Original subtitles

>> NARRATOR: For centuries mankind believed that life only

existed here on Earth, but today many scientists agree that we

are not alone.

>> MICHAEL CREMO: Practically every human civilization that

has ever existed tells us we are not alone in the cosmos.

>> GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: A long, long time ago, extraterrestrials

came here, and through a targeted mutation of our genes,

we became human.

>> DAVID CHILDRESS: We have, in theory, a worldwide civilization

that has extraterrestrials interacting with it, and human

beings, as we are today, who are possibly the genetic breeding of

these aliens.

>> NICK POPE: If we're being visited, they've probably always

been here.

>> NARRATOR: Millions of people around the world believe we have

been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings.

But what if it were true? Did ancient aliens really help

to shape our history? And if so, why did they come

here? And just what was their mission?

Captioning sponsored by A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS

On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 mission reached its destination,

and two men‐‐ Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin‐‐ actually walked on

the moon.

>> They've got the flag up now, and you can see the Stars and

Stripes on the lunar surface.

>> Beautiful, just beautiful.

>> NARRATOR: It was the first time in history that beings left

their home and traveled through space to an alien planet.

Or was it? Were we really the first

creatures in the universe capable of traveling to another

world? Given the vastness of the

universe and the billions of years that it took to create our

galaxy, is it so hard to imagine that such a thing might have

happened before, perhaps thousands of times and over the

course of millions of years?

>> BILL BIRNES: The ancient alien astronaut theory

presupposes that thousands and thousands of years ago‐‐ even

before recorded history‐‐ Earth was visited by astronauts from

another world.

>> NARRATOR: But if alien beings did, in fact, travel to Earth,

why? Did they come to explore,

to plunder, to study, to hunt, or to breed?

When Armstrong and Aldrin explored their incredible

surroundings, they found the moon a barren landscape.

It seemed to offer little more than a lifeless oasis of rocks

and dust. But in 1986, further testing

determined that the lunar landscape actually contains a

high amount of helium‐3, an extremely powerful nonpolluting,

nonradioactive fuel source. Experts estimate that a single

space shuttle filled with this material could satisfy all the

energy needs in the United States for an entire year.

Think of it. Armadas of spaceships mining the

moon and other planets for natural resources.

Could this help explain why Earth might have served as a

destination for travelers from other worlds?

>> BIRNES: We'd go out there with robot mining crews and

eventually human mining crews, mine those planets, extract the

ore. Ships would come; they'd take

the ore and bring them back. Well, if we would do it, why

wouldn't extraterrestrials? Here, in what is now known as

Iraq, lies what is commonly regarded by historians and

archaeologists as the "cradle of civilization."

Between 3500 and 1900 BC, the fertile area between the Tigris

and Euphrates Rivers was the home of the Sumerian people.

>> TSOUKALOS: The Sumerians were one of the first cultures that

built actual cities with streets and a street grid, almost like

New York City, where you have, you know, a square street grid.

They invented cobblestones. They had a sewage system.

They were taught in agriculture.

>> NARRATOR: The Sumerians also invented the first known writing

system by using cuneiform script on clay tablets.

In the 19th century, archeologists exploring the

ancient ruins of Nineveh discovered 22,000 of these clay

tablets. When they were later translated,

the texts described many stories similar to those found in the

Judeo‐Christian Bible.

>> ARTHUR D. HORN: Virtually every story that's in Genesis‐‐

the flood story, the Adam and Eve story‐‐ they all have

precedence with the ancient Sumerians.

>> NARRATOR: In 1976 author Zecharia Sitchin published his

own translations of the Sumerian texts in a series of books

called The Earth Chronicles. According to Sitchin, the clay

tablets describe an alien race known as the Anunnaki who came

to Earth to mine gold.

>> TSOUKALOS: Zecharia Sitchin has essentially suggested that

the reason why we were visited in the remote past is because

the ancient astronauts' home planet needed gold for their

atmosphere and that their gold content in the atmosphere was

depleting, so they came to Earth in order to mine gold and bring

it back to their home planet.

>> NARRATOR: But why gold? What are the unique properties

of this precious metal that might make it important and

worth traveling through the galaxy for?

>> MICHAEL DENNIN: I think, for extraterrestrials, gold would

be an important resource just like it is for us.

If it's at all like our society, one of the major things it's

going to be built on is electricity, and gold really is

one of the top conductors, and its malleability and its ability

to make it into wires, use it in really small forms as

nanoparticles is going to make it an incredible technological

resource for any sort of life‐ forms that reach that level of

dealing with electricity and technology as we do.

One of the exciting directions is possibly as an energy source

through properties called thermoelectric effects, where it

can take heat and turn it directly into electricity.

This would be obviously a very nice clean energy source.

>> NARRATOR: With its capacity to create energy and conduct

heat, some scientists believe gold may also be an invaluable

asset in the construction of spaceships.

>> DENNIN: Gold actually reflects infrared light.

Infrared is basically light that's not quite red, and so you

don't see it, but we interact with it as heat.

The radiation will interact with your molecules and make them

vibrate faster and you'll feel that as heat, so it makes a

great heat shield, partly because it's so malleable.

You can make it very thin; it's easy to work with; and it has

great properties for reflecting and heat protection.

>> CHILDRESS: The only metal that really lasts is gold.

Gold is indestructible. All gold from ancient times

still exists today.

>> GEORGE NOORY: If you look at Zecharia Sitchin's theories‐‐

that E. T. s came down from another planet in our solar

system, which is on a 3,600‐year elliptical orbit, that they were

running out of minerals, and gold specifically, that they

somehow needed to line their atmosphere with.

>> NOORY: Through their incredible equipment, they find

a planet that has this. It's got gold.

So they decide "We're going to go there and we're going to

mine." So they send some expeditions to

planet Earth. All of a sudden they get here

and the factions begin to say, "Well, there's a lot of gold

here, but we're not digging it out. What are we going to do?

We need workers."

>> HORN: The story that came down to the Sumerians is that

the Anunnaki were mining gold on the earth, and the run‐of‐

the‐mill workers complained, said, "This is really hard work

and we're tired. We don't want to do this

anymore." And so they had a big council

and they decided to create a primitive worker called an Adamu.

>> NOORY: So they look at what is on this planet, and that is

Homo erectus, and they say, "Well, they're not very

intelligent and they're not going to listen to us, so we're

going to genetically alter them."

>> HORN: The Anunnaki created humans as a slave species.

>> NARRATOR: According to Zecharia Sitchin, the Adamu

were the first modern humans. They were created by the

Anunnaki 450,000 years ago when they genetically mixed their DNA

with that of prehistoric man.

>> VON DANIKEN: They took one cell of one of these ancestors

of us. They changed the cell by an

artificial mutation. They changed the DNA code, what

our genetics are doing every day.

>> LINDA HOWE: It's carved in their stone.

This is not something made up. This is part of the Sumerian

history.

>> NOORY: If you believe Sitchin's theory that mankind

was created by E. T. s for slave labor, all of a sudden it makes

sense. And then when you look at the

biblical terms of what may have happened‐‐ Adam and Eve?

Sure, they may have been two individuals back a long time

ago, the beginning of time. But perhaps Adam and Eve were

the first of the genetically created human beings.

>> NARRATOR: Closer comparisons between the Hebrew Bible and

the Sumerian texts reveal many similarities, not only in their

stories, but also in their language.

"Adam" is Hebrew for "man." "Adamu" is what the Sumerians

refer to as "first man," the Anunnaki slaves.

But do the Sumerian tablets actually describe an alien race,

a race that conducted mining operations on a global scale?

♪ ♪

Thousands of miles away, on the African continent, ruins of

ancient gold mines have recently been discovered.

The largest concentration can be found in South Africa, where

some excavations, according to scientists, date back some

150,000 years.

>> NOORY: They're in areas that have an abundance of gold right

now, so it's very possible that they could have mined it.

Now, the big question is, how do we know they weren't human

beings that simply did that? Why the E. T. theory?

>> NARRATOR: In many languages in Africa, the native word for

"star" means "bringer of knowledge or enlightenment."

Some African cultures believe that extraterrestrial beings

have been visiting the Earth for tens of thousands of years.

Zulu legends speak of a time when "visitors from the stars"

came to excavate gold and other natural resources.

These mines were worked by "artificially produced flesh‐

and‐blood slaves created by the First People."

>> CHILDRESS: Some ancient mines in Southern Africa are thought

to be a hundred thousand years old or older.

If humans weren't doing that mining a hundred thousand years

ago, and making metals, then we would have to assume it would

be extraterrestrials doing it.

>> NARRATOR: Alien slave mines? Genetically engineered humans?

To believers of ancient astronaut theory, these notions

are not far‐fetched fantasies or fairy tales, but facts, and

they point to additional evidence of alien mining a

half world away... on the American continent.

>> NARRATOR: Peru has long been known as "the land of gold."

In ancient, times, Incan rulers adorned themselves with it.

And when the Spanish explorers arrived in the 16th century,

they sent shiploads of their plunder back home to Spain.

>> DENNIN: Gold was largely a valuable commodity because of,

being rare and easy to make jewelry, coinage.

And if you're looking at, like, the ancient Incas, those people

are using gold as a status symbol.

Many cultures thought it came directly from the gods.

People thought gold was so pure,

so wonderful, it must , heal, and

they would actually occasionally ingest pure gold.

Certainly, we're discovering more and more, as we get better

at archaeology and as we can look into these things,

applications that people have used. For instance, there is some

evidence that ancient people, had very primitive batteries,

and this would be a place in which gold would be very useful

because of its electrical properties and its conductivity.

>> NARRATOR: It should not be surprising, then, to find

archaeological evidence of ancient gold mines. ,

But some sites have recently been discovered that date back

some 50,000 years.

>> NOORY: All throughout areas in Peru, you see remnants of

what could have been ancient mining operations. It's there.,

They go down, some cases, thousands of feet deep.

>> DENNIN: Gold turns out to be surprisingly easy to mine for,

even though it's relatively rare. There's a lot of common

techniques ancient people used, and some of them were used,

you know, well into recent times.,

A lot of it, you know, involves using water, often, to change

the properties of the rock around it.

A lot of heating and freezing, and the gold will come loose.

>> NARRATOR: In addition to gold, other ancient sites in

Peru provide e, vidence that they were once mined for quartz...

hematite... and red ochre.

>> DENNIN: They're used for different things.

Quartz is incredibly common. It's basically silicone dioxide.

It's kind of like glass. It's a great mineral; it's hard,

but it can be formed into pretty sculptures; you could make

quartz statues; you could probably even use it for money

before you discovered minerals and gold.

Hematite and ochre are much more valuable because of their ,

iron oxide. And particularly ochre is

important as a pigment, so as soon as you're gonna start

having painting, cave drawings even, or any sort of art work,

you need to make colors. And making color can be a

challenge, and ochre is a great source of that.,

>> NARRATOR: Also located in Peru are the world‐famous Nazca

lines. While the origins of these ancient geoglyphs remain a

mystery, the area in which the lines are located suggests that

a majo, r excavation took place there, perhaps hundreds of

centuries ago.

>> TSOUKALOS: At Nazca, entire mountaintops have been removed.

I mean, this all requires machining.

And I'm not talking, you know,, a little wheelbarrow and‐and a

pick. I'm talking sophisticated machinery, because we today

would also need sophisticated machinery in order to achieve

such feats.

>> NARRATOR: Could the vas, t flt plain located in the Nazca

Desert be evidence of a gigantic mining operation, one

that took place hundreds of thousands of years ago?

>> TSOUKALOS: Whoever comes here in a spaceship, Nazca would be,

like a beacon, as in: "Come here."

Because the moment you come to Nazca, you're sort of confronted

with a Cliff Notes to planet Earth, where you have all sorts

of raw materials that exist in that one particular spot in,

very, very abundant quantities.

>> NOORY: I think the Nazca Lines aren't evidence of search

for gold, but they're evidence of some communication

with possibly E. T. s, or gods, from above.

>> NAR, RATOR: But despite the controversy, one thing is

certain: the plain, and the lines that scar the surrounding

countryside, are not natural formations.

But while scientists and ancient astronaut theorists

remain divided about, who, or what, created the Nazca lines,

they are in agreement about one thing: the so‐called Band of

Holes, located in the Pisco Valley, Peru, is a complete

mystery.,

>> TSOUKALOS: In the mountains of Peru, we have what's commonly

referred to as the Band of Holes, and

>> ROBERT SCHOCH: It's a bunch of little, shallow holes, dug

into the ground, and it's had all kinds of explanations.

Some people say it was just pot hunters, you know, looting,

looking for burials. Some people think it looks like,

some kind of machine was running over the territory.

Some people think it was some kind of systematic mining

operation.

>> DANIKEN: They need raw material, be it gold, be it

silver, be it uranium, whatever; they need something.

And they send something down, like a shuttle.

It can be a robot. No extraterrestrial is on board.

And this robot just caresses over the surfaces and collects

and measures raw material, and disappears again.

>> NARRATOR: The holes run about ,three feet apart and measure

six to seven feet in depth, and number in the thousands.

>> DENNIN: Often we see regular structures like that and we

assume either a person or an intelligent life had to make it,

but there's lots of examples in, nature where the natural

processes lead to large‐scale what we call "pattern formation."

You see it on a small scale in animals. You look at leopards and

zebras‐‐ leopards have spots; zebras have stripes.

Surprisingly, on geological scales, some of the same

processes that give you spots o, a leopard could give you

indentations in the ground and raised areas that would look

like holes. It would take a long time over

geological scales, but we've had a long time, and that might be

what they're left over from.

>> NARRATOR: Mainstream, archeologists suggest the holes

were used to store grain, but ancient astronaut theorists

reject that notion.

>> TSOUKALOS: It's a mystery because who in their right mind

would go ahead and dig all thes,e holes? For what?

The other intriguing aspect about the Band of Holes is that

you can only see it from the air. When you stand down there, all

you see is a couple of holes dug

into the ground, and it doesn', t really mean much.

But if you're up in the air, there is this long band with

these individual holes that you can see, and you can conceivably

create some type of message that can only be seen from the air.,

>> NARRATOR: But if ancient aliens came to Earth searching

for gold, why did they leave? More gold still exists here, as

do many other , valuable mineral. Could it be that ancient mining

operations were just the means to another possibly greater end?

Or perhaps the real alien mission on Earth was to hunt

the greatest prey in the,

universe:

>> NARRATOR: Alamosa, Colorado. September 7, 1967.

When a three‐year‐old horse named Snippy went missing, her

owners grew concerned and went out looking for her.

Their search yielded a gruesome and mysterious discovery.

Snippy's body had been mutilated...

(horse neighing)

...almost surgically. An examination of the carcass

showed that her skin and flesh had been neatly cut; her heart

and brain had been removed, and a formaldehyde‐like odor emitted

from the remains. An autopsy also revealed that

her spinal fluid had been removed.

The events of Snippy's death stunned the community and remain

shrouded in mystery, even to this day.

Since the mutilation, an estimated 50,000 similar events

have been reported around the world, most of them involving

cattle.

>> BULLARD: But it was not until about the middle of the 1970s

that cattle mutilations really entered into Ufology.

Farmers would come out and find some prize livestock that was

alive and healthy the day before and then it was just suddenly

dead. And it looked like it had been

cut up in a rather odd way. That certain parts of the body

looked like they were cut out in ways that seemed to be almost

surgical.

>> NARRATOR: Television producer and UFO investigator Linda Howe

has been tracking the mystery of animal mutilation for over 30

years.

>> HOWE: I began trying to get to the bottom of what was

happening to all of these animals.

There were horses, cows, other domestic animals found with the

same pattern of bloodless excisions.

The law enforcement called them animal mutilations.

266‐some Polaroids, from so many cases, and the first thing

I felt was anger. And then I felt nervous, and

then I felt afraid. I sat across from sheriffs who

told me, "Linda, we're not dealing with predators, disease,

and satanic cults. We're dealing with creatures

from outer space."

>> BULLARD: There are several explanations for why aliens

would want to experiment on cows.

One is that they're just looking for food.

One that they're looking for some kind of information about

vertebrate organisms. Another one is that they're

looking for some kind of genetic material for some reason.

>> HOWE: The closest answer I've ever gotten was from a man who

had had very upfront, and close and personal observations of

nonhumans in his work for the government.

He told me‐‐ he said, "The best answer I can give you, Linda,

is: It's a genetic harvest." But once you have said, "a

genetic harvest from Earth," there's even a bigger question.

Why a genetic harvest from Earth? What is being made with this

genetic harvest? To what end?

>> NARRATOR: The answer to these questions might be found in our

ancient past, in the bizarre, almost Frankenstein‐like

experiments that were practiced by early civilizations.

>> TSOUKALOS: We have ancient descriptions from Egypt where it

says specifically that the gods created these chimeras‐‐

mixed beings, or hybrids. We find paintings where you have

a human body with a cut‐off head and a red tube coming out of it,

and next to it, you have just the head of some animal.

And in the next picture‐‐ 'cause they're like‐‐ they look like

comic strips almost. And in the next picture, you see

the same human body with the animal head attached to the

human neck.

>> NARRATOR: Incredibly, examples of strange human animal

hybrid beings date back to a time even older than ancient

Egypt.

>> TSOUKALOS: According to mainstream archaeology, ancient

Sumeria is the earliest civilization of human kind.

And the interesting part is the fact that their earliest

writings are filled with references of these bizarre

beings that descended from the sky called the Anunnaki.

Anunnaki means "those who from the heavens came."

>> NARRATOR: But is there any physical evidence of these

human‐animal hybrids? If so, wouldn't we have found

skeletal remains? The answer may have been found

in Saqqâra, Egypt, home to that country's oldest pyramid.

In 1851, French scholar and Egyptologist Auguste Mariette

explored a deep tomb dedicated to the sacred Apis bull.

Inside were two sealed and intact sarcophagi.

But when Mariette opened them, what they contained was shocking.

>> TSOUKALOS: They opened the sarcophagus and they didn't find

a bull. Instead, they found this black

mass of what's called bitumen, a type of asphalt.

And inside this stinking mass, they found the bone fragments of

seven different types of animals crushed up.

According to the accompanying texts, some type of monsters

existed during the time of the Egyptians.

And so who knows whether or not the priests instructed the

people to destroy these beings, to rip them apart, to crush

their bones, and put them inside this stinking mass,

and put them underneath a lid in the sarcophagus weighing

80 tons. I mean, all... in all of Egypt

we can find mummified remains of every single animal, but we

find these sarcophagi that contain these crushed‐up bones.

Doesn't that mean the ancient Egyptians did not want for those

creatures to ever return after their death?

>> NARRATOR: Of course, mainstream scientists and

archeologists believe ancient Greek and Egyptian stories of

animal and human hybrids are just fanciful products of the

imagination. But are they?

>> PHILIP COPPENS: There is this period in pre‐dynastic Egypt,

where these demigods ruled. We have not found human remains.

We do not know who they were. But we do have scientific

evidence that at least the ancient Egyptians believed

firmly that they ruled. As to whether they are just

human beings, like you or I; or whether they come from somewhere

else; or whether they are a hybrid being, we have no idea.

>> NARRATOR: What if ancient civilizations possessed the

advanced scientific knowledge of our own modern day scientists?

What if they, too, had unlocked the mysteries of DNA: cloning

and gene‐splicing?

>> TSOUKALOS: Why is this so fascinating?

Well, because if you look at this from a genetics aspect,

we're in the process right now today of being able to recreate

creatures like that. I mean, this is Frankenstein.

This is science fiction stuff. Yet, in ancient Egypt, we have

the exact same descriptions, the exact same depictions of some

very bizarre, hybridization program which took place

thousands of years ago.

>> BIRNES: They are mixing alien, animal and human DNA, not

just for ten years or 20 years, but for thousands and thousands

of years. And that's why there are so many

alien abductions, and that's why each generation is cyclically

more advanced than the next, until we get to the complete

union of two cultures‐‐ the ultimate hybrid.

>> HOWE: I think the answer clearly is, we're not alone in

this universe and we have nonhuman intelligences

interacting with this planet for reasons that are still unknown

to most of us. It leaves you feeling a little

nervous.

>> NARRATOR: If alien beings came here, as some suggest, to

perform strange mutation experiments on animals, could

they have done the same on humans? And if so... why?

>> NARRATOR: Life on Earth comes in a tremendous diversity of

shapes and sizes. It can be found from the depths

of the deepest oceans to the peaks of the highest mountains.

But the vast array of life‐forms we see today is only

a small portion of what has existed on this planet during

its millions of years of history. In fact, scientists estimate

that 97% of all the species that have ever lived on Earth

are now extinct.

>> CREMO: Most scientists today will tell us that there have

been six major extinction events that have occurred during the

history of life on Earth. The most recent of these

extinction events was the one that occurred 65 million years

ago and wiped out the dinosaurs.

>> NARRATOR: Paleontologists attribute these mass extinctions

to natural causes such as meteor strikes...

floods and dropping sea levels. But another theory suggests

that these extinctions were not caused by nature, but by alien

beings.

>> HORN: In the ancient Sumerian texts, they can control weather,

they can cause droughts, and they did this to humans.

They are capable of producing their own disasters.

>> NARRATOR: But were now‐extinct life‐forms actually

exterminated in order to make way for other, perhaps more

docile or desirable species? Was the intent to clear the way

for colonization? Or invasion? And if so, what sort of

technology would be needed to effect such a widespread change?

>> BIRNES: Some theories say that we have that technology

now, called scalar technology. We heat up to high, electrical

impulses, a certain spot on the water, and that creates a

hurricane. And by making a path with that

beam, you can track the hurricane.

Now if we can do that‐‐ and this is hypothetical‐‐ if we can do

that, why can't an alien culture say, "Let's create an ice age on

planet Earth?" It will kill off the dinosaurs,

but pave the way for aliens to implant human beings on planet

Earth.

>> NARRATOR: Did alien beings come to Earth in order to stay?

Might they, as some believe, have seeded it with their own

genetic offspring? If so, where is the proof?

Some ancient astronaut theorists point to myths that describe

gods coming down from the heavens in order to mate with

humans.

>> TSOUKALOS: Ancient texts talk about the fact that whoever

visited the earth in the remote past, these gods, thought that

Earth women were quite beautiful. So, in many occasions, we find

stories where those visitors essentially mated with Earth

women. It was misinterpreted, misunderstood as something

divine that came here. They were flesh‐and‐blood

extraterrestrials.

>> NARRATOR: Native American folklore refers to those beings

who came down from the heavens to breed with Earth women as

Star People.

>> NANCY RED STAR: The Star People are extraterrestrial

people. They are not from this... this

earth. They visit.

They are star ancestors.

>> BULLARD: There's a great deal of, uh, of interaction

between them. Like some of the American Indian

star husband tales where some woman sleeping outside at night

looks up at a star and thinks it's very beautiful and would

like to go there, and winds up finding herself in the morning

being pulled up into heaven and meeting with the supernatural

being who was associated with that star in becoming the bride

of the star husband.

>> NARRATOR: According to Native American mythology, the brides

of these alien beings would become pregnant and give birth

to star children. They would be raised by the

native mother until the age of six, when they went to live with

their star father. Similar stories of intimate

encounters between celestial beings and humans can be found

in ancient Hebrew and Judeo‐Christian testaments

often referred to as The Pseudepigraph, or what many

refer to as the Apocrypha.

>> ROBERT CARGILL: There are lots of instances in the

Pseudepigraph‐‐ these are the books that didn't make it into

the Bible‐‐ where people are visited by beings that aren't

from this earth.

>> TSOUKALOS: Before the Bible became the Bible of today, there

were many additional books that used to be a part of the Bible.

They were removed in what was called the Council of Nicaea

because those books contained too much information, dangerous

knowledge.

>> CARGILL: In Genesis 6, where it talks about these

watchers that are kind of angels that came down from heaven and

had sex with the women of the earth.

>> VON DANIKEN: These strangers had sex with beautiful young

girls on our planet. How can angels have sex?

This is impossible. In our point, in our view,

angels were something spiritual, not something who has a body,

and has a feeling of sex. But they had sex.

Our prehistoric ancestors could not understand, and they believe

that these extraterrestrials are some kind of gods.

>> JONATHAN YOUNG: The conception of the Christ.

An angel comes to the holy mother, to the Virgin Mary, and

tells her that she's going to be blessed by God with a child.

And then, essentially, she finds herself pregnant.

>> REV. BARRY H. DOWNING: There is an angelic reality point in

the New Testament. And whether it be at the birth

of Jesus, or his resurrection, we've got the possibility of

other powers from another world being involved from the

beginning to the end.

>> NOORY: I tend to believe that Jesus was a very spiritual human

being who understood a lot of things that we're beginning to

learn today. But it's also very possible that

he might have been an extraterrestrial who came down

to teach us things. That divine intelligence is very

real in some form or fashion.

>> NARRATOR: Tales of gods mating with humans are prevalent

in everything from Greek and Roman mythology to Native

American legends. In China, at the end of the

fifth century BC, the country was divided into seven states,

each ruled by powerful warlords who battled for territory and

power. It was during this turbulent era

when the legendary story of Huangdi first appeared.

>> YOUNG: A great god took the form of a dragon, came down to a

hilltop where a young maiden was out gathering fruit.

And as this great dragon came near, the sky darkened.

It was like a storm. She was terrified, and she

passed out. When she came awake again, uh,

the sun had come out again, and the dragon was gone, and she was

pregnant.

>> NARRATOR: Much like the story of the Virgin Mary and Jesus,

the story of Huangdi told of an earthling woman who would give

birth to him‐‐ the legendary first emperor of China who

ushered in a time of great change.

>> HORN: Gods deliberately bred with humans so that they could

produce, they could get a race that they could trust and

control a little bit better.

>> CHILDRESS: In my mind, legends and‐and myths are based

on something real‐‐ while they have been mythified

and distorted and exaggerated, in many cases‐‐

but there is, in my mind, some core of truth here.

>> NARRATOR: Another prevalent theme in ancient texts, myths,

and religions is that of a cataclysm of some kind.

Usually, these come in the form of an intense flood, fire, or

other devastating catastrophe. In the Hebrew Bible, for

example, God punishes mankind for their decadence and sinful

ways. He sends punishment in the form

of a great flood... which destroys nearly all living

things on the planet, except for Noah, his family, and the

animals rescued aboard his ark. Similar stories can be found in

numerous ancient texts.

>> BULLARD: Many of the mythical tales of most civilizations

include some kind of idea that there are gods that came to

Earth at some point.

One interpretation has been that these are literal descriptions

of visitors from space. Not gods, but some creatures

of... with advanced technology that came to Earth in times

past, and either created mankind, brought culture to the

Earth, brought civilization, and then, for some reason, departed,

usually under some kind of breach between mankind and the

gods.

>> NARRATOR: Take the case of the once‐thriving Mesoamerican

cultures of the Aztecs and the Mayans.

By the year 1500 AD, they had all but vanished.

>> CHILDRESS: At some point, it all crashed in a cataclysmic

disaster. And the world, as they knew it,

came to an end. And tidal waves washed across

continents. Areas of the planet went under

water. And the megalithic building that

was going on then, too, also completely stopped.

And it's what we see at certain areas.

Like in Peru, where giant blocks of granite have been quarried

and partially moved to where they were going.

But then it all came to a sudden, complete halt.

>> NARRATOR: For nearly 3,000 years, the Mayan civilization

thrived in Central America. Among their many

accomplishments, the ancient Maya invented a remarkably

complex and accurate calendar. And so the idea that ancient

people, like the Mayans say, were somehow totally in tune

with this and had knowledge of these kind of vast cosmic

cycles, which apparently led to cataclysmic changes

on the Earth, that's the kind of advanced knowledge that we

wouldn't expect them to have. And where would they get that

kind of knowledge? You would think that would have

to come from extraterrestrials.

>> NARRATOR: If we accept the notion that alien beings

left behind the Mayan calendar warning device, might they have

left other astronomical instruments here on Earth?

And if so, why was it

>> NARRATOR: The stars. Since the beginning of time, man

has gazed in wonder at the night sky. Stars became the stuff

of legends, home of the gods and sometimes, man's final resting

place. It is no surprise then that

ancient man built monuments dedicated to these celestial

wonders.

>> SCHOCH: When we look at ancient monuments around the

world‐‐ these Mesolithic structures‐‐ we find that many

of them are aligned astronomically to the sun,

to planets, to stars... Numerous examples can be listed.

Stonehenge is essentially an ancient astronomical

observatory. Guess it may have been used for

ritualistic purposes. It may have been used for

religious purposes. But it's very clear that it was

also used for astronomical purposes, for observations.

>> SEAGER: We're not surprised whether it's Stonehenge,

pyramids, or perhaps the Nazca Lines that ancient people

understood events that were going to happen in the sky, and

when they would repeat.

>> NARRATOR: But why was ancient man so fixated on the sky?

And why did they construct elaborate stone monuments and

temples in order to track the movements of the stars?

Was it simply to help farmers know when to plant their crops?

Or might there have been another, perhaps more profound

purpose? Could they, as some believe,

have been constructed as a type of extraterrestrial GPS system?

Nabta Playa, Egypt. 500 miles south of Cairo

in Egypt's Nubian Desert sits one of the oldest astronomical

sites ever discovered. In 1974, archaeologist Fred

Wendorf almost passed it by before noticing its small stone

artifacts and toppled rocks.

>> BAUVAL: It's a very strange site. It's just strange stone

formations, circles, uh, stone alignments.

Bizarre trigger lines with strange rocks and others.

>> NARRATOR: Later excavations put the date of the astronomical

device at approximately 5000 BC, making it close to 1,000 years

older than the remarkably similar formation at Stonehenge.

>> BAUVAL: When they brought an astronomer there, they realized

that it was a ceremonial site, very intensely astronomical.

The intriguing thing about this site is that it shows that they

were tracking stars over thousands of years.

And to track stars over that period, they must have have been

aware of what we call "precession," which means they

weren't simply astronomers, or ancient astronomers.

They were very sophisticated astronomers.

>> NARRATOR: Could the people who built Nabta Playa 7,000

years ago have possessed an advanced understanding

of physics and astronomy? One that rivals or, perhaps,

surpasses our own? And why were they tracking

Orion and Sirius? In 1994, the mystery of Nabta

Playa took on even greater significance when Robert Bauval

announced a surprising discovery along Egypt's Giza

Plateau. The Great Pyramid contained

four long interior shafts. Bauval determined that they

were each precisely aligned with specific stars in the sky.

>> BAUVAL: The southern ones aligned to the belt of Orion

and to Sirius, and the northern ones aligned

to the second pole stars. Again, this is very intriguing.

In terms of construction engineering, that's, that's

bull's‐eye. As an engineer, I know that

it's one thing building a pyramid.

But it's another thing building a pyramid with that kind

of precision.

>> NARRATOR: Bauval also proved that the three pyramids of Giza

were laid out in the precise order and position of the three

stars of the Orion's Belt constellation.

But what exactly is the significance of the shaft

alignment and the layout of the pyramids themselves?

>> BAUVAL: I mean, we're deciphering a message.

The question is whether it is religious or whether it is

a stellar message. The fact is that what we have

on the ground is an image of a constellation that we know now

is the birthplace of stars. Literally, stars are being

born there. And the Egyptians themselves

believed that their gods had descended from the stars.

>> NOORY: That could be either a knowledge of ancient

astronomy, or it could also be a road map to where these E. T. s

may have come from.

>> NARRATOR: But why were the ancients so fixated on the

Orion and Sirius constellations? Some believe the answer can

be found on the other side of the world in North America.

Cholula, Mexico is home to the largest pyramid

in the world. More than 3,000 years old, it is

estimated that it took approximately 1,400 years

to complete.

>> TSOUKALOS: Even though the Cholula Pyramid doesn't look

like much because of the overgrown jungle, it is in fact

the world's largest monument ever constructed by human hands.

In fact, the volume of the Cholula pyramid‐‐ the whole

pyramid complex‐‐ is 4.45 million cubic meters.

The great pyramid in Egypt only has 2.5 million cubic meters

in volume. So, the great pyramid at Giza

is way taller than the Cholula Pyramid, but volume‐wise,

the Cholula Pyramid is, by far, the largest man‐made structure

ever created on planet Earth.

>> NARRATOR: Originally built by the Olmecs in the third century

BC, it was later added on to and used by the Toltecs and the

Aztecs as a place of religious

ritual and human sacrifice. But along with its history of

bloodshed, an examination of the pyramid reveals that the ancient

cultures of the region had a remarkable understanding

of astronomy.

>> CREMO: It's interesting to consider what the Aztec

people thought about its origins. They did not think it was built

by humans, like us, which is our theory today.

According to the ancient Aztec tradition, the Cholula Pyramid

was built by a being they called a "giant."

If you look at the Aztec cosmology, you'll see that

these giant beings were identified with different

celestial objects. The one in particular that is

said to have built the Cholula Pyramid is identified with the

planet Venus.

>> NARRATOR: Both the Aztecs and the ancient Egyptians charted

most of the planets in the solar system thousands of years

before European astronomers. But why?

And even more compelling is the fact that the two cultures were

thousands of miles and half a world apart.

>> CHILDRESS: Mainstream archeologists are telling us

that all these civilizations around the world‐‐ in the

Americas, on remote Pacific islands, in Asia and Africa and

Europe‐‐ that they're all disconnected with each other,

and that there wasn't some contact with South America, and

Egypt, or any of these ancient civilizations.

But really, it has to be the other way around.

All of these ancient civilizations were connected in

some way.

>> NARRATOR: But were these holy sites, as ancient astronaut

proponents suggest, really connected to each other?

And if so, why? Are they evidence of aliens

coming to earth?

>> Whoa, I'm getting a series of lights right there.

I got it, I got it, I got it.

>> NOORY: These reports that we continue to get from people of

E.T. visitations and craft, clearly points out to me that

we're being visited. And we have been visited.

>> Oh, there it is‐‐ over to the left.

>> NOORY: They may have physically left the planet,

in terms of a civilization. But they‐‐ they're continuing

to come back and monitor us for some reason.

>> Dude...

>> Wow.

>> ...they're back. More appeared, bro.

>> NARRATOR: If aliens are watching us today, what are they

waiting for? Or, as some claim, have they

already left messages for us in plain view?

>> NARRATOR: 90 miles west of London, in the county of

Wiltshire, the English countryside remains pretty much

as it has for thousands of years. Small farms, stone walls, and

rolling green hills provide inhabitants with an environment

of peace and stability. This historic region is also

home to a large number of ancient sacred sites, many

built thousands of years ago.

>> SUZANNE TAYLOR: It's an ancient, sacred landscape where

most of them occur. There are monuments that you

know about: Stonehenge, Avebury, Silbury Hill.

This is one small area that seems to be a manipulated

landscape that was done thousands of years ago where

sacred rituals have taken place.

>> NARRATOR: But in 1978, Wiltshire's tranquil landscape

became the focus of a controversy that persists to

this day.

>> Today alongside the tracks of farm machinery, a new set of

circles were found. No human tracks lead to the

markings.

>> NARRATOR: There, carved in fields of wheat, barley, and rye

were elaborate geometric patterns.

Even more curious was the fact that much like the famed Nazca

Lines of Peru, the designs were only visible from the air.

>> BULLARD: There have been cases that have been traced back

for hundreds of years‐‐ so‐called mowing devil, where

apparently some sort of a devil supposedly mowed a field in a

single night. But they became recognized as a

phenomenon only when these circles started appearing in

English wheat fields. They were very simple things at

first. And, well‐‐ but they kept occurring year after year, and

each year they seemed to get a little more elaborate.

One of the early theories was that there was some kind of

whirlwind that was making them. But as they became more

elaborate, they also became associated with paranormal

activity, particularly UFOs. Some people said they saw a

light in the field at night. And some people that‐‐ began to

read that as a UFO presence.

>> ROBERT MOORE: This circle in a Wiltshire field is just one of

200 such markings to have been discovered in the last six weeks.

To farmers and scientists, how they're formed or by whom

remains a big mystery.

>> NARRATOR: Not surprisingly, the region became the focus of

intense interest from UFO enthusiasts and skeptics,

each offering explanations as to who or what was responsible for

this strange phenomenon. But if in fact, alien beings

from another planet were responsible for the crop

circles, why were they making them in England?

Were they trying to contact us or were there clues embedded in

the designs? And was the proximity to

Stonehenge and other ancient sites of any particular

significance?

>> CHILDRESS: So you have the idea of these earth energies,

and these ancient structures, and then the crop circles are

appearing around them. And many of the crop circles

appear to be some kind of signals and ancient writing.

>> HOWE: When I saw the first photographs, I was... haunted,

actually. Are these extraterrestrials

doing this? Are we dealing with somebody who

knows how to bend space and time?

Our entire relationship with the universe and quantum physics‐‐

in all of its complexities‐‐ has been pushed hard by crop

formations alone.

>> CHILDRESS: Certainly it is one theory that

extraterrestrials are trying to communicate in a big way through

popular media. Crop circles do get in

newspapers all over the world. Perhaps that's what they want.

>> TAYLOR: These are being carefully designed.

They're not accidental‐‐ both, in terms of the shape, and where

they land. These aren't accidents.

There's a mind behind this that's making these decisions.

Where is that mind? What kind of body is it in?

>> NARRATOR: Scientists struggled to find an explanation

for the phenomenon, until in 1991, two self‐proclaimed

British pranksters, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, came forward

and proclaimed that they were the ones responsible.

>> BULLARD: They showed how they could make crop circles in a

single night using some very simple tools.

And at the time, people said, "Well, that must be the

explanation for it."

>> NARRATOR: Nevertheless, some researchers remain skeptical

that a single pair of elderly men could have created literally

hundreds of designs in the dead of night with little more than a

few boards and some rope.

>> TAYLOR: You know, it was very effective.

You still will run into people‐‐ "Crop circles‐‐ oh, forget about

them. Those two old guys made a...

come on, don't be so naive! They‐they were done by those two

old guys years ago. What are you paying attention

to them anymore?" Very effective piece of

disinformation.

>> NARRATOR: During the years that followed Bower and

Chorley's confession, crop circles continued to appear in

the English countryside and at various locations around the

world. Some were inarguably the work of

artists or jokesters. But after studying soil samples

and grain dispersion patterns in the disturbed farmland,

researchers concluded that it would be impossible for all of

these designs to be man‐made.

>> TAYLOR: Well, in what we would consider to be a

mysterious crop circle, where we can't identify it being made

by people‐‐ the lay is absolutely beautiful.

The lay of the crop. It's like a million carpet

layers came down, and put these stalks of grain down, right

parallel to one another. It's just a gorgeous thing to

behold. When the hoaxers make them, they

tend to be sloppy and messy because they're not... they

haven't got that same force. They're doing handmade

manipulation, which doesn't lay them down quite as beautifully.

>> NARRATOR: In 1991, noted biophysicist Dr. William

Levengood put forth a startling new theory.

After spending ten years studying crop circle sites and

samples, he concluded that they were created by a complex energy

system, which he called a spinning plasma vortex that

comes down from somewhere high up in the atmosphere.

>> HOWE: Biophysicist Levengood has now analyzed 350‐some

samples from crop formations in his career.

Now, if Levengood were sitting here with me, he would say, "All

I can do is, I can take you from the ground‐‐ I can take you from

the crops, up. But I can't tell you what sets

in motion that spinning plasma vortex in the first place.

It's still a huge mystery."

>> TAYLOR: The anomalous things that happen inside crop circles

are in fact one of the indications that you're in a

so‐called genuine circle because indeed the weirdest

things happen. Batteries fail‐‐ brand‐new

batteries. People go in with cameras.

Cell phones don't work.

>> BULLARD: There have been people who have started reading

all kinds of messages into these crop circles.

Uh, that they have some kind of digital significance that‐that

you can read. There's a kind of numerology,

and there'll be a kind of message.

People are really reading something into it.

>> TAYLOR: In terms of who or what is delivering them‐‐ we

have no way to know that. We only have science fiction

that tells us what's coming to visit us.

So, we have to just speculate about where this might be coming

from. We have to wait for whatever the

source is to introduce itself to us.

>> HOWE: Are we dealing with time travelers?

Are we dealing with spiritual forces from some dimension

we don't understand? Are we dealing with advanced

intelligences that are not even in this galaxy, that are from

someplace else? And is this a form of

communication? The conversations keep getting

more and more complicated.

>> TAYLOR: Crop circles are contact. We are being contacted.

Just because we don't have the bodies to shake hands with, we

have the evidence that the bodies have left us.

I'm absolutely convinced that crop circles are evidence of

intelligent life. There is intelligence bombarding

us, winking at us, waving.

>> NARRATOR: Are these mysterious crop circles

messages or warnings? Or might they have another,

perhaps more profound, purpose? Could they be futuristic clu

>> NARRATOR: Belize, Central America.

In 1924 British adventurer Frederick Mitchell‐Hedges

traveled here with his daughter Anna to explore the ruins of the

ancient Mayan city of Lubaantun. One afternoon Anna climbed to

the top of a crumbling pyramid, hoping to see the ocean.

>> BILL HOMANN: It was high noon and she was at the top, and the

way the sun came in, the way the rocks had moved in that there

was just a small opening and the light from the sun went through

and it hit the top of the skull, and she ran down and she's all

excited. She said "There's someone in

there with a flashlight."

>> NARRATOR: Anna's father and others in their party were too

large to fit inside the small opening of the pyramid, so they

tied a rope around Anna and lowered her into the hole.

When she came back up, Anna held the top of a strange crystal

skull. A second search uncovered a

matching jaw. The two‐piece skull weighed 11

pounds, seven ounces and appeared to be carved from a

single piece of rock crystal.

>> COPPENS: It's the only crystal skull which is almost

perfectly humanoid. It's the only crystal skull

which has a detachable jaw, and when I say "almost perfectly

humanoid," the one thing which is missing is the sutures on the

cranium. It has a perfect cranium.

So it almost suggests that, even though it's a human crystal

skull, those who were carving it somehow felt that this creature

was not born. It somehow came into this world

perfectly.

>> NARRATOR: The skull's appearance created an immediate

sensation among the local tribesmen.

>> HOMANN: When the natives saw it, it was like their god had

returned. They all started crying and

kissing the earth and everything. They were just so excited, and

Mitchell‐Hedges seeing this, he presented it to the high priest

and they put it in an altar, and for 24 hours a day they burned

flames around the, the crystal skull.

>> NARRATOR: The Mayan elders believed that, in ancient times,

13 crystal skulls were buried in secret places around the world.

Currently it is claimed that seven have been found.

Four are in private collections and one each in the British

Museum, the Smithsonian, and the Quai Branly Museum in Paris.

All have been the focus of intense examination,

speculation, and even worship.

>> SHERRY WHITFIELD: A lot of natives and a lot of people

working with crystal skulls say that the high quartz content

skulls and especially the quartz skulls themselves is the highest

frequency or energy or vibration possible on the physical plane,

and so a lot of native people kind of worshipped or took care

of these objects because they knew that they had or felt that

they had the highest energy possible on the earth plane.

>> NARRATOR: But what are the exact origins of these

mysterious crystal skulls? Since their discovery,

scientific tests have determined that the two owned

by the British Museum and the Quai Branly were not authentic

pre‐Columbian artifacts. Could it be that the Mitchell‐

Hedges skull was also a fake? In the 1960s it underwent

extensive testing by art curator Frank Dorland and the Hewlett‐

Packard Company.

>> HOMANN: They used the most advanced stuff that they had.

They could not find any marks on it except for around the jaw

and, I think, a little bit around the eyes‐‐ the only place

they saw tool marks using their techniques.

At the time, Hewlett‐Packard found that the temperature

always stays about the same temperature, no matter if it's

in hot or cold. It was carved against the lines

of the crystal. If anybody tried to do that, it

would break into a thousand pieces.

It's made out of a high level of electronic crystal, and they're

not really sure exactly where it came from.

>> COPPENS: If you listen to the academics, crystal skulls are

all modern fabrications, meaning somebody has gone on there with

a wheel and has carved them as such, and this is where the big

divide is between established academics and alternative

researchers like myself, who feel that the academics are not

using all the available evidence to draw their conclusions, and,

in short, we believe that the academics are wrong in their

conclusions.

(indistinct chattering)

>> NARRATOR: Are these skulls really ancient artifacts?

And if not, who or what carved them?

>> CHILDRESS: Crystal skulls, according to certain stories,

yes, they are alien artifacts. Even some people think they're

made on another planet.

(indistinct whispering)

>> WHITFIELD: I think there are links between crystal skulls and

extraterrestrials, not necessarily that they were

carved and created by extraterrestrials.

I've been told they were created by humans, but they were created

specifically to hold records from alien civilizations.

>> NARRATOR: Could there actually be some type of coded

information stored inside these skulls?

And if there is, how could it be retrieved?

>> WHITFIELD: There is a legend that there were 13 skulls and

that when the 13 skulls come together, then something

significant will change in the world.

>> TSOUKALOS: Legends suggest that there are 12 additional

worlds out there, planets which are inhabited by intelligent

species. Now, we belong to those worlds

or to those planets, and our planet Earth is called "planet

of the children." They also suggest that these 13

crystal skulls that allegedly exist on planet Earth were each

brought here from one of those 12 planets... and the 13th skull

is the one that apparently contains all of the information

of all those 12 different worlds.

>> CHILDRESS: Within each crystal skull, information is

stored, and in fact IBM has shown that, too, that quartz

crystal can store millions of gigabytes of information, and,

in fact, any quartz crystal or a crystal skull could hold much

more information than any computer we have now.

So when these crystal skulls would be brought together, they

begin to interface with each other... and ultimately a

greater knowledge and information is condensed and

brought to us, and that's the legend of the crystal skulls.

>> NARRATOR: But as ancient astronaut theorists maintain,

why would visiting aliens have given the crystal skull to the

Maya? To what purpose?

>> COPPENS: The skull is a very important motif for the Mayans.

When you look around the Mayan monuments, you see skulls carved

pretty much everywhere. They use it for some of the

notations for calendars.

>> NARRATOR: And it is the Mayan calendar that many people refer

to when discussing the possibility of a new Armageddon.

Are the skulls somehow linked to this?

Or will they simply be used as a tool by some form of

extraterrestrial intelligence to guide mankind to its next stage

of evolution? If so, is this intelligence

waiting and watching for the right moment?

And from where exactly could it be watching us?

>> NARRATOR: If extraterrestrial beings do exist in the universe,

where are they? That was the question posed by

Enrico Fermi, one of the leading scientists of the 20th century.

>> PAUL DAVIES: Shortly after the Second World War, the famous

physicist Enrico Fermi, who was taking part in the Manhattan

Project to build the atomic bomb, was talking at Los Alamos

with some friends about the reports of flying saucers, and

Fermi suddenly said, in relation to extraterrestrial intelligent

beings, "Where are they?" And he was simply making the

point that if there was a civilization somewhere in the

galaxy that had arisen, say, 100 million years ago, then they had

plenty of time to spread across the galaxy.

>> JOHN BALL: Fermi said, "Gee, if there's all of these

civilizations out there and all of these planets out there,

where is everybody?"

>> NARRATOR: The Fermi paradox, as it became known, was an

attempt to explain the lack of evidence of aliens despite the

mathematical probability of their existence.

>> CARGILL: Up unto this point, to modern time, no credible

scholar, no credible scientist looks at any of the evidence

that ancient alien enthusiasts put forth and say, "Yes, this is

evidence of ancient aliens." No credible scholar does that.

>> MICHAEL J. CROWE: Moreover, the whole SETI project‐‐ the

Search for Extra‐Terrestrial Intelligence‐‐ it's been going

on now for nearly 50 years. The fact that we have found no

radio telescope evidence of extraterrestrials plays very

much into the Fermi paradox in that it further indicates: if

they're out there, why aren't we hearing from them?

And we don't seem to be hearing from them.

>> NARRATOR: But in the 1960s, MIT astrophysicist John Ball

rebutted Fermi's hypothesis with a controversial one of his own:

the zoo hypothesis.

>> BALL: The zoo hypothesis says that we are in a zoo, or a

wilderness area, that they have essentially left alone and are

going to leave alone to allow us to develop in our own way and at

our own rate.

>> CROWE: Extraterrestrials have detected us on Earth, but have

chosen not to come here, not to invade, but rather to observe us

as we observe animals in the zoo. They've thought, "We'll do a

study of those earthlings and see what sort of people they

are."

>> BALL: Now, why would they do this?

Well, if on the one hand we have nothing they want, that's

surely true. And on the other hand,

we aren't able to interfere with whatever they're doing.

That's also surely true. They're out there doing their

own thing, and they're not paying any attention to us.

And we're not clever enough to eavesdrop on whatever they're

doing.

>> HOWE: That's the predicament we're in.

We have something that is looking down and monitoring us.

We are on the Petri dish and we can't get out far enough to

see what's behind those eyes behind that microscope.

>> NARRATOR: If aliens are watching us right now, where are

they? Some believe they are sitting

out in space in what are called "Lagrange points," named after

mathematician and astronomer Joseph Lagrange, who discovered

them in 1772. There are five of these points

between the sun, the Earth and our moon.

>> SEAGER: Lagrange points are points between two bodies

where the forces balance equally. Think of, like, a seesaw when

you have one really heavy person and one really light person.

There's a kind of balance point in there, and that's what

a Lagrange point is.

>> DAVIES: Lagrange points is where we send some of our own

satellites. And that's a point in space

where you can just sort of sit there inert for millions of

years if you had to without having to worry about in course

corrections. If you go anywhere else in

the solar system, uh, then in order to keep pace with Earth

as it orbits the sun, you've got to continually change your

position.

>> SEAGER: So people have talked about Lagrange points

as a place where a spacecraft might hide out because

you don't have to do a lot to stay in that spot.

It's sort of equally balanced and you just get carried along.

>> TSOUKALOS: If an extraterrestrial race would have

ever visited our solar system, they would have placed a probe

in those specific points in order to observe us, to record

us, what have you. So, I mean, this is not

something that the ancient astronaut theory has proposed.

This is, you know, university professors, astrophysicists who

have proposed this.

>> NARRATOR: Some argue that another reason alien beings

have yet to reveal themselves is because they don't yet

consider us worthy. This forms the basis of John

Ball's jungle hypothesis.

>> BALL: The jungle hypothesis just means that if you have

animals, such as ants, that live in the jungle, no matter how

many of them you have, their chances of ever having seen

a human being are very slim. Not because we're hiding or

anything, but we just don't have a reason to go into the jungle

and step on anthills. So, the idea is that we are

probably related to advanced extraterrestrial intelligence

similar to an anthill might be related to humans.

And the fact that we've never seen any extraterrestrial

intelligence is just we don't have anything they want.

>> HOWE: We could actually shake hands with something that might

have been coming and going on this planet for literally

thousands, perhaps millions, of years, and has kept a distance

during the last age of man for reasons unknown, and maybe is

waiting for us all to finally grow up.

>> CROWE: One thing that can be said with a great deal of

confidence is that, if the contact is initiated by them,

they are going to be not only superior to us, but greatly

superior to us. They won't be just beginners

like we are. They will be far more advanced

than we are.

>> NARRATOR: Both the jungle and zoo hypotheses propose that

alien beings are watching us, but are, for the time being,

keeping their distance. But what if they're not?

What if the alien mission was to integrate with our society

in a way that avoids detection? If so, might they be walking

among us right now?

>> NARRATOR: According to the ancient astronaut theory,

aliens may have come to Earth for many reasons: to excavate,

to breed, to conquer, or simply to explore.

>> DOWD: Certainly, we want to go out and find out about things

we don't know about. We see the moon.

We want to go up to the moon and find out more things about

it; we see Mars, we want to go there. We want to go to Jupiter.

We send out our probes. So, if aliens are something

like us, then perhaps they have that same kind of motivation.

They just want to go learn.

>> TSOUKALOS: Just like we exhibit curiosity, there are

other species out there that have the same trait.

It would be very egotistical to think that we're the only

explorers in this galaxy. I mean, that would be a very sad

statement to suggest we're the only ones with a brain and

want to go out there and explore.

>> NARRATOR: But while our own journeys into space have been

brief and largely exploratory, could other beings, traveling

millions of miles to Earth, have stayed?

And, if so, might they still be among us?

>> CHILDRESS: Many ancient astronaut theorists think this

all happened in the past and the extraterrestrials came here,

did this and did that, and then they took off back to their own

planet. But there's a lot of evidence

to show that extraterrestrials who might have come here in the

past, they've never left. They have bases somewhere on

the planet underneath the oceans, inside mountains.

In South America, there is very strong beliefs that many

UFOs come out of lakes and underwater.

Lake Titicaca and other lakes in Peru and Bolivia and other

areas of South America have some kind of underground,

underwater alien base associated with them.

If aliens were coming to our planet, there seems little

doubt that they would stop at the moon on their way here.

The moon itself is kind of the eye in the sky.

NASA says that the moon is apparently hollow.

During the Apollo missions, the command module crashed into the

moon. And the moon rang like a bell

for hours. There are craters on the moon

which they cannot find a bottom to, and it's thought, by some

researchers, that these bottomless craters are

entrances inside our moon.

The whole enigma of the moon

gets weirder and weirder the more you know it.

Was the moon actually brought here from another solar system

and put into orbit around our planet?

Biologists say that life on this planet could never have

occurred without our moon. And the reason for that is that

the moon creates the tidal effect.

And without the effect of tides and this rhythmic motion on the

oceans, life would never have begun on this planet.

In my mind, the evidence is there that the moon is a

gigantic spaceship in orbit around our planet.

It's occupied by some extraterrestrial race.

In many ways, it's much like the George Lucas Death Star

concept in Star Wars where they're building this artificial

moon that's capable, with technology, of actually

destroying a planet.

>> NARRATOR: But if alien beings are using the moon as some

sort of satellite for Earth observation, why?

What would be the purpose? And where is the proof?

>> RED STAR: They would like to see us evolve.

You know, they are great masters, great... avatars.

They are very high. And so are we.

And we need to live up to our potential.

We really need to live up to our potential for all people.

>> (over P. A.): Your attention please.

>> HOWE: Today, we are living still, as if we are alone in

the universe while hundreds and thousands of people are seeing

unusual craft in the skies as they did 5,000 years ago.

And so, in a way, the idea that the ancient aliens would finally

be coming around full circle all the way into the 21st

century... Us trying to push open a truth

that governments have suppressed in the 20th century, is really

very ironic.

>> NARRATOR: There are many diverse and conflicting theories

concerning the idea that alien astronauts have been visiting

the earth for centuries. But perhaps the proof lies in

the most obvious place of all: right within ourselves.

>> VON DANIKEN: Somewhere in our genes it is coded that extra

terrestrials were here thousands of years ago.

And it takes a certain time before this message is open to

us, maybe in the brain.

>> NOORY: I don't believe extraterrestrials, E. T. s,

ancient astronauts are the missing link.

I think what they very well could be, they may be the

beginning of the link‐‐ the link that helped genetically alter

human beings, the link that jump‐started our civilization

the way we are today. It's very possible they came

down here and saw some creature, and they said, "You know what?

We're going to jump‐start this." It may take another ten million

years for this thing to become smart and intelligent.

So they created us. And we're smart and intelligent

now, aren't we?