Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Massive figures

etched into the earth,

coded patterns in stone

only visible from above,

and mysterious crop formations

crafted with extraordinary precision.

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 really have to ask, what is the significance

of these geoglyphs?

Are they calling cards?

Are they signs for those in the sky?

What are we gonna learn from all this?

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.

♪ ♪

When we talk about ancient mysteries,

one of the most fascinating things to me

is why people would build, all around the world,

things that can only be seen from up above,

-from the sky. -GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: That's right.

I mean, we have standing stones, we have structures,

we have geoglyphs that you really can't

make out from the ground.

So you have to ask yourself, why?

And were they meant to be seen

by extraterrestrial visitors?

Right, I mean, who else would see them?

The most well-known example of this, of course,

-are the Nazca Lines in Peru. -Mm-hmm.

And we did a whole episode

about geoglyphs around the world back in 2013.

NARRATOR: Southern Peru, 1927.

While hiking in the foothills of the arid Nazca Desert,

archaeologist Toribio Mejía Xesspe discovers

what appears to be a large network of ancient roads

carved into the earth.

Years later, as airplane travel

to the region becomes more frequent,

aerial flyovers reveal nearly 100 other designs

in the nearby landscape.

Known as geoglyphs,

they depict animals, flowers,

and even a mysterious humanlike being.

Scattered over a nearly 200-square mile area,

these lines and figures have become collectively known

as the Nazca Lines.

NICK REDFERN: The Nazca Lines

consist of these massive drawings

or carvings, if you like, on the ground.

Everything from geometric symbols, lines,

to animals, even fish, birds,

but the intriguing thing about them

is, you know, that number one, they're massive.

And they can really only be seen properly from the sky.

There are over 800 straight lines,

there are over 70 animal figures,

there are over 150 geometrical shapes.

JASON MARTELL: We have glyphs of different figurines on the ground.

We have these intricate lines and what appear to be runways

spread all around the desert.

Some of these actually show mathematical diagrams

built thousands of years ago,

which really raises the question: why?

M.J. EVANS: There's an enormous amount of unanswered

and perhaps unanswerable questions

that arise from the phenomena.

NARRATOR: The largest of the figures

is nearly 1,000 feet,

or the size of three football fields,

while the longest line extends almost nine miles.

According to mainstream archaeologists,

these mysterious earth drawings were created by the Nazca,

an ancient people that flourished in the region

between the first and eighth century AD.

The lines were formed by the careful removal

of the reddish iron oxide pebbles

that make up the desert surface.

Once exposed, the underlying dirt,

which contains high amounts of lime,

hardened and was resistant to erosion.

HUGH NEWMAN: The Nazca plain is made up of layers

of light-colored kind of rock and dirt

with dark-colored rock and dirt just on top-- it's very simple.

And they just remove the dark-colored stuff to reveal

these kind of white-looking lines over the landscape.

Like a canvas that isn't being disturbed,

that's maintained its integrity

for hundreds or even thousands of years.

PHILIP COPPENS: The reason why they have survived

is because of the desert conditions.

Truly, if you make a geoglyph

at the Nazca Desert environment today,

it will be found hundreds of years from now.

There is hardly any rain, hardly any wind.

Anything you make here will last for eternity.

NARRATOR: But why did the Nazca people

feel it necessary to make these elaborate

and massive drawings in the earth?

What purpose were they intended to serve?

And why were they designed in such a way

that they could have only been seen

and appreciated from the sky

at a time when aircraft didn't even exist?

The only place you can see them above

is that somehow you're floating in midair.

TSOUKALOS: It has been suggested

that whoever inhabited the Nazca plateau,

that they had access to some type of balloon flight

so that they could appreciate

what they had created on the ground.

If the Nazca population

had access to balloon flight,

the Spanish chroniclers would have most certainly

recorded that in their reports.

But there is not a single word

that describes that the Nazcans had access to hot-air balloons.

They would have written that down,

but they didn't, so it didn't exist.

COPPENS: By default, we're in the bailiwick

of highly advanced terrestrial technology.

And that is really the anomaly of the Nazca Lines.

They really are easy to make when you look at it,

because it is only really removing

the top layer of a surface.

But the magnitude of the figures

is what makes this such a complex undertaking.

CHILDRESS: Many of the lines at Nazca go for miles,

perfectly straight through the desert.

There are various trapezoids and spirals

and other glyphs that are so large

that the surveyors would need some direction from the sky.

And this is where aliens

or some kind of people with flight

had to be involved with the creation of the Nazca Lines.

LINDA MOULTON HOWE: I was in Peru for a month in 1987.

I went with a pilot over the plains of Nazca.

The first pattern that the pilot said, "Well, let's aim

for that long, six-mile triangle."

And there have been laser surveys done,

and it is remarkably accurate, this triangle.

And it looked like something had pressed

the whole ground down at least 24 inches.

How would you press down a six-mile-long

perfect triangle into the desert of Nazca?

What kind of technology can do that?

Not the feet of ancient people.

NARRATOR: How could the ancient people of Nazca have created

such massive geoglyphs without the capability of flight

or the use of advanced tools?

Might these mysterious lines have actually been created

with the help of otherworldly beings,

as ancient astronaut theorists believe?

The fact that these designs can only be seen from above,

from the sky, is an indication

that they were used as navigational markers

for the gods when they were actually here.

So the question then becomes, you know,

were they drawn in this way

as navigational markers for the gods

to actually fly their vehicles in?

TSOUKALOS: Let's assume for a moment that extraterrestrials sent down

some type of an unmanned craft, like a rover

that we have on Mars right now, that is collecting samples

and is driving around a desert plateau.

It, of course, leaves behind some type of tracks.

And then the natives, just witnessed this,

would look at each other and say, "Wow,

we were just visited by a god."

When in reality, no such thing happened.

REDFERN: Now, could it be the case that the gods

directed the building of them to the people below?

Could it be that there was some sort of

teaching process involved?

The fact that we're talking about geometric lines

and things like this, was it a teaching process

by somebody up there

for the so-called lesser perceived people down below?

We're still asking questions 1,500 years later,

but, you know, to this day they fascinate, uh, people

and just provoke endless controversy.

NARRATOR: Were the Nazca Lines

really navigational markers

for otherworldly beings visiting Earth?

Or were they meant to commemorate

an extraterrestrial encounter,

one that happened tens of thousands of years ago?

Modern-day historians and anthropologists

believe the Nazca people

were one of several ancestors of the Inca civilization,

the largest empire in pre-Columbian America.

In the 13th century,

the Inca Empire thrived in the Andes Mountain region

of South America.

According to legend,

the mysterious Incan creator god Viracocha

commissioned the Nazca Lines and glyphs in the remote past.

NEWMAN: And these were said to be created

by the Viracocha himself,

who was the great teacher god of the Andes.

And so where he came from is still a mystery.

He could have been from Sumeria.

He could have been connected somehow

with the Anunnaki, no one really knows.

But the same legends,

and the same stories of these great gods

appear throughout the world,

especially all the way through the Americas.

COPPENS: We know that they are part

of a creation mythology in which some of the figurines,

which are depicted here, are said to be deities,

are said to be part of the creation mythology

as to how the people who lived in that area

and who made these geoglyphs came about.

They are messages to be seen from above

to basically say that the people on the ground

still live in accordance with the rules established

by the deities who came from above

to teach the people on the ground

about civilization and various other aspects of culture.

NARRATOR: Could the lines and glyphs of Nazca

really have been the work of the Inca god Viracocha,

as their legends suggest?

If so, what was the purpose

of carving these strange geoglyphs into the earth?

Perhaps the answers can be found by taking a closer look

at one of Nazca's most mysterious figures,

one that has become known as el astronauto.

NARRATOR: Switzerland, 1968.

Researcher and writer Erich von Däniken

publishes his first book, Chariots of the Gods?

In it, he introduces the revolutionary notion

that the Nazca Lines were created by the Nazca people

after witnessing extraterrestrials

using advanced technology

and a sophisticated knowledge of mathematics.

Erich von Däniken was one of the first

to actually do aerial flyovers of the Nazca region,

and was one of the first researchers

to not only look at the diagrams on the plain floor

but also in the hills of Nazca.

We find intricate mathematical diagrams

that have never been documented before.

When you fly over the desert, you see down gigantic lines.

Seen from the air,

they give you the imagination of air strips.

Because they start abruptly, end abruptly.

Sometimes they cross.

They look like airstrips.

COPPENS: When Erich drew the comparison

as to how this looks like a network of runways,

it is to draw a visual comparison

to what they look like from above.

They are not runways.

They would not support weight

of anything physically landing there.

KEN STORCH: Some theorize that they were runways.

Uh, I don't believe that for a moment.

Hell, I was in the Air Force for six years

and none of the aircraft that we had would be capable

of landing on that as a runway.

I think it's more of a attention getter.

You can see them from space.

So I think that it's a, uh, a signal.

NARRATOR: In the more than four decades

since the publication of Chariots of the Gods?,

Erich von Däniken's controversial theories

concerning the Nazca Lines

have continued to spark widespread study.

Some scholars, after discovering curious patterns

in the numerous designs,

suggest that the Nazca Lines might actually be

one of the earliest known examples of applied geometry.

MICHAEL DENNIN: They were interesting geometric figures.

They could draw a figure

and then they could envision making it even bigger.

You're making angles,

you're approximating distances

and that innate skill of us to deal with geometry,

I think translates to our earliest art forms.

BARA: It's interesting as you look

at these designs on the plains of Nazca,

some of them have very, very interesting relationships

to the skies overhead.

There's a very famous glyph of a spider

with one leg that extends way, way out

and if you take that

and flip it into sort of a mirror situation

what you can plainly see is that the spider

is meant to represent the constellation of Orion.

And the spider's leg, the extension,

is meant to represent the star Sirius.

So whoever put these designs on the plains of Nazca

understood the same thing

that all of the other ancient cultures before them understood,

which is that there's some critical importance

to understanding Orion and Sirius

and their relationship to the Earth.

NARRATOR: But could the Nazca figures

really have had a more profound purpose?

Some ancient astronaut theorists believe they were created

as a means of communicating messages to the gods.

Messages that may have also included

a plea for them to return.

Ancient astronaut theorists believed

the mysterious figure known as el astronauto

could hold a clue to the Nazca mystery.

CHILDRESS: They call him the spaceman.

And he appears to have a space helmet

or something on his head,

and he's got one arm up and he's waving.

And it-it would seem this is one of the sky gods.

Or if he's not one of the sky gods himself,

he's one of the Nazca people

who's waving to the sky gods

and saying, "Hi, we're here.

"Come and land.

We know you came here before, come back."

TSOUKALOS: You have a figure that looks like E.T.,

with the big eyes, and the big head.

And one hand is pointing to the sky

and the other is pointing to Earth,

as if it was some type of a message:

"Hey, something happened here.

We were visited by beings from above."

NARRATOR: Is the mysterious figure known as el astronauto evidence

of an extraterrestrial visitation in the distant past,

as some researchers believe?

And, if so,

might this suggest a reason why extraterrestrial visitors

may have landed at Nazca in the first place?

VON DÄNIKEN: We send scientists

from the University of Dresden to Nazca.

They measured the magnetic field and they found a change

in the magnetic field under some of the lines.

And also, we measured the conduction,

electricity along the lines and right next to it,

the ability to conduct currency was

8,000 time higher on the lines.

And they found that eight feet below one of these lines,

the magnetic field definitely changes.

So we have the result,

there is something in the ground but we don't know what it is.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Is it really possible

that something in the Earth might have attracted

an otherworldly species to Nazca?

Could it have been an outpost

for a mining operation of precious metals?

Or perhaps minerals needed for rocket fuel?

MARTELL: It's been said that if any extraterrestrial wanted

to come to Earth, Nazca would be a great place for them to land.

Nitrates and various things that we use

in our modern propulsion are found in abundance.

Maybe it's possible that extraterrestrials were

aware of this location as an energy source,

and ancient man left these depictions and runways

as a way to entice those beings to come back.

We find that the Nazca civilization was placed

in nitrate-rich environments.

They had no purpose for these nitrates.

The question might be whether nitrate was indeed

of importance to the people who came to this area,

maybe in prehistoric times.

Maybe an extraterrestrial civilization

somehow had a purpose for this nitrate.

Because nitrate is used in an awful lot

of interesting technological applications today.

Such applications as space travel.

NARRATOR: But might the extraterrestrial contact at Nazca

have been designed to support an even greater presence

that we have yet to recognize?

And could Nazca have, in time, served its purpose...

only to be abandoned?

With any visit, or with any project,

the time arrives when something is finished.

And that is why

some of these contacts had ended,

because the extraterrestrials went on to different places.

When we talk about formations

that pretty much can only be seen from the air,

then one of my favorites is right here in the United States,

and that's Serpent Mound in Ohio.

Yeah, and what's so interesting is it's a giant Native American

effigy mound, which are burial sites,

but there's no burials at Serpent Mound.

Yeah, and it's right on the edge of this enormous crater

where there's all kinds of magnetic anomalies,

so you have to wonder if they're not marking this location

for alien visitors.

NARRATOR: Adam's County, Ohio.

At the end of the 1700s, President George Washington

awarded what was then the unchartered land

beyond the Appalachian Mountains to Revolutionary War veterans,

in 600-acre parcels,

as payment for their service.

But when the settlers arrived, they found much of the land

covered with thousands of Indian burial mounds.

And one of these was very different from the rest.

Imagine when you're pushing west and all of a sudden you find

this gigantic effigy mound in the form of a serpent.

What you have is a gigantic structure,

which just sits there in the middle

of a very interesting landscape.

Serpent Mound was one of the amazing,

mysterious mounds, found by, uh, the first settlers,

as they came over the Appalachian Mountains.

There were thousands of mounds, but Serpent Mound

must have been special.

NARRATOR: Like the Nazca Lines in Peru,

Serpent Mound is a giant, prehistoric structure

that looks as though it is meant to be

viewed only from the sky.

CHILDRESS: When you see the, the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio,

it's massively huge.

And it can't really be appreciated

when you're standing there looking at it.

What we have here is meant to be seen from the sky.

It's mysterious in the fact that it is

on an elevated plateau and concealed

from the world.

Unless you're flying over it in a plane.

And it's, it's on very uneven ground.

And, really, to lay that out and make it right,

you'd almost have to be above, looking down, to get it right.

Which is a mystery.

NARRATOR: This 1,330-foot-long structure

winds across the land and depicts

a coiled snake, eating what appears to be an egg.

It is the largest effigy mound in the world.

And curiously, unlike most Native American mounds,

the Great Serpent Mound was not constructed for burials.

ROSS HAMILTON: Serpent Mound had no burials.

It's one of those mysterious mounds that,

that offered us no clue as to who the builders were.

But on the property

there were burial mounds

dated from about very early Adena period,

nearly 3,000 years ago.

NARRATOR: Another curious aspect of Serpent Mound

is where the ancient Native Americans chose to build it...

on the outside swell of a five-mile-wide meteor crater.

JOHNSON: 300 million years ago,

a meteor came into this area

and struck the Earth going about 50,000 miles an hour.

The Serpent Mound is built right on the very edge of the crater.

And there's magnetic anomalies and faults that go

across the Serpent Mound and that the Native Americans

could dowse them and they could feel the positive energy

that's coming out of the ground.

If you bring a compass to the Great Serpent Mound,

there's certain spots where the compass needle

just keeps going, so obviously,

we have some weird magnetic fields there

and also some gravitational anomalies.

The myth has it that the Native Americans,

when they came here, could see birds similar

to passenger pigeons, or homing pigeons,

circling by the millions.

Because within the skull of the pigeon is a little piece

of hematite, or magnetite, and that's how they navigate.

And they couldn't figure out where north was.

Can you imagine millions of birds flying

in a circle five miles wide?

NARRATOR: In addition to creating magnetic anomalies,

the meteor also deposited a number

of elements not indigenous to the area,

including one of the rarest elements on Earth:

iridium.

When we look at the location of the Serpent Mound,

we find not only that there is iron,

that there is uranium, but also iridium.

Iridium can withstand temperatures

up to 2,000 Celsius.

It is non-corrosive.

And it's actually been used in unmanned spacecraft

A.J. SHAKA: A lot of iridium apparently comes

from outer space rather than being found on the Earth.

There is a use of iridium for thermal electric circuits.

These deep space probes include, actually,

a radioactive source, because it's the only thing

that can provide enough power when you're out

beyond Jupiter and there's no sunlight,

and there's no nothing.

We have iron, iridium and uranium,

three substances which definitely should

not be considered to be of any use to Native Americans.

The question then is: to who are they of use?

NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut theorists believe extraterrestrials

may have come to this site to mine iridium

for their spacecraft, and point to numerous caves

found in the crater swell beneath the mound

as evidence of this.

Right here we can see one of those caves.

It's pretty large.

And since this site is believed to be many,

many millions of years old, there's a chance

that there are many, many caves.

NARRATOR: But if alien visitors really did come here

to mine iridium and other elements,

might this explain why the Serpent Mound

was built on a scale that made its shape visible from the sky?

JOHNSON: The Serpent Mound is a marker for space

according to the Shawnee Indians.

They're convinced that space travelers

are using Serpent Mound as a marker.

NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut theorists also point

to the placement and shape of the Great Serpent Mound

as proof of its extraterrestrial origins.

HAMILTON: The serpent itself was aligned to a constellation

that had its apex at the height

of the night sky 5,000 years ago.

The constellation Draconis.

It was used to align the Great Pyramid.

NARRATOR: In addition to lining up with the stars of Draconis,

the coils of Serpent Mound also align

with the solar events of the solstice and equinox,

as well as the 18.6-year lunar cycle.

Could these precise astronomical alignments

suggest that the Serpent Mound served

a greater purpose than just acting as a marker?

Some believe that, because of its magnetic anomalies,

this site may also have been used to harness energy.

This magnetic anomalies, these faults, attract lightning.

HAMILTON: The Serpent Mound is right on the edge

of an outcropping of pure limestone,

or dolomite, which is even, even better

than the limestone they built the Great Pyramid from.

And it's, it's highly semi-conductive.

This is, uh, what, what I call the Serpent Mound stone.

It's, uh, an unusual feature that seems

to be made of a different kind of dolomite

than what exists on the outcropping

of the general serpent.

This stone could've been placed in the center of the oval.

Therefore you wouldn't get a lot of random strikes,

so much as you would a lot of strikes that would

tend to come to the stone.

NARRATOR: Was the Great Serpent Mound

really a hub of ancient extraterrestrial visitation?

And could this effigy mound have been

a deliberate signpost to mark the location

of an energy source on Earth?

If so, are there others?

When it comes to things

ere s

than the Carnac Stones in France.

Yeah, you have thousands of these monolithic standing stones

erected in perfectly straight lines across the countryside.

And they can only really be appreciated from above.

Right, and you actually went there

for one of our earliest field segments

we ever shot for Ancient Aliens.

NARRATOR: Few sites on Earth

are as majestic, or as treacherous,

as the jagged region of Brittany

located on the northwest coastline of France.

Here can be found the legendary Carnac Stones:

a collection of over 3,000 massive rocks,

arranged in rows and other shapes,

and spreading across more than two miles of French countryside.

You're talking thousands of stones that are aligned

in straight rows, aligned in circles,

aligned in squares and rectangles.

Why are people doing this?

Why are they putting so much time

and energy into something?

And the short answer, I believe, is that we really don't know.

NARRATOR: According to local legend,

the megaliths were originally invading Roman soldiers,

turned to stone by Merlin the Magician.

But if it wasn't magic that created this forest of stones,

who or what did?

CHILDRESS: Modern archaeologists would say

that people who were one step removed from cavemen

were quarrying these giant stones,

uh, some of them weighing 100, 200 tons,

even up to 350 tons.

And then somehow moving them into place.

When you first look at the stones here at Carnac,

they seem to be in, uh, haphazard shapes.

But on closer examination,

we can see that most of the stones

have been cut on one side or another.

And, in fact, these granite megaliths

are magnetized with the Earth,

and nearly all of them come to a point.

NARRATOR: Stone magnets?

Is it possible that these stones

were really cut and positioned in such a way

as to create some sort of geomagnetic field?

But why?

Carnac as a place is highly charged with energy.

As you walk down these stone corridors,

you can feel this charge.

Many tourists who come here also like to touch the stones

and feel the energy coming off of it.

And the people who built Carnac must've been

highly knowledgeable of the Earth's energy fields.

NARRATOR: According to a concept known as the World Grid Theory,

certain places on our planet

contain higher magnetic forces than others.

MARTELL: An interesting coincidence for all the megalithic structures

we have around the Earth is that they're placed

at specific points that could be harnessing

an ancient World Energy Grid.

SCHOCH: There are certain spots around the world

which have traditionally been "sacred,"

"hallow," "vortexes."

Energy feels different there.

The ancient stone monuments were built

to harness that force and that potential

to create a funnel-like vortex.

MARTELL: When we look at things like the Giza pyramids

or Machu Picchu or Baalbek in Lebanon,

all of these are placed at specific geo-coded locations

which relate to this World Energy Grid.

NARRATOR: Could Carnac be one of these locations?

And might the combination of geomagnetic properties

and the unique shapes of the stones themselves

have allowed ancient builders to actually manipulate gravity?

If so, where did this knowledge come from?

And what ultimate purpose did it serve?

It wasn't until we were able to see these stones from above,

in a helicopter, that we realized that Carnac

was meant to be seen from the sky above us.

And that is one of only three things

that you can see from outer space.

That's Nazca, Great Wall in China and Carnac.

MARTELL: Were they meant to be seen by people in the sky?

And who could've been flying at that time other than...

extraterrestrials?

NARRATOR: At one end of the Carnac alignment,

aerial researchers identified a stone circle,

similar to the one found at Stonehenge.

At the other end, investigators on the ground

discovered a rectangle of stones,

one that had been buried for centuries.

Both groupings appeared precisely placed

to predict both the summer and the winter solstice.

And when even more closely examined from above,

the solstice points

and the alignment of Carnac's many rows of stones

reveal yet another geometric phenomenon:

the shape of a Pythagorean, or right, triangle

covering many square miles.

But how could the builders of Carnac have had knowledge

of a sophisticated mathematical theorem

approximately 2,000 years before its discovery

by the Greek mathematician Pythagoras?

These conclusions about the Pythagorean Theorem

doesn't come from me, it actually comes

from quite advanced mathematicians

who have looked at these alignments

and made the calculations.

We're talking Stone Age time,

and they knew about A squared plus B squared equals C squared?

They knew about it, yes, but why?

Who told them this?

At the time, extraterrestrials told our ancestors,

put this stone here, put this stone there,

with the idea that a future generation

would have to stumble across this mathematical riddle,

that somebody would say, "Hold on a second.

"This was erected during the Stone Age,

"yet here we have advanced mathematics.

How is this possible?"

VON DÄNIKEN: Now these extraterrestrials, they ask themself,

how could we give them a sign?

And there was a suggestion made

in French Brittany, kilometers of stone lines

in the form of a triangle. Gigantic triangle.

So we have the sign. We have the information.

But nobody looks at it.

It's time to change our attitude to these things.

CHILDRESS: I think that these stones are transmitting energy

that extraterrestrials, or others in airships,

could pick up this energy like a GPS system,

or some kind of airport beacon...

...and use it for navigating the entire planet.

NARRATOR: Gigantic triangles made of stone.

Geomagnetic phenomenon.

The possibility of an extraterrestrial encounter

with humans, thousands of years ago.

But if alien visitors did touch down at Carnac,

where else did they land?

You know, when it comes to lines and patterns

that pretty much can only be seen from the air,

the largest ones actually extend

for thousands of miles.

And we refer to them as "ley lines."

And on these ley lines are ancient cities

that are perfectly aligned.

And they cross mountains and lakes,

and in some places, even the ocean.

Right. And when you consider they go on

for miles and miles, you have to think

that maybe our ancestors were directed

on where to build these sites,

and maybe extraterrestrials were using them for navigation.

NARRATOR: Herefordshire, England.

June 30, 1921.

While horseback riding through the British countryside,

amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins

notices that ancient features

and structures across the landscape

appear to be arranged along straight lines.

Four years later, in 1925,

Watkins publishes The Old Straight Track,

a book in which he proposes

that man's earliest monuments and megaliths

were linked by a network of long, straight tracks.

ANDREW COLLINS: And he referred to them as ley lines,

but as to what these were, he could only really say

that perhaps they-they were lines

that were used by the ancients

to communicate from one place to the next.

In other words, they were simply markers on a journey.

Ley lines are, uh, mostly found in England and France.

They're literally geographic markings

between sacred sites.

They might be old churches,

they might be churches built on top of megalithic ruins.

But you'll see dead straight lines between these sites

that have been maintained.

The Michael Line in England is a straight line

and it is measurable.

It's a magnetic field line that you can measure

and it will be higher than other areas

around it geographically.

NARRATOR: In his book, Watkins further theorized

that ancient landmarks along ley lines

were deliberately placed by early man

for the purpose of line-of-sight navigation.

NEWMAN: Watkins believed they were trade routes originally.

But later it was noticed that some of them

went over really obscure terrain,

like mountains and bogs

and streams, and all this kind of stuff,

so they couldn't really have been walking.

So it seems more like they were kind of like a survey,

or a mapping system.

NARRATOR: Some researchers believe that ley lines

are magnetic in nature,

and delineate the lines of Earth's unseen energy fields.

But if ley lines were useful

for overland navigation to the ancients,

might they also have been useful for aerial navigation

by extraterrestrial visitors,

as ancient astronaut theorists believe?

TSOUKALOS: Something extraordinary happened along those ley lines,

because the once very physical and real visit

of extraterrestrial beings has been forgotten.

NARRATOR: Trelleborg, Denmark.

Here, along the northern reaches of the European continent,

lie the archaeological ruins of a Viking fortress

dating to 900 AD.

For decades, mainstream historians

have been baffled by the precise nature

of Trelleborg's perfectly circular design,

with a courtyard divided into four zones,

each with four longhouses,

and gateways open precisely

to the four cardinal directions:

North, south, east and west.

Some believe such a strict geometric design

would have required extensive knowledge

of advanced engineering.

The mystery deepened in 1982,

when pilot Preben Hansson

discovered a direct line of flight

from Trelleborg to three other Viking fortresses,

all constructed with a similar design.

(speaking German)

(translated): Trelleborg was the starting point.

40 miles farther, another fort appeared.

Then he found others so that there was a line

of four forts in Denmark.

BARA: Given that the Vikings were basically seafaring people,

and these sites are spread out so far over land

at great distances, it implies that maybe

they had some other way of getting to these places.

Perhaps they even were able to fly.

Now, how they would fly, what the technology was,

it's a good question.

But it seems unlikely that they would be able

to find all these spots, survey them, and place monuments

and structures there if they were simply a seafaring race.

VON DÄNIKEN: These Viking fortresses are all on one straight line.

You continue the one line straight ahead,

over the Alps, for thousands and thousands of kilometer,

and under the line, always holy places

from antiquity, from Stone Age.

And the line points directly to Delphi,

Delphi in Greece.

Delphi was the place of the god Apollo.

And, uh, mythology about Apollo says every year,

two times, Apollo took his heavenly chariot,

disappeared in a faraway land in the north.

Apollo flies on one straight line.

At several points, he makes a stop.

Wherever he makes a stop, the Stone Age people

start to create a holy place of it, because here was a god.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that the ley lines that connected

early civilizations were actually flight paths,

as ancient astronaut theorists believe?

And might such flight paths

have been used by extraterrestrial spacecraft?

VON DÄNIKEN: The extraterrestrials in the past knew exactly

that the future generations would develop technology,

they would fly, they would measure,

they would photograph their own land.

So, by photographing their land, they would realize

something is strange here on the ground.

BIRNES: How could a straight line link ancient Egypt,

the pyramids, the Oracle of Delphi in Greece,

and Viking fortresses

that would've been established thousands of years later?

It made no sense.

But it does make sense

if these installations are along straight lines

across the Earth's grid,

and if somehow, those straight lines

marked navigation routes

for ancient extraterrestrials

that use them as markers

to navigate the globe

from society to society.

TSOUKALOS: Is it possible that these ancient sites

along ley lines were nothing else

but refueling stations for ancient astronaut craft?

And the answer is yes,

because just like today,

a plane goes in straight lines.

And if a plane needs to refuel,

it lands at an airport that's on its course,

and not, you know, a thousand miles to the east

or a thousand miles to the west. A plane flies straight.

COLLINS: It was suggested that UFOs may be connected in some way,

because it could well be that they are following

the paths of geomagnetic fields, the different variations,

the different strengths that exist.

It was often seen that UFOs

seemed to either appear or descend or rise

in connection with where the ley lines seem to intersect.

And this has been seen time and time again

around the world, at different UFO hot spots.

NARRATOR: Might the sacred sites along ancient flight paths

really have been landing points,

or perhaps fueling stations

for extraterrestrial space vehicles?

Perhaps further evidence can be found

by examining the ancient civilizations

that are connected from opposite sides of the globe.

NARRATOR: Cuzco, Peru.

Here lie the impressive ruins of the ancient capital

of the Inca Empire...

...that thrived from the 13th to 15th century.

Long suspected by ancient astronaut theorists

to have been a place visited by extraterrestrial beings

in the distant past,

Cuzco is considered to be an axis mundi,

which in religion or mythology

means the "center" or "navel of the world."

They are very important sites,

and quite often, when you start looking into some sites,

like Cuzco, Cuzco literally means "navel of the world."

It was the navel of the empire of the Inca.

So, Cuzco isn't unique.

We really find navel sites everywhere,

and the navel sites are quite often the most

important sites of a culture.

Jerusalem is one, the Giza Plateau is another.

BIRNES: World navels,

because they lie along

the Earth's magnetic grid, were places

where the ancients created what could only be called

heaven's gates, altars, places where human beings

could communicate with otherworldly entities.

NARRATOR: Evidence can also be found connecting Cuzco

with another world navel over 2,000 miles away

in the South Pacific: Easter Island.

Although mainstream historians and archaeologists believe

the two places were never in contact in ancient times,

Cuzco and Easter Island

feature strikingly similar styles of stonework,

with colossal, multi-sided stones

precisely fitted as if each joint was welded together.

TSOUKALOS: The walls at Cuzco are identical

to the walls we can find in the base foundations

of some of the Moais on Easter Island.

And those two places are so far apart,

I wonder how was it done?

Either the builders traveled from one place to the other,

or the builders in each culture

were visited by the same teachers,

the teachers from the stars, extraterrestrials.

(Fiebag speaking German)

(translated): These navels of the world might have been geodesic points,

which you could use to navigate from the air.

There are interesting accounts about this.

For example, from Apollonius,

who lived in Rome in 4 AD,

that he descended with thunderbirds,

that he had visited the city of the gods.

There, he was given a talisman,

which he was supposed to bury.

There is a similar legend from Cuzco.

There, the children of the sun god

are supposed to have plunged a rod into the earth.

And there are similar legends on Easter Island.

NARRATOR: But if Cuzco and Easter Island

were linked in ancient times by space travelers,

what might this say about other "centers of the world"?

Strangely, some ancient civilizations

are located on the exact opposite sides of the planet.

A line drawn from Easter Island, through the center of the Earth,

points to Mohenjo-Daro, Pakistan,

a once-great empire believed by ancient astronaut theorists

to have been destroyed by a nuclear blast

thousands of years ago.

And from Nazca, Peru,

a line through the Earth points to Angkor Wat, Cambodia,

a site of great religious significance,

known in ancient myths to have been built

as a landing zone for sky beings.

And astonishingly, these four sites

lie on one circle around the globe,

a circle that also includes the location

of the great pyramids of Egypt.

COPPENS: This is really the underlying mystery, I think,

which is, not necessarily why were these monuments built,

for what purpose?

But also why were they built on those specific places?

Because really, what we are beginning to understand

is that all of these monuments from the past

were not just built haphazardly on the surface of the Earth,

but were built in very specific locations.

MARTELL: It appears that ancient people

either mapped the Earth in some esoteric way

that we can't comprehend yet,

or it was sacred knowledge

handed down over thousands of years.

NARRATOR: Might such connections between ancient sites around the world

suggest that there was some sort of strategic link

between these civilizations,

as ancient astronaut theorists believe?

And if so, what could this mean?

Before the advent of satellite-guided

global positioning systems,

the science of geodesy

was used to determine the exact position

of geographic points on the globe.

One of the oldest of earth sciences,

the use of geodesy dates back thousands of years.

There's clear records that geodesy

was used by the Sumerians in ancient times.

Several of the landing spots used by the gods...

...were actually triangulation points to the landing corridor.

Things like Baalbek in Lebanon, or Jerusalem,

were actually extensive megalithic monuments

or platforms that were used to launch spacecraft.

And ancient man recorded stories around these locations

of seeing great smoke, fire and loud noise

as these ships ascended or descended from these locations.

DENNIN: It's probably highly reasonable that the ancients

had systems of navigation.

I mean, we know the Romans did effectively that.

And that was why they were so efficient

at getting around their empire,

in addition to their roads and keeping track of things.

CHILDRESS: In the early era of our own flight,

pilots used markers,

which would be church steeples or mountains,

and obvious, uh, physical monuments

that they could see.

Just like that, the ancient aliens,

they were able to also use this world grid

and the pyramids and obelisks and other monuments

that were built at these special power places to navigate.

NEWMAN: It's almost like the ancients were building these sites

and they were mapping the planet in-in vast antiquity,

possibly up to 10,000 or more years ago.

BIRNES: Because of the interaction

between ancient civilization and ancient aliens,

these ancient societies,

recognizing the importance of these spots

and the presence of ancient aliens,

place these monuments as a map

for the star people, for the ancient aliens to follow

and to direct them to the civilizations

they might well have started by themselves as colonies.

NARRATOR: Is it really possible

that many of the world's most famous ancient sites

were part of an interconnected network

whose placement on the globe

was planned tens of thousands of years ago

by visitors from other galaxies,

as ancient astronaut theorists contend?

Perhaps further evidence can be found

by analyzing striking similarities

in geometric patterns that can only been seen

from above.

When we're thinking about alien beacons,

it's interesting to note

that the form that some of these take

is in abstract,

-geometric symbols. -TSOUKALOS: Right,

and that makes you think that they might contain messages,

either for other visitors or for us to decipher.

Right, like the Sun, Star and Cross glyph at Nazca,

which looks like a mandala.

But what's a Hindu mandala doing in Peru?

We investigated this on Ancient Aliens in 2014.

(bell tolls)

NARRATOR: London, England, 1971.

After years of studying ancient philosophical teachings

relating to the Egyptian Mystery Schools,

author John Michell unearths evidence of an ancient code.

A numerical and geometric code seemingly embedded

not only in the sacred structures of ancient Egypt

but also in the Hebrew world and in the plans

for the Heavenly City of New Jerusalem.

KATHLEEN McGOWAN: John Michell was a scholar, he was a mystic,

he was a genius and a very, very prolific author.

He had an incredible understanding

of earth geometry and geography.

But what John Michell is most famous for

is the New Jerusalem diagram.

NARRATOR: By carefully examining

the physical description of New Jerusalem

in Revelation 21,

Michell uncovered a sacred design.

At the core of Michell's diagram is the squaring of the circle,

and the division of the circle into equal sectors--

a zodiac wheel--

and the positioning of 12 gates to the Heavenly City,

three on each side of the square

representing the 12 tribes of Israel.

CHILDRESS: This is also a geometric figure,

and John Michell claimed that this would be, uh,

how the New Jerusalem was to be built in the future.

And that all this was encoded in Revelations

in a mathematical, geometric way.

NARRATOR: In his book The Dimensions of Paradise,

Michell proposed that this sacred geometry

represented the order of the universe.

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest

that this exact same geometrical concept can be found

halfway around the world, in Nazca, Peru.

NARRATOR: Here in the desert,

among the many plant and animal glyphs,

is a geometric design that looks much different

from the rest of the Nazca Lines.

It is called the Sun, Star and Cross.

CHILDRESS: The Nazca Sun, Star Glyph

is one of the most interesting glyphs to be seen at Nazca.

And, in fact, because it's in a remote area,

the Palpa valley, it's not actually seen by many tourists.

But it is, by far, uh, the strangest

and most mathematically precise

of all of the-the diagrams at Nazca.

NARRATOR: The Sun, Star and Cross glyph

is a precisely formed star polygon

made of two squares surrounding a perfect circle,

all sharing the same center and diameter.

Inside the grid are wheels within wheels

and squares within squares.

The design mirrors not only New Jerusalem's sacred geometry

but also offers up yet another connection.

When you look at it, it's very obviously

what is called a mandala.

Or a yantra, in ancient India or-or Tibet.

What a mandala/yantra glyph is doing

in remote desert of Peru is very interesting.

TSOUKALOS: It's a very sacred symbol.

It's this idea of being connected

with the realm of the gods.

And then we have to once again ask ourselves,

"Well, what was the realm of the gods?"

It's very interesting to note

that, seen from the sky,

it is very similar--

not identical but very similar to, for example,

the layout of the temples at Borobudur.

NARRATOR: The Buddhist temple of Borobudur

lies over 11,000 miles west of Nazca, in Indonesia,

and is laid out with a series of precise circles

within a platform of perfect squares.

TSOUKALOS: One has to wonder if, somehow, all these sites are connected,

because that is what the ancient astronaut theory excels in,

that people in our ancient past were not isolated.

They had contact with each other.

In the end, there is an extraterrestrial connection.

COLLINS: Is this something that was taught by the ancients

from one culture to the rest,

and they incorporated these divine cities,

these New Jerusalems?

Or is this something that may have been given to us

by some divine intelligence?

NARRATOR: Is it possible that the New Jerusalem design,

the Sun, Star and Cross of Nazca,

the Temple of Borobudur

and other geometric structures around the world

are encoded with similar mathematic

and geometric principles?

And if so, are they part of an alien message?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,

and suggest there's evidence

that the communication continues.

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.

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.

REPORTER: 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.

TAYLOR: When you see it for the first time,

you go "What in the world is that doing there?"

I mean, it's obviously not natural.

TOM BULLARD: There have been cases

that have been traced back for hundreds of years,

so-called mowing devil where,

apparently, some sort of, uh, devil supposedly mowed a field

in a single night, but they became recognized

as a phenomenon only when these circles

started appearing in, uh, English wheat fields.

They were very simple things at first.

And... 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 began to read that as a UFO presence.

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?

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, ancient writing.

The crop circles are calling us back

to a time before science and spirit got separated,

when we were whole, we had a sense of wholeness.

And here, they are landing near sacred sites

that are from an ancient time,

when we did experience those things.

When I saw the first photographs,

I was, uh, 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.

Cop circles do get

in the newspapers all over the world.

Perhaps that's what they want.

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.

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! Do not be so naive.

"They-they were done by those two old guys, years ago.

Why are you even 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.

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,

'cause 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."

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.

There have been people who have started reading

all kinds of messages into these crop circles,

that they have some kind of digital significance,

that you can read a kind of numerology,

and there will 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.

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.

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

the crop circles are evidence of intelligent life.

There is intelligence bombarding us, winking at us.

You know, we've been talking about extraterrestrials

placing beacons on Earth,

but we, too, have been sending signals out into space

hoping they'll be received by some alien intelligence.

Yeah, I mean, we've sent out

music and images and even messages in binary code,

and even the entire Wikipedia library.

Right, and what's even more incredible

is that some people claim that some of the signals

that we've sent out have already received

an actual response.

NARRATOR: Arecibo Observatory.

Puerto Rico.

November 16, 1974.

Early pioneers of SETI--

the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence--

aim the world's largest radio telescope

at a cluster of stars 25,000 light years away

to send a transmission out into the cosmos.

The coded signal consists of binary digits--

zeros and ones--

that form a message designed to notify

other potentially advanced beings of our existence.

This message into space, it was encoded in what's called

binary code, 'cause it's the simplest around.

Listen, we're trying to send a message to the aliens

and because you don't know anything about them,

you have to make this as obvious as possible.

Now here's the message over here that was actually sent in 1974.

And it starts off with teaching the ABC's to the aliens.

Well, not ABC's, the 123's, because right up here are

the numbers from 1 to 10, but in binary,

and anybody who has thought about binary

should be able to figure that out, including the aliens.

Right underneath that is...

th-this funny thing here has the numbers one, six, seven,

and so forth.

Those are the atomic numbers of the elements

that make up our bodies:

hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus.

NARRATOR: The coded message also contained

information about our DNA,

the figure of a human,

a graphic of the solar system,

and a graphic of a radio telescope.

For decades, SETI scientists wondered

if their cosmic message would ever be received or answered.

Then, nearly 27 years later,

there appeared to be a response.

Hampshire, England. August 2001.

Next to the Chilbolton Radio Observatory,

two crop formations appeared in a field.

Both were unlike any other ever found.

They were both pixelated, meaning that,

when you're on the ground, you couldn't perceive

what the crop circle was, but once from the air,

you could readily identify the pattern.

COLLINS: One of the crop formations that appeared at Chilbolton in 2001

was a face, but the other one

was far, far more interesting because it greatly resembled

the message that had been sent in 1974.

There were very, very subtle differences between the two.

Um, they looked identical,

but when you actually looked at them,

the differences gave a key

that seemed to be, uh, almost like an answer.

NEWMAN: One of them was the fact

that the human being that we sent out,

when it came back, it had what appeared to look like

some kind of grey alien with a large head and a small body.

It also had a different system of planets,

which is suggesting it's a different solar system,

and also it had a different DNA sequence as well.

And so, just these three things

really caught my attention because either it was, it was

a brilliant hoax or it was actually a message

that came back and was a response

to that original SETI message, way back in the 1970s.

COLLINS: And all of these suggested to the crop circle community,

um, and the media, that we really had received a reply...

...to the Aricebo message of 1974.

Can we see it as a reply?

Yes, indeed, it was.

But actually who created it

and their exact purpose will remain a mystery.

NARRATOR: Could the crop circles in Chilbolton

have been an actual alien response to the signal

that SETI sent out into the cosmos in 1974?

And are crop formations the latest iteration

in an ancient system of otherworldly signposts,

including global pictographs,

geometric patterns, and architectural markers?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,

and suggest that modern technology

is revealing this system to be far more ancient

and widespread than ever imagined.

You know, when the Nazca Lines were discovered in the 1920s,

people thought that these lines, these markings in the ground,

were a complete and total anomaly.

But today, we know that there thousands of other geoglyphs

all around the globe.

Yeah, that's right, and what's so exciting is that,

with continuing advances in technology,

we're discovering more and more of them all the time.

Yeah, and in 2024, artificial intelligence helped us uncover

300 new Nazca glyphs.

So, it would seem that, you know,

technology is what we need

to uncover what was happening in the ancient world.

NARRATOR: Nazca, Peru.

First discovered in 1927,

the Nazca Lines consist of hundreds of designs known

as geoglyphs that can only be seen from above.

Scattered over 200 square miles in southern Peru,

mainstream archaeologists believe the figures were created

by the ancient Nazca people

sometime between the first and eighth centuries AD.

Ancient astronaut theorists

have been studying the Nazca Lines for years.

They maintain that the massive and complex designs

must have been created as signals to celestial beings

that came down from the heavens,

and they say new evidence proves that aliens

not only visited Nazca,

but continued to return there over the centuries.

On July 7, 2015, a team of anthropologists

from Yamagata University in Japan revealed they had found

new Nazca Lines that, due to erosion,

are impossible to make out with the naked eye.

By conducting a three-dimensional scan

of the ground, they uncovered a total of 24 images,

including strange-looking humanoid figures,

a disembodied head, and a llama 65 feet long.

According to their findings,

the new geoglyphs date from 400 to 200 BC,

making them hundreds of years older

than those previously discovered.

These new finds are instrumental in showing the duration

of which these types of modifications were going on,

on the desert floor, for hundreds and hundreds of years,

involving different cultures

with different motivations and different depictions.

It would seem to be all of the cultures

were trying to signal some kind of sky people,

and probably over time were trying to induce them

to come back down from the sky and land their ships.

You have to wonder then if,

with at least four successive cultures doing this,

that you would think they must've had some success.

NARRATOR: Some ancient astronaut theorists have even suggested

that the discovery of older Nazca Lines may indicate

that the people responsible for the later geoglyphs

were imitating what was originally made

by the extraterrestrials themselves.

So, the question starts to rise is:

were various different people coming to Nazca

to make these petroglyphs and these large diagrams?

Or were they possibly recreating some initial experiment

or some initial thing that took place?

What if some of the early cultures in Nazca

actually experienced interaction with beings that were creating

edifices that can only be seen from in the sky,

and the only way to get to lure them back

was to create these ways to communicate

from an aerial perspective?

NARRATOR: For decades, it was thought that there was no other place

on Earth like Nazca,

but recently, a shocking discovery was made

on the opposite side of the globe.

Turgay, Kazakhstan. October 2015.

Using satellite photography, NASA captures images

of more than 260 geoglyphs covering the ground here.

They're located in a very rural part of Kazakhstan,

and they could only be found thanks to modern technology.

They're much more complex than the Nazca geoglyphs

in that they are three-dimensional.

They are mounds and trenches,

whereas the Nazca Lines are etchings in the sand.

We're talking here about massive features that are constructed

from earthen mounds and also from wood,

showing everything from rings to squares

to crosses, and even swastikas that are on the ground.

NARRATOR: The archaeologists in the area have no idea

who made the geoglyphs or what they represent.

But one fact they have been able to determine

is that some of these glyphs date back 8,000 years,

nearly 6,000 years older than the Nazca Lines.

Since these can be dated to almost 8,000 years old,

we have to wonder who they were trying to communicate with.

Could it have been, possibly,

what a lot of these ancient cultures refer to as gods?

I think the fact that we're finding more and more

of these symbols simply tell us

that the humankind at that time

tried to communicate with what they thought

were the gods from above.

This is only one small part

of a gigantic archaeological puzzle.

Now, we today, we must stumble over these lines,

and automatically we have to ask questions. What is it?

How have they done it? For what purpose?

And sooner or later, we came up with the question,

is there maybe a message by the extraterrestrials?

So we really have to ask, what is the significance

of these geoglyphs? Are they calling cards?

Are they signs for those in the sky?

A lost language?

What are we gonna learn from all this?

Yeah, and are they just signaling

to the extraterrestrials, "Hey, we're here.

You know, come on back"?

Almost like cargo cults

and their airstrips to attract more airplanes to come.

Right. I mean, all of these pieces

are parts of a puzzle,

and you don't necessarily have to finish a puzzle

in order to see the bigger picture.

There is an underlying thread

that essentially combines it all,

that we have been visited physically in the remote past.

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