of the famous Door of the Sun.

So why are these winged beings, then,

on jewelry with the Wari people?

And we find that with Egyptians, too.

WILCOCK: The Egyptian god Thoth

is depicted in Egyptian iconography as a half-bird,

half-man deity.

And it was Thoth

who gave the knowledge of mummification to Isis.

What's interesting is that there are other cultures around the world

that also have half-bird,

half-human beings that are treated as gods.

This suggests

that there was some global culture

of extraterrestrial visitors here who were

teaching this mummification as a technology.

NARRATOR: Is it possible

that the Wari images of winged gods

really represent extraterrestrials

who came down from the sky?

Did they visit not just Peru,

but ancient cultures across the world?

And does the fact that these images are found on Wari mummies

suggest that this was a science brought to planet earth

by otherworldly beings?

Utcubamba Valley, Peru.

Perched on a mountain cliff in this isolated region of the Amazon,

stand six massive, clay sarcophagi

known by locals as simply the "ancient wise men."

Researchers estimate these eight-foot clay coffins

were constructed between 1100 and 1300 AD.

They were built to house the mummified remains

of elite members of the Chachapoya tribe,

a pre-Columbian civilization of fierce warriors.

(Shouting)

CHILDRESS: So we don't know much about

the Chachapoyas people, who they were.

They seemed to be very different from the other tribes in Peru

and just exactly where they had come from and where they went

is today, a complete mystery.

BARNHART: I don't know of any other culture in South America that created

sarcophaguses or coffins.

These coffins were big.

And they were made in the form of humans.

Not unlike the sarcophaguses in Egypt.

WILCOCK: The Chachapoya mummies were buried in a fetal position,

and this is interesting.

The fetal position suggests the possibility

that the mummification rite was going to lead to a new birth.

It's like the idea that there's a new incubation,

and this may explain why

we see mummification not just with the Chachapoya,

but we also see it in Egypt,

and this mummification technology on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean

does suggest that these people are after some sort of goal

that we don't yet understand in modern times.

NARRATOR: Could mummification have been an attempt by the ancients

to not only preserve the body after death,

but to enable the dead to be reborn?

A technique used by extraterrestrials to achieve power over death?

Perhaps further clues can be found

by examining mummies

made not from the bodies of the dead,

but from the bodies of people buried alive.

NARRATOR: Mount Yudono, Japan.

In the 1,200-year-old Dainichibo temple,

at the base of this holy mountain,

sitting on an alter within a glass case,

is the mummy of the revered Buddhist monk

Daijuku Bosatsu Shinnyokai-Shonin.

Shonin is what is known in Japan

as a Sokushinbutsu, or a Living Buddha.

He died in 1783 at the age of 96,

but shockingly,

this is not when the mummification process was started.

It began 6 years before his death.

This ritual of self-mummification

was commonly practiced by monks

in the Shingon sect of Buddhism in northern Japan

between the 11th and 19th centuries.

DOMINIC STEAVU: They would willingly embark

on a process of self-mortification, which

was tantamount to suicide.

The first phase would last about 1,000 days,

and they would begin the self-mummification process

by embarking on a very rigorous low-calorie diet.

In the second phase of the process,

the practitioner would be imbibing the urushi tea.

Now, the urushi tea is highly toxic.

However, it was believed to

lacquer, basically, the tissues and organs from the inside out

in order to favor the mummification process.

And because of its toxicity,

the flesh was so

poisonous that even maggots would not consume it.

YOUNG: When they were nearly dead,

they would go into a small chamber,

just big enough to sit in the lotus position.

It would be sealed up, except for a reed

that allowed a little air in,

and inside, the monk had a bell.

One day the bell would not ring

and the followers would withdraw the reed and seal up the chamber.

After 1,000 days, they would open it to see what had happened.

JEREMIAH: If the bodies had mummified,

they were considered Living Buddhas,

and they were redressed in sacerdotal robes

and displayed in special temple halls called ***.

If they had not mummified,

an exorcism was performed and they were simply buried.

NARRATOR: Although hundreds of monks tried to attain

Sokushinbutsu,

only 24 are known to have succeeded.

But why would these devout followers of Buddha

have endured such pain in order to mummify their own bodies?

One of the central beliefs of Buddhism

is reincarnation,

but according to the Shingon sect,

those who successfully complete the self-mummification process

become higher beings.

JEREMIAH: The idea was they didn't think they were dying.

They perceived this as a state of suspended animation.

It wasn't death for them. It wasn't life.

It was somewhere in between.

They needed the body preserved

to enter this other dimension of reality

and to continue life, although it's not life as we would interpret it.

DEEPAK SHIMKHADA: They do not have to be reborn

because when you become a Living Buddha,

you have already attained your nirvana so that, you know,

your... your body remains kind of immortal in a sense.

STEAVU: They were trying to emulate these

high-ranking or highly-achieving, spiritually speaking,

beings such as Buddhas or Bodhisattvas.

NARRATOR: But what did it mean to a Shingon monk

to become a Living Buddha,

and transition to a higher realm?

Perhaps the answer can be found

by examining the life of the original Buddha himself.

STEAVU: The historical Buddha was known as Siddhartha Gautama,

and he was born

around the mid-6th century BCE.

He founded the Buddhist tradition,

in which he expounds on the path to enlightenment.

It's very important that

the historical Buddha was understood as a human.

That gives every human practitioner

access to the same level of ability and enlightenment.

However, he also took on some magical powers

that, in some ways,

brought him much closer to a divine being or semi-divine being

than to a normal mortal human.

He was known to teleport across the Ganges River,

appearing from one side of the river to the other in the blink of an eye.

CHILDRESS: When you look at the life of Siddhartha Gautama Buddha,

he would appear to be somebody that we would maybe call a star child:

part human, part extraterrestrial.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that the first Buddha

had extraterrestrial origins?

Might the Shingon monks have believed

that through the process of self-mummification

they too could be transformed into more advanced beings?

Ancient astronaut theorists believe

that further answers can be found

by examining the story of an Egyptian pharaoh

with extraterrestrial origins.

NARRATOR: Amarna, Egypt. 1891.

Italian archaeologist Alessandro Barsanti

explores the tomb constructed for the Pharaoh Akhenaton,

but finds no evidence of his mummy.

GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: What's really interesting is that the Egyptologists were certain

that they would find Akhenaton behind

that tomb, and they didn't.

NARRATOR: Just what happened to this revolutionary leader

after his death is as mysterious as the pharaoh himself.

Was he never actually buried in his tomb,

or could he have been removed?

Akhenaton ruled from 1353 B.C.

until his death 17 years later.

His reign was dominated by controversy

when he abandoned the pantheon of old Egyptian gods

and instead demanded that his subjects

worship the sun god Aten.

WILCOCK: The Aten was something that he saw in the sky

between two mountains

that inspired him to create the sacred city of Amarna.

Now, the typical view is the Aten must be the sun,

but it is entirely possible

that what Akhenaten was seeing

was, in fact, an extraterrestrial flying craft.

NARRATOR: Did Akhenaten uproot the entire Kingdom of Egypt

because of an extraterrestrial encounter?

Or could there be an even more profound explanation?

TSOUKALOS: If you compare images of Akhenaten

to other depictions of pharaohs

you'll notice that Akhenaten looks very different.

He had this very bizarre elongated skull

and he had this weird potbelly and weird arms.

So was he really a human?

Perhaps Akhenaten was not of this earth.

NARRATOR: While archaeologists have yet to uncover the remains of Akhenaten,

ancient astronaut theorists believe

that depictions of him having an elongated skull

could be more than just artistic license.

Because there are other mummies that do, in fact,

have unusual skulls.

Some elongated skulls can be explained

by the fact that numerous ancient cultures practiced head-binding...

a form of body modification

where the heads of infants were tightly bound

to force their skulls to become conical in shape.

But several misshapen skulls appear to defy explanation.

In Peru and Malta,

elongated skulls have been discovered

that are mysteriously missing a sagittal suture...

the fibrous jagged joint found in all human skulls.

TSOUKALOS: When you compare some of these elongated skulls,

some have sutures like we have as humans,

and then there are other skulls

that do not have the same sutures.

So, is it possible that

some of them are of actual extraterrestrial origin?

It would not surprise me

in the least bit, in the least bit.

NARRATOR: Could the elongated skulls found on certain mummies

actually be of extraterrestrial origin?

Might they be proof

that humans learned the process of mummification from alien visitors?

For years, researcher Brien Foerster

has been studying elongated skulls

found in Paracas, Peru,

and recent DNA tests have yielded startling results.

BRIEN FOERSTER: Initial results, though ambiguous,

seem to indicate that partial segments of their DNA

are not to be found in what is called GenBank,

which is the record of human DNA that's been decoded so far.

Astonishingly, the geneticist who's been studying them

has said that their DNA, at least in some aspects,

are not human.

NARRATOR: Might the DNA of the mummified Paracas skulls

contain the truth about ancient man's contact with extraterrestrials?

Could it be that the mummy of Akhenaten

has never been found because it was deliberately hidden

or destroyed to keep us from discovering its alien origins?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest

that the most compelling evidence of a connection

between mummification and extraterrestrials

can be found with the Inca,

who treated the dead as though they were still very much alive.

NARRATOR: Cuzco, Peru.

This sacred city was once the capital of the Inca Empire,

and by the 13th century was the center

of one of the largest and most sophisticated

Pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas.

The Inca were renowned for their proficiency in architecture

and widely regarded as the most important

of their many temple complexes was the one known as Qurikancha.

Historical accounts describe it as a magnificent palace of gold

that housed the most holy objects of worship for the Inca...

the mummies of their dead kings.

BARNHART: That's where the king did his most important rituals

and where the mummies of

the previous Sapa Incas, or kings, were kept.

And those mummies were communicated with on a regular basis.

NARRATOR: Even today,

descendants of the Inca

recreate the centuries-old practice

of using the mummies in sacred ceremonies.

FOERSTER: Four times a year they were brought out

and the living descendants would then consult with them

about the affairs of state,

as well as what they should do in the future.

JEREMIAH: It was believed that these mummies could communicate with deities

or otherworldly beings in this twilight realm

or in this state between life and death.

They even had

people specially trained to take care of the royal mummies.

And some of the duties that these caretakers had were interpreting

what the mummy wished to say,

arranging meetings with the living and the dead

and strangely even taking the mummy outside so he could urinate.

NARRATOR: But why would the Inca...

the most advanced civilization in South America at the time...

treat corpses as though they were living, thinking beings?

Perhaps the answer can be found

by examining the Incan creation story.

WILCOCK: The Incan creation myth describes

how the world was created by the Ayar brothers.

And the word "ayar" actually means mummy,

so written right into the myth from the very beginning

is the idea that mummification is of central importance

to whomever and whatever these gods are.

Is it possible

that those mythical gods were actually

extraterrestrial flesh and blood beings of some kind?

NARRATOR: But if the Ayar brothers

really were extraterrestrials,

why would the Inca have used the same term

for these alien visitors as they did for their mummified dead?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest

that the Inca may have witnessed these other-worldly space travelers

emerging from a state of suspended animation.

TSOUKALOS: What if they were trying to mimic

whatever it is they saw?

And so, if someone with no technological knowledge,

witnesses someone who is in suspended animation,

and then they come alive.

They have just witnessed the resurrection of someone,

someone coming back from the dead,

when in reality, that was never the case.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that the Inca

witnessed alien visitors coming out of hibernation

and that this is why they mummified their dead?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,

and claim that this might also explain

mummification in other cultures, most notably the Egyptians.

WILCOCK: It's possible

that the extraterrestrials who visited Egypt

would have needed to have some sort of hyperbaric isolation chambers

to get from their home world to here.

Now, if that is true, then it's also possible

that the mummification ritual

actually originated from this

long-term hyperbaric storage

that they were doing with their bodies inside

sarcophagus-like chambers.

CHILDRESS: One idea, certainly, is that

human beings and these societies

were seeing extraterrestrials who were

wrapped in certain body suits

and then they would

come back alive.

They were put in a special suspended animation

that was similar to mummification.

And perhaps this is why

the Egyptians were doing mummification.

NARRATOR: Could mummification

really have been an attempt by ancient people

to imitate extraterrestrial space travelers?

Perhaps.

But ancient astronaut theorists propose

that there may be an even more profound explanation:

that early humans were not simply imitating alien visitors,

but intended to join them in the future.

NARRATOR: Ju�rez, Mexico.

2008.

Just eight miles southwest of El Paso, Texas,

in this notoriously violent border town,

Dr. Alejandro Hern�ndez C�rdenas

develops a groundbreaking new technique

in forensic science.

By using a secret chemical formula,

he is able to rehydrate the flesh

of unrecognizable homicide victims,

including bodies that were mummified

after years of being dried out in the hot desert climat.

KIRSTEN FISHER: Out of sort of compassion or concern for the

huge number of unidentified bodies in Ju�rez,

he figured out a solution that you can place

a mummified corpse in.

The corpse becomes recognizable in terms of

identifying scars or tattoos.

NARRATOR: The naturally mummified corpses

are put in a tank that Dr. C�rdenas refers to

as "The Jacuzzi,"

which holds 60 gallons of his secret formula.

Over the course of a few days,

the shriveled remains are rehydrated to look almost lifelike.

But as astounding as his formula is,

it's not the first time science has attempted

to in some way restore a mummified body.

In 1968,

Robert Connolly, a researcher from the University of Liverpool,

attempted to virtually regenerate the blood

of a completely mummified body...

only this mummy was 3,300 years old.

It was the mummy of Egypt's most famous pharaoh...

King Tutankhamen.

Connelly's method was to combine antigens

taken from a skin sample of King Tut

with his own blood cells.

FISHER: Connolly is actually Type O,

which means you don't have any antigens on your blood cells.

He was actually able to put the antigens from King Tut

on his sort of "clean slate" of a blood cell...

so, then, recreating whatever blood type the mummy had.

You mix those red blood cells with different blood types,

and if it's not the correct blood type,

what you get is sort of clumping of the blood cells,

because there's an immune response against them.

But if it's the correct blood type,

then you don't see any sort of immunological response.

And so in that way they were able to figure out which blood type

King Tut possessed.

NARRATOR: Since Connelly's experiment,

scientists have gone even further

and discovered what they believe

is King Tut's true DNA.

Could the next step be an actual resurrection?

Was the preservation of the body

not just a ritualistic attempt to imitate alien visitors,

but an actual form of suspended animation?

But if so,

how could they have foreseen such incredible

scientific advancements thousands of years ago?

WILCOCK: It is possible

that the ancient astronauts

taught the Egyptians

that mummification

was a way of preserving their

genetic information in the DNA.

CHILDRESS: One of the startling discoveries in the study of mummies,

in Egypt and elsewhere,

is that quite a bit of DNA is actually preserved for

is that quite a bit thousands of years

in the mummification process.

This makes it possible

to clone ancient mummies and, in a sense,

bring them back to life.

WILCOCK: It is possible

that, at some point in the future,

if your body had been successfully mummified,

that these ancient extraterrestrials were well aware that a clone

of who you were before

could then be reborn many years later.

And is it possible

that with the magnificence of the DNA

and with all of the information that it contains,

that you might also come back with the memories

of what you lived,

and who you were, and what you knew

the last time?

And that may be the purpose

which will actually be used in the future...

not yet present,

but with a technology that we are very rapidly acquiring.

HENRY: When the extraterrestrials taught the art of mummification,

did they have it in the back of their mind that,

maybe 5,000 years into the future,

medical science would advance to the level

where we would be able to extract

the DNA from those mummies?

And maybe this is part of the purpose of the mummification,

is to create this time capsule.

NARRATOR: Could our ancestors

really have been taught the process of mummification

by extraterrestrial beings?

Was it their intention

that we would eventually develop the technology

to retrieve the DNA of the ancient mummies

and restore them, to life.

And if we do, might we discover

that these human time capsules

hold the secrets to our very origins?

Perhaps one day,

we will truly be able to reanimate the dead,

and from these ancient mummies,

we will learn the truth

about our alien ancestors.

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