Ancient Aliens: Declassified | Pyramids and Monoliths (S1, E39) | Full Episode

[camera shutters clicking] [dramatic music]

- This gigantic pyramid in Antarctica would be the oldest pyramid on our planet.

- It's possible that underneath the ice will be keys for us to reclaim our ancient past.

- The Nazis were particularly interested in Antarctica.

- Saucers were coming up out of the water and were shooting them with some sort of beam, literally cutting ships in half.

- Antarctica may hold lost remnants of an extraterrestrial civilization that existed there, thousands and thousands of years ago.

[mysterious music]

- [Narrator] Since the dawn of civilization, mankind has credited its origins to gods and other visitors from the stars. What if it were true? Did extraterrestrial beings really help to shape our history? And if so, might the ultimate proof be found when we uncover the pyramids of Antarctica?

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Stretching over five million square miles, across the southernmost reaches of the Earth, lies the coldest and most isolated continent in the world, Antarctica. Because of its hostile climate, including average daily temperatures of minus 49 degrees Fahrenheit and wind speeds of over 200 miles per hour, Antarctica remains largely untouched by mankind. According to historical records, modern man did not even set foot on the continent until 1853, when ship captain Mercator Cooper landed on what is now known as the Oates Coast of Victoria Land. Today, anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside at the research stations scattered across the continent, braving the extreme conditions in hopes of learning more about this mysterious landscape. Most geologists believe Antarctica has been completely frozen and uninhabited for over 12 million years. But in 2012, new photographs revealed formations in the landscape that challenge this notion: Mysterious pyramid structures emerging from the now-melting ice.

- Recently there have been a number of reports of pyramids being found on Antarctica. There are various photographs that show what appear to be perfect four-sided pyramids, very similar in design to those at Giza, Egypt, and perhaps other places around the world.

- [Narrator] While the photos were explained away by mainstream scientists as nothing more than natural land formations, satellite imagery analysts, like Joseph White, are not entirely convinced. In March of 2013, he uncovered what he believes is evidence of yet another pyramid, located just south of Antarctica's remote Shackleton mountain range.

- I initially found the structure whilst looking on Google Earth. I was in fact looking at some of the rather strange blank spots that you get in Antarctica, when I stumbled upon this very large square structure which seems to be some kind of building or perhaps even a pyramid, but certainly, very large and very square. It actually lines up perfectly with the coordinates of the compass, north, south, east and west. And, this dictates to me that it's probably an intelligent structure, because random structures, like mountains, are not aligned to the compass. And another way we know that a structure is not naturally occurring is generally to look for symmetry, things like right angles and equilateral triangles and shapes that you would not normally find in nature. This structure is exactly two kilometers square. And this corner to this corner is two kilometers and this corner to this corner is also exactly two kilometers, which would make this more than double the size of any pyramid thus far found on Earth.

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- [Narrator] While it may seem unthinkable that pyramids could exist in Antarctica, in recent years, archeologists have found pyramids all over the world that had been lost for centuries, mistaken as natural formations or hidden in the most unlikely places. They have been discovered in the plains of northern Peru, buried beneath dirt and rubble in Indonesia, and one may even exist in Los Angeles, California. All the way 'round the world we find evidence of pyramid structures. We should start looking at the possibility that there was habitation on Antarctica. Was it a lost civilization? Could it be ancient astronauts? And just maybe, the earliest monuments of our own civilization came originally from Antarctica.

- If this gigantic pyramid in Antarctica is an artificial structure, it would probably be the oldest pyramid on our planet. And, in fact, it might be the master pyramid that all the other pyramids on planet Earth were designed to look like.

- There has been extensive research done on pyramids throughout the world, in terms of their structure and what it is that they really are. And one of the theories is that pyramids are power generators. And so, if you have these pyramids strategically placed around the world, generating this charge, it's possible to create a general standing wave around the world that is basically a wireless transmission of energy.

- It's been theorized that ancient ships, extraterrestrials and those with high technology could use this interconnected wireless energy system to navigate around the planet and it makes sense that if there was some kind of worldwide pyramid power grid like this, that Antarctica would have pyramids as well.

- The whole idea of these pyramidal structures, where did it come from? 'Cause it's not an arbitrary thing. And these structures, they exist worldwide. So, you know, what was the impetus? What's the origin? And, even more fascinating, did they originate on the Antarctic continent?

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- [Narrator] Might the pyramid Joseph White claims to have discovered near the Shackleton Mountain Range and other pyramid-shaped formations recently photographed in Antarctica provide evidence of extraterrestrial visitation to our planet in the remote past? And if they are actually man-made structures, how is such a thing even possible in a place that has been buried beneath the ice for over 12 million years? According to ancient astronaut theorists, Antarctica may not have been a frozen continent for as long as mainstream scientists suggest. And they say proof can be found by examining a 500-year-old map depicting the continent without any ice.

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Siberia, 2013. A wooly mammoth is discovered flash frozen in the glacial ice, engulfed so quickly that its blood and muscle tissue are perfectly preserved. It is just one of dozens that have been found within the Siberian ice since the turn of the 20th century. Many seemingly caught in suspended animation, some with food in their mouths and vegetation in their stomachs that would only grow in a much warmer climate.

- The discovery of a woolly mammoth that was flash frozen raises some interesting scientific questions. Did something happen very locally to the woolly mammoth that it froze very fast? But it does also raise the question of how quickly can climate really change. And does it take some sort of cataclysm? Or one that's sudden and unexpected?

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- [Narrator] In 1958, Charles Hapgood, a Harvard-educated scientist, published the book, "Earth's Shifting Crust." In it, he proposed that portions of the Earth's crust experienced violent and sudden shifts during Earth's geological history.

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His theory, known as Crustal Displacement, posited that both Siberia and the continent of Antarctica were located in slightly more temperate climates prior to the end of the last Ice Age, approximately 12,000 years ago. But then, some unknown catastrophe plunged them into their current positions.

[explosion booms]

- Professor Hapgood came up with the idea that the previous North Pole position had been in the area of the Hudson Bay. And then it shifted to where the pole is today. And at the southern pole, he believes that the area of Antarctica had previously also experienced a temperate climate, and that this was suddenly now thrust into this deep ice and this harsh, freezing climate. He believed the last time that this had actually taken place was approximately 12,000 years ago. When we think about Earth crust displacement theory and plate tectonics, you want to think of the crust basically floating on the magna and being able to shift and move around on top of it. The Earth's crust is not one solid piece. We know it's made of individual pieces. So, you could look and see how the continents probably used to fit together and where they've moved, and how they move apart over a long period of time. But the question is, you know, would something the size of Antarctica shift suddenly, or is that too big?

- These crustal shifts, according to Hapgood, actually could happen over a period of even days. And so, if you had a thriving civilization, this crustal displacement could have hit it very, very quickly, and so, it could have actually been frozen over a very short period of time.

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- [Narrator] Although Hapgood's theory of sudden, large-scale shifts of the Earth's crust was not widely accepted, renowned physicist Albert Einstein was "electrified" by it, and even wrote the foreword of Hapgood's book. Hapgood would also find additional support for his theory when, in 1960, while combing through the Library of Congress archives, he unearthed an unusual map, published in 1531. The map, credited to mathematician and cartographer Oronteus Finaeus appears to depict an ice-free continent remarkably similar to today's maps of Antarctica.

- It was not until as late as 1820 that we had any real idea of what Antarctica looked like. Yet, here, on the Oronteus Finaeus map from 1531, here was Antarctica. How the hell is it possible that it could appear on this map?

- [Narrator] Researchers are baffled as to how the Oronteus Finaeus map could include a continent that was not discovered until over 300 years later, and are even more perplexed by the fact that it depicts Antarctica free of ice. If explorers somehow discovered Antarctica in the 1500s, it would have been completely frozen over. Remarkably, the Finaeus map shows not only a detailed coastline free of ice, but the entire continent, including interior features such as rivers, valleys and mountains.

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- The map shows mountain ranges that have rivers coming out of the mountain ranges. How could that be? It's frozen. It's ice. There's a NASA image of the continent of Antarctica using radar so that mountain ranges come through and can be seen. And you can see a mountain range on one photograph, and on the Oronteus Finaeus map, it's right there, too. It's the same mountain range.

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- [Narrator] According to climatologists, the estimates of when this feature would have been free from ice cover was at least 6,000 years ago. So how is it possible that this map exists? Did Finaeus have access to an older map? One dating back thousands of years? Perhaps more confounding, U.S. Air Force cartographers that were sent the maps in the 1960s concluded that they were drawn using advanced spherical trigonometry with remarkable precision, especially when considering the maps were made hundreds of years ago.

- The fact that we find something that's a reference to modern-day technology on a map that dates back to the 16th century, makes me think, is it possible that some type of advanced radar technology was used? Because in order to produce a map that would outline the areas we see, you would have to be at an altitude of 80 miles. So, how was that possible? Could it be that the basis for these maps was gleaned from maps that were cartographed by extraterrestrial land surveyors?

- The implications of all this, and if you now are able to add things like pyramids, this would really indicate that there was some kind of ancient civilization in Antarctica. And that it would have been over 12,000 years ago. And you've got to wonder what kind of civilization this was. Is it possible that it was extraterrestrials?

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- [Narrator] Could Antarctica have been inhabited by extraterrestrials in the distant past? Did they study this continent and leave behind detailed information about its landscape? If so, just what happened to these otherworldly visitors? Ancient astronaut theorists believe more clues can be found in Egyptian stories describing an Earth-altering catastrophe.

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Edfu, Egypt. Located on the western bank of the Nile, the Temple of Edfu is one of the largest and most well preserved temples of the ancient kingdom, dating back to 237 BC.

- The Edfu Temple is of tremendous importance. As you enter the temple, it's like you're going inside a book. It's literally full of texts, every wall, every column, every room, every chamber is filled with text. They're known collectively as the Edfu Texts. What is very interesting is that the majority of these texts speak about the creation of the world.

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- [Narrator] According to the texts, the Earth was created by powerful gods who came down from the sky, and these gods first established a place known as the Island of the Egg.

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- Two gods, they created an island in the middle of the eternal lake. Creation started with that island.

- It says that here the first temples were built, the first ones ever in the world. And that these became the blueprint for every temple in Egypt.

- Once all the creator gods have done their job with creating the world, they would meet with their big bird and ascend to the sky. Ancient Egyptians believed with all their heart that everything listed and inscribed on these walls are true, true, true.

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- [Narrator] According to the Edfu Texts, not all of the occupants left. And after many generations, the island suffered a terrible fate.

[thunder rumbling]

- The texts are very different as to what happens to the occupants, these strange gods. They seem to, once they have set the scene, once they have built the temples, they hand over their work to the historical lineage, and then they depart. We don't know where they go. There seems to be something very interesting here. There seems to be a war going on. The armies of these divinities is led by this falcon god. And he battles a kind of enemy represented by a snake.

- In the skies appeared what was known as the enemy snake. It had a name. It was called the Great Leaping One. It was said that immediately it appeared, there was a time of darkness. And there were suddenly floods that destroyed this sacred island. And when the waters receded, these original beings, who were known as the Ancient Ones or the Elder Ones, were now no longer there. Perhaps the Great Leaping One, this enemy snake, was the memory of the comet that entered into our inner solar system, broke up,

[explosion booms]

causing devastation and destruction.

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- [Narrator] Might the account of this ancient catastrophe inscribed on the walls of the Edfu Temple be describing a natural event? Or was it a deliberate attack, an attack targeting an otherworldly civilization existing on what we now know as the Antarctic continent?

- We need to take a second look at the Edfu Texts and the story of the Island of the Egg because it's the source material for Plato's story. In his story of Atlantis, he gives a very important detail. He describes it as an immense island the size of Libya and North Africa combined. Now, the thing about it is, is that there's only one island on the planet that's out in the middle of the ocean that matches that description, and that's Antarctica.

[mysterious music]

- [Narrator] Curiously, the island continent depicted on the Oronteus Finaeus map reveals a shift of the South Pole of seven and a half degrees, or nearly 1,000 miles from what it is today. Might this shift corroborate the accounts of a major catastrophic event in the remote past? If so, could the creation myth recorded at Edfu be describing something more than mythology? The cataclysm which would have shifted Antarctica, this would have destroyed the civilization that was there. And then, over time, whatever buildings and pyramids that were there would be covered with ice. So the whole idea that Antarctica is hiding, beneath its ice, some ancient civilization is a very intriguing idea.

- [Narrator] Might there actually be evidence of an ancient extraterrestrial civilization buried under the ice of Antarctica? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and believe that this long history of an alien presence there is precisely what brought another occupying force to its frozen shores, the Nazis.

- [Narrator] Hamburg, Germany. December, 1938. Four years into Adolf Hitler's reign as Fuhrer, he is beginning to establish his total dictatorship by taking direct control of the German military.

[Hitler speaking in foreign language] [audience cheers]

- [Narrator] But on the brink of World War II, Hitler is also involved in much stranger endeavors that are hidden to the public. He is committing every remaining resource to searching for ancient relics that he believes could hold incredible powers. On December 17, the German freighter MS Schwabenland sets out on one of these top secret missions. Its 33-member team is rumored to include scientists, military experts, construction crews, and key members of the Thule Society, an elite group associated with the Nazis that focused on mysticism and the occult. 32 days later they arrive at their destination, Antarctica.

- The Nazis themselves were fascinated by ancient civilizations and legends of vanished super races. They were searching for this lost Arctic home that they thought that the Aryans had come from. They were looking all over the world, and that included Antarctica.

- The Thule Society actually believed that they were mystics, or channels, who were able to communicate with these beings who claimed to be either extraterrestrial in origin or claimed to belong to this civilization that lived in Earth's interior. They gave a lot of information about the building of advanced aerospace vehicles, flying saucers, and I think this is where Hitler's Nazi party got a lot of its information about Antarctica, that in Antarctica there is this ancient civilization, or bases where they could find a lot of these advanced technologies.

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- [Narrator] During their time in Antarctica, the Nazis were believed to have mapped huge swaths of the icy landscape by air. Ancient astronaut theorists believe they also established an elaborate underground headquarters known as Base 211.

- Hitler and the Nazis were particularly interested in Antarctica. I think they really believed that there were things going on deep under the ice. And there have always been rumors that the Nazis, with their submarines, have underwater caverns, small cities, that they escaped there after World War II.

- When the Germans got to Antarctica what they found were massive cities that were highly technological. And these buildings were not just on the surface, they went deep down underground. So, they began relocating a massive amount of equipment and personnel to Antarctica, repressurizing these ancient facilities and reoccupying them.

[tense music]

- [Narrator] In 1946, one year after the end of World War II, the U.S. government launched its own large-scale mission to Antarctica. Operation Highjump deployed 4,700 troops, 13 ships, an aircraft carrier, and a number of seaplanes to Antarctica. Although the government denied it at the time, it would later become known that one of the operation's primary objectives was, quote, "extending the United States' sovereignty over the largest practicable area of the Antarctic continent."

[tense music]

- The U.S. Navy, then, sent what was basically a flotilla of armed ships to Antarctica. There were stories of craft coming up out of the water, around the ships, and of flying saucer-type vehicles.

- Saucers were coming up out of the water, and were shooting them with some sort of beam, literally cutting ships in half. They were shooting planes out of the sky. And they traveled so fast, that it was almost impossible to visually reference where the disk was going. So, the American fleet had to limp back to the United States, totally broken and destroyed.

[suspenseful music]

- It's still a mystery, all of the activities that were going on in Antarctica. You have to wonder if the American military, and other governments, too, are aware of structures under the ice, of pyramids beneath the ice; and perhaps they know that there's some kind of ancient civilization frozen beneath the ice of Antarctica.

[tense music]

- [Narrator] If, in fact, the Nazis were seeking extraterrestrial technology in Antarctica, is it possible that they actually discovered it? And might the U.S. military have encountered this powerful technology years later, during Operation Highjump? Ancient astronaut theorists believe that further proof of an alien presence in Antarctica may be found in a prehistoric lake buried under two miles of ice.

[mysterious music]

- [Narrator] Lake Vostok, Antarctica. Buried under two miles of ice is a 4,800-square-mile body of water. It is by far the largest of the continent's nearly 400 lakes that are entirely covered by ice. In 2001, pilots collecting data here recorded unusual and extreme irregularities in the magnetic field at the southeastern corner of the lake. Spanning a remarkable 65 by 46 miles, the anomalous area is producing an unusually high level of magnetic energy.

- This anomaly was roughly 50 miles in diameter and was something that would be commensurate with the magnetic field being generated by a city.

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- I have been to Lake Vostok several times, as part of expedition research. And when we were in the area, we did pick up this magnetic anomaly. But we also found other magnetic anomalies which were actually transitioning from one place to another. They were moving. Highly rare and extremely unusual. We weren't able to determine what was causing these anomalies.

- It's totally inexplicable. And of course, this has given rise to theories that perhaps there is something else here. Perhaps it's a UFO, perhaps it's some kind of alien base, perhaps even the remnants of a lost civilization. And now the NSA themself have almost put a blanket over any further research, and it's almost become a no-go area.

[tense music]

- [Narrator] Vostok is not the only site with limited outside access. Seven different countries have claimed territories in Antarctica, yet it remains one of the most restricted locations in the world. Currently, there are 68 international bases here, many of which require permits or special permissions to visit. They are manned not just with scientists but also military personnel. But why is it so restricted?

[mysterious music]

McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Located on a southern peninsula of Ross Island, this is the largest research station on the continent. It was opened by the U.S. government in 1956 and houses up to as many as 1,200 residents at a time. In January of 2015 a U.S. Navy flight engineer, who served with the Antarctic Development Squadron at McMurdo for 14 years, came forward to investigative reporter Linda Moulton Howe with bizarre accounts of his time in Antarctica.

- In January of 2015, I got an e-mail from a retired naval flight engineer. He's asked me to call him only Brian in the world public. And this is what he told me, from about 1983, to when he retired from the Navy in 1997, he was in all kinds of what they call Antarctic squadron expedition missions, that included rescuing people in and out of various places. In all these trips, nothing of a high strangeness had occurred. And then, all of a sudden, it was one thing after another. During a squadron mission in the Transantarctic Mountains, the whole crew saw a whole bunch of silver darting objects. And they are round. And he says they're doing the strangest thing. They're going, like, to this peak in a group, to this peak in a group, to this peak in a group. And then they'd all take off. And not only did this happen once, it happened over and over.

- [Narrator] According to the informant, this was just one of many strange mysteries on the continent that he witnessed during his time there.

- They get an assignment not long after. There's a medical emergency. They are now under the gun, the clock is ticking, and a decision was made: They're going through the no-fly zone because it's a medical emergency. And what do they see? In the ice, like, a huge entrance to a cave but slanted going down. And he said, "I think it was at least, Linda, 200 feet in diameter, a big hole in the ice." And he said, "Our instruments are not operating. We were losing electricity. We had magnetic anomalies. And we concluded there's something about this hole that is now causing these problems." They do their medical recovery. And the next thing they know, they're all being chewed out by men in suits that are not from McMurdo. They appear to be from Washington, DC. And he said, "They told us that we are never, ever to fly over that hole. And we are never to discuss it again." What is that about? And does that have anything to do with all these other pieces that keep emerging that there might be something archeological in Antarctica?

- [Narrator] According to Admiral Richard Byrd, he allegedly reported seeing a massive opening at the South Pole, that went deep inside the Earth, ice-free, and was inhabited by various sorts of aliens. And when Byrd got back to the United States, he was brought back to Washington, where he was questioned very heavily about his statements. And, allegedly, he was told to stop talking about this. You have to wonder, is the South Pole some kind of extraterrestrial entry zone, some kind of portal that's so important that it has to be controlled by the military?

- [Narrator] Is the United States government covering up an extraterrestrial presence in Antarctica? And if so, could they be the same otherworldly beings that once occupied the continent thousands of years ago? Ancient astronaut theorists believe the truth may be revealed when Antarctica's ice finally disappears.

[tense music]

- [Narrator] East Antarctica. October, 2015. Scientists at NASA announce that despite years of thinking otherwise, they are now finding that the ice in this region is actually growing, averaging 82 billion tons a year. Snowfall is currently adding ice to most of the continent. But at the same time, glaciers are rapidly melting along the coast of Western Antarctica. Scientists calculate that, since 2009, as much as 60 cubic kilometers of ice, the equivalent of 70,000 Empire State Buildings, is disappearing into the ocean each year. But why is the ice here melting, when it is growing throughout much of the rest of the continent?

- We can't rule out the possibility that, in certain cases, there could be entire cities that are built underground that may even be actively maintained by extraterrestrials now, and that as those cities are powered up or expanded in size that they are giving off some kind of heat and that heat, in turn, is melting the ice above them.

- If there are things buried under the miles of ice at Antarctica, then that would mean that had to have happened before the last Ice Age. So who knows what we'll find there? Remnants of a lost civilization, perhaps even tools with which these civilizations were built.

- It's possible that underneath the ice will be keys for us to actually save ourselves and reclaim our ancient past.

- We may end up in a situation where this can't be covered up anymore, where visible ruins, gigantic pyramids, gigantic obelisks, start to peek through the ice. And, at that point, it's game over. No longer can this be swept under the rug.

- There's no question that under the ice of Antarctica there could be extraterrestrial craft. There could be cities down there. Bottom line is, it will shock the entire belief system of humankind. It will just change everything we know.

[tense music]

- [Narrator] What really lies beneath the ice and snow in Antarctica? Was this frozen continent once covered with lush vegetation, as well as pyramids that predate those in Egypt? And if extraterrestrials truly did inhabit Antarctica, could these otherworldly visitors still be hiding out there today? Perhaps, one day soon, we will discover what the ice of Antarctica has hidden for thousands of years, and it will finally expose the truth about our alien past.

[mysterious music]

- One of the all time great observations in ancient alien theory has to do with the way the three pyramids of the Giza plateau mirror the three belt stars of Orion.

- We can use star charting software that will tell you, oh, you can go outside tonight and know that Orion will be right in front of you. You can also roll that clock back and see that in 10,500 BC Giza is perfectly aligned with Orion in the sky and the Sphinx is staring east directly into the constellation of Leo. So for that type of alignment to have been set up at an architectural level at that scale, pointing to these various star constellations is something that even today we'd be challenged to do.

- The ancients had a a rule or an adage, as above so below. What that means is that events on Earth mirror events in the heaven and vice versa. So that connection is an actual proof of that adage and gives us great comfort 'cause it says, okay, people were here before, they left this very important message for us. They want us to connect with the stars and we can do so by connecting with the Giza Plateau.

- Someone was here, someone taught our ancestors how to build these structures, and then they left again. Or they're observing us. And by the way, not just the Giza complex is aligned with Orion, but there are structures worldwide that all point to Orion, they point to Sirius and also to the Pleiades star system. So there's three different constellations that our ancestors paid very close attention to. And one has to wonder why. Could it be that these structures point to those places because that is where they came from?

- So right underneath our feet are tunnels and facilities.

- Miles, absolutely miles of tunnels. It really is like something out of a James Bond movie.

- [Host] Could a secret base in England hold evidence of extraterrestrial visitation?

- If there was anywhere in the United Kingdom, any secret facility where crashed UFO debris would have been brought, it would've been right here.

- [Host] Is the British government in possession of an alien spacecraft?

- The more I looked into these claims, the more I realized, wait a minute, there's something going on here.

- [Host] And did they even develop one of their own?

- I had about five minutes, and then a police car showed up and said, "Well, I think it's time for you to leave."

[dramatic music] [eerie music] [tense music]

- [Host] London, England, 2007. The British Ministry of Defense, or MOD, makes a startling announcement. They are releasing the entirety of their UFO files to the National Archives of England.

- My belief is that the MOD's motive was to have people stop asking them questions, they could get away from all these difficult Freedom of Information Act requests that people were making. And they framed it in a way that it was all about cost cutting, but in reality, it was almost as if they just didn't want anything to do with the subject anymore. I still believe they take a very active interest in the subject, but they don't want to be seen publicly to take that interest.

- [Host] After a rollout that took more than a decade, it came to light that the Ministry of Defense had accumulated over 60,000 documents pertaining to UFO encounters. But researchers sorting through the archives were able to determine that 18 key files were missing.

- There were a number of very famous cases where people are taking some really good photos, some really good film imagery, that the MOD can't now find.

[fire crackles]

Large parts of their files were seemingly destroyed, and it seems to have a very good history on losing really important bits of information.

- [Host] After a request was submitted, Ministry of Defense officials located the missing files.

- Each file, by the way, contains upward of maybe a hundred, 200 documents; so we're talking thousands of documents. They sent those files to the National Archives and everyone was expecting an imminent release, but in an unprecedented move, the Ministry of Defense then recalled the files. Now, I've never heard of this happening before. To date, these 18 files remain under lock and key so something very mysterious is going on.

- [Host] Why would the British Ministry of Defense send UFO files to the National Archives, and then suddenly recall them without explanation? Some government insiders have suggested that the files were moved for safekeeping while another even more secure facility was being prepared. When the National Archives returned the files to the British government, they were spirited away to an undisclosed location. There are those who believe that location is a former Royal Air Force base in the southwest county of Wiltshire, called Rudloe Manor. A site that the Ministry of Defense used to perform UFO investigations dating back to the 1940s. On the surface, it appears to be nothing more than a quaint English manor house, but deep beneath this structure lie an astounding 2.2 million square feet of vast caverns divided into many smaller chambers. These underground quarries were excavated in the 19th century to mine bath stone, a type of limestone used to build the nearby city of Bath and several other English cities.

[artillery booms] [tense music]

One century later in 1939, England was drawn into World War II and the British Royal Air Force took over the depleted quarries, transforming them into an underground aircraft factory. At the end of the war, many such facilities were returned to civilian control, but Rudloe Manor and its over 2 million square feet of secret tunnels and chambers were never surrendered.

- For years, it was home to a group called the Provost and Security Services. They're kind of like the James Bonds of the British Royal Air Force. They do espionage investigations, counterintelligence programs, things like that; even terrorism investigations. But back in the 1990s, and certainly going back to the 1950s, the Provost and Security Services were heavily involved in UFO investigations.

- Now for years, the Air Force and the Ministry of Defense denied that any UFO investigations were going on at Rudloe Manor. Then a document got released and it showed that actually, yes, UFO investigations had been done from Rudloe Manor, and the staff there had been working hand in glove with those of us in the headquarters building in London.

- [Host] Shortly before the Ministry of Defense released their UFO files in 2007, they announced that Rudloe Manor was no longer in use by the military. But if that's true, why are the grounds surrounded by chain link fences, monitored by security cameras, and even protected by guard dogs? To find the answers, in January of 2017, Ancient Astronaut theorist Giorgio Tsoukalos traveled to the protected boundaries of Rudloe Manor.

- [Giorgio] There it is.

- [Host] Joining him in his search for the truth was Nick Pope, who in the early 1990s, worked for the Ministry of Defense investigating UFOs.

- We're here! During your time at the MOD, what did you learn about this place or any type of UFO cases that may have happened around this area?

- Well, this whole area is rich in UFO sightings. Rudloe Manor was the headquarters of a unit known as Provost and Security Services.

- Mm.

- Now this is all tied up with Air Force Security and Intelligence. UFO sightings were investigated by staff based here at Rudloe Manor, but for years, we denied it. We told parliament, the media and the public that these things were of no interest, that Rudloe Manor had no involvement in this; and yet when the files were declassified, it turned out that people were right.

- Right here.

- Right here. And so this building really was at the heart of Britain's secret UFO research, and particularly the underground facilities below us. All sorts of secrets and research and investigation projects went on from this particular facility.

- [Host] While the manor house was the face of Rudloe Manor and the headquarters for Britain's UFO investigations, access to the underground facilities is found two miles away at the equally secretive installation known as the C.C.C.

- It's close to where we are, it's all part of the underground facility. So there are tunnels which start right underneath the manor house here and go to the C.C.C. No one knows exactly how many people work down there, but it's thousands. Nobody knows exactly what they do. And I worked for the government, for the Ministry of Defense for 21 years, and I don't know. So, and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to tell you.

- Of course!

- [Host] Are the UFO files withheld by the Ministry of Defense being kept at Rudloe Manor as Ancient Astronaut theorists believe? And could even greater secrets be hidden at the mysterious site known as the C.C.C.?

- Officially, it's called the Corsham Computer Center, and you can't get in there. It's absolutely off limits. Whatever's going on down there, it's big.

[tense music]

- [Host] Despite the fact that it is not open to the public, Ancient Astronaut theorist Giorgio Tsoukalos asked Nick Pope to take him to the C.C.C. for a firsthand look at the installation.

- [Giorgio] All right.

- Good luck.

- Thank you very much.

- [Host] As a former employee of the Ministry of Defense, Nick did not feel it was appropriate for him to approach the facility himself without clearance.

- I'll see you later, Nick.

- Yes.

- Take care.

[tense music]

Here we are, the C.C.C.

[tense music]

The lights are on, and just like Nick explained, it's got barbed wire, it is fenced down, impenetrable.

- [Host] According to the British Ministry of Defense, the C.C.C. is simply a data processing center for the Royal Navy. But if true, why is it so heavily guarded?

- Clearly, it's an access to what seems to be an underground system, and if the stories that Nick told me are true, then underneath our feet is a vast system of tunnels and underground facilities.

[sirens wail]

- [Host] Within minutes of Giorgio's arrival at the security gate, the crew is met by a military police unit.

- [Officer] I'm going to ask the million dollar question. What are you doing down here?

- [Giorgio] Can you tell me anything about this place?

- [Officer] This is private property. It is well signed posted as you come down the road. It's private property.

- [Host] Unfortunately, the situation ends with filming being halted.

- [Giorgio] Well, we're only trying to find out the truth.

- [Host] But why? What is it that's so top secret that Giorgio and his camera crew are not even allowed to film the entrance from public property?

- So it was exactly how you said: fortification, barbed wire fence. I had about five minutes, and then a police car showed up and said, "Well, I think it's time for you to leave."

- So I think you did exactly the right thing to get out there while you could, but you know that A, it is operational and B, it's obviously important. They send the security people out. I guarantee you, they had eyes on you from the moment you started.

- [Host] Could this seemingly innocuous building, and the underground facilities it leads to, be continuing the extra terrestrial investigations that were previously carried out at Rudloe Manor? Ancient Astronaut theorists say yes and suggest that they are not only looking into UFO reports, but mysterious phenomena that has been happening in the county of Wiltshire for thousands of years.

- I think this is it right here.

- Yes, here we are. Great.

- [Host] Author and historian Andrew Collins has lived in or near Wiltshire for most of his life and has investigated the many strange happenings associated with the area.

- How are ya?

- [Giorgio] All right?

- You good?

- [Giorgio] Yeah, you?

- [Host] Giorgio and Nick arranged to meet with him to discuss why the Ministry of Defense might have chosen this location to be the headquarters of their UFO investigations.

- You're looking at the dead center of weird activity in the whole of Great Britain.

[camera flash clicks]

We've got UFOs, we've got crop circles, we've got the most intensive amount of prehistoric sites, ancient mounds, barrows; plus we have obviously the strange activity that surrounds places like Rudloe Manor and Corsham as a whole, where we are here today.

- [Nick] Absolutely. And some of these sites, I don't think people realize, but they're older than the Egyptian pyramids.

- Absolutely. We've got here Stonehenge, and Amesbury itself. Most people think that these sites go back four thousand five hundred to five thousand years, but they in fact go back at least 10,000 years. I lived in the center of Amesbury, which is the largest stone circle complex in the whole of the world. UFOs have been seen in the vicinity of the stones there. Sometimes they've been seen to actually come into the circle and land. Other times they have manifested into strange shapes, figures, things like that. All around the country, there are certain areas where UFOs manifest more than anywhere else. They're called window areas. And I believe that the area around Stonehenge and Amesbury is exactly one of those window areas, because there are reports of UFOs and strange lights being seen here for several hundred years, and it's long been speculated that there's a connection between UFOs and what are known as ley lines.

- [Host] In 1925, amateur archeologist Alfred Watkins published "The Old Straight Track," a book in which he proposed that man's earliest monuments and megaliths were linked by a network of what he called ley lines. Some researchers claim scientific testing shows evidence that the ley lines are magnetic in nature and delineate the lines of Earth's unseen energy fields.

[dramatic music]

- I'm aware of at least one ley line that goes all the way from England through the bottom of the boot in Italy, in one straight line. And what's fascinating, that especially as it goes through Italy, all these cities, they contain the root word for star.

- We have what we call the Earth grids. These are sites, power sites, all the way around the world, which all seem to be linked by these lines of energy that seem to converge and at all of these sites, you'll find the same type of phenomena; strange lights, UFOs, mysterious happenings, prehistoric activity, sacred sites. And this is exactly what we have here in Wiltshire.

- [Host] Could the so-called ley lines be part of an invisible energy grid? And might this explain both the high number of mysterious occurrences in this area as well as the decision by the British Ministry of Defense to base the headquarters for their UFO investigations here?

- Why is the government there? What are they seeing? There are many compelling UFO sightings in Wiltshire that are jaw dropping in their level of significance. As one example in 1948, a couple was walking through the fields of Wiltshire and there, at a low altitude, comes a flying saucer. They see two people inside the ship closely enough that they could tell the people were looking right at them. And this was in the immediate aftermath of World War II. And remember now, after World War II, the British never gave back the underground city below Rudloe Manor. And it could be that there are unusual energies there, at that exact spot, where the Ministry of Defense had the center of their UFO investigating headquarters.

- [Host] Is it possible that the Ministry of Defense retained control of Rudloe Manor after World War II because they were aware that extra terrestrials have been visiting the area of Wiltshire, not just in modern times, but for thousands of years? Ancient Astronaut theorists say yes and suggest that further clues as to what is really going on in the vast underground facilities can be found by investigating an incident that has become known as Britain's Roswell.

[tense music]

London, England, May 22nd, 1955. In a report syndicated by the INS, famed American newspaper columnist Dorothy Kilgallen makes an audacious claim. "British scientists and airmen, after examining the wreckage of a mysterious flying ship, are convinced that these strange aerial objects are not optical illusions or Soviet inventions, but actually are flying saucers which originate on another planet."

- Dorothy Kilgallen was someone who had extremely good ties and links with people in the government, the intelligence community, and the military. Kilgallen heard a story that she said came directly to her from a high ranking representative of the British government. And the story was back in 55, the British government had got its hands on a crashed UFO and judging from the size of the craft and the interior of the vehicle, it appeared to be piloted by very small, humanoid-like entities. The event had actually occurred during the second World War and the crashed UFO was put on ice, so to speak. And then when the war was over and the peace was reigning again, the military then decided to pull this wrecked UFO out of the hangar and then start investigating it. Now a lot of the rumors coming out about, quote, "the real investigations" are coming from Rudloe Manor. One of the more thought provoking aspects of Rudloe Manor is this claim that it's sort of the British equivalent of Area 51.

- [Host] Interestingly, this would not be the last time allegations surfaced that a crashed UFO had been retrieved and taken to Rudloe Manor. Another much more notorious incident occurred in the 1970s and was witnessed by an entire village. Llandrillo, Wales, January 23rd, 1974. Late in the evening, this quiet rural village in the Burwyn Mountains is rocked by an enormous explosion.

[explosion booms]

14-year-old Huw Lloyd is in his home watching television when he feels the impact, and then receives call after call from his neighbors, most claiming to have seen an incredibly bright light falling from the sky and then glowing on the mountainside. Today, Huw Lloyd still works on his father's ranch in Llandrillo.

- Are you Huw?

- [Huw] Yeah.

- [Host] Ancient Astronaut theorist Giorgio Tsoukalos And Nick Pope, a former UFO investigator for the British Ministry of Defense, met up with Huw to get his take on what really happened that night.

- Can you tell us your experience?

- Well, I was home with my two sisters and my neighbor. We were basically watching television, and there was this, like a thud. And next thing, the whole place started shaking quite violently. You know, this like, earth tremor. And then we were all a bit stunned. We had never experienced anything like that before. And next thing, we went outside just to check that the cattle and animals were okay, got back in the house and the phone started ringing. It was all neighbors and things, you know, saying, "What the hell was that? Are you okay?" You'd put the phone down and another neighbor would phone.

- Your neighbors called you to ask you if you're okay. So they pretty much had similar experiences?

- Oh, yes. Yeah.

- So you are not the only one?

- No.

- And you were 14?

- Fourteen, yeah.

- Years old. How did your parents react?

- Well, they weren't even home. They were in the next village and they'd felt it there as well.

- And what time of evening was this?

- It was roughly twenty to nine.

- So, you know, some people have suggested that, well, it was nothing else but an earthquake.

- Yeah.

- Which I don't subscribe to this idea, but have you had any earthquakes around here?

- Nothing like that, no. But at the time they were trying to say that the lights people had seen were people with, what do you call them? Lamping? You know, after foxes and rabbits.

- But you saw that light and it was much, much brighter than-

- Oh, yeah, yeah.

- People lamping. I mean, it was something almost blinding.

- Well, I've never seen a light like it before and I've never seen anything like it since.

- Wow.

[Host] According to Ancient Astronaut theorists, what really happened in the Burwyn Mountains that night was the crash of an extra terrestrial spacecraft that was retrieved and taken to Rudloe Manor. And they suggest that the most compelling clues can be found by examining not the event itself, but what happened immediately after. At 9:10 PM on the night of the mysterious incident at Llandrillo, [explosion booms] approximately 30 minutes after the strange lights and violent tremors were reported, a police officer arrived at the home of eyewitness Huw Lloyd. [officer knocks]

- There was a knock on the door and there was a police officer there, and he said, "There's been a report of a plane crash." And I remember our neighbor saying, "Oh, he's quite important. He's got pips on his shoulder."

- Right, so a senior officer,

- Yeah.

- Not one of the local.

- No. 'Cause the police turned up, I just assumed there was a plane crash, you know?

[Host] A plane crash? For Nick Pope, who worked at the Ministry of Defense and has seen the file on this incident, this is a surprising new detail. The official report only mentions a meteor and nothing about a plane.

- I remember he said he was an inspector. I remember our neighbor asking him, "Where are you based?" And he said, "Barmouth," which you'd been struggling to do it in an hour and a half today. But at that time, you know, you're talking two hours plus, maybe.

- [Nick] Right. And and roughly what time did he turn up at the house?

- Twenty five minutes to 30 minutes after the incident.

- [Nick] Right, so there is no way that he could have got from Barmouth.

- No way, not in a car- in a vehicle, anyway.

[ominous music] [crickets chirp]

[Host] The officer commandeered the family's truck and drove with Huw to the crash site. Nick and Giorgio were taken on the exact same journey that was made that night.

- [Nick] How high is the mountain?

- At the very top, about 2,800 feet.

- You know, one thing that's struck me is this is a pretty difficult drive, so you've gotta be pretty determined to get a whole bunch of people up here.

- Yes, and for what purpose? Unless it's really something of importance.

- Yeah, this is not to be undertaken lightly, is it?

- No.

- An interesting thing is the fact that it was an inspector who came out.

- Yes, it was an inspector.

- I mean, that's the thing. You see, in the UK, most cops are constables and then next up from that is sergeant, and then inspector is above that; so it's actually quite a senior rank. This, to me, says that somebody somewhere was treating this as an important high profile incident that needed someone with the seniority and the clout to deal with it.

[Host] According to Huw, the police inspector directed them to stop at this spot, although he was allegedly not familiar with the area and seemed to have no reason for doing so. It was at this location that he witnessed an incredibly bright light in the distance.

- So down there?

- Yeah, more to the left there.

- Okay.

- [Huw] Just over there. There's a little clump of trees. To the left up the valley, that's where the lights were.

- [Giorgio] So not in the trees, but,

- [Huw] No.

- [Giorgio] Beyond it. In the valley.

- [Huw] In the valley.

[ominous music]

- [Giorgio] When this light appeared, did it seem to you as if it was an explosion?

- [Huw] No. This was definitely a very strong white light from the ground.

- [Nick] And how long was it shining for?

- [Huw] No more than 15 seconds.

[Host] According to Huw, the inspector wanted to get a closer look at the mysterious light, but then received a curious command from his superiors.

- He asked me, "Can you take the vehicle where the source of light is?" So we went back down that way a quarter of a mile and turned left on the track, and then this radio message came and said, "Come back at first light."

- So it sounds like it was a stand down call.

- Yes, well, that bugs me till the day because if they were looking for a crash site, why, you know, when you were half a mile away from where we wanted to go, that they were called down?

- [Nick] Yes.

- Doesn't makes sense.

[Host] Curiously, the official explanation for these events provided by the Ministry of Defense did not include either fox hunters or a plane crash, as was told to Huw that night. And the story they did provide involves an incredible coincidence.

- The story is apparently that there was an earthquake that hit the village, but at the same time, there was a bright fireball meteor breaking up in the Earth's atmosphere. [explosion booms] So not one extraordinary event, but two, at exactly the same time. Some people said, has there been a UFO incident? Has there maybe been a UFO crash? Over the years, the UFO community has become convinced that this was indeed a UFO crash; that the military launched a secret operation to secure the crash site, to recover the wreckage and maybe bodies and to take it to a secure facility. And many believe that that secure facility is Rudloe Manor.

[Host] If what Huw Lloyd and hundreds of others witnessed on that night in 1974 really was an alien craft falling from the sky, might the wreckage have been taken to Rudloe Manor for investigation? Ancient Astronaut theorists say yes and suggest that perhaps the most compelling evidence of all can be found by reexamining England's best documented UFO encounter: The Rendlesham Forest incident.

[tense music] [crickets chirp]

Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk County, England. 200 miles east of Rudloe Manor lies six square miles of woodlands that has become notorious as the site of Great Britain's most incredible UFO encounter. On December 26th, 1980, near an air base leased to the United States Air Force by the RAF, strange lights are reported on the horizon in what appears to be a possible downed aircraft. Two US servicemen are dispatched to the site. According to accounts, radios failed as they approach the targeted area and the air itself felt electrically charged as they closed in.

[tense music]

- Strange lights were seen about three to 400 meters away from an area that was called the East Gate. And the patrolling officers of the East Gate saw the lights above the forest and they thought, potentially, it was a downed aircraft or an aircraft in distress. So two of them, Sergeant Penniston and Airman John Burrows, went further into the forest.

[Host] Once at the so-called crash site, the men observed the strange triangular craft on the ground approximately three meters wide at its base.

- It appeared to be either hovering or on legs, and it had clearly come down into this small clearing and smashed some of the branches off the trees. So there was physical evidence, which was looked at afterwards. And so the men looked at this strange object.

- I noticed that there was an inscription on the side of the aircraft. I was expecting to find, I don't know, USAF, something like that. And what I find was glyphs, pictorial glyphs making no sense at all. And then I was running my hand over the side of the craft, it was very warm to touch. At this time we were getting the feeling of electricity that was just bouncing. It was much, much stronger. There was this feeling of being drawn into it or being pulled into it, like someone was holding a picture up of zeros and ones in my mind's eye.

[Host] The strange vision Sergeant Penniston had upon touching the craft has made this one of Britain's most famous UFO encounters. But Ancient Astronaut theorists suggest that even more compelling is what happened after. The following evening, further strange sightings occurred and also the night after; reported by US Air Force Colonel Charles Halt. Colonel Halt led his own search party to put an end to the confusion. But instead of finding a logical explanation, they discovered levels of radioactivity where Burrows and Penniston had previously seen the strange craft and three impact holes in the ground. They then spotted a light in a nearby field that suddenly came towards them through the trees at high speed.

- One of the people with me said, "Look there, to the north." There were four or five objects in the sky. There were elliptical and round, they changed shape. They moved at very high speed, made sharp angular turns, as though they were doing some type of a grid search. One came at high speed, stopped directly overhead, three, four, maybe 5,000 feet, and sent on a concentrated beam about eight to ten feet from us. It was about a foot in diameter. I would describe it today as probably like a laser beam. We noticed the other object in the south sent then down similar beams on Woodbridge base. Apparently these beams were falling down into or near the weapon storage area. I was really concerned then.

[spacecrafts hum] [tense music]

- I suspect it was some kind of scan to see what was inside, the ordinance inside. What we do know is Lieutenant Colonel Halt saw Colonel Williams just a few hours later, and told him that beams had been shone down into the storage bunkers. And he said, "I think the ordinance needs to be checked out."

[Host] If Colonel Halt's report is true, why were these craft emitting beams of light down into the Woodbridge base? According to some Ancient Astronaut theorists, they may have been conducting a search- not for nuclear weapons, but for one of their own craft.

- They were moving around erratically, he said, as if he was conducting some sort of grid search. And the reason he said that was that beams of light were firing down from this UFO into one of the most sensitive parts of the base, the weapons storage area. Maybe the aliens would be looking for crashed UFOs, maybe their own alien technology, to prevent us from trying to back engineer it and build our own spacecraft.

[Host] Could it be that the UFOs witnessed over the highly secure Woodbridge base were aliens searching for one of their own downed craft? Might they have considered this base the most likely place The British government would hide such wreckage, unaware of its true location in the underground facilities of Rudloe Manor? Ancient Astronaut theorists believe the truth lies within the 18 UFO files the British government has withheld from the public and that it might also exist in documents recently declassified by the CIA.

[birds singing] [wind whistling]

[Narrator] Washington DC, October, 2016. In the weeks leading up to the United States presidential election, WikiLeaks publishes over 20,000 pages of private emails belonging to John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Within these emails, it is revealed that Podesta has a strong interest in releasing the CIA's classified UFO files should Clinton become president. While his candidate lost the election, Podesta ultimately got his wish. On January 18th, 2017, in Barack Obama's last days as president, the CIA uploaded nearly a million classified UFO files to its website. The move prompted new calls for the British government to release the 18 files that they held back from their own disclosure of UFO reports that began in 2007, but still the Ministry of Defense will not release their documents. Could these files hold information about extraterrestrial activity not even known to the CIA? And do they remain hidden at Rudloe Manor?

- I think the MOD is not willing to have that honest debate with the public, that is not willing to sort of open up its files. I don't think they trust people with information. They don't want an informed populace. If you would get access to all the information the MOD holds, I think it would point to the fact that the MOD has a lot of information that we're being visited by extraterrestrial craft.

- We now know that there are at least two confirmed cases of crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft being relocated to Rudloe Manor. This includes Dorothy Kilgallen's claim that craft were crashing in World War II and were brought to Rudloe Manor, and it also includes the Berwyn Mountains incident that occurred in 1974. The Ministry of Defense vehemently denied that they were involved in UFO investigations, and yet now thanks to declassified documents, we know that they were in fact actively investigating this subject and that Rudloe Manor was at the center of it. So now that we find out, that even after they told us, they released all the documents, that there's 18 documents being held back, something tells me that when we go into those documents, we will find that all roads lead back to Rudloe Manor.

- I think it's highly likely that they know that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists. The only reason why this information has not yet been made public is because of this bizarre thought that we as a human species can't handle the truth, that we're not alone in the universe. And I think that all government agencies around the world should give the people living on this planet a little bit more credit because it just shows the greater picture and that we are part of this larger picture.

[tense music]

[Narrator] Could the remains of an extraterrestrial craft really lie hidden deep beneath the surface of Rudloe Manor? And if so, might the recent disclosure by the American CIA push the British government closer to revealing an incredible truth, proof that first contact with extraterrestrials is no longer the stuff of science fiction, but of scientific and historical fact? Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings. What if it were true? Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history? And if so, might there be evidence here on Earth hidden in the mysterious monoliths?

[epic music] [tense music]

The Washington Monument, built in the 19th century to commemorate the first president of the United States, it towers more than 555 feet above America's capital city. Its pinnacle fashioned into a distinctive pyramid shape. The monument is considered to be the tallest stone obelisk in the world.

- Obelisk is a generic phrase used for the rectangular pillars that are a little pointy at the top that you find in ancient Egypt, ancient Rome. They would have writing on them. They were used often to record battles, special events, record the entire reign of a particular king or ruler.

- And so now here in the United States, we've done a similar thing. The Washington Monument, a symbol of the United States and of the power in Washington DC. The Washington Monument is built out of blocks of stone, but then it looks identical to an Egyptian obelisk. But those obelisk are different. They are one solid stone.

[Narrator] Single standing massive stones are known as monoliths, and millions of them were used to construct monuments all across the ancient world, including locations such as Turkey, Peru, and Ethiopia. But why did ancient man begin to create these massive monolithic structures? Could there be something inherent in the quality of stone that might hold some sort of influence or power over mankind? Perhaps the answer can be found at a location 90 miles west of London in the English countryside. Stonehenge, England. Here on the Salisbury plain in the county of Wilshire stands the most sophisticated prehistoric stone circle in the world. According to radiocarbon dating, this striking arrangement of monoliths was placed on this wide plane in southern England more than 4,000 years ago. Consisting of more than 100 stone blocks, the monoliths create a larger structure known as a megalith. Stonehenge, the world's most famous megalithic structure, derives its name from the material used to construct it and also from the term henge, which refers to a circular or oval shaped bank that surrounds a central flat area.

- Stonehenge, it's just 25% of the original monument. 75% has been destroyed forever. Originally, they had 60 huge blocks that formed a perfect circle. The question is who was able to move them, and what was the purpose?

[Narrator] Although the specific origin of the site has alluded researchers for centuries, the physical construction of Stonehenge is believed to have taken place in different stages over a period of several thousands of years.

- It's now believed the very first part of Stonehenge is three great wooden post holes, which are now in the carpark, and there's blobs of paint on them. These are dated to at least 10,000 years old. The next phase of construction at Stonehenge was around 3200 to 3400 BC, where they built the great earthen henge, and there was just a couple of stones there. Then a few hundred years later, they bought in the blue stones, and these are the ones that were bought over a hundred miles away from the Prescelly Mountains in Wales. The major monoliths have the great sarsen stones. They were bought from much closer, about 20 miles away, but that some of them weigh up to 50 tons.

[intriguing music]

[Narrator] Multi-ton stones being carved from the landscape and transported distances of up to a hundred miles. Is it really possible that a prehistoric people could accomplish such an enormous and seemingly impossible task?

- The theories really range from they either use rollers and tree trunks, which is kind of unlikely when you look at some of the terrain they would've had to go through.

- There have been teams of Brits who have tried to recapitulate these things. How did they get them across the rivers between Wales and Stonehenge? How did they go up and down through valleys and over hills?

- One explanation associated with Stonehenge dates back to the Arthurian legend, and the legend says that the stones at Stonehenge were brought from Ireland by Merlin, who was King Arthur's magician.

- Merlin was said to transport the stones by levitating them and pushing them along just with his bare hands all the way across the landscape from Wales to Stonehenge.

- The great 20th century French philosopher and historian, Jean Markale, wrote over 40 books on the life of Merlin and Arthur and the Celtic traditions. And Markale was adamant that Merlin was a real person. He was also adamant that Merlin was an incredibly powerful otherworldly being who was here to teach us to move beyond the human restrictions and boundaries.

[tense music]

[Narrator] Could the legend of Merlin really be proof of contact with extra-terrestrial entities in the ancient past and that they provided advanced technology to help transport and place the monoliths? If so, why would stone be the ideal material needed to construct the site?

- Probably it was worth using as a medium if he wanted to impress the gods because it was quite likely that people saw stone as being synonymous with gods because it seemed to them to last forever.

- If they're gonna build a monument to provide a testament to how long lived their culture is, stones are the best way to go. Stones were recognized to have very spectacular properties of toughness, of hardness, and some of them other properties such as quartz crystals, which we see with a particular use in a lot of these cultures.

- The blue stones that create the outer and inner circle of Stonehenge contain quartz crystal. The properties of those stones have been found to have effects on the human body, to impart vibration and beneficial effects to the holder of those stones, to have healing properties.

- And in fact, it's often been said Stonehenge was some healing place where people came with their ailments to be cured.

[Narrator] For some researchers, further clues to Stonehenge extraterrestrial connection can be found in one of the site's most striking features, the precise position and alignment of each stone that makes up the megalith.

- Seen from the air, Stonehenge is actually a replica of our solar system. All those concentric circles, they all represent one planet in our solar system. How did they know this? And according to the ancient texts and the ancient traditions, this knowledge was given to our ancestors by none other than extraterrestrials, by the gods.

[enchanting music]

- Some people think Stonehenge was some sort of calendar marker so that ancient cultures could know when was the right time to plant. Other people think that it actually was a celestial calendar that was designed to show when we would pass through certain very, very intense meteor streams.

- We know that through the position of different monoliths, they were able to watch the summer solstice, the winter solstice, even the movement of some star systems.

- So who was it then who needed these astronomical calculations? Would it be the extraterrestrials or rather the priestly groups that the extraterrestrials were cultivating here on Earth and training them to monitor the stars and the heavens and the moon and the eclipses?

[Narrator] Is it really possible that other worldly beings designed Stonehenge so ancient men could gather data about the stars? If so, why, and what was the ultimate purpose behind obtaining the celestial knowledge? Ancient astronaut theorists believe further clues can be found by traveling deeper into the English countryside to another monolithic site that is 16 times than Stonehenge and even more mysterious. Southwest England. Here, just 17 miles north of Stonehenge is Avebury, the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. Originally constructed with hundreds of monoliths, some experts believe this immense site was once a major center of religious ritual in Great Britain.

- Avebury is probably the most significant and most interesting megalithic site in Great Britain, partly because it's the largest.

- And just imagine the magnitude of what we're dealing with here. There's now been a whole village built inside of it because it's so large. The stones are huge. They're probably between 20 and 50 tons each. They're rough hewn stones in a great circle. And there were even two stone circles within Avebury itself, and these were roughly the same size of Stonehenge each.

- Old antiquarians once said that Stonehenge was like a parish church compared to Avebury, which was like a great cathedral.

- Approaching Avebury from at least two different directions were avenues of stones that led off into the local landscape. Plus on top of that, there were other monuments locally as well. Silbury Hill, the largest manmade mound in Europe and the West Kennett Long Barrow, which was a burial chamber dating back perhaps 6,000 years.

[Narrator] Encompassing more than 28 acres, mainstream historians believe Avebury was constructed from 2850 BC to 2200 BC by Neolithic Britains and like Stonehenge was used during sacred rituals.

- They were celebrating the different cycles of the years, the changing of the seasons. It seemed as if this was necessary within their society to show that there was some kind of rhythm and cycle within nature that was not only understood, but could be controlled in some manner.

[lightning thundering]

- Avebury was considered to be a meeting point. It's significant at the solstices at the mid-summer and the mid-winter, but exactly what took place there and exactly what the people who built it believe we don't know.

[Narrator] According to some researchers, there may be a profound purpose for this circular alignment of stones at Avebury, one perhaps connecting the monoliths to celestial beings that visited the site thousands of years ago.

- The area around Avebury has always been associated with kind of magic mystery. There's been lots of orbs seen there, UFOs. There's been ghost sightings. There's been hundreds of crop circles around the area. So it's got this strange mystical feeling about it.

- The mythologies in conjunction with Avebury always point to the sky to some celestial beings, the shining ones, as they were called, descending from the sky and educating people in various disciplines, agriculture, mathematics, geometry, engineering.

- In many cases with Avebury and other giant megaliths, it's as if they're set up by some ancient people, perhaps an extraterrestrial race, who essentially went out and surveyed these wilderness lands. And as part of their surveying, they left what we would call gigantic survey markers, and then at certain places, for unknown reasons, they made stone circles like Avebury.

- It is pretty clear that in Avebury you have this fenced off environment whereby probably only certain people were able to come because the stones somehow embodied the deities. Maybe they thought that they could communicate with the deities through these monolithic stones.

[Narrator] Could Avebury's location and building materials really have been chosen in order to enable communication with extraterrestrials? And if so, might this explain why man has been drawn to stone structures throughout the world since ancient times? Perhaps the answers can be found at another mysterious city, one that was built on top of a giant rock. Sigiriya, Sri Lanka. Known as Lion's Rock, this natural monolith towers 600 feet over the surrounding landscape.

- It was discovered in 1831 by a British army officer named Jonathan Forbes. What he found there was a natural monolith, a giant cliff rock, and stairs had been cut into it, and then a palace had been built on top, and it's extremely remote area and high up vertical cliffs.

- Sigiriya was certainly a Buddhist monastery from the first millennium BC, and then around 500 AD, it actually became fortress and a palace for a local king. There are gardens and palaces on the very top of the rock. Then there's various caves, and within these caves are different murals.

[Narrator] These fresco paintings feature portraits of women that some researchers believe represent ladies of the king's court. While others suggest the women are religious figures. But according to ancient astronaut theorists, the images reveal more evidence of extraterrestrial contact in the distant past.

- We find some of the most amazing paintings of people emerging out of the clouds, and they're actually floating in midair. And you have to wonder, what did our ancestors try to depict here? According to the local myths and legends, Sigiriya was created with the help of the gods who descended from the sky. What a beautiful poetic way to depict something that they might have witnessed. It was a complete misunderstanding of a visitation by technologically advanced space travelers.

- We see so often how these enigmatic rocks are worshiped by our ancestors. They somehow are gateways between our world and the world of the gods. And so in Sigiriya, we're seeing this once again confirmed.

- The very concept of a monolith can be very important and very sacred to a people. Also, the concept of a mountain reaching to heaven. It makes me think of the celestial or the cosmic Mount Meru.

- Mount Meru is a name used in Buddhist cultures to describe a cosmic mountain. It's actually described in ancient literature as a mass golden light, like a golden blazing fire in the shape of a mountain. It's at the center of the universe, and it exists at many levels from there, not in a physical sense, but in an energy sense. The gods live on the slopes of it. They all have palaces and cities.

- Mount Meru was a place of the gods. It was seen as the place of connection, a place of communication with the gods themself. It's the point of access between this world and heaven.

- Sigiriya is basically the small scale replica of Mount Meru. Our ancestors took to this rock and began to build on top of that. It is saying, this is the rock we have in this specific place, so we're going to use it in order to establish an uplink and a downlink to the gods in the sky.

[Narrator] Is it possible that Sigiriya was built in order to honor and connect with extraterrestrials as ancient astronaut theorists believe? If so, might other monoliths reveal more evidence of these ancient space visitations? Perhaps the ultimate proof can be found carved in stones buried half a world away.

[tense music]

Easter Island, isolated in the Pacific Ocean, more than 2000 miles west of Chile. This tiny land mass is home to nearly 900 monolithic stone statues.

- On Easter Island, we have these huge heads and torsos that are carved out the volcanic rock. They're called the Moai. Some of them that have been erected are 30 feet or so tall, weighing up to 75 tons.

- You don't realize that they're really buried right up to their chest and that these statues are two, three times as large as we can see because most of them is below ground.

- And they look inward toward the center of the island. They also seem to look up toward the skies. So I think there's a deeper significance, and it has to do with the heavens. It has to do with things that were happening in the sky that were very important to the people and that they are recording in these Moai and pointing to look upward. There is something going on there.

[Narrator] According to archeologists, the native Polynesian inhabitants of Easter Island, known as the Rapa Nui people, constructed the Moai between the 12th and 18th centuries AD to honor their ancestors. But recent archeological excavations have revealed that the figures were naturally buried over thousands of years.

- It seemed that certain guests came, build them, and probably those heads do represent their original builders.

[Narrator] If the Moai are older than previously recognized, who really built them and why? Considering the Rapa Nui are thought to have arrived on Easter Island no earlier than 300 AD, is it possible that celestial beings visited here thousands of years before? Ancient astronaut theorists believe these monolithic figures provide clues that the Rapa Nui ancestors may have actually been space travelers.

[tense music]

- You cannot exclude that they are representation of celestial ancestors. We have all these statues, and the faces of the status do not look like the Easter Islanders. The status they created, they look like robots, with long narrow noses, with narrow lips. They have nothing which compares the Easter Island people. So what do they represent?

- They are elongated heads. There are also these cone heads that we see at Nazca and Egypt and other areas of the world. Who are these people?

- One possible explanation for why these heads of the Easter Island stone figures face the heavens it's as if they were pointing a finger to their place of origin, but not because they forgot where they came from, but so the humans could remember.

[Narrator] Is it possible the Moai heads represent extraterrestrial beings nodding toward their other worldly origin? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes and point to similar stone figures thousands of miles away in Southeast Asia as proof.

[enchanting music]

Bada Valley, Indonesia. Hidden in the isolated mountains of the island of Sulawesi, more than 20 monoliths are scattered in the fields of this farming region. Mainstream historians date the statues to the first millennium BC, although the actual date of their creation has not been determined.

- Much of the valley has rice terraces, which are familiar throughout Indonesia and Southeast Asia. But then in the middle of these rice patties are these statues, and they're just sitting there. And when you look at it, you're baffled. The stones are coming from these deep river valleys that are some miles away where there are giant boulders weighing a hundred tons. But then to haul those giant boulders up into the valley and then erect it, then carve it into this giant 15-foot statue. And you don't know why they would do it or how.

[Narrator] But how is it that monoliths halfway around the world can bear such a close resemblance to each other? Some researchers believe the inspiration came from the same celestial visitors.

- You get similar style carvings of these very strange sort of alien looking faces, which are very symmetrical, very beautifully carved. They have intricate kind of craftsmanship built into them.

- They wanted to make them resemble what in my opinion was a depiction of the ancestors, the gods, which somehow these stones were allowing to commemorate or communicate with these entities. They're basically telling us this is a memorial to our gods, the deities who was once present and who have left since.

[Narrator] Is it possible as ancient astronaut theorists suggest that these monoliths were created by mankind to pay homage to actual other worldly beings who visited Earth in the distant past? And if so, might monoliths throughout the world have an even more profound connection to each other?

[enchanting music]

Palmar Sur, Costa Rica. While clearing the jungles in the 1930s, crews discover hundreds of monolithic stone spheres.

- Many of them are huge. I mean, they're 10 feet in diameter. They're gigantically huge. Others are much smaller, the size of a basketball or of a car tire or something like that.

[Narrator] To date, over 300 stone spheres have been found at archeological sites across the region. And Las Bolas, as they are called, are some of the most precise stone carvings in the ancient world. Some experts believe these mysterious stone balls could be 96% completely spherical.

- A perfectly spherical round ball is hard to make. And in fact, where they're found is a primitive area. So the stone balls that we see at Costa Rica would've been very, very hard to make by just bashing them out with a rock.

- We can only imagine how they may have been able to make such perfect spheres. These spheres are carved out granites and granite diorites. These are very hard igneous rocks difficult to work.

- Granodiorite is one of the hardest natural materials. It never comes free in nature in a shape of the sphere. So obviously somebody shaped them. Today, we would need to use diamond tools and laser to shape the spheres.

- It almost seems like they were some kind of megalithic carving school who could create the most perfect sphere. Some of them are still hidden within the jungles. So what were they doing there? I mean, why were they constructed?

- According to the legends of Costa Rica, those stone spheres were used as cannonballs by the god of thunder to drive away the god of wind and hurricanes. Now, these are all wonderful ideas of a story, but as we all know, every story has a core of truth. And the question is, what is that core?

[Narrator] Are the legends of God's battling storms really a description of ancient astronaut machinery at work as some researchers suggest? And if so, might the discovery of stone spheres reveal the ultimate purpose for monoliths? Bosnia, Herzegovina, 2004. A team of archeologists discovers stone spheres in forests and creek beds near the town of Banja Luka.

- If you go into that area, it's a ravine in a mountainside that's been cut by a stream. And in it are all of these stone balls, very similar to the ones in Costa Rica. They're half buried in this mountainside and some are exposed. It is a tourist area, and in fact, Bosnia has four or five areas where these stone balls can be seen.

- The biggest source of Bosnian stone spheres is the central Bosnian town of Zavidovici. We took samples from four different stone spheres and samples of natural stone that we found nearby, and then we did chemical analysis. But the conclusion was those stone spheres were made. From the liquid state, they would melt them. They were adding certain additives to get the better properties of material, and then when they got dry in certain molds, they were getting a perfect shape of the sphere.

[Narrator] Like most other monoliths researchers believe the spheres were likely used for ceremonial rituals. But is it possible that these monoliths, like the stone spheres in Costa Rica, helped create a connection to celestial beings as ancient astronaut theorists contend?

- Another theory of the stone balls is that they were somehow used as star maps, and that they were rolled around, and they would show where stars were and their relationship to other areas, very much like some extraterrestrial map.

- It's also said that these stone balls were there to concentrate thought, that they were somehow physical devices, that somehow by touching or working with these stones, we were able to establish a bridge to another dimension. And so we might actually be looking at a civilization who realized that the places where these stones spheres were located were somehow power spots, that somehow there was some form of energy whereby if we were able to concentrate, we would indeed be transported to a world where we could communicate with the gods. And that might be why these spheres are located in the places they are.

[Narrator] Could it really be that these round monoliths were placed throughout the world to create a greater cosmic energy grid as some researchers believe? If so, might stone spheres and other monoliths be celestial travel tools placed in power spots, portals for star travelers visiting Earth? And is it possible these advanced beings have left behind more evidence, perhaps not on Earth, but approximately 140 million miles away?

[stirring music]

[Narrator] 1998, the Mars Global Surveyor snaps photos of what appears to be a monolith on Phobos, one of the two moons that orbit the planet Mars.

- On the moon of Mars, Phobos, there's a very, very interesting obelisk or monolith there. They call it the Phobos monolith. Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, had made a really big deal out of this. And basically claimed that it was artificial, and when we got there and studied it, it would change everything in terms of how we looked at our history.

[Narrator] Is it really possible there is an obelisk on a moon of Mars, one that is not a natural occurrence, but was in fact put there by other worldly beings? If so, might they have created similar structures on other planets and celestial bodies, perhaps even earth as some researchers suggest?

- Egypt has a number of obelisks in it, and those obelisks are four or 5,000 years old. [stirring music] And the obelisks in Ethiopia may be that old too. Obelisks, they're a piece of crystalline granite. And within the granite is quartz crystal. So obelisks themselves are, in a sense, a crystal tower with all of the properties that quartz crystal brings to technology. It's an antenna, and any antenna can receive a broadcast and it can give a broadcast. And then we have these ancient obelisks that were, at one point, apparently all around the world. It would seem that there was a worldwide system, similar to a wireless broadcasting system. These obelisks would broadcast power into the atmosphere. [lightning buzzing] [stirring music] And remote locations around the world could pick up that power, much like a radio today or a television set, a satellite phone, or a computer. This seems to be the system that was set up by extraterrestrials thousands of years ago on this planet. And incredibly, they didn't just do it on planet earth. So we may well find that when we go to Mars, we'll find obelisks there. [stirring music]

[Narrator] Is it really possible, as some researchers believe, that monoliths on earth have a cosmic connection to the obelisk on Phobos? And that at one time, many of the monolithic sites seen around the world were part of an advanced system that would help to receive and distribute energy?

- You have to realize that there is more than just the stones involved. There's a kind of energy field around them, and it works through the stones by way of their placement. When put in a circle or in rows or standing singly, they would ground celestial energy, transmit it and downloaded into the local landscape. It was meant to be a kind of passive, continuous input to the earth from the celestial and galactic realms.

- Places like Easter Island or remote jungles or a remote mountain area, as long as you're able to dial in to that energy pattern and to the energy being put out, you would have power.

- These sort of tall standing stones all around the world could easily have been part of some kind of energy grid around the planet. Connecting up all these ancient cultures, connecting up the energies of the earth, all in different parts of the world. Somehow harnessing cosmic energy with earth energy, and used for various different purposes we're only just starting to understand today.

[stirring music]

- This sort of megalithic landscape was designed to create higher nodes of awareness in multiple places. Their placement was specific to take advantage of implicit energy aspects and gradients in the landscape.

- The location of the stones is very important. For example, Stonehenge, we now know that those stones were positioned above the underground water flows. The water moves, generates energy, stones receive the energy, and slowly release it. The ancient people, they would be around those monoliths, keeping their hands on the stones, receiving the energy.

- And if the stones were arranged in a pattern, it would create a kind of geometry of consciousness that would have uplifting effects on people who were in proximity to them.

- Throughout the world, whether they are stones spheres in Bosnia or megalithic monuments in Avebury, what we're seeing is that our ancestors are saying that these stones are able to hold energy. The soul, the spirit of our ancestors, of the gods. And so what we see throughout the world is these monoliths because throughout the world, we are trying to establish this link between us, mankind, and the world of the gods.

[Narrator] Monoliths, interconnected by design, tapping into the energy of the earth. And serving as a beacon to link with celestial beings. Is it really possible that ancient monoliths hold an advanced, perhaps extraterrestrial power, we have yet to realize? And if so, just what will happen when we unlock the mystery of the monoliths?

[gentle music] [stirring music] [upbeat stirring music]

- When you're looking up at these massive, massive monuments, Giza and elsewhere, you get the inner sense that humans did not create these incredible structures.

- We know for a fact that there is some type of geodetic connected world energy grid from all these sites, and they were sharing some type of subtle energy. Was this possibly because at one time, there were extraterrestrials here interacting with man?

- There are engineering feats that our ancestors accomplished that today, we would have great difficulties replicating them. And in doing so, we would use the most gigantic and the most sophisticated of machines, high tech.

- But these ancient people are doing things that modern construction crews cannot do even today.

[stirring music]

- There are suggestions that we can read about in ancient texts that speak of these magical incantations that were pointed at the stone block. And then all of a sudden the stone, for example, levitated and things like this. So were our ancestors capable, for example, of levitating stone blocks? Of course, our ancestors built any and all of the ancient mega structures. But what I'm suggesting is that the engineering knowledge was given to our ancestors by an advanced space fairing race.

[stirring music]

[Narrator] Ancient stone fingers reaching for the sky and stretching out over several miles.

- People who are basically one step removed from cavemen were pouring these giant stones, some of them weighing 100, 200 tons, even up to 350 tons.

[Narrator] A complex of stone structures dating back more than 10,000 years.

- It just stands there asking us to go figure, how was this done? What's the background to this?

- Were they meant to be seen by people in the sky? And who could have been flying at that time, other than extraterrestrials?

[Narrator] And the remains of an Incan temple, reported to have other worldly origins.

- They wanted that in the far future, question comes up, have you been visited by out of space?

[pleasant music]

[Narrator] Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings. What if it were true? Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history? And if so, is there an extraterrestrial explanation for the earth's most mysterious unexplained structures?

[pleasant music] [stirring music]

Located more than 500 miles away from the crowded streets of Istanbul is Sanliurfa in southeastern Turkey. [gentle stirring music] There in 1994, on a dusty hilltop, a local shepherd noticed the tip of a stone sticking out of his field. He began to dig, eventually unearthing a 19 foot pillar. Its edges were precise. And rising from its center was a relief carving of a strange animal. Upon closer examination, it appeared that the finely chiseled stone had been fashioned by talented stonemasons working with advanced tools. When word of the discovery reached the scientific community, one fact became obvious, a Kurdish shepherd had stumbled upon what is perhaps the most astonishing archeological discovery in modern times. a site known as Gobekli Tepe. Test results have supported the idea that Gobekli Tepe is nearly 12,000 years old. Almost 7,000 years older than Mesopotamia's fertile crescent, long heralded as the cradle of civilization.

- In Gobekli Tepe, the oldest advanced site now on our planet, we know of no other site that is this advanced. [stirring music] And it has now doubled the history of humanity.

- And right there is this gigantic site with huge megalithic circular structures. It just stands there, a mystery asking us to go figure, how was this done? What's the background to this? We don't know who made them. They just come out of the darkness of the

last ice age where we know nothing, and enter the stage of history already fully formed. And to my mind, this is indicative of a major forgotten episode in human history.

A lot of myths, a lot of legends suggest that there were past civilizations of astounding sophistication at incredibly early periods. I think we have little glimmers, little suggestions around the world that there was something going on much higher, much more sophisticated, at a much earlier period of time.

To put things into perspective, Gobekli Tepe is 12,000 years old. That is several thousand years earlier in age than Stonehenge and the great pyramid. And indeed, according to biblical tradition, the world really began in 4,000 B.C. And yet, that is 8,000 years later then the foundation of Gobekli Tepe.

[gentle music]

So clearly, we have here something that contradicts our normal understanding of the evolution of civilization.

[Narrator] Curiously, after 13 years of digging, archeologists investigating the ancient site have failed to recover a single stone cutting tool. The mystery of Gobekli Tepe is further compounded by the ancient stone carvings found throughout the site. They depict creatures like wild boars and geese.

[gentle music]

We see various types of creatures, different animals, birds, insects. And even abstract human forms that seem to come together to create this very weird menagerie, which has totally baffled the archeologists who have uncovered this site.

[Narrator] Located less than 350 miles from Mount Ararat, the site many biblical scholars believe to be the resting place of Noah's Ark, the animal carvings of Gobekli Tepe suggest a time in the region's history when the indigenous animal population may have been of a totally different origin. But do these carvings actually provide historical proof of the great flood that was described in the Bible?

Archeologists are aware that there are more than 2,000 myths of a great flood which destroyed an earlier civilization.

[gentle music]

[water gushing]

[Narrator] Some researchers theorize that the events of a cataclysmic flood, and a story similar to that told of Noah's Ark, was recorded on the stone pillars of Gobekli Tepe. If true, that would push the date of the great flood back to the end of the last ice age, far earlier than the biblical period.

There is evidence that this may have ended quite catastrophically. There was a lot of things happening, a lot of migrations, possibly waters rising up very quickly. A lot of rapid changes in lifestyles.

[gentle music]

[Narrator] But another, perhaps even more profound, question remains, who built Gobekli Tepe? For what purpose? And how did such an ancient site remain in nearly pristine condition for more than 10,000 years?

In the case of Gobekli Tepe, we find that the site was carefully placed underneath sand. This site was buried. It appears as if somehow the usage of Gobekli Tepe was no longer there and that people moved on, but had such a reverence to this important site that rather than destroy it, they put it to peace by burying it.

[Narrator] But why would the area's inhabitants carefully bury their monuments under 20 feet of sand? Is it possible that Gobekli Tempe was deliberately buried in order to protect it from invaders? Or might the intention have been to preserve it, in hope someday to return?

I do see a similarity across the globe from megalithic sites where these past cultures explain that they were built by the gods. But were they really gods? Or could they have been extraterrestrials?

[stirring music]

[Narrator] Perhaps the answers can be found by examining another ancient site, one located half a world away in the mountains of Peru. Peru, home of the world's longest mountain range, the Andes, the spine of South America. Here in a high river valley among peaks towering over 20,000 feet, the Inca established their capital city of Cuzco, which thrived for over 300 years until Spanish conquistadors arrived in the 16th century. Above Cuzco, at an elevation of more than 12,000 feet, looms the ancient fortress of Sacsayhuaman, whose immense stone walls may hold secrets which predate the Inca themselves.

My feeling, very strong feeling, is that we are looking at a two phase construction site in many of the so-called Inca stone monuments. And that the Inca structures sit on top of much more ancient rock cut structures and megalithic structures, that we just don't know who built them. And this actually fits with the Inca's own view.

[stirring music]

[Narrator] Like many Inca sites, Sacsayhuaman features astonishing stonework, but not all of it credited to the Inca.

[gentle music]

According to conventional archeology, the Killke culture built the older sections of the site approximately 1,000 years ago. But the Inca themselves believed the site was constructed by an earlier unnamed race of people, led by a powerful god who descended from the skies.

[stirring music]

We see various types of creatures, different animals, birds, insects. And even abstract human forms that seem to come together to create this very weird menagerie, which has totally baffled the archeologists who have uncovered this site.

[Narrator] Located less than 350 miles from Mount Ararat, the site many biblical scholars believe to be the resting place of Noah's Ark, the animal carvings of Gobekli Tepe suggest a time in the region's history when the indigenous animal population may have been of a totally different origin. But do these carvings actually provide historical proof of the great flood that was described in the Bible?

Archeologists are aware that there are more than 2,000 myths of a great flood which destroyed an earlier civilization.

[gentle music]

[water gushing]

[Narrator] Some researchers theorize that the events of a cataclysmic flood, and a story similar to that told of Noah's Ark, was recorded on the stone pillars of Gobekli Tepe. If true, that would push the date of the great flood back to the end of the last ice age, far earlier than the biblical period.

There is evidence that this may have ended quite catastrophically. There was a lot of things happening, a lot of migrations, possibly waters rising up very quickly. A lot of rapid changes in lifestyles.

[gentle music]

[Narrator] But another, perhaps even more profound, question remains, who built Gobekli Tepe? For what purpose? And how did such an ancient site remain in nearly pristine condition for more than 10,000 years?

In the case of Gobekli Tepe, we find that the site was carefully placed underneath sand. This site was buried. It appears as if somehow the usage of Gobekli Tepe was no longer there and that people moved on, but had such a reverence to this important site that rather than destroy it, they put it to peace by burying it.

[Narrator] But why would the area's inhabitants carefully bury their monuments under 20 feet of sand? Is it possible that Gobekli Tempe was deliberately buried in order to protect it from invaders? Or might the intention have been to preserve it, in hope someday to return?

I do see a similarity across the globe from megalithic sites where these past cultures explain that they were built by the gods. But were they really gods? Or could they have been extraterrestrials?

[stirring music]

[Narrator] Perhaps the answers can be found by examining another ancient site, one located half a world away in the mountains of Peru. Peru, home of the world's longest mountain range, the Andes, the spine of South America. Here in a high river valley among peaks towering over 20,000 feet, the Inca established their capital city of Cuzco, which thrived for over 300 years until Spanish conquistadors arrived in the 16th century. Above Cuzco, at an elevation of more than 12,000 feet, looms the ancient fortress of Sacsayhuaman, whose immense stone walls may hold secrets which predate the Inca themselves.

My feeling, very strong feeling, is that we are looking at a two phase construction site in many of the so-called Inca stone monuments. And that the Inca structures sit on top of much more ancient rock cut structures and megalithic structures, that we just don't know who built them. And this actually fits with the Inca's own view.

[stirring music]

[Narrator] Like many Inca sites, Sacsayhuaman features astonishing stonework, but not all of it credited to the Inca.

[gentle music]

According to conventional archeology, the Killke culture built the older sections of the site approximately 1,000 years ago. But the Inca themselves believed the site was constructed by an earlier unnamed race of people, led by a powerful god who descended from the skies.

[stirring music]

Throughout time there has been witness to a god named Viracocha that visited the South American people and blessed them and gave them all types of technology. And some of his physical characteristics make him stand out from the indigenous population because he was a very tall, pale skinned, white-haired being.

[Narrator] But did this god Viracocha actually exist? Could he have been, as ancient astronaut theorists suggest, a visitor from an alien world? If so, it might help to explain just how the ancient site was constructed.

[gentle music]

This rock weighs about 20 tons. This is minuscule compared to many of the rocks at Sacsayhuaman. Today we have heavy machinery to move such stones, but in the ancient times, especially the Inca, they would've used massive human workforces working for massive amounts of time. A rule of thumb is it takes about 10 to 20 men to move a one ton rock. So when you're talking hundreds of tons, you're talking thousands of men.

What we see is a culture who have got the technology to quarry giant blocks of stone, move them to the site where they want to build. And then to stack and cut and articulate these massive blocks into, in some cases, almost indestructible structure.

Talk about granite, you're talking about a composition of feldspar, mica, and quartz. So you'd need diamond to actually braid it or cut it. We would use diamond today to cut granite. Those are the kind of discoveries that lead one to question whether they were really using the tools in the ancient toolbox, or whether there was something else at work.

[stirring music]

[Narrator] Shaman Jorge Delgado has spent most of his life studying the mysterious structures of Peru, many built prior to the rise of the Inca empire.

It's amazing, all the weight of the stones. You know, it's difficult definitely for any human to move, even in groups. And the other aspect is how it's put together. In some stones, we will see, still now there is like some marks that it seems that it was dissolved.

The walls are put together with blocks of stone weighing 50 or 100 tons, cut and shaped like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle so that they lock together so tightly that you can't even get a sheet of paper between them.

There are signs in many of these stones that show very large amounts of thermal heat have been applied to mold the stones in such a way that they fit perfectly. And so, it really does raise a lot of questions.

If you look at the style the Sacsayhuaman wall was built, the blocks look as if they've been molded like putty. If you can mold stone into place, then all of a sudden, as crazy as this sounds, it makes more sense because there is no mortar that has been used.

[stirring music]

[Narrator] According to local legend, a bird was responsible for the seamless construction. Legends say the winged creature carried a powerful chemical in its beak, a substance capable of melting stone.

Sacsayhuaman means the head of the falcon, falcon's head. But maybe it was some falcons or maybe some bird people who could connect with the place.

[gentle music]

[Narrator] But is it possible, as ancient astronaut theorists suggest, that the mythical bird might actually have been a spacecraft piloted by alien visitors known to the locals as Space Brothers?

I believe that it's a combination of the Space Brothers' technology with other kind of possibilities. Nowadays we know different kind of tools. We didn't have before these kind of tools, or maybe we had more sophisticated. So the thing is that this place, Sacsayhuaman, it continues as a mystery.

So looking at all these sites with these perfectly stacked stones, we're looking at a type of technology that's not used anywhere else on earth. I don't discount human ingenuity, but that type of engineering that we still can't duplicate today must raise a flag for further consideration. It's almost extraterrestrial in a sense. Someone had to have taught them these techniques.

[stirring music]

[Narrator] But whether the process of forming the large megalithic stones involved the use of thermal energy or a mysterious chemical, one thing is certain. The ancient builders used the technique on a vast scale, but why? What was the intended purpose of creating such intricately built stone structures?

[pleasant music]

So we can't really give an answer as to what they were being used for other than, we know that the extraterrestrials more than likely are the source of what they call gods. How did they get here? More than likely, in some type of craft. And very possibly, they could have been using these large megaliths as platforms to land on.

[Narrator] But if Sacsayhuaman was in fact constructed by alien visitors, might there be additional evidence of their time on earth at other ancient sites around the world? Perhaps there is. And the path to that evidence is clearly marked in stones.

[waves crashing]

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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.

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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?

Modern archeologists would say that people who were one step removed from cavemen were quarrying these giant stones, some of them weighing 100, 200 tons, even up to 350 tons. And then somehow moving them into place.

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When you first look at the stones here at Carnac, they seem to be in haphazard shapes. But on closer examination, we can see that most of the stones have been cut on one side or another. 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 have 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.

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.

There are certain spots around the world which have traditionally been sacred, hallowed, vortexes, energy, it feels different there.

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The ancient stone monuments were built to harness that force and that potential, to create a funnel-like vortex.

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.

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[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?

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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.

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And that is one of only three things that you can see from outer space. It's Nazca, the Great wall of China, and Carnac.

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Were they meant to be seen by people in the sky? And who could have 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.

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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?

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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?

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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.

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[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? And where did they come from? Perhaps a recently discovered archeological site in Armenia will provide the answer.

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The Syunik province, southern Armenia. Approximately 140 miles southeast of the nation's capital, Yerevan, lies the city of Sisian. Nearby sits a high plateau where hundreds of ancient stones, some weighing more than 50 tons, stretch over a third of a mile. This is Carahunge, also known as the Armenian Stonehenge.

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Estimated to be approximately 7,500 years old, Carahunge predates the British Stonehenge by more than 4,500 years. The site is made of 203 slabs of basalt. At the structure's center stands the stone's circle or henge.

When most people hear of stone henges, they think of the Stonehenge in England. But there are hundreds of these henges or stone circles scattered all across Europe.

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What they were and how they were used is still a mystery.

Mainstream archeology still doesn't agree on who lived there, or who the builders were of that site. What we do know though is that the entire site is definitely a part of some type of an astronomical model.

[Narrator] But how could this simple circular array of stones have given early man information about the stars? Is it possible that Carahunge might be the world's oldest observatory? In September of 2010, England's Oxford University sent an expedition to investigate.

What makes this exceptional megalithic monument unique are the small holes which have been brought in to the rock at different angles. There are 85 stones with holes. They're like telescopes.

[insects chirping]

What we see with these holes is that they're pointed at different alignments to positions on the horizon or into the night sky. What they're pointing at is still a mystery to us.

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But we can say with certainty from the archeological evidence, that they were some sort of way to connect man and his life on earth to the heavens above. And this would be the first time that we can say that people were systematically trying to understand their place in the solar system.

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This site is also called the Zorats Karer, which means the stones of the powerful. And what has been determined is that the outline of these stones actually does correspond to the constellation known as Cygnus, or the swan, which in certain cultures is also referred to as the vulture.

Cygnus has always been seen among cultures around the world for many, many thousands of years as a point of entry and exit into the sky world. This belief in a power in the stars, the idea that we come from the stars, and actually return there in death.

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[Narrator] The early Greeks, Chinese, and others also believed that Cygnus had a special power or unique significance. But why, why would so many ancient cultures around the world have similar myths about the same constellation?

The only reason why I would do this, if I were on a foreign planet, is to give a message to future generations to say, "Hey, nudge, nudge, this is where we came from."

[Narrator] Although today, it is no longer possible to see Cygnus through the notches of Carahunge, many theories exist as to why the position of the constellation has changed so drastically.

This site dates back to antiquity, where the earth's axis was in a different position. And you had the constellation visible in the sky at that time because of the fact that the earth was on a different tilt of its axis entirely.

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[Narrator] Mainstream scientists have calculated that the earth's axis slowly changes or wobbles over a 26,000 year period. But there are other researchers who believe these shifts happen more suddenly and dramatically.

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They claim that when these events occur, they cause major climate changes, flooding of biblical proportion.

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And the widespread destruction of life.

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But if these rapid shifts did occur, might Carahunge have been designed to provide something of a warning?

It's possible that the Armenian Stonehenge was one of the initial sites where ETs came to visit. And if there had been some sort of shift on the Earth's axis before, if there were periodic cataclysms, then maybe there is a time cycle in which those cataclysms happen. And maybe these ancients were very concerned about watching the astronomical alignments, because they wanted to make sure that this wasn't going to happen again.

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[Narrator] But could alien visitors from other worlds have come to this spot even before Carahunge was built? Perhaps petroglyphs in the area, much older than the standing stones, offer even more clues.

[Hugh] There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of images of humanoid figures on these sites. Some of them are quite distorted and difficult to understand and interpret.

The Armenian Stonehenge also has some interesting carved wall reliefs that show humanoid-looking beings. Now, many people have speculated that these could be possibly extraterrestrial. We look at the very bulbous-shaped heads, slanted eyes, very similar to what we see in a modern day gray alien.

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Look at the eyes, look at the shape of the head. What's interesting in this carving right here, those extraterrestrials are holding some type of a disc. You've got this sphere that's sort of just floating there in midair. Is it possible that these here represent flying discs? And the answer is yes because, again, this is a human rendering of something that they witnessed a long time ago. And it had to have been compelling enough for them to carve this into stone.

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[Narrator] Could these ancient stone carvings actually be primitive portraits of visitors from the sky? Did ancient astronauts really use Carahunge as some sort of landing site or early portal? If so, what secrets did they leave behind? And could they still be helping to create stone monoliths, even in our own time?

Homestead, Florida, 30 miles south of Miami. This former agricultural town is home to one of the most mysterious structures in North America, a stone garden made of sculpted blocks of ancient coral, some weighing 30 tons. It's called the Coral Castle.

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Spread over several acres, the complex formations and intricate designs of the stone walls and sculptures marvel tourists. But unlike other great structures around the world, this site is not ancient.

Coral castle in Florida is often said to be the only modern megalithic structure ever built.

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[Narrator] In 1923, Ed Leedskalnin, a Latvian immigrant, began building what he originally called Rock Gate Park. But believe it or not, Leedskalnin insisted that he was not using modern machinery to build the impressive structure. He also claimed that he was working alone.

Well, Ed was a hermit and Ed was a loner, and he was a foreigner, and he was a recluse and a scientist.

He was in love with a woman and he wanted to build this facility in memory of her. And he waited for her to come from Europe, and he waited and he waited, and she never did. But the big question is, is how did this frail little man move these thousands of pounds of block by himself?

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[Narrator] Barely over five feet tall and weighing just 100 pounds, Leedskalnin is said to have carved, moved, and hoisted huge multi-ton stones using only a makeshift tripod.

He has a tripod, three pieces of Florida pine, and he is got some chains. And he's now gonna lift 30 tons, 10 tons of rock. It can't be done, no one could do that.

He would work at night, he wouldn't let anybody watch him. And he said that he knew the secrets of the pyramids.

[Narrator] But what exactly was Leedskalnin referring to? Had he rediscovered the same advanced technology used to build megalithic structures like Carnac and Sacsayhuaman?

Ed over and over again would tell people that he knew the secrets that helped the Egyptians build the pyramids. What was he talking about? Why was he constantly harking back to the Egyptians? We don't know.

[Narrator] Leedskalnin continued work on the Coral Castle until his death in 1951. In the journals he left behind, the builder explained that he had discovered the ancient secret of transforming stones into weightless objects.

Ed says this in his pamphlet, Magnetic Current, that real gravity is actually real magnet. So if you reverse the magnet forces with a force of some kind of electromagnetic, radio perhaps, frequency, you can then make these rocks not as heavy as they seem otherwise. And therefore, you can lift them.

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[Narrator] But if Leedskalnin had developed a device that could modify gravity, what was his secret? Some suggest the answer lies in a mysterious black box that can be seen in various photographs, a box that has since disappeared.

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The black box sitting on top is the element that no one has ever seen, except in those pictures, and no one has today. We believe that black box has something to do with how he got these massive, heavy, brittle pieces of rock up in the air in a way that no one can duplicate.

He had some kind of magnetic machine down in one of his other house areas that has since been dismantled, but it had a revolving ability. He may have been having that thing spin, the whole place could have been anti-gravity. Probably just pushed these into place.

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Levitation is the only way that I know of to hold up very heavy objects. Very, very high speed trains are magnetically levitated. These high speed trains don't have wheels that touch any tracks. They're literally suspended above the track using magnetic forces.

We can speculate at this time that there are techniques for using electromagnetism to nullify gravity. This was the great quest of Einstein. The motivation for such technology is, of course, to lift a large spaceship out into space and across space.

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[indistinct radio chatter]

[Narrator] Could it be that Ed Leedskalnin utilized anti-gravity to levitate and distribute the enormous rocks used to build Coral Castle? If so, where did this incredible knowledge come from?

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And he died taking this secret to his grave. The question is, did he invent it? Or did he himself somehow inherit it, or learn it from a tradition, or maybe from some visitor from another realm?

The only thing that is explainable is that someone with a higher form of physics and understanding of gravity has created the ability of one person to lift stones that modern technology could not do the way he did it. It had to come from a different place in this galaxy.

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The fact that one guy created these massive structures, it is absolutely fascinating. Am I suggesting that he did this with extraterrestrial technology? No, because I don't know. Am I excluding that possibility? No.

[Narrator] If aliens visited earth in ancient times, perhaps the world's unexplained structures provide clues to unlocking not only the secrets of our past, but a glimpse into our future.

I think that extraterrestrials would not have left our solar system some thousands of years ago without any proof. They wanted that in the far future, we start to reflect, have we been visited by outer space?

[Narrator] Perhaps additional clues still lie hidden, etched on even more massive stones. And waiting to be discovered, right before our eyes.

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