Original subtitles

(upbeat music)

(energetic electronic music)

- The observatory at Mount Palomar,

almost 6,000 feet above sea level

in the California mountains

is equipped with the world's largest reflecting telescope.

Its immense concave mirror intensifies the light

from the farthest star 1,000 times.

A special road bed 45 miles long

had to be laid to transport to the observatory, this mirror,

which measures more than 16 feet across.

The Mount Palomar telescope can probe the Universe

to a point four billion light years away.

One light year is expressed in terms of miles

by a six followed by 12 zeros.

The nebulae photographed here

are two billion light years from the Earth,

or in miles, the figure 12, followed by 21 zeros.

The giant eye of Mount Palomar can see

billions of stars in the heavens.

Today, scientific investigators the world over

are absorbed by a fascinating question

on how many of these stars could life exist.

We know for instance that in our galaxy alone,

as many as 50 million stars

could support a highly developed form of life.

It's quite possible that our own planet,

at some remote moment in its past,

had a visitor from one of these 50 million stars.

The world renowned rocketry expert, Wernher von Braun,

has stated, "I hold as a definite probability,

the existence of not only animal and vegetable life

in the infinite reaches of the Universe,

but also that of intelligent beings."

Professor Hermann Oberth,

the father of interplanetary travel, told us this,

"I believe that it's possible for unknown foreign beings

of a superior intelligence to have visited our planet

at a remote point in time.

Scientists are quick to adopt

a negative attitude towards new ideas.

When the railroad was invented,

they protested that humans were incapable of withstanding

speeds of over 20 miles an hour."

The Russian scientist Kazantsev,

member of the Moscow Academy of Natural Science, asserts,

"to the question of whether extraterrestrial beings,

gifted with intelligence, have ever visited the Earth,

I would reply in the affirmative."

At the Academy of science in Minsk,

Dr. Wiatscheslav Saitsew has declared,

"personally, I'm absolutely convinced

that extraterrestrial creatures have stopped on our planet

because of the many traces they left behind.

We have not yet learned how to interpret their traces.

Only as we reach for the stars ourselves

does the idea of earlier

interplanetary contact with Earth become conceivable."

(rocket roars)

Man has always dreamed of rising above the Earth.

Early in the age of science, he learned to fly,

but it wasn't enough.

(explosions roar)

(explosions roar)

(explosions roar)

He reached for the Moon and found it within his grasp.

The stunning advancement of rocket technology

has put the entire heavens within our reach.

In the course of this century, man will land on Mars.

In the next one, on Venus.

(rocket roars) (lively music)

How will our astronauts be welcomed

when they set foot on another populated star?

As enemies?

Or as gods?

We know from recent history how primitive people react

to their first confrontation with modern technology.

During the Second World War,

American soldiers were sent to certain isolated islands

in the South Pacific to build airfields

and military installations.

When the war was over, they went home,

and a very curious thing happened.

The natives of these islands,

isolated from the outside world,

lived virtually in the Stone Age,

until the Americans came and went.

Very soon afterwards, the natives began making straw

and bamboo fetishes resembling airplanes,

crude landing surfaces on their islands

to tempt the visitors back.

(suspenseful percussive music)

The strangers had brought fabulous treasure

with them from the skies.

Tools, fantastic weapons.

Sky machines they'd never dreamed of.

What else, but gods, could possess such superior knowledge?

They didn't hunt or fish.

Yet, they never liked food.

They came from heaven.

They had to be gods.

They must be lured back.

The natives offered fiery sacrifices.

They scan the heavens, day and night,

watching and waiting.

However, the islanders had a new religion.

A new cult was born from the encounter

between a primitive people and visitors

from a highly-developed, technically-superior society.

The Russian scholars Kazantsev and Saitsew

proposed that all religions began in just this manner.

(fire crackles)

(brooding music)

In Mexico and South America,

from Egypt to India,

throughout the world, people have fables, legends,

and even religions which center around the visits

from foreign astronauts.

Of course, they don't call them astronauts, but gods,

who came to Earth in miraculous sky vehicles.

(man speaks foreign language)

We could easily accept these tales as mere fantasy,

were they not reported among people the world over.

(background chatter) (exotic percussive music)

Written accounts of god-like visitors abound.

For example, in the books of the Tibetan Kanchur.

The Kanchur consists of over 1,000 volumes

containing the holy texts of Lamaism.

The secret code of these texts

is the most complex devised by men.

Only one 100th of the Kanchur has been deciphered.

The resulting texts, which we can now read,

are full of references to gods appearing in the sky,

of the luminous pearls and transparent spheres

that these gods lived in.

Once these books have been completely deciphered,

they are bound to yield much more information

about these mysterious space visitors.

In India, the wisdom of the Mahabharata

commands great respect.

It is the national epic poem, much loved by the people.

Its 80,000 verses are 6,000 years old.

This is a part of the Mahabharata,

in which we also come upon stupefying evidence

of gods come to Earth.

The poems speak repeatedly of "vimanas."

These are vehicles which fly to great heights

by means of mercury and powerful, upward wind currents.

This reconstruction of vimana was made by Dr. Kazantsev,

according to the description in the Mahabharata.

The author of this passage witnessed

what today would be called a blastoff.

"The Bhima flew away in his vimana

on a gigantic beam of light, which shone as the Sun

and whose noise was like the thunder of a thunderstorm."

(rocket roars)

Our search for further evidence of visitors

from other worlds takes us to Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.

The land between two rivers.

The museum here provides us with many a link to the past,

including accounts written on clay tablets

at least 5,000 years ago.

Their stony pages tell of mysterious creatures

which came to Earth in bursts of smoke and noise.

At the turn of the century,

a dozen clay tablets were found,

upon which the Gilgamesh was engraved

in cuneiform characters.

These are fragments of the Gilgamesh.

A creation story in the form of an epic poem

is inscribed here.

It bears a striking resemblance to the book of Genesis.

Yet the authors of the Gilgamesh lived 2,000 years

before the men who wrote the Bible.

Gilgamesh, the hero of the epic, was part-god, part-man.

The seventh tablet described some amazing travels.

Enkidu, a friend of ours here,

gives us the first eyewitness report

of a space voyage in the stone chronicle.

After rising skyward in a space chariot for 12 hours,

he records,

"Gaze down upon the land.

What do you see?

Look upon the seas.

What do they look like?

And the Earth looked like a meal pap

and the sea like a water trough."

The American Moon men used very much the same words

to describe their impressions of Earth from high in space.

(suspenseful music)

We are flying over the Dead Sea.

Among these forbidding rock formations near Qumran,

two young shepherds looking for lost goats

found something quite different.

In these caves, in 1947,

they came upon the so-called "Dead Sea Scrolls."

They were inscribed on leather about 2,000 years ago.

The Qumran texts also speak of strange sky vehicles

and of the sons of heaven who came to Earth in them.

Their arrival and departure

were accompanied by clouds of smoke and fire.

Hardly more than a thousandth of these ancient sources

has given up its secrets.

There are too few scholars at work deciphering

the mountains of parchment, bark or clay documents,

gathering dust in museums and libraries.

Moreover, what little has been decoded calls for careful

study to determine just what verifiable facts they contain.

We should no longer permit ourselves to dismiss accounts

of sky vehicles and traveling deities as sheer imagination.

There is a lesson in the reaction of those

south sea islanders to their first experience

with white men and airplanes.

If they'd known how to write,

surely their impressions would make fantastic reading.

We would be wise to discover what truths

lie behind the legends and myths of ancient times

to take them seriously.

One man did just that, 100 years ago.

Here on the shores of Asia minor, in 1864,

a man came searching for the legendary city of Troy.

He found it beneath this hill.

Heinrich Schliemann had made up his mind to take the tales

of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey literally.

"What utter nonsense," said the wise men of his day.

"Homer's stories were written eight centuries before Christ,

and charming as they are, we all know they are only poetry."

But Heinrich Schliemann had faith

in the factual historical side of the blind bard's accounts,

and at last, his faith was rewarded.

Following the poet's lead, he found ancient Troy.

Imagine his pleasure in giving his wife jewelry

he had unearthed in Priam's royal treasure house.

Imagine his satisfaction in locating Troy

exactly where Homer said it was.

Schliemann was ridiculed in his own day.

Today, he is considered one of the greatest archeologists

of all times.

Following his example,

let's take another great document literally.

The Bible says, "then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah,

brimstone and fire."

What actually happened?

Certainly the 19th chapter of the first book of Moses

describes a dramatic event.

God sent his messengers to warn Lot's family

of impending disaster.

The angels told Lot, "flee for your life.

Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley.

Flee to the hills, lest you be consumed."

Today, of course, we know that a mountain offers protection

from radioactivity.

The messengers were insistent

that he leave the city immediately.

We might well wonder if they had foreknowledge

of an atomic explosion.

(explosions roar)

(eerie music)

One thing is certain.

The flourishing cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were leveled,

laid waste at a single stroke.

The kind of power to deliver such a devastating blow

was not in man's hands in those days.

The report of the catastrophe ends,

"then he looked down and beheld, and lo,

the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace."

(peaceful orchestral music)

Mount Horeb in Sinai range

rises more than 6,500 feet above sea level.

Here, Moses received the 10 commandments.

Here also, the Lord gave him the blueprints

for the Ark of the Covenant.

In chapter 25 of the second Book of Moses,

he gives directions for the erection

of this amazing structure.

"And they shall make an ark of acacia wood.

Two cubits and a half shall be its length.

A cubit and a half its breadth

and a cubit and a half its height.

And you shall overlay it with pure gold,

within and without shall you overlay it.

And you shall make upon it a molding of gold round about."

The Lord was extremely precise

about the building of the Ark.

He warned that no one should come near the structure.

It represented a mortal danger, and though he himself

would speak to Moses from the covering plate,

he could not be seen.

Moses was even to provide special shoes and clothing

to protect his workmen.

Shoes and clothing that would insulate them properly.

If we were to build a replica of the Ark today,

according to Moses' instructions, we would have a condenser

charged with several hundred volts.

One side of the plates carrying a negative charge,

the other, a positive one.

The Bible says the Ark bristled

with sparks and bright flashes, as in these old paintings.

Indeed, when Moses had erected the Ark,

the Lord would speak to him through it.

Could the gold sheath had been a form of loudspeaker,

reproducing the Lord's voice from afar?

In 1961, a group of Minnesota college students

took Moses seriously enough to construct an ark

according to his directions.

Their instructor, however, had to have the model destroyed

because of the dangerously high

electrical charge it developed.

Viewed from the 20th century, the Bible is full

of astonishing accounts, like that of Moses.

No less surprising is the Ascension of Elijah,

a chronicle of the purest fantasy, unless of course,

the storyteller was eyewitness

to an unprecedented actual event.

A fiery chariot drawn by flaming horses

came from heaven to take Elijah away.

Another sensational occurrence in the book of books.

Many an artist has recreated the story

of Ezekiel the Prophet.

"In the 30th year, in the fourth month,

on the fifth day of the month, the heavens were opened.

As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north,

and a great cloud with brightness round about it

and fire flashing forth continually.

And in the midst of the fire, as it were, gleaming bronze.

And from the midst of it came the likeness

of living creatures and this was their appearance.

They had the form of men, but each had four faces,

and each of them had four wings.

As for the likeness of their faces,

each had the face of a man in front, a lion on the right,

an ox on the left and an eagle at the back."

Would Ezekiel have described the landing of visitors

from space in very different terms?

"Now, as I looked, I saw a wheel upon the Earth

beside the living creatures, one for each of them.

It was like the gleaming of a chrysolite,

their construction, being as it were,

a wheel within a wheel.

When they went, they went in any of their four directions

without turning as they went.

The four wheels had the rims and they had spokes

and their rims were full of eyes round about."

Were these the engines of a space ship?

"And when they went, I heard the sound of their wings,

like the thunder of the Almighty.

A sound of tumult, like the sound of a host."

The prophet had witnessed a dazzling sight.

How closely it resembles the launching

of a multi-stage rocket,

even to the scream of its engines at blastoff.

These pictures speak for themselves.

This is how early biblical illustrators

represented the angels of promise.

A creature with metal legs and landing disks.

Doesn't that look familiar?

Look carefully at the right side of this picture.

(solemn chanting music)

This is the monastery of Decani

in the peaceful countryside of Southern Yugoslavia.

(footsteps clack) (solemn chanting music)

The church was decorated with frescoes

in the middle of the 14th century.

Recently, the question has been asked,

do the frescoes of Decani represent spaceships?

(chaotic music)

Yes, they do look a bit like spaceships.

In the first ship, we see a man seated,

his hand on a stick shift.

He is definitely observing the second spaceship.

Please note the aerodynamic form.

Jets are clearly seen.

The spectators are protecting their faces with their hands.

They are obviously terrified.

There is no explanation for the origin

or purpose of these fantastic pictures,

nor for the prehistoric rock paintings

discovered at Valcamonica near Brescia in Italy.

There are portrayals of strange gods

in bulky primitive overalls.

Their helmets seem to carry antenna.

(lively jazz music)

Istanbul. The city on the golden horn.

Here stands the palace of Topkapi.

A curious set of maps are kept here which were found

in the Orient by the Turkish Admiral Piri Reis

during the 18th century.

The oldest of these maps dates back to the first century AD.

They are most likely copies of still earlier maps.

The ornamentation of ships and animals is of a later date.

Here is one of them.

It shows part of Europe and Africa,

as well as Central and South America.

Let us imagine ourselves astronauts in a space capsule

in orbit high above Cairo.

We would see the Earth in this configuration of continents.

The most amazing thing about the maps of Piri Reis

is that they show exactly what we would see

from only one point in space, high above Cairo.

Another remarkable thing, this map show the region

which is still largely unexplored.

The Antarctic.

In fact, the existence of Antarctica, as a continent,

was only established in the 19th century.

However, this map dates from 1532.

We can only conclude that these ancient charts

represent what was seen by someone

at a great distance from the Earth itself.

(energetic jazz music)

Cairo, a city of three million inhabitants on the Nile.

12 miles from Cairo is Giza.

The site of the most enigmatic structures known to mankind.

The pyramids.

The area of the base of the Pyramid of Cheops

is about 570,000 square feet.

A small town of 500 dwellings

could be erected in that space.

At its completion, the pyramid was 477 feet high.

It has lost only 32 feet of its original height.

Passages lead to its interior.

The total weight of the pyramid

is six and a half million tons.

Roughly the weight of 65,000 locomotives.

2,300,000 stone blocks

were used to build the seventh wonder of the world,

each of which weighs a crushing two and a half tons.

These stone masses were transported from a quarry

in the Maqattan mountains on the far banks of the Nile

at a time when men had neither cranes, nor trucks.

How?

On wooden rollers, of course.

Not very likely.

In those days, as today, only date palms grew in the region.

A softwood whose fruit

was a necessary part of the workers' diet,

and how could workmen succeed in hauling these colossal

stone blocks to a height of over 400 feet?

Let's try the following figures on for size.

20,000 workmen, closely scheduled to haul and install

10 blocks a day would need 664 years,

or more than 30 generations to build one pyramid.

Thus, it couldn't have been built

in the time of one Pharaoh for his tomb.

If you multiply height of the pyramid of Cheops

by one billion, it equals almost exactly the distance

from the Earth to the Sun.

A mere coincidence?

The longitude, which runs through the center

of the pyramid of Cheops, divides continents and oceans

into two equal halves, just mere coincidence?

At the end of the 16th century,

the Dutch mathematician Ludolph arrived at the figure pi,

by which one can determine the circumference of a circle.

If we divide the perimeter of the base

of the pyramid of Cheops by twice the height,

we get exactly the figure pi,

which Ludolph only found 4,000 years later.

Could it still be mere coincidence?

It's almost impossible to brush off

the vast body of mathematical and astronomical values

embodied in the pyramid's construction as just coincidence.

(percussive music)

This is the pyramid of Chefren.

In 1967, a team of scholars scanned the interior

of this pyramid with radar,

in hopes of finding hidden cavities, but without results.

Their efforts shed no light on its construction.

An old Egyptian proverb says,

"the world fears time, but time fears only the pyramids."

The Sphinx.

Symbol of the riddle.

The eternal enigma.

65 feet high.

237 feet long.

Its age is unknown.

The Nile Valley near Luxor.

A narrow strip of fertile land in the middle of the desert.

(peaceful music)

Before us stretches the Valley of the Kings.

This valley was a royal burial ground

at the time of the pharaohs.

Behind these cave-like entrances are steep stairs

and endless crooked passages leading to the stone crypts.

The crypt of King Sethos II

is 300 feet deep in the interior.

His burial chamber, its rectangular columns

and decorative reliefs, are carved directly out of the rock.

Here, as in other tombs, we find fascinating wall paintings.

They were achieved without daylight.

Because the dome shows no trace of soot,

no torches or oil lamps were used.

Scholars have suggested that these ancient artists

brought sunlight into the crypts

by means of a complicated system of mirrors.

The silver mirrors of that early period

reflected only 40% of the light,

which is why they needed so many mirrors.

(percussive music)

These creatures all bear symbolic reference

to their relationship with the heavens.

With the Universe.

The tomb of Tutankhamun is the smallest,

but most famous of these royal grave sites.

All the others had been looted in the course of centuries.

Only this one retained its treasures until modern times.

A 19-year-old god king was laid to rest here

to await the day of his resurrection from the dead.

This mummy was embalmed at least 3,000 years ago,

prepared for a physical rising from the dead.

Mummies were consigned to the most secure resting places

that could be designed.

Until recently, embalming was thought to be

a religious custom.

The theory has been advanced that embalming

was a skillful imitation of a physical conservation method

employed by extraterrestrial visitors

attempted unsuccessfully by the Egyptians.

(dramatic music)

The enigmatic statue of Ramses II.

Wars have destroyed it.

3,000 years old,

hewn from a single rock weighing 1,200 tons,

was brought from the quarries of Maqattan, 370 miles away.

No one knows how.

The Memnon Colossi.

3,500 years old.

52 feet high.

Carved from solid sandstone.

Each weighing 1,000 tons.

They too came from the market and Maqattan mountains.

No one knows how.

There is a present day example

of the enormous engineering effort

required to move similar stone sculpture

for a distance of only 600 feet.

The temple Abu Simbel and its monuments

on the banks of the Nile had to make way for the Aswan Dam.

3,000 years after the building of this temple,

it took a pool of talented resources from over 100 nations

to solve the problems of its relocation.

The latest equipment was employed.

Cranes, whose bearing strength was reinforced

by hydraulic presses.

300,000 precise measurements were taken,

because the statues of Abu Simbel had to be sawn to pieces.

A task that took three years.

Modern engineering was faced with an undertaking

of unprecedented dimensions.

How did the Egyptians tackle the same problems

without these techniques, 30 centuries earlier?

(rhythmic jazz music) (machinery hums)

The Obelisk of Luxor.

3,500 years old.

85 feet high.

Carved from one piece of red granite.

Brought from Aswan, 185 miles away.

The Obelisk of Karnak rises 96 feet,

making it the tallest column in Egypt.

It weighs 400 tons.

The unfinished obelisk lying in Aswan.

Over 135 feet long,

it is the largest in the world.

1,200 staggering tons

of red granite.

No crane in the world could lift it, much less move it.

The famous Stone of the South

is the largest block cut and carried by man.

It weighs 2,000 tons.

It was destined for Baalbek in Lebanon,

two hours by car from Beirut.

(brooding orchestral music)

(wind whistles)

The temples were built by the Greeks and Romans

in historical times,

but they were erected on a skillfully-constructed

foundation, composed of the largest stone masses

ever trimmed and positioned on Earth.

The largest of these blocks are 65 feet long,

15 feet high and over 12 feet wide

and weigh almost 2,000 tons.

This terrace was ancient when the temples were built on it.

Archeologists still have no explanation for the terrace,

nor for the transport of its components.

The Russian research scientist Agrest

submits that it served as a launching pad

for travelers from outer space.

(peaceful orchestral music)

Our next stop is far to the southwest.

The Oasis of Djanet in the middle the Sahara,

1,200 miles south of Algiers.

From Djanet, we can reach the plateau of Tassili.

The terrain resembles the lunar surface.

Bare reddish outcroppings of rock in a sandy desert.

The Sahara was once a fertile area.

15,000 years ago,

it was the most densely populated corner of the world.

The mountain faces were eaten away by sun and storm.

The icy northern wind lashes through the canyons

6,500 feet above the scorching desert floor.

Thousands of wall drawings were found here in Tassili.

The earliest were done eight to 10,000 years before Christ,

during the neolithic period.

The artists were hunters and farmers.

Their themes are always the same.

Animals.

Hunters.

And...

What is this strange creature with the bulbous head?

Who are the figures at his feet?

Helmeted, in the fashion of today's divers or astronauts.

No eyes, no nose, no mouth.

Only peep holes round little apertures.

A body that seems to be floating effortlessly in space.

In space?

The puzzle here is that our prehistoric artists

represented the men and the animals around them

with great fidelity as to shape and proportion.

Only, these balloon-headed creatures

seem to be disproportionate.

Why?

Could it be that the artists didn't see them clearly,

or long enough?

For six days, we track onward,

sleeping beneath the sparkling starry desert sky.

We are curious to learn as much as we can

over the fascinating world around us.

Is this the sketch of a space module?

What is this lumpy disc with a figure separating from it?

And there they are again.

Unreal floating creatures, their heads indistinct,

wearing light-colored garb.

Could they be dressed for space travel?

To be sure, there are other explanations.

(dramatic brass music)

(wind whistles)

(water splashes)

The last of our drinking water is sprinkled on the rocks

to bring out the ancient drawings.

Now we can make out the figures with their odd headgear.

The coveralls with padded joints.

After 10,000 years, the contours have become blurred.

We painstakingly copy them for reference,

down to the last detail.

Henry Lut, the French archeologist,

found the image of a 19 foot giant

on this steep curved wall, protected by a Rocky ledge.

He called him the Great God Mars.

(wind whistles)

Henry Lut didn't know about astronauts.

But we do.

(dramatic brass music)

(lively jazz music)

Beneath us lies darkest Africa.

The bushlands of Southern Rhodesia.

(solemn choral music)

And at last, the ruins of Zimbabwe,

a forgotten ghost town of the past.

No one knows who the builders were.

The temple was constructed of brick-shaped granite blocks,

all exactly alike, as if produced in a factory.

20,000 tons of identical building stones.

They were laid to a height of over 30 feet

to form walls which has stood for thousands of years.

What masons trimmed and piled these stones

with such astonishing perfection?

Where they the ancestors of these bushmen,

whose straw huts surround the ruins?

A visiting race of master builders?

(plane engine hums)

(jaunty music)

Mexico.

A land where gods were once quite at home.

We pay a visit to the Museo Nacional.

Here we find this huge Aztec calendar stone.

It is more than 11 feet across and weighs 24 tons.

Originally it was brightly painted

and stood before the temple of the Sun God.

The stylized symbols express the results

of astronomical observations,

the precision of which is astonishing.

The Aztecs calculated their year by the Sun and the Moon,

and came up with a period consisting of 365

and one-quarter days.

They arrived at this exact figure without telescopes

or mathematical instruments.

Could their knowledge have come

from extraterrestrial sources?

This ancient object has little significance,

unless seen through the eyes of a generation

newly accustomed to the world of outer space.

(rocket roars)

Hidden beneath this hill

lies yet another wonder of the world.

The Pyramid of Cholula,

by volume, the largest construction made by man.

It took six centuries to build.

Its base measures 1,000 by 1,170 feet.

It is 178 feet high.

The Pyramid of Cholula has a volume

of over three million cubic yards.

By comparison, the pyramid of Cheops is smaller

by half a million cubic yards.

In the 16th century,

the Spaniards built a church on top of it.

Systematic excavations have only begun in this century.

12 miles of subterranean passages

have been discovered thus far.

Their purpose remains obscure.

The form of the pyramid

is common to many widely-separated civilizations.

Could there be a link between them, as yet unknown to us?

(upbeat music)

Teotihuacan. A vast expanse of ruins in Central America.

It lies an hour's drive from Mexico City,

at an altitude of 6,500 feet.

Only a small part of the ruins has been excavated.

The name Teotihuacan means "where the gods reside."

The city of the gods is dominated by the Pyramid of the Sun.

Its base measures 760 by 720 feet

and rising to a height of 216 feet,

it forms a small mountain,

weighing two and a half million tons.

The identity of the builders of Teotihuacan

and the age of the structures where the gods reside

are shrouded in mystery, but there are clues.

A mile to the south of these pyramids

is the temple of Quetzalcoatl, a great feathered serpent.

Legend tells us he was a light-skinned bearded man

who came from the stars.

He taught men law, the arts,

the cultivation of corn and cotton.

His symbol is seen everywhere.

The feathered head of a serpent.

When Quetzalcoatl finished his mission on Earth,

he returned it to the morning star,

promising to come back to Earth again.

The ruins of Tula are about 20 miles from Teotihuacan.

According to an old myth,

the towns of Tula, Coba,

Chichen Itza and Uxmal

were linked by a ladder hung in the sky.

(eerie tones) (percussive music)

These monumental sculptures stand a silent watch,

guardians of mystery.

They are warriors, dressed alike, wearing unusual helmets.

They carry some sort of box-like unit on their chests.

The tools or controls clasped in their hands

are unrecognizable.

Perhaps they are weapons or communications equipment

brought from a distant star.

A two-hour flight from the capital

is Monte Alban in the Valley of Oaxaca.

Another testimony to the brilliance

of the ancient Mexican civilization.

How was it conceived?

Who were its architects?

(brooding vocal music)

Our flight wings over the mountains of Mexico

to another complex of temples and pyramids.

Chichen Itza.

Chichen Itza is an ancient Mayan settlement

in the Yucatan peninsula.

Its structures were built according to astrological data.

A Mayan observatory stands on three terraces.

Its shape is virtually identical

to that of a modern observatory.

Look closely at the statute.

A man, in the confines of a small room,

seems to be operating a lever.

There are strange projections on his helmet,

resembling antenna.

This pyramid is actually a huge calendar in stone.

Each of the 365 steps on its four stairs

represents one day.

Here we see the winged god, Kukulkan.

We are told that he too came from the stars

and returned to them.

He was supplanted by the bloody warrior god Shakmul.

He carried a tray before him

to receive offerings of human hearts.

(plane engine hums)

In times of drought, the people were led in a pilgrimage

to the sacred well called Cenote.

Young maidens were sacrificed here to the rain god,

flung into the deep murky waters.

There was no escape from this sinister well.

(eerie music)

It is a perfectly-round crater in the rock.

It couldn't possibly have been formed naturally,

nor could human hands alone have scooped it out.

It resembles a crater made by the exhaust gases

of a very powerful rocket engine.

Among the many unanswered questions

posed by the traces of Mayan culture is the following.

600 years after Christ,

the entire Mayan population departed,

leaving towns, temples, and pyramids,

the fruits of great labor behind,

and moved northward to start from scratch.

However, there was no trace of war, plague, famine,

or sudden climate change at that time

to account for the move.

There are 16 cities in Mexico,

with a population of more than 100,000.

One of these is Merida.

The descendants of the Maya live here.

I still have their own language,

derived from the ancient Mayan town.

They are perhaps the most peaceful people in Latin America.

Their faces today still have the haunting beauty

of their ancestors preserved for us in stone.

Leaving Merida, we fly over a vast swampland

to arrive at La Venta.

This is where we find dozens of these stone heads,

right in the middle of the swamps.

Each weighs about 200 tons.

There is no quarry within 80 miles.

Only jungle.

The same question arises again.

How were these mammoth statues

carried over the marshy terrain?

(smooth jazz music)

Days of delay precede our audience

with the winged god of Palenque.

He is not an easy gentleman to see.

A dome of sweltering humidity

hangs over the virgin forest of Palenque.

Along our path to the sacred city of the Maya,

we pass the cadavers of cattle

with swarms of patient vultures wheeling overhead.

(brooding orchestral music)

After eight refusals, we are finally granted official

permission to film with this ancient celebrity.

A sealed sepulcher is open to us for a brief half hour.

Up a steep flight of stairs,

then down into the even more stifling dampness

of the interior of the tomb.

(water drips)

(dramatic brass music)

And there he is, captured for the first time on film.

The winged god of Palenque.

What the lens sees is so stunning

that we must examine the details separately.

(energetic jazz music)

We see a man seated in a capsule,

intently watching something.

His hands seem to be operating some undefinable controls.

His foot is pressing a pedal.

At the rear of the capsule,

we see jets trailing flames behind them.

Isn't this a typical position for an astronaut,

as we so well know it today?

He seems to be dressed for the job,

in trousers with a broad belt.

A sort of jacket, tight-fitting at the wrists,

like coveralls.

The chair is well upholstered

to absorb the shock of acceleration.

A figure before controls, also dressed like an astronaut.

Another jet trailing flames.

"This stone deity," say the Maya, "represents Kukulkan

who came from the stars and returned there."

(rocket roars)

Easter Island emerges from clouds of smoke and rain.

(wind whistles) (sparse electronic music)

Today the natives still call their island "Mata Ki Te Rangi"

which means "eyes looking up to heaven."

(waves crash)

The neighboring atoll is called

"the Island of the Bird People."

Here we see them, creatures with human bodies,

and the heads of birds.

(peaceful music)

Are these really birds' heads,

or do they just seem that way to the natives?

They could also be helmets equipped with oxygen masks.

Legend has it that in prehistoric times,

flying people came to the island amidst fire.

This is Makemake, the god of the Island.

(waves crash) (wind whistles)

Today, about 2,000 people live here.

There were never more than 4,000 natives at one time.

All scholars agree on this point.

This being established, a tangle of vexing questions arises.

Of the total population, 70% are women, children,

or the elderly.

The majority of able-bodied men

is needed for the production of food.

Thus, the number of workmen is so small

that it would've been impossible for them to create

the more than 600 gigantic stone figures

found everywhere on the island.

The stone is so hard that repeated hammering

with a steel chisel hardly scratches it.

Many of these stone colossi stand 65 feet high

and weigh nearly 400 tons.

Most of the sculptures are but partly exposed.

Only excavation will reveal their true size.

The fingers are all the same unusual type of human,

wearing the same haughty taciturn expression,

one after the other, as if cast from the same mold.

(waves crash)

Only the statue which was unearthed by Thor Heyerdahl

is an exception.

It has a round head and is kneeling.

This was the stone cutter's workshop

with the volcanic crater Rano Raraku.

The colossi which were carved here

were removed to distances of as much as 12 miles.

There was no army of slaves for labor, no wood for rollers,

nor the slightest traces to suggest that the sculptures

were dragged across the island.

The legends of Easter Island claim that the stone giants

moved themselves with the help of mana,

a mysterious force which only two priests could invoke,

and that one day, the priests disappeared with the mana.

Was that the day their work was completed

in the quarry of Rano Raraku?

Or is that why there is an army of unfinished statues?

What was mana?

Were there strangers from other planets

possessed of electromagnetic powers?

Did they have the ability to defy the laws of gravity?

To this day, Easter Island exerts

an unusually-strong magnetism.

The report of a French expedition in 1964 ends as follows.

"Since there are inexplicably magnetic forces

and unusual geological phenomenon on Easter Island,

one cannot exclude the possibility

of extraterrestrial contacts."

(bright music) (waves crash)

(waves crash)

(brooding music)

Our search leads us back to South America, to Cuzco,

the capital of the Inca empire,

11,380 feet above sea level in the Peruvian Andes.

The city was founded by messengers

of the Sun God, we are told.

The walls bordering these narrow streets

date from the time of the Incas.

The passage of centuries has had little effect

on the stone cutters' artistry.

These expertly-trimmed stones were set in place

without mortar, yet a knife blade will not enter the joints.

A peculiarity is the 12-sided block, so precisely executed

that only the most modern equipment

could equal its perfection.

Or a startling comparison.

This wall, constructed in the same manner,

is found in quite a different spot,

3,000 miles to the west in the Pacific on Easter Island.

Where the masons of Easter Island and those of the Andes

apprenticed to the same master builders?

High above Cuzco are the impressive ruins

of the fortress of Sacsayhuaman,

used by the Incas to protect their royal city.

Like pieces of a puzzle,

as though they were light as matchboxes,

huge boulders form a wall 1,200 feet long.

The fortress existed long before the Incas' time.

When Pizarro, the Spanish conquistador,

inquired about the builders,

he was told they were a light-skinned, bearded,

redheaded race of men.

The descendants of Viracochas.

Some of these stones weigh 500 tons.

(wind whistles)

The Indians come to the market of Pisac.

(upbeat music)

(child cries)

The return to the sacred valley of the Incas,

the Valley of the Urubamba.

(peaceful music)

8,450 feet above sea level

lies Machu Picchu.

The Citadel also said to have been built

by the divine race of light-skinned, auburn-haired

descendants of Viracochas.

(upbeat music)

At the foot of the King's Cordillera, La Paz,

the capital of Bolivia.

At an altitude of 12,350 feet,

the highest capital in the world.

Lake Titicaca, 13,000 feet above sea level,

is the highest lake in the world.

On its banks is the Indian market.

(bright string music)

An air of mystery hangs over the lake of 1,000 secrets.

The traces of an ancient culture are found along its shores.

We learn from legend that Ohana, the Earth mother,

landed here in a golden chariot.

She brought wisdom and knowledge of the arts and crafts

to the people, then returned to the stars.

Tiahuanaco was built in her honor.

The oldest religious edifice in the world.

Tiahuanaco stands 18 miles

from the shores of Lake Titicaca today,

but it is said that at one time the lake lapped

at the very foot of the temple.

(wind whistles)

This is how it was.

The small ports below, the sacred lake above.

The lake bed dried up long ago.

It is still surrounded by the ruins

of once enormous buildings.

It is true that the waters recede

about one-eighth of an inch per year.

However, if the shore is now 18 miles away,

how long has it been since the lake washed around the tempo?

Certainly long before recorded history.

(ominous brass music)

The most impressive relic of this vanished era

is the Door of the Sun.

Chiseled from a single rock, it weighs 10 tons.

Three rows of stylized figures

flank an inscrutable creature.

Another god come from the stars?

(waves crash)

The mysteries of the past

manifest themselves on all continents.

(percussive music)

(strong wind blows)

In the rough hilly country of Northwest Australia,

there are scores of rock paintings

which dates back far in time.

Drawings which are probably the earliest messages

from prehistoric man.

This sketch represents Wandjina.

Wandjina was the legendary goddess of the Milky Way.

She too came from heaven to instruct the children of Earth.

Surely there were models, one is tempted to say one model,

for these deities found on all continents.

In Australia.

In America.

In Africa.

In Europe.

In Asia.

This is one of the famous Dogus of Japan.

These figurines were found on the island of Honshu.

They are at least 5,000 years old.

(Kazantsev speaks Russian)

Kazantsev, the Russian collector and expert,

gave us his explanation of them.

"In my opinion, these figures represent

astro beings seen on Earth.

Their sealed helmets are equipped

with a breathing apparatus.

Vision is afforded by glasses with narrow slits,

like the Eskimos wear to avoid snow blindness.

Probably they were accustomed to weaker light

on their home planet.

The cosmic clothing they wear seems inflated,

as though to compensate

for the higher atmospheric pressure on Earth.

Their hands are not at all like human hands,

but like mechanical claws.

If you suggest they were about images of gods,

I would ask you how their creators could have portrayed

their technical accessories so accurately

without having seen a model?"

Kazantsev made one further point.

He drew our attention to the amazing similarity

between the Dogu figurines

and the wall painting of the Great God Mars,

found halfway across the world.

The asymmetrical design of a piece of jewelry

found in the tomb of a Mexican high priest

can also be interpreted with startling results.

If we superimpose a modern integral circuit on it,

what we thought of as pure design takes on a new dimension.

Another example of Mexican ornamentation

becomes, on completion,

very much like a modern mechanical space claw.

(peaceful music)

Once again in Iraq, the museum in Baghdad,

we find these small clay cups dating to the time of Christ.

They may be even older.

A small copper tube was introduced into the narrow neck.

A rod made of an alloy of different metals

was inserted in the tube.

When filled with hydrochloric acid,

the device produces an electric current.

This was no doubt a primitive electric cell.

Yet, Count Volta invented the electric cell

1,500 years later.

Another technical wonder from the same period in culture

can be seen in the British Museum.

It is a polished lens, which could only be produced today

with precision cutting and polishing tools.

Polished lenses weren't executed in Europe

before the 16th century, whereas this one was found

in the near-east and is 2,000 years old.

In Moscow, near the monument to the astronauts,

we spoke with Dr. Wiatscheslav Saitsew

of the Academy of Science.

He called our attention to two prehistoric relics

which simply cannot be explained

by our present knowledge of history.

The first is the skull of a bison,

which roamed the Siberian Tundra 40,000 years ago.

He was shot by a bullet.

The proof is the hole.

Ballistics experts have established that

it could only have been pierced by a high-speed projectile

and that the beast was alive when killed.

A shot, fired 40,000 years ago.

Dr. Saitsew's second example is equally startling.

Outside of Fergana, in Uzbekistan, near the Chinese border,

Soviet scholars found a rock painting

which they carefully copied.

We must look and look again to grasp the significance

of this prehistoric drawing.

A creature wearing the head gear of an astronaut.

The helmet, well attached to his space suit.

Connecting tubes, breathing apparatus.

The trappings of a space voyager.

(ominous music)

And suspended in the void, a spaceship,

shaped like two saucers, one atop the other.

Not only in Uzbekistan, but around the world,

we've seen pictures of flying machines and flying creatures.

(wind whistles)

Around the world, giants pose their silent questions.

(ominous music)

And around the world, we've seen architectural marvels

raised in honor of the gods, which came from the skies.

(plane engines roar)

This flying machine was painted on a rock wall in Japan

7,000 years ago.

This tiny golden replica of an ancient flying machine

is Colombian, over 1,000 years old.

It was tested in a wind tunnel.

The aerodynamics tiling resembles that of a modern aircraft.

(upbeat music)

We thought it impossible that more compelling evidence for

the visit of extraterrestrial beings to our planet existed,

but they do.

From the Pacific Ocean,

we approached the coast of Southern Peru.

Before us is the Bay of Pisco.

There, pointing the way,

is a Trident, 300 feet high, obviously a signal.

A signal for whom?

We approach it once more.

This sign has shown the way to the interior of the country

for 2,000 years.

Shown the way to what?

Let's follow it and see.

Passing over the ruins of ancient civilizations,

at last we see before us

the mysterious plane of Nazca.

Lines running toward us.

Lines which would mean nothing from the ground.

Long furrows cut into the parched soil.

Cut there at least 2,000 years ago, scientists agree.

(suspenseful music)

But do they really mean nothing?

From a great height, from an aircraft, for instance,

they fall into focus.

We see a spider.

An eagle.

A peacock.

And a hummingbird.

None of which can be recognized from the ground.

At no observation point,

no mountain nearby overlooking the plane.

The giant drawings must've been made

for someone arriving by air.

These other lines make no sense from the ground, either.

Straight as arrows.

One huge geometric puzzle.

Some parallel, some intersecting.

Starting nowhere and ending nowhere.

There's no doubt.

They are landing fields.

The plain of Nazca is a gigantic abandoned airport.

Could these be astrological symbols?

These indications are only visible from a great height.

Who could have followed them, or were they roads?

Roads which go nowhere, which suddenly stop.

Yet, if it was an airfield, who was to land there?

Do these figures answer our questions?

Was Earth visited by gods from distant planets?

(upbeat music)

Were the gods astronauts?

We've accumulated a great deal of evidence to that effect

around the world.

We may still doubt the conclusion,

but we dare not ignore the evidence.

For as long as such ancient mysteries remain unexplained,

our questions are valid ones.

(upbeat music)

Were the gods astronauts?

Do you suppose that once upon a time...

Once upon a time... Once upon a time...