Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Accounts from thousands of years ago,

describing high-tech flying machines.

Medieval artwork depicting mysterious objects in the skies.

And centuries-old reports

of unexplained aerial phenomena.

For nearly two decades,

Ancient Aliens has traveled the globe,

exploring towering megalithic structures,

mysterious artifacts

and stories of otherworldly beings

in a quest for evidence that might reveal the truth

of our extraterrestrial origins.

We have countless ancient descriptions

that today, we would simply refer to as "flying saucers."

NARRATOR: Now, we take a look back

through the Ancient Aliens archives

to the show's very origins

to examine the evidence that we are not alone.

We have never been alone.

So, ancient close encounters.

Isn't that what the ancient astronaut theory

-is really all about? -GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: Right?

And, you know, it's interesting that for the past 15 years,

Ancient Aliens has explored ancient mysteries,

mythologies, legends

and monuments and things like that.

But we've also started

to incorporate modern-day phenomena.

But the bottom line is

that these things have been happening long before Roswell.

JASON MARTELL: Yeah, and it's interesting.

You know, the term "UFO" didn't really exist until 1952,

but the idea of an alien craft--

it's probably not a thought that would have even have occurred

-to ancient man. -Right.

But think about all those ancient accounts

of flying shields,

flying canoes, flying chariots.

-Or flying, fire-breathing dragons. -Mm-hmm.

I mean, in my opinion, all these are cases

of what I refer to as "misunderstood technology."

I love that we're beginning

this "Ancient Close Encounters" show

with one of the earliest examples

that we've presented

in the first episode of Ancient Aliens.

-And those are those little models of birds. -Right.

And it turns out

that these birds feature aerodynamics,

and this has been proven.

NARRATOR: Saqqâra, Egypt.

Located roughly 20 miles south of Cairo,

it is home to the world-famous Step Pyramid of King Djoser.

Dating back more than 4,000 years,

it is the oldest of Egypt's 97 pyramids.

Saqqâra is also famous

for being one of Egypt's oldest burial grounds,

earning it the nickname "City of the Dead."

It was here, in 1891,

that French archaeologists unearthed an ancient tomb

containing the burial remains of Pa-di-Imen,

an official from the third century BC.

Among the various items discovered

was a small, wooden model

of what appeared to be a bird, lying beside a papyrus,

bearing the inscription, "I want to fly."

The artifact was later sent to the Cairo Museum

where authorities placed it

alongside several other bird figurines.

The model sat largely unnoticed, until 1969,

when Egyptologist Dr. Khalil Messiha

was examining the bird collection

and noticed that there was something very different

about the Saqqâra bird.

DR. UWE APEL: It's interesting, because on one hand,

clearly, it should look like a bird because it has eyes,

and has a typical nose of a bird.

On the other hand,

the wings are clearly not bird wings.

DR. ALGUND EENBOOM: To the middle of the rump,

you'll see this wing a bit thicker.

In this region,

the lift-up is the highest.

The whole thing becomes thinner to the, um, end of the wings,

and those wings are modeled down.

And this is a very modern aerodynamic design.

APEL: Then the other point is,

birds have no rudders,

because a bird doesn't need a rudder

because of its aerodynamic architecture.

And so, there is the idea they are not representing birds,

but flying machines or aircraft.

NARRATOR: Could the ancient Egyptians have possessed

the power of flight?

In 2006,

aviation and aerodynamics expert Simon Sanderson

built a scale model of the Saqqâra bird,

five times larger than the original,

to test that possibility.

(air hissing)

We're running at a constant speed,

slowly increasing the angle of attack,

and then measuring the forces which it's producing.

That way, we can learn about its flight characteristics.

At ten degrees, we're producing

-four times weight and lift. -Yeah.

So it actually would be flying now.

-Yeah. -SANDERSON: That's good.

EEMBOOM: Tests shows the Saqqâra bird is

a highly developed glider.

And this is a design we use today.

NARRATOR: During the Sanderson tests,

it was discovered that the only thing

preventing the Saqqâra bird from achieving flight

was the lack of a rear-stabilizing rudder,

or elevator, needed to maintain balance.

Is it possible that the Saqqâra bird

ever possessed this critical component?

What is missing is something like an elevator.

But if you look at this feature here,

then we may interpret

that something like an elevator was connected here,

but was lost during history.

NARRATOR: But if the Saqqâra bird is capable of flight,

where would ancient Egyptians have acquired such technology?

EENBOOM: I think that people in ancient times

were visited by beings coming not from this Earth,

and they gave us culture

and scientific technologies

to improve our life on Earth,

coming from the primitive

to a higher-developed culture.

APEL: If ancient cultures would be able

to produce any really flyable machine,

they would be far more advanced than we believe today.

So it changes our viewpoint of ancient societies.

PHILIP COPPENS: It's a fact that our ancestors were

more intelligent

and had more technological, superior capabilities

than our history books give them credit for.

NARRATOR: 7,000 miles from Egypt,

the dense jungles and rugged mountains

of Colombia contain a vast number

of archaeological sites.

(birds singing)

Many treasure hunters believe the legendary city of gold,

El Dorado, lies hidden here,

somewhere under a thick canopy of trees.

While the mythical metropolis has never been found,

early in the 20th century,

tomb robbers searching along the Magdalena River

stumbled upon a grave site dating back 1,500 years

to a pre-Columbian civilization known as "the Tolima."

Among the funerary objects found there were hundreds

of small, two to three-inch gold figurines.

TSOUKALOS: Many of those looked like insects and fish.

However, out of those hundreds

that they found, they also found about a dozen

that are eerily reminiscent

of modern-day fighter jets.

They have a triangular shape,

they have an upright tail fin,

stabilizers

and a fuselage.

And they have nothing in common

with anything similar in nature.

NARRATOR: Could these gold objects really be proof

that Earth has been visited by ancient aliens?

APEL: One of the objects

shows a typical set of wings, like with a modern aircraft.

And if you compare it

to something like a space shuttle, you see

that the basic wing shape is very similar

to wing shapes for high-speed, aerodynamic bodies,

like a space shuttle is.

COPPENS: There is not a single insect in the world

which has got its wings at the bottom.

Now when you exclude the possibility that it's an insect,

one of the things which remain is the fact

that this is actually, yes, what it looks like-- a plane.

NARRATOR: In 1997,

German aviation experts,

including Algund Eenboom and Peter Belting,

set out to prove the speculation

by building a scale-model replica of the Goldflyer,

fully equipped with landing gear and a working engine.

EEMBOOM: It was rather simple because

we don't need to put much parts

to this shape because this shape is perfect.

Everything was already done

by the native people 2,000 years ago.

TSOUKALOS: They did not add an inch or remove an inch.

They just essentially blew the little thing into a larger size.

I mean, this is sensational,

that pre-Columbian culture knew about aerodynamics.

NARRATOR: Once completed,

the remote-controlled flyer

took off down a makeshift runway

and flew.

COPPENS: When you see this thing taking off,

you really feel that this is the real deal.

It was a very successful test

and, uh, showed us how perfect

ancient people were working out aerodynamic design.

What, uh, shows you that there must be something happened.

We are not quite sure how it did but that it did.

This is applied science.

This isn't just thinking somewhere.

This is people going out there and making sure and proving--

what I still see, anybody can see this--

that this is real, this is genuine.

This little thing, which sits in a museum,

could fly.

TSOUKALOS: So we have two examples

from opposite side of the planet

and both examples

are aerodynamically sound

and they fly.

So to suggest that all of this is coincidence,

I mean, after a while,

even coincidence no longer makes sense.

BILL BIRNES: Could the ancients

have seen actual entities

like ancient gods, ancient astronauts

actually flying around in what amounted to modern aircraft?

NARRATOR: The answer to these questions may be found

in ancient documents

that describe flight patterns, aircraft specs

and even aerial battles in remarkable detail.

NARRATOR: Over the past 50 years,

NASA has sent astronauts into space inside large rockets.

This method has been described by some

as simply putting a man on a large firecracker

and lighting the fuse.

Man's ability to travel farther into space

will require more advanced propulsion systems.

Several are being researched by NASA.

ROBERT FRISBEE: There are a wide variety

of advanced propulsion technologies

that are being actively developed

and studied by NASA and other researchers.

A really exotic version of that

is to use a launch assist catapult.

You use technology derived from the magnetic levitation trains

to build a maglev sled that carries your rocket,

gets it up to about Mach 1

and then launches the rocket from it.

NARRATOR: While these futuristic propulsion systems

seem like something out of science fiction,

ancient alien theorists believe past civilizations possessed

these same advanced technologies.

They point to a number of cultural myths

that describe "sky people" coming to Earth

in fire-breathing dragons or metallic-looking machines

as proof of extraterrestrial visitation.

CHILDRESS: In my mind, legends and-and myths

are based on something real.

And while they've been mythified

and exaggerated in many cases,

in my mind, some core of truth here--

in that people really were flying in airships

in ancient times,

just like we do today.

NARRATOR: But might these airships have reached Earth

using the same type of propulsion systems we use today?

The answer may be found deep in the Indian subcontinent.

India.

Over 1.1 billion people crowd its modern cities

and rural townships,

speaking hundreds of languages

and practicing a number of different religions.

India is considered one of the oldest civilizations,

with settlements dating back over 11,000 years.

It is also home to several of the oldest records

of ancient technologies.

Ancient Sanskrit texts dating back as far as 6000 BC

describe in varying but vivid detail

flying machines called vimanas.

EENBOOM: Vimanas are airplanes

and they are powered by some jet engines.

This seems to be true

because all the description

of the flight behavior,

elephants ran away in panic.

-(elephant trumpets) -Grass was thrown out

because there was a lot of pressure

from behind those vimanas.

So that we can say this is a description of the spaceship.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Although mainstream historians believe

the vimana texts are myths,

many of the documents contain passages

that seem to describe modern machinery and technology.

CHILDRESS: The Vymaanika-Shaastra goes into metals

that are used in these craft.

It talks about electricity and power sources.

It talks about the pilots and the clothing they have to wear.

It talks about the food that they eat.

It talks even about the weapons that are kept on these airships.

EENBOOM: The flight manuals of the vimanas

are quite similar to the flight manuals you find

in the modern passenger flight business

or, uh, when you go to the military jet engines.

Of course, they have also flight manuals

because it's necessary for a pilot to get knowledge

about his plane he wanted to fly with.

MICHAEL CREMO: We also learn that these vimanas

could be controlled mentally.

And this is a technology

that modern militaries are beginning to develop.

Even today, with as advanced as we think we are,

almost every manifestation

of an actual extraterrestrial civilization today

would look almost like magic to us,

where it has to do with

technological electromagnetic systems

that interface with coherent thought

and organized thought.

This gets into-- People go,

"Whoa, now you're losing me here."

But I tell people, I say, "Yeah, well,

"you got to push your boundaries a little bit

if you're talking about a true interstellar civilization."

NARRATOR: The Vymaanika-Shaastra suggests

vimanas were powered by several gyroscopes

placed inside a sealed liquid mercury vortex.

FRISBEE: Here's an example

of a little kid's gyroscope.

You spin it,

with a heavy wheel around a central axis.

Well, a gyroscope seems to do a lot of strange things,

even defy gravity,

and it does this because it uses

what's called rotational, uh, or angular momentum.

And it wants to keep a particular orientation

on its spin axis, the center rod.

If you push on that rod,

it will want to righten itself up to its original orientation.

It wants to keep that same angular momentum.

Gyroscopes are used all over the place--

in airplanes,

in spacecraft, in submarines.

This allows 'em to determine their position

based on where they started.

They can also use it for finding their velocity

or even just the orientation of the vehicle in space.

One of the texts talks about mercury rotating

and driving some sort of a powerful wind

or a windmill effect.

That might be some sort

of what we call a flywheel energy storage--

where you have a spinning disc

and then you extract energy from it slowly.

That would be the mercury.

And then that could be used

to drive some sort of a propeller

or what we call a ducted fan sort of system,

like you have in a hovercraft.

Mercury would be quite good for that,

because it's a high density,

so you'd have a small package for your power plant.

GREER: How are these civilizations

traveling faster than the speed of light

is a fundamental question.

It's a scientific application of things that have been studied

for thousands of years and they're within the Vedas.

NARRATOR: But if vimanas existed,

could this prove

there was a worldwide transportation network?

I find it beyos,

we have descriptions of these gods flying around

in the so-called vimanas.

And as Erich von Däniken has always asked the question,

what kind of a god needs a flying vehicle

with which to move around in?

Yeah, it's a good question. And there wasn't just one type

of vimana. They actually describe

a whole array of different types of craft

-in these ancient Sanskrit texts. -Yes.

And if we're talking about extraterrestrials versus gods,

this makes sense. I mean, we have stealth bombers,

we have drones,

we have space shuttles, jumbo jets.

And in the ancient record,

we find a variety of craft

associated with these extraterrestrials.

I mean, you see these close encounters.

They talk about these flying carpets,

they talk about flying sky ships,

they talk about whole cities hovering in the sky.

Right. And where did Erich von Däniken first encounter these?

In the Old Testament.

NARRATOR: Myths and legends of ancient air travel

are not limited to only vimanas.

According to the Kebra Nagast, a holy book of the Ethiopians

dating back to at least the sixth century AD,

the Queen of Sheba was once given a gift

of a flying carpet by King Solomon of Israel.

TSOUKALOS: The Kebra Nagast

is one of the most important texts you've never heard of.

The Kebra Nagast means "The Book of Kings,"

and it is the most sacred book

of the Ethiopians.

In it, King Solomon, it's described,

he had access to some type of a flying machine.

And in that part of the world, the term "flying carpet"

was always used very liberally.

My question is, did they really mean actual flying carpets,

or was it another term

with which to describe some type of a flying machine?

CHILDRESS: This was the original chariots of the gods

that Erich von Däniken talked about,

the flying magic carpets

of the Arabian Nights stories.

There are traditions in the Middle East

of King Solomon having this airship

and flying to different places in the Middle East,

certain mountains, which are known as

the Mountains of Solomon.

These may have been certain airports

or landing areas for these vimanas.

Nicholas Roerich,

famous, uh, Russian-American explorer

who traveled all through Central Asia and Tibet,

in the 1920s,

he, too, claimed that Tibetans had traditions

of King Solomon flying to Tibet in this aircraft.

NARRATOR: The Kebra Nagast also describes how King Solomon

used his flying airship to make maps of the world.

But could these have any relation to other ancient maps

some believe may have been made by extraterrestrials?

GRAHAM HANCOCK: Some of these maps

show the world not as it looks today,

but as it looked during the last ice age.

And this is really hard to explain.

Everybody's heard of the-the Piri Reis map,

but they've perhaps not heard of the Orontius Finnaeus map

or-or the Mercator maps that show Antarctica,

uh, in great detail hundreds of years

before Antarctica was even discovered.

NARRATOR: One of the most referenced stories

of ancient aircraft is found in a surprising place:

the Bible.

In the Book of Ezekiel, the prophet describes

a flying chariot containing wheels within wheels

and powered by angels.

Although Bible historians suggest

Ezekiel was speaking symbolically

about the terrifying enemies facing Israel,

could this be another example of an alien visitation

and proof that prehistoric aircraft existed?

In the story of Ezekiel's throne chariot,

this flying vehicle that doesn't seem to have

any means of propulsion,

if we thought of the word "angel"

as representing something like celestial energy,

it sounds much more like a-a spacecraft then,

because some of the angels are going back and forth.

Well, that sounds like flames, that sounds like propulsion.

Some of them are wheel-like.

Well, those sound like flying saucers.

Our ancestors weren't idiots.

Ezekiel saw something that was so frightening to him

that he fell to his knees.

Then out of the glory of God came this being

in these bright clothes that looked like metal

and told Ezekiel,

"All right, man, we brought you here.

We want you to measure this monument, this building."

And Ezekiel asks, "Well, why should I do this?"

And the being says,

"That's why we brought you here."

And then, you have 40 pages

in the second part of the Book of Ezekiel

with measurement after measurement after measurement

of this gigantic building,

in which, by the way, the glory of the Lord landed.

NARRATOR: In the early 1970s,

NASA scientist Josef Blumrich set out to disprove the theory

that what Ezekiel witnessed was a spaceship.

Josef Blumrich is your proverbial rocket scientist.

He worked on the Moon project for NASA,

and from the mind of a rocket engineer,

started to look at what was written

in the first part of the Book of Ezekiel,

and after many months of research,

Josef Blumrich came to the conclusion

that what Ezekiel described

in his eyewitness report,

it was, indeed, a type of spacecraft.

NARRATOR: Josef Blumrich would go on

to write The Spaceships of Ezekiel.

Several years later, a German structural engineer

named Hans Herbert Beier sketched out a blueprint

of the second section of the Book of Ezekiel,

where Ezekiel is told to construct

an open-topped building to house the flying chariot.

Ezekiel's spaceship fit exactly into the temple

that Hans Herbert Beier recreated.

So what we have here is a proof by indication.

Here we have a NASA engineer and a structural engineer--

they didn't know of each other's work--

and both pieces fit together like a puzzle.

In any court of law,

that's evidence that would hold up.

HANCOCK: I think that scientists feel uncomfortable

with the notion of the lost civilization

precisely because the evidence for it is so ambiguous.

It's not so in-your-face that it's immediately obvious.

Uh, and, you know, the result is that science

has not welcomed this idea.

It'll take much more evidence before it's widely accepted.

TSOUKALOS: The God that I believe in

doesn't need a vehicle

in which to move around from point A to point B.

Whatever was described in the Old Testament

wasn't God,

it was a misunderstood flesh-and-blood extraterrestrial

whom our ancestors misinterpreted

as being divine and supernatural.

And why? Because of misunderstood technology.

And that is the underlying thread

that applies to all of the ancient astronaut theory.

e

and other ancient texts,

and you do it through a modern lens,

it's really not that difficult to see

some type of extraterrestrial connection.

Yeah, again, it's about frame of reference.

What people were familiar with

and the language they had at the time.

-Right, and the vocabulary. -Mm-hmm.

And so, ultimately though,

I think what we are seeing in the past

is the exact same thing,

because we have countless ancient descriptions

of some flying objects

that today, we would simply refer to

as "flying saucers."

NARRATOR: Flying saucers.

UFOs.

Mainstream historians claim sightings

of these mysterious craft

are mostly a 20th-century phenomenon.

But according to ancient astronaut theorists,

unidentified flying objects

have been appearing in Earth's skies

for thousands of years.

CHILDRESS: Depictions of flying saucers

and-and what seems to be some kind of ancient spacecraft

go back to some of the earliest cave paintings that we know of.

Scientists date these cave paintings back to 20,000,

30,000 BC,

and these cave paintings are-are in Russia,

China, Africa, South America and other areas.

And they appear to be some kind of a spacecraft.

WILCOCK: You can go back to ancient Sumerian inscriptions

from Babylon and you actually see these discs

with wings around them.

And depictions of people flying in them.

And you see the same thing in Egypt where you see

round discs that have wings coming off them.

What you're dealing with is, most likely,

actually a flying saucer that's being seen up in space.

NARRATOR: Guatemala, Central America.

According to most mainstream scholars and archaeologists,

the earliest human settlements in this region

date back over 14,000 years.

Here can be found numerous ancient artifacts,

and among them is this one, the figure of a man

lying inside what appears to be the shell of a turtle.

And when I asked the local archaeologist there,

"What is this?"

they said, without the flinching of an eye,

"Well, this is, according to legend,

the giant flying turtles which flew around in Guatemala."

The entire body is aerodynamically fashioned.

The extremities are pressed in an aerodynamic fashion

against the body of this turtle.

And if you look closely...

...it's as if there's some modern-day fighter pilot

glasses or goggles.

This right here is from the same culture,

from the same region where they created the turtle in clay.

So they knew exactly what a turtle looked like.

It looks like a snapping turtle.

And what we have here,

that is everything but a turtle.

It's something else.

In their frame of reference, they were able to use the turtle

as the best example of what they might have seen

that the gods used to fly around in.

NARRATOR: Halfway around the world,

in 329 BC, the Greek ruler Alexander the Great

planned the invasion of India.

But according to ancient texts, his army was supposedly thwarted

by a strange attack from the skies.

CHILDRESS: As Alexander's army was getting ready

to cross the Indus and invade India,

suddenly in the sky appeared these flying discs.

And they began dive-bombing at the war elephants

that were part of Alexander's army.

And what these flying discs did was cause stampedes

within Alexander's own war elephants,

who then ran amok throughout his army, uh,

tearing up the camps and everything.

And after that,

Alexander's generals met with him and they said,

"No, we're not going into India.

This, this is it. We're gonna turn back."

And that was the end of that war campaign.

NARRATOR: But whether in ancient times or much more recently,

so-called flying saucers are often described

as being unaffected by gravity or the basic laws of physics.

You know, I know that people who have,

who have seen, uh, extraterrestrial vehicles

in modern times have said

how in the world could it be doing that?

For example, it's moving through the sky

and it's going 20,000 miles per hour,

and makes a right-hand turn without decelerating.

That isn't possible

using normal aerodynamics.

CHILDRESS: When jets have been scrambled

after, uh, flying saucers, the saucers are described

as suddenly turning at right angles

at super speeds and just zipping off

in what seems like impossible aerobatic maneuvers.

And this can be explained as the kind of technology

they're using which is, uh, a gravity control.

It's artificial gravity.

So when you're inside of a,

a gravitational field that you're creating yourself

around your craft,

the gravity of the Earth doesn't have a force on you.

dozens of examples of ancient flying objects

as they're described in legends

or depicted in ancient rock art

and also in carvings.

Up till now, we've had lots of evidence

of ancient accounts,

but as we've shown on the series,

these accounts are shown all throughout the Middle Ages

-as well as the Renaissance. -TSOUKALOS: Mm-hmm.

And it's not just accounts.

There are numerous examples of these mysterious

disc-shaped objects that appear

in the artwork of the time as well.

It's right there for anyone to see.

NARRATOR: For those who believe that close encounters

with alien beings have helped shape Earth's history,

it is important to remember

that it isn't only ancient history

that has been so influenced.

There have been literally hundreds of credible accounts

of strange creatures, UFO sightings

and otherworldly phenomena that took place

even in the so-called Dark Ages.

BIRNES: There have been sightings all over the world

throughout the Middle Ages.

There are stories

going from Scotland, to England,

to Italy, to the Crusades.

(men clamoring)

Remember, the Crusades took place over hundreds of years.

And at certain points in the battle,

in some cases over Turkey,

in some cases over Jerusalem, there are images...

...captured in writing by various chroniclers

talking about a strange cloud in the sky

that glowed red.

A strange image coming out of a cloud in the sky.

Why would we say this is a UFO?

Because traditionally,

UFOs mask themselves by forming a cloud around themselves,

and it's a cloud that's going through the sky.

That's their invisibility cloak.

NARRATOR: In his 13th-century historical work

titled Otia Imperialia,

Gervase of Tilbury wrote about an aerial craft

over the city of Bristol, England,

which caught an anchor in a church steeple.

BIRNES: He uses specifically the term "anchor."

Now, we don't know what kind of anchor that is.

But a creature, a man, climbs out of this craft

and tries to free the anchor from the steeple,

and all the people in the village start stoning him,

thinking he's some sort of evil demon.

But for ancient astronaut theorists,

evidence of an alien presence during the Middle Ages

isn't only found in literature.

All throughout the Middle Ages,

there are some magnificent paintings...

...and in certain areas of the painting,

there are what looks like to be UFOs.

They're always floating up in the sky,

usually above the Virgin Mary

or above Jesus on the crucifix

or somewhere, we have sceneries

that depict what looks like UFOs.

One very interesting painting is

where Jesus sits up in the clouds

with "God" and they're holding on

to the antennae of what looks like Sputnik.

And theologians say what is depicted here

is nothing else but the Earth.

But why would Earth have two antennae sticking out of it?

And why would it be round because the mainstream viewpoint

at the time was that the Earth was flat.

♪ ♪

LITTLETON: Here are the pictures of the crucifixion

dated around 1350, from Kosovo.

Here are presumably vehicles

with people driving them

in attendance at the crucifixion.

Could this be a crude-- an attempt on the part

of the artist, drawing on a tradition--

obviously, he wasn't there--

drawing on a tradition?

Could he be reflecting a folklore?

Possibly.

BETTY ANN BROWN: The people of the Middle Ages depicted devils

and angels frequently in their art.

They did not depict

what we today consider aliens,

specifically,

but angels are heavenly creatures

that come from outside of our sphere, aren't they?

NARRATOR: Did the medieval artists include

strange creatures and flying spacecraft in their paintings

because they had seen them in real life?

Or were they trying to communicate their belief

that the miraculous events of the New Testament had

otherworldly origins?

MAXIMILLIEN DE LAFAYETTE: The most famous painting

that, without any doubt in my mind,

depict a UFO with its laser beam

was made by Crivelli in 1486...

...The Annunciation to Mary.

In medieval art,

in The Annunciation when Mary is told

that she will have a child,

but she will still be a virgin, and the angels tell her this,

over Mary's head is a space capsule.

But what's a UFO or a space capsule doing over Mary?

Maybe the artist saw it,

and he's putting it in the painting

to bring together his own vision of a UFO,

the annunciation from the Bible, and the mystery of salvation

that there could be a virgin birth.

to mysterious disc-shaped objects

in medieval art.

It's really clear this is an ongoing phenomena.

Oh, absolutely, because you can look

at ancient rock paintings, for example,

of a disc shape over somebody's head.

And you fast-forward to the Middle Ages,

like the 1400s or something,

and you see the exact same theme in paintings.

And this continues into the New World.

We even have descriptions from Christopher Columbus,

that he and his crew had some type of an encounter

before they reached land.

NARRATOR: When Columbus and his men first set foot

in what to the Europeans was the "New World,"

the Indigenous people had never encountered anyone like them.

Their skin was pale; they wore strange clothes

made of bright, often shiny materials;

they arrived in massive ships and had powerful weapons.

To the Natives,

the visitors were truly aliens from a strange, faraway world.

Beings who might just as well have been sent from the heavens.

CHRIS PITTMAN: Columbus wrote in his journal that the inhabitants

eagerly came out to see their ships,

and asked them if they had come from the heavens.

And despite the fact that Columbus and his men

indicated, "No, we didn't come from the heavens,"

they called out to the people still on the shore,

"Come out and see the people who have come from the heavens."

Certainly, it seems interesting to wonder

why it is that, instead of thinking

that, possibly, they came from some other part of the sea,

that they'd come from the sky.

NARRATOR: But there is more to the story.

Less well-known is that Columbus

had an alien encounter of his own,

one reported in his log

just days before he reached the shores of the New World.

At about 10:00 p.m. on the 11th of October 1492,

the anxious explorer was on the deck of the Santa María

when he saw a "light glimmering at a great distance."

Columbus wrote, "The admiral,

"standing on the quarterdeck, saw a light.

"Calling to Pedro Gutierrez, he told him he saw a light,

"and bid him look that way, which he did and saw it.

"The admiral again perceived it once or twice,

"appearing like the light of a wax candle

moving up and down."

Summoning another member of the crew,

the two watched as the light vanished

and reappeared repeatedly.

BIRNES: Seeing lights in the water isn't really an anomaly.

We all know that certain kinds of underwater life

give off lights.

But this light actually traveled along with the ship.

Columbus noted in the log

a glowing object rise out of the water

and head off into the atmosphere.

NARRATOR: What did Columbus see?

A phosphorescent sea creature?

An hallucination?

Or was it something more?

Something from out of this world?

What did Columbus's men see?

What they saw

was a luminous object

that, upon breaking the water's surface, became a UFO.

NARRATOR: To UFO researchers like Bill Birnes,

Columbus's sighting is significant

not only because of when it occurred

but also because the object was spotted coming out of the sea,

ruling out the possibility

that what he saw was a comet or a shooting star.

LITTLETON: What's intriguing is that this was in

what we call today the Bermuda Triangle.

The Bermuda Triangle, that area,

particularly off of Bimini, in the Bahamas,

may in fact be-- and I'm way out on a limb here--

colony headquarters, underneath that.

Your UFO goes down into the water

and then into a subterranean.

What better position would be to monitor South America,

Middle America, Egypt, than the Caribbean?

PITTMAN: Many people believe

that it's possible that UFOs

could have established bases on the seafloor.

To some extent, it's true that we know more

about the Moon or some parts of outer space

than we do about the deepest parts of our own oceans.

This event is extremely important,

because it is the world's first recorded event

that illustrate the appearance of UFO

as object emerging from the water.

NARRATOR: If Columbus's sighting was so extraordinary,

why do we only find record of it in his log?

Some believe another account of this event exists,

in the official records of the Spanish Inquisition.

UFO researcher Maximillien De Lafayette

claims that Columbus's shipmate Pedro Gutierrez

reported him to the Inquisition after hearing Columbus describe

the lights in the sky as resembling the Jewish menorah.

DE LAFAYETTE: When they went back to Spain,

Gutierrez went directly to the infamous Inquisition.

This is the Catholic organization

created by the Vatican to persecute and kill the infidels.

The infidels means the Jews,

the Muslim and Christian who are not Catholic.

The Inquisition called him for explanation, deposition.

"Did you say that you saw menorah?"

"Why did you say 'menorah'?"

In the deposition, which is lengthy,

you find more details, meticulous details,

of what Columbus saw above the water.

The file of the Inquisition,

it is in the vault of the Vatican.

And good luck if you can go to the secret file of the Vatican

and try to dig for document as explosive as this one.

NARRATOR: Secret files of the Spanish Inquisition?

UFOs and alien sightings in the time of Columbus?

Far-fetched, perhaps.

But to proponents of ancient astronaut theory,

these precolonial close encounters

are considered commonplace events.

For them, it offers additional proof

that we are not alone.

ALEX CHIONETTI: They have several sightings

of what we could call UFOs today.

Along the discovery of America, during the conquest of America,

Columbus wasn't the only one.

Also, the trip of Magellan,

Ferdinand de Magellan, the discoverer of the Strait

who circumnavigate the world after Columbus,

he have, also, sightings.

NARRATOR: Seafarers often encounter strange lights

both in the sky and below the surface of the ocean.

Skeptics argue that Columbus's sighting,

like many others, was simply a natural phenomenon.

WILLIAM BRAMLEY: At night, there are all kinds of things,

for example, bolides.

Bolides are these very large comets,

and they're spectacular.

It's just, like, this enormous bright light,

with a trail that just arcs through the sky.

But we can tell the difference.

When you have a meteor like that or a bolide,

the characteristics are very different

than the ones of genuine UFOs.

PITTMAN: As far back as the 19th century,

people have speculated about what that light could've been.

Explanations have centered around the possibility

that it could've been a light or a torch

being carried by an island inhabitant.

They were, in fact, more than 35 miles away

from any land, which makes that impossible.

The other possibility is that it was a meteor

traveling very close to the horizon,

and that the movement of the ship is actually

what made the light appear to be moving up and down.

NARRATOR: But what if conventional science is wrong

and the ancient astronaut theorists are correct?

What if Columbus, Magellan and the early explorers

really did see evidence of extraterrestrial creatures

visiting our planet?

What does this say about our past,

our history and our future?

1.

At dawn, the citizens of Nuremberg awoke

to what was described in a local news flier

as "a very frightful spectacle."

Various strange objects were spotted in the sky,

engaged in what appeared to be an aerial battle.

Could they have been witnessing a close encounter?

BIRNES: They see this incredible sight as the Sun is coming up.

They see what they describe as cigar-shaped objects,

circles in the air and crosses, flying crosses.

And suddenly, these shapes began emitting other shapes.

PITTMAN: The spheres and discs were seen for a long time,

as they, apparently, were fighting in some kind

of a battle over the city.

In fact, the battle was so evident

that the people in Nuremberg were actually able to perceive

which side was winning.

Some of the objects were seen to crash

into the ground and disappear in a cloud of smoke or steam.

Other objects were seen to fly off

and disappear in the direction of the Sun.

BIRNES: This entire event becomes memorialized in a broad sheet.

Now, a broad sheet in the 16th century

was literally a newspaper.

And that broad sheet exists today in Zurich, Switzerland.

PITTMAN: The Zurich Central Library, to this day,

retains a copy not only of the famous woodcut

that shows the 1561 sighting over Nuremberg,

but also a 1566 woodcut showing a sighting

from that year that was quite similar in Basel, Switzerland.

What's fascinating is it's a very similar event.

People saw a bunch of circles in the air.

In fact, a proliferation of circles in the air.

They didn't necessarily interpret that

as a battle in the air,

but they did interpret it as some kind of heavenly sign.

NARRATOR: The broad sheets that were distributed

both in Nuremberg and in Basel five years later

advised people to "repent for their sins"

and interpreted these extraordinary events

as signs from God.

In old time, everything paranormal, "extra, extra,"

hyphen, "ordinary belongs to realm of divinity, of God's.

"God's doing this! God is punishing us!

God is blessing us! Go repent! Go to church!"

PITTMAN: It's interesting to read the Nuremberg description,

because it is written with religious iconography in mind.

They talk about crosses seen in the sky

on the previous day, during that sighting.

Now, what we might think of as a fuselage with wings

might've appeared as a cross to people

who saw religious symbolism constantly

in their everyday life.

It's difficult to imagine

how these things might have appeared,

but it's certainly possible

that if these were to appear in the sky today,

we would describe them quite differently.

NARRATOR: Could the people of Nuremberg have actually witnessed a battle

between warring alien factions--

an event eerily similar to the one written about

in the Bhagavad-Gita over 3,000 years earlier?

And if not,

what else would explain the vivid accounts

of luminous globes and blood-red crosses

appearing in the sky?

Throughout the Middle Ages,

visions of strange happenings were often attributed to God,

or to the supernatural.

But moving into what is known

as the Early Modern period of the 17th century,

people began to look more and more toward science,

and the stars, for answers.

And with the invention of the refracting telescope in 1608,

there would be more eyes trained on the stars than ever before.

Ironically, the first report of a UFO

witnessed through this new device

came from colonial America's best-known Puritan minister,

Cotton Mather.

BIRNES: There was an incredible sighting that the very famous

New England preacher Cotton Mather had.

Cotton Mather said that he was looking through a telescope

at the Moon, and in the telescope he saw

a flying light over the surface of the Moon.

Well, how did this get recorded?

By none other than NASA.

And people can find it themselves,

go to the NASA report on lunar anomalies over 500 years,

and they will find Cotton Mather's sighting

of a UFO over the surface of the Moon.

PITTMAN: There are a vast number of natural atmospheric phenomena

that can appear as bright lights in the night sky.

Certainly, uh, meteors are a possibility.

Even certain kinds of terrestrial phenomena

do materialize as glowing balls of light

that, seen from a distance, may appear to be a star.

And it's incredibly difficult

to judge the distance of a point source of light in the night.

So, he may have thought that it was on the surface

of the Moon, or-or hundreds of miles away,

when in reality, it could've been

quite close to where he was.

NARRATOR: Though it is uncertain what Cotton Mather saw,

ancient astronaut theorists find it significant

that a prominent religious figure would report

such a sighting not as a vision from God,

but as an astronomical event.

They see it as a sign.

Not only of the sighting's authenticity,

but that views on the possibility

of extraterrestrial life were starting to shift,

even within the Christian Church.

BIRNES: Cotton Mather was known as a fire and brimstone preacher.

But there's a rational part of Cotton Mather as well.

Because this was the very beginning,

the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

And in this context, people were thinking about science,

they were thinking about machines,

and really thinking about could there be something in space?

NARRATOR: Although sightings like Cotton Mather's

were still rare in the 1700s,

the increasing interest in astronomy

sparked a new debate over a centuries-old theory

called "the plurality of worlds,"

the idea that life might exist elsewhere

throughout the universe.

MICHAEL CROWE: By the end of the 18th century, the majority of people,

at least of educated people,

were convinced that all throughout the solar system

there was intelligent life--

on Jupiter, on Mars, on Saturn.

All of them had extraterrestrials.

Very possibly the Moon would have intelligent beings on it.

I once did a tally of the leading intellectuals

in the 18th century.

Over half of them included ideas

of extraterrestrial life in their publications.

NARRATOR: The premier 18th-century astronomer William Herschel

also supported the theory that life existed on other planets.

So did Thomas Paine, one of America's Founding Fathers,

along with many religious leaders of the time.

CROWE: Preachers were preaching about extraterrestrials

as a proof of God's goodness.

That's the idea:

that if there is a good and beneficent God,

he would populate all the planets, all the stars.

NARRATOR: Though there was open debate about the existence

of extraterrestrial life in the 1700s,

the discussion did not often extend

to the idea of aliens visiting Earth.

But in 1731, a series of sightings occurred across Europe

that were so compelling,

the possibility could no longer be ignored.

In modern UFO sightings,

the communications about UFOs are instant.

It's on the Internet, it's on YouTube.

But what about some of these 18th century

or Renaissance sightings?

Here's something incredible.

In 1731 over Kilkenny, Ireland,

there was a sighting of a luminous object

coming out of a red cloud.

That same sighting is reported

in the span of a week over the rest of Europe,

particularly over Romania in Eastern Europe.

Now, here are two countries

that are not communicating with each other.

Newspapers don't go back and forth,

they don't speak the same language,

there's no radio and there's no television.

Yet, a UFO was spotted traveling

from the Irish Sea, across Europe,

all the way to Eastern Europe and towards Asia,

and is spotted in different places as it goes.

Independent observations that don't cross-pollinate.

NARRATOR: Could these nearly identical reports

of a strange object passing through the sky

be mere coincidence?

And if it was an alien craft,

is it possible that earlier sightings

simply weren't reported because they were interpreted

as signs from God?

Perhaps further clues can be found

by exploring accounts from North America

detailing aerial craft and their connection

to otherworldly visitors.

the Founding Fathers,

but you really can't talk about North America

without mentioning Native Americans.

And they have accounts that go back for centuries.

If you talked with a member of the Hopi or Navajo tribe today,

they will tell you stories of the star people

that were recorded by their ancestors

that say these beings have been visiting us

for thousands of years.

Right. And we all knew, and we all remember

Zuni elder Clifford Mahooty, who has since passed away.

But I remember like it was yesterday

when I visited him in Zuni Nation,

where he brought me to an ancient sacred petroglyph site.

And you can only visit there

if you're going with a Zuni elder.

And the petroglyphs that he showed me there,

he himself said that these are depictions

of the ancient flying vehicles

that his ancestors witnessed with their own eyes.

NARRATOR: In the United States,

there are over 6,000 UFO sightings reported every year,

more than any other country in the world.

But why?

Is there an explanation

for such a high number of UFO sightings?

Could aliens have a special interest in America?

According to ancient astronaut theorists,

not only are aliens watching over North America today,

but in fact, they have been visiting us

for hundreds, and possibly even thousands of years.

And they claim the evidence can be found in the strange sites,

structures and monuments

that lie in every corner of the continent.

America's really a very mysterious place

with all kinds of strange legends.

So trying to put all of these things together

in context shows us that we're living

in a very unusual continent full of magic and mystery.

NARRATOR: Serpent Mound in Adams County, Ohio.

The kivas at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.

Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming.

Many Native American tribes say that at these ancient sites,

and countless others,

entities that they call "star beings"

came down from the sky to teach their ancestors.

MAHOOTY: To the Zuni people and other tribes,

there's a spiritual connection with the star beings.

They're the ones that actually rule the universe

or the world that we're on.

If you look at the petroglyphs, there's a lot of references

to those type of, uh, entities.

NARRATOR: According to tribes like the Zuni and Hopi,

stories of these otherworldly visitations

exist not only in the oral traditions

passed down from their ancestors,

but also in petroglyphs carved into rock all across America.

On the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico,

there are literally thousands of ancient carvings

that most outsiders have never laid eyes on.

And the Zuni claim that some of these petroglyphs

depict visitations from star beings.

There's definitely evidence that aliens

visited North America in the distant past.

And there are petroglyphs

throughout this part of the country

carved by ancient Americans that depict just that.

What can you tell me about this petroglyph right here?

You know, it's, if you can see on top of that

where maybe a head would be,

-it's kind of eroded off. -TSOUKALOS: Mm-hmm.

MAHOOTY: But on the next part of it, there's four compartments

look like extension of something sticking out.

TSOUKALOS: Yeah, almost like legs.

MAHOOTY: It could be something

-that they saw in the air. -Mm-hmm.

TSOUKALOS: Isn't there a legend that

beings visited on top of this mountain?

Oh, yes.

Uh, on all of the mesas.

TSOUKALOS: In conjunction with all the stories

of star people descending from the sky

in fiery shields and things like this,

when I see a pattern like that,

I always think, what if this is something that they saw,

and then they carved onto a rock?

MAHOOTY: And a lot of these are sacred drawings.

They're just not graffiti like a lot of people say they are.

-No, never! -There is no such thing as that in those days.

Look at that triangle up there.

TSOUKALOS: And you've got the dots around it

that have been carved into the rock

that remind me, like stars.

NARRATOR: Could the ancient people in this part

of America really have been trying to depict

encounters with alien spacecraft?

There are legends and myths all around the world

that can be interpreted as having

been visits by extraterrestrials.

And many think that such stories

don't exist here in the United States.

But the fact is that there are things

in this country that nobody's even dreamed of.

NARRATOR: According to ancient astronaut theorists,

there is evidence that otherworldly beings

were not only witnessed by Native Americans,

but also by the European colonists.

And curiously, one of the earliest UFO sightings

reported in the colonies

occurred in an area that the local Wampanoag Nation

claimed was a point of contact with star beings.

The Hockomock Swamp, southeastern Massachusetts.

Located 25 miles south of Boston,

in and around the suburban town of Bridgewater,

this vast wetland is infamous

for being the heart of the Bridgewater Triangle.

According to Native American legends,

this 200-square-mile region has been a hotbed of UFO sightings

dating back to before Columbus arrived in the New World.

PITTMAN: Within the Bridgewater Triangle,

a huge amount of interesting paranormal activity

has been reported, including very high numbers

of UFO sightings.

Some people speculate that maybe

it's the presence of the Hockomock Swamp.

The very name "Hockomock"

means "place where evil spirits dwell."

European colonists settled this area in the 17th century.

But the stories of paranormal activity here

go back long before that time.

Time and time again, we see stories

about beings that live in the sky,

flying canoes,

what are apparently spaceships that land,

people that get out and interact with the Native Americans.

NARRATOR: On May 10, 1760,

in this same area where Native Americans say

star beings interacted with humans,

European colonists reported

seeing mysterious lights in the sky.

The account appeared in a publication

that was read throughout the English-speaking world

called The Gentleman's Magazine.

According to historical records,

at 10:00 a.m., a sphere of fire

appeared that emitted a light

bright enough to cast a shadow in bright sunlight.

And this object was reported to be seen not only in Bridgewater,

but also in Roxbury over 30 miles away.

Now that's interesting to me because the fact that people

in two different cities reported seeing the same thing

at the same time, to me says that they really saw something.

It was seen by a huge number of people.

And one observer remarked

that the sound that this giant, uh, ball of light made...

(whooshing)

...was heard more in the middle

of its travel than at the beginning,

which I think is a very interesting detail

that does correlate, to some extent,

with more modern UFO reports.

The Bridgewater sighting of 1760 is just one

of many incredible events

that took place in colonial America.

It was mysterious.

It was the frontier.

Something was up there in the sky,

way before any powered flight had been invented

by modern humanity.

believed in the idea of extraterrestrial life

beyond Earth.

Even Benjamin Franklin wrote about it

-in Poor Richard's Almanack. -Yeah.

And there were some enormously significant events

that will remind you of ancient close encounters.

It's almost as if the extraterrestrials

were intervening in order to direct or ensure

the outcome of these events.

Well, and that's what some people have suggested happened

with the encounters during the War of 1812.

I mean, some really strange things happened there

that some say turned the tide of that war.

NARRATOR: According to the Colorado-based

Mutual UFO Network--

the largest UFO investigative organization in the world--

in the first week of 2012,

reports of UFOs in the United States suddenly skyrocketed,

with a staggering 233 reports

coming in from 36 states.

And ever since, the numbers have continued to grow.

If there really are aliens still visiting Earth today,

have they taken a special interest in America?

And might they even be helping to determine our future?

Ancient astronaut theorists believe

the answer may be found by looking back

at one of the most important events in American history.

NARRATOR: Washington, D.C., 1814.

Two years into the bloody War of 1812...

...the American hopes for victory

over the invading English army seem to be dying.

And now the unimaginable is happening.

A foreign army is poised to enter Washington, D.C.

CHILDRESS: It was a very hot summer that year.

The British forces were able to completely

overwhelm the, uh, very young United States Army at the time.

And they marched into Washington, D.C.

President Monroe and all of the other politicians

had left the capital and at the time,

the British forces were finding it basically a deserted city.

So they began to set fire to Washington, D.C.

starting with the White House.

And they were basically gonna just

burn down our nation's capital.

NARRATOR: The United States of America--

then just a few decades old--

is on the verge of going down in flames.

But then something strange happens.

That summer day was a very hot, sultry day.

And at first they thought this would really help

burn down Washington, D.C.

There weren't any clouds in the sky.

But suddenly the weather changed very, very drastically.

Big storm clouds moved in,

it began pouring rain.

And then suddenly,

out of nowhere, this tornado formed...

...and it went straight at the British troops,

and forced them to retreat.

And at the same time,

the pelting rain put out all the fires.

And Washington, D.C. was saved.

PITTMAN: History books record this

as a stroke of incredible good luck for the Americans.

But some ancient alien theorists believe

that perhaps this was a UFO encounter.

That it was an extraterrestrial intelligence

that created that storm...

...and changed the course of that battle

and perhaps of American history.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Is it possible that the storm

that helped the United States win the War of 1812,

was actually produced by extraterrestrials?

And if so, were they trying to protect

the fragile American experiment?

It's interesting to speculate

that perhaps there was something about America

that an extraterrestrial intelligence took interest in,

whether it was freedom of religion,

new ideas about democracy, about a republic

or something else that drew the attention of aliens

and might have made them

want to help this country become a success.

And I think that that would really be

because the United States as a country was, uh,

prophesied to exist in a sense.

And the extraterrestrials very much nurtured

the-- this young United States

and watched its growth very carefully.

Like a-a parent watching a child growing up

and being very protective of it, too.

And when the extraterrestrials saw this moment

where the United States, uh, could lose this war

and-and be occupied, they decided to step in

and change history.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Could the mysterious sightings

and strange incidents

that have been reported throughout our history

be evidence of America's extraterrestrial heritage?

Since the beginning of recorded history

in North America,

we've heard of these sightings.

And we, today, in our modern world are

re-encountering these same creatures.

And you have to ask, "Are they the same beings?

"Are they the same creatures that have been seen

"for thousands of years and now we're being asked

to find a place for them in our world?"

at all the ancient close encounters

that we've documented

in over 250 episodes of Ancient Aliens,

it's really clear that extraterrestrials have been

visiting Earth for thousands of years.

And now in the modern era, the story continues.

That's right.

And one of the most famous cases,

the Roswell incident, it's probably what really sparked

the modern era of ufology.

And it's not just a sighting, we're talking about a craft

that actually crashes to Earth.

Well, the U.S. military itself declared it a flying disc.

That's what they reported.

And so the Roswell incident

definitely was a major turning point

in this entire discussion because,

all of the sudden, we see this stuff

with our own eyes, in our own time.

A UFO crashing to Earth.

So I think it's only fitting

that we end this show with Roswell,

which we introduced to Ancient Aliens

-way back in season one. -MARTELL: That's right.

Way back when you became known as "the guy with the hair."

(laughing)

NARRATOR: Mainstream archaeologists have long rejected

the notion that extraterrestrial beings had a hand in creating

the pyramids of Egypt.

Theologians and religious scholars refute

the idea that stories of the Bible

or the Mahabharata could be describing alien encounters.

And governments throughout history

have officially denied reports

that the Earth has been visited by flying saucers.

But on July 8, 1947, a UFO sighting was reported

that even the United States government

had trouble denying.

Why? Because this time,

the report was issued by the U.S. Army.

I'm walking on the Foster Ranch

between Corona and Roswell, New Mexico.

Not far from what is called

the debris field right over that hill.

And that debris field refers to headlines

back in July of 1947 about a disc,

one of those mysterious UFOs

actually crashing right out here.

NARRATOR: One night in early July 1947,

a major thunderstorm rolled across New Mexico.

The next morning,

rancher Mac Brazel went out to check on the damage.

JULIE SHUSTER: Mac Brazel went out to make sure

everything was where it was supposed to be,

and he came across

this really extensive area of debris,

stuff he had never seen before.

He brought it to the local sheriff's office.

In 1947, Roswell was home

to Roswell Army Air Field.

The sheriff called the base, the base sent Major Jesse Marcel

and at that point, it basically became a military site

as they gathered up every bit of debris they could find.

NARRATOR: In their initial report,

Army officials made a vague claim of having started

the recovery of the debris "sometime last week."

But why didn't the Army report their findings right away?

And why were they so ambiguous about the timeline?

One of the biggest things we have is the newspaper

of July 8, 1947, where Colonel Blanchard issued

a order to Lieutenant Walter Haut,

who was the public information officer saying basically,

"We have in our possession a flying saucer,

it's being taken to Fort Worth, to higher headquarters."

Roswell was a real turning point for ufology.

I think that was because the military,

for the first time, admitted

that they had a crashed disc.

And because it was admitted at the time,

of course, it caused a sensation.

SHUSTER: Then July 9th, General Ramey issued

a press release saying, "No, it was a weather balloon."

And that started the best-documented

UFO cover-up ever.

NARRATOR: Army officials referred to the debris

as being part of a flying disc.

Internal memos even referenced the crash site

as having victims.

So why, less than 24 hours later,

did they suddenly decide that what they had retrieved

was nothing more than a weather balloon?

Although Blanchard and Ramey stuck by the revised story,

Lieutenant Haut stood by the contents

of his initial report his entire life.

And those who believe him think modern technology

may have recently provided the irrefutable evidence

they have been looking for.

SHUSTER: When Major Marcel took the debris to Fort Worth,

and General Ramey spread it out to give this press conference

that it was a weather balloon,

there was a picture taken,

and in his hand is a piece of paper,

and it's a very little piece of paper.

I mean, and this has been blown up,

and it is a memo.

There is a leading researcher in the field

who is pulling the words out of this.

And they include things like "team at Fort Worth,"

"forwarded victims of the wreck,"

"pod or pan."

And so every year that the technology improves,

General Ramey may be the one to solve it.

NARRATOR: Five years after Roswell,

the United States Air Force coined the term

Unidentified Flying Object or UFO.

In the decades since, thousands of UFOs have been reported...

-MAN: Whoa! -NARRATOR: ...photographed,

and videotaped all over the world.

MAN: Oh, my God!

Perhaps one of the biggest,

most revolutionary pieces of technology

to change our view

of UFOs and flying saucers,

is the videocam.

MAN: Woah! I'm getting a series of lights right there.

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

NARRATOR: With smartphones now a standard part

of everyday life,

are we poised to capture the undeniable evidence

of extraterrestrial craft in our skies?

And if so, might society finally be ready to accept

that there's been an alien presence on Earth

for thousands of years?

To me, it's fascinating that we have

so many accounts of ancient man

living amongst their living gods.

And today, we're all about,

where did these gods go?

Yeah, I mean,

when you look back at human history...

...these close encounters have been the one constant,

it's the one thing that almost every culture has recorded.

Empires rise and fall, heroes come and go,

we're always talking about extraterrestrials.

The fact that we have identical stories from ancient times

to that also happening today,

illustrates to me that the same thing is still happening.

We are part of this larger picture

that's been going on for thousands of years.

And we can see the evidence all around us.

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