Original subtitles

(eerie music)

- You know, I've been around for a while,

met some interesting people,

done some crazy things.

So, you just might think that there's

not much that can take me by surprise.

You'd be wrong.

(eerie music)

The world is full of stories and science

and things that amaze and confound me.

every single day, incredible mysteries

that keep me awake at night.

Some I can answer.

Others just defy logic.

Is the history of the world wrong?

In a Mexican cave, a young girl finds

a bizarre 900-year-old skeleton.

Is it evidence aliens once walked our planet?

- This is the equivalent of landing on the moon.

- [William] A Peruvian doctor discovers stone carvings

that could rewrite the history of evolution.

Did dinosaurs live alongside humans?

- This is one of archaeology's most baffling enigmas.

- [William] And a 2000-year-old wooden model

reveals an incredible secret.

Did the ancient Egyptians invent the airplane?

- This is going to throw the way we view

ancient civilizations completely topsy-turvy.

- Yeah, it's a weird world and I love it.

(dramatic music)

I love books.

They make me think, especially anything about history.

Thousands of years of human development and achievement,

they're all contained in the pages

of these wonderful documents

that not only teach generation after generation

about where we came from, but where we might be going.

Have you ever stopped to consider

what it might mean for us if all we've learned

and all we think we've learned about our past

is wrong?

It's unthinkable, isn't it?

Well, guess what, there's real and bizarre events

out there that are telling us

we may need to rethink everything we know about everything.

The unthinkable is here.

Researcher Lloyd Pye is the guardian of what he contends

is the most important artifact ever discovered.

The story begins in the Mexican countryside

over 80 years a go.

- It was originally discovered in about 1930 by a young girl

about a hundred miles southwest of Chihuahua.

She was visiting relatives there.

She went out exploring the area,

found a mine tunnel, went in,

and inside the tunnel, found two skeletons.

(eerie music)

- [William] Examining the bones,

the girl thinks one of the skulls looks very strange.

- It was a misformed or misshapened skull.

She believed it was a deformity.

- [William] With no idea what she stumbled across,

the girl removes the skull as a macabre souvenir.

She holds on to it for 60 years.

- She brought it to her home in El Paso,

kept it for her whole life.

When she found out that she was dying in the early '90s,

she asked some friends if they would take it for her.

- [William] The skull ends up in the care

of Melanie Young, a medical professional,

who immediately makes a shocking discovery.

- She had seen a lot of deformity and she said right away,

"I don't think this is necessarily a deformed human skull,"

and that's how I got involved.

- [William] Perplexed, Melanie approaches Lloyd.

He's an expert in human skulls,

but in his years of studying human development,

he's never seen anything like it.

- When I looked into those eyes, it was like Whoa!

This really is something unusual.

It's so unusual, it's so bizarre,

a moron can see this is not really a human skull,

it's something else but what?

But by the same token, I was like everybody else,

my first reaction was it has to be some kind of deformity

because if it's not, then this is the equivalent

of the shepherd that fount the Dead Sea Scrolls.

I mean this is a big deal, and I didn't believe that

that kind of thing would just fall into my lap.

I took it to experts in every field of human physiology,

the eye guy, the brain guy, the ear guy,

the skull shape guy,

During the course of '99, I came to understand

that physiologically, it was really nothing like a human.

It is human-like, but it is definitely non-human,

no other way to say it.

- [William] But if it's not human, what was it?

Lloyd broadens his search.

- I took it to experts in UFOs and aliens

and have people who have been in it for years

evaluate it.

- [William] After close examination,

the UFO experts reach a stunning conclusion.

- The skull is an alien that died

on Earth and was buried on Earth 900 years ago.

The consensus was it looks like the skull of a grey alien,

the alien that we all know, the one with the heart-shaped

face on a thin little neck and weird eyes.

We all know that look, a grey alien.

- [William] With this in mind, Lloyd and his supporters

name the artifact the Starchild skull.

They keep looking for answers.

- How it got here, I don't know.

Was it crash landed?

I don't know.

Did it come here on a visit and get sick and die?

I don't know.

The implications are as big as you can imagine.

The Starchild is going to change history.

It's going to prove that at least once,

an alien being walked on the Earth.

(dramatic music)

- Dear friends, we are gathered here today

to pay our last tributes and respects to the memory

of our departed and beloved alien child, (hum)

Oh sorry, would you excuse me for a moment?

This story is definitely weird or what.

Does the Starchild skull belong to an alien child

who was visiting or even conceived

on Earth but tragically died?

If so, change the course of history?

But even more importantly, what about the parents?

Did anyone think of letting them know?

Did they give their child a proper farewell?

I doubt it.

I'm so sorry.

(hum) was a wonderful child who loved

comics, sports, and practical jokes

like destroying planets with his father's death-ray.

He'll be sadly missed.

Would anyone like to say a few words?

(eerie screeching}

Is the Starchild Skull the most important

archaeological discovery ever made?

Not everyone thinks so.

Yale University neurology professor, Steven Novella,

has studied the Starchild Skull, and claims

its appearance is nothing unusual.

- Going through medical school and training as a neurologist

I've seen many examples

of similar kinds of deformities before.

There are lots of genetic anomalies

that produce abnormalities or deformities.

- [William] Novella's research has led him to believe

the Starchild skull belonged to a human suffering

from a medical condition called hydrocephalus.

- Hydrocephalus is a term that literally

means water on the brain,

and what happens is that the fluid that's

normally inside and around the brain

does not flow like it normally should,

and that causes the water and the pressure

to build up inside the brain and inside the skull.

In young children, where the bones of the skull

have not yet fused, this can cause the skull

to balloon out, sometimes even to incredible size.

In an adult, where all the bones of the skull

have completely fused together,

then the hydrocephalus would just cause

increased pressure on the brain,

but not an expansion of the skull itself.

(eerie music)

- [William] For Novella, it's this ballooning that explains

the Starchild Skull's unusual appearance.

- The overall size and shape of the skull

and the arrangement of the deformities

matches pictures of children and skulls

of people with hydrocephalus.

Certainly, I've seen pictures of many of them

which look very similar to the Starchild skull.

- [William] Sadly, there would have been no treatment

for this painful condition in the era

from which the Starchild Skull belongs.

- The modern treatment for hydrocephalus

is to train the fluid out from inside the brain.

It reverses all of the abnormal

effects of the hydrocephalus.

This is a modern neurosurgical treatment, however,

this would not have been available prior

to 50 or 60 years ago, let alone hundreds of years ago.

- [William] So, does this mean that we've yet

to play host to intergalactic visitors?

- I have nothing against the notion

that there are aliens in the universe.

I think it would be really cool.

I just don't think this skull is it.

This is not the evidence of anything alien.

Lloyd Pye would have you believe that this one skull,

this one bit of evidence,

which really has been very imperfectly examined,

is enough to rewrite everything that we know.

Of course, he's been making that claim for years.

Everything you think you know is wrong.

That's sort of his shtick,

alternative science, alternative history.

He wants us to brush aside hundreds

of years of evidence and expertise.

He thinks all scientists are close-minded and wrong,

and therefore, he can come up with any fantasy he likes

and present that as the truth

because he can just ignore all of established science.

- [William] So, is this the end of the mystery?

Did the Starchild skull belong to a human

suffering from hydrocephalus?

Trenton Holiday and John Verano are professors

of anthropology at the University of Tulane.

They have a different take.

- Originally when I saw the skull

I suspected it might have suffered from hydrocephaly.

However, I have since revised my opinion on that.

I don't think it was a hydrocephalus individual.

- [William] So, if not an alien and not hydrocephalic

just who was the Starchild?

- The most unusual of this Starchild Skull

is just the shape of the skull.

It's flattened in the back, it's bulged at the sides,

and I can explain that very easily by cradleboarding.

- [William] Cradleboarding was an early solution

to a problem many of us face today,

making kids portable.

- Cradleboarding was a very common

practice in South America.

It was originally done as a means of restraining

the infant so that they can be brought out into the fields.

It also was done for aesthetic reasons.

- [William] But how could a simple baby carrying device

create the bizarre shape of the Starchild Skull?

- Here's an example of an actual cradleboard from Peru.

I've strapped on a doll to give you an idea

of the way an infant would be put on it,

and then here you can see how the head is strapped down.

A strap goes over the forehead and goes over

at the back of the skull, holds the child's head in place,

allows it to move, probably, from side to side,

and in fact, many of these are asymmetrical,

which suggests that they were lying

habitually to one side or another.

- [William] But cradleboarding have a side effect.

As the skull was compressed from one direction,

it grew in the other to make room

for the baby's rapidly developing brain.

- This was a child's skull that was cradleboarded.

It's bulging out on the two sides

and that's because there's pressure that was put

on the back side of the skull.

What you can see is the way the skull is flattened

in the back and it's kind of bulging up from the side,

giving it this unusual shape that if you didn't know

about cradleboarding, you might think

boy that's a bizarre looking human skull.

- [William] Were the strange features

of the Starchild Skull caused by

an ancient child-carrying device?

Or is the truth way more bizarre?

- The Starchild had an alien father and an alien mother.

- [William] The features of a 900-year-old skull

puzzle the scientific community.

Some offer practical explanations such as cradleboarding.

Others disagree.

- When a skull is cradleboarded, a baby's bones are so soft

that they flatten, so that if you feel this, it's very flat,

as flat as the board that it was pressed to.

The Starchild has its natural convolutions to it.

So, what that means is it was not flattened artificially,

it grew this way.

Its genes told it to grow.

Now, another interesting difference is that

a normal human the crown of the head is round

all the way around here, rounded, rounded.

If you look at the Starchild you see clearly

that there is a crease here down the middle.

A crease, and that could only occur

if the suture, this suture line right here, had been fused,

in a human, was fused early and then you could

have a shape like this where the brain would grow

out and around and that wouldn't really spread out

because the suture line would be prematurely fused.

But we CAT scanned the Starchild

and all of its sutures are open.

There's no premature fusing.

It's very normal and also it's very symmetrical.

If you look at the whole skull,

it's extraordinarily symmetrical

for as strange as it looks,

it's more symmetrical than the human skull.

It's more symmetrical than my skull

or any average person's skull.

In fact, one of the hallmark's of beauty,

everyone agrees, is that the most symmetrical

faces are the most beautiful in people, tend to be,

so, that too, is very different.

Now, another aspect of extreme difference

between the Starchild and a human

is the thickness of the bone

and we can see that very closely here,

you see the difference.

It's half or less, the Starchild's

bone is half or less as thick.

It weighs half as much, it's very much lighter

in the hand than is a human skull.

- [William] So, if it's not cradleboarding

could hydrocephaly have deformed the skull?

- Anybody that says the Starchild is a hydrocephalic

is missing a very important point.

When you look at standard hydrocephalic pictures

you see it's blown up all around.

There's no significant features like this.

This grew this way because its genes

told it to grow that way.

- [William] Having dismissed the opinion

of traditional science, Lloyd undertook his own research.

His findings are astonishing.

- What makes the Starchild skull different

is that there are 25 major physical differences

between it and human skulls.

There's not one part of it that's exactly like a human.

It is completely different and what that indicates

is that its genes are radically different.

- [William] But does this mean the Starchild Skull

could only be of extraterrestrial origin?

In 2003, DNA technology allowed Pye

to put his theory to the test.

- We got the first test by a laboratory

that was capable of doing ancient DNA,

and the answer that they got was

that the mother was human and the father was not.

Clearly, something is wrong with the father.

The father's not human.

- [William] Is the Starchild Skull evidence

that aliens bred with humans?

Native American legends tell stories

strikingly similar to Pye's theory.

- There would be beings from the stars

who would come down from the skies, pick a woman

in a village and they would make her pregnant.

So, the Starchild fit right into that.

- [William] But as technology advances,

so does the story of the Starchild skull.

In early 2011, a new DNA test led Lloyd

to an even more astonishing claim.

- The conclusion that we've come to now after several

DNA tests and an extensive analysis of those results is that

the Starchild had an alien father and an alien mother

and when I say alien, I mean non-human.

The difference is so stark.

The difference is so wide.

There is no way that we can call this a human.

- [William] Is this the first physical

evidence that aliens exist?

Lloyd has no doubt.

- It's going to change human history

to have to accept that at least once,

900 years ago, an alien being walked the Earth,

lived here, died here, and was buried here.

This is the equivalent of landing on the moon.

- [William] What is the Starchild skull?

For now it remains an enigma.

Did it belong to a deformed child

or an ancient adult with a disease of the brain?

Is it conclusive evidence that we are not alone?

Weird or what?

(dramatic music)

(drum music)

You know, I've always had a fascination

with the relics of the ancient past

and I'm not just talking about The Beatles

or The Rolling Stones or Leonard Nimoy.

No, no, no, no, no,

when it comes to our far distant history,

there's nothing quite as spectacular,

mysterious and even frightening

as dinosaurs.

Surely, the king of all creatures,

real life monsters that dominated the planet

until something wiped them out

long before man even evolved.

What a pity that we only find them now

in museums or as cute toys.

Can you imagine what it would be like

to see one in the flesh?

Well, maybe we already have

and maybe we still can.

(dinosaur roar)

Weird (dinosaur roar) or what? (dinosaur roar)

Adventurer Dennis Swift travels the world

in search of the ancient artifacts,

but nothing he's found compares to a discovery

made in Ica, Peru by a man named Javier Cabrera.

- Dr. Cabrera made the greatest discovery

in the history of mankind.

The implications are staggering.

- [William] It began innocently enough

at a birthday party in 1966.

- It was Dr. Cabrera's 42nd birthday.

- [William] One of the doctor's oldest friends

brings him a special gift.

- Dr. Cabrera was given a stone.

It was found in some official archaeological excavations.

- [William] The stone was carved

by an ancient Peruvian tribe.

His friend thinks it's a trinket,

but the Dr. makes a discovery that sets his heart racing.

Etched into the stone, is an image that defies explanation.

- He recognized it to be a species of fish

that went extinct 150 million years ago.

Now how do you explain that?

- [William] Seeking answers, the Dr. employs

local workmen to find more stones.

- Dr. Cabrera began to find more of these stones

and people brought them to him.

The more he delved into it, the more it consumed his life.

- [William] As more and more stones arrived

Dr. Cabrera realizes they feature other images

that just shouldn't have been there.

- Some of the stones seemed

to be depicting impossible scenes,

things that would cause the textbooks to be rewritten.

- [William] What had the doctor found?

It was something that would shock the world.

- He risked his reputation.

He said if you look closely at this, you'll see

a dinosaur carved there with two people.

- [William] It's an astonishing moment, but how could it be?

Dinosaur fossils weren't identified until 1824.

How could an ancient people have known

about them a thousand years ago?

- Finding artifacts and information that showed

that these people had knowledge of dinosaurs

that predated our knowledge was truly amazing.

- [William] But could it proved?

(dramatic music)

After comparing the etchings

on over 400 stones to real fossils,

he discovered the depictions were accurate.

The Peruvian artists must have known

what dinosaurs looked like.

- Now, not only is that astonishing, it began to say to him

they saw living breathing dinosaurs.

This is one of archaeology's most baffling enigmas.

- [William] Did the dinosaurs live millions of years

longer that we thought they did?

- I've studied the Ica stones for well over 20 years.

I believe they are very substantial, strong evidence

that dinosaurs and man lived together.

- [William] Current scientific belief is that the dinosaurs

were wiped out by an astroid 66 million years ago,

(dramatic music)

59 million years before early man even existed.

Swift, however, believes there's evidence to the contrary.

- In the cultures around the world,

they talk about encountering these animals

of giant size and they fit the description

of what we would call a dinosaur.

Of course, "dinosaur" was not coined

until 1841 by Sir Edward Owen.

It's a compound Greek word that means

terrible lizard or frightfully fearful lizard.

If you read the science books of the 1300s, 1400s, and 1500s

when they talk about dragons,

they resemble very much what we would

describe as a dinosaur,

and in fact, there's an account of an Irishman in 900 AD

who encountered a beast that had like

triangular shaped, diamond shapes on its back.

It had a head like a horse, and it had big

iron spikes on the back of his tail,

and it describes its legs.

Well, what animal could that be?

It could only be a stegosaurus.

I've been with the American Indians

and they say, "we don't like to tell White people

"cause they make fun of us,"

but they believe their ancestors fought

against what we would call a triceratops.

- [William] Could some dinosaurs have survived extinction?

Did they walk among ancient Peruvians?

For Swift, the artifacts uncannily

accurate proportions don't lie.

- Here's a styracosaurus on the stone.

Does it have dermal spines? Yeah.

Does the tail sticking out when it's walking? Yes.

Does it have three toes? Yes.

Alright, so it's a dinosaur.

- [William] But if Swift is right,

there's an even bigger question.

If dinosaurs walked the Earth with humans

only a relatively short time ago,

then what happened to them?

And where are they?

- I believe that they existed from a few thousand

years ago to maybe 500 years ago

and there's a possibility that there

could be a handful left.

There was a Frenchman in 1967, I believe,

he even took photographs of a footprint

that's three-toed, it's huge, and it has a claw on the back.

Only a dinosaur had that kind of a footprint.

So, yeah, dinosaurs could be out there.

- Oh boy, this is incredible.

I mean that guy thinks that dinosaurs

are still roaming the Earth.

Wow, let's think about what that means.

Not a lot of room left on the planet.

so they're going to have to share our neighborhoods, right?

Maybe we could have one as a pet.

You imagine keeping one in your backyard?

Woo.

I think not.

Has somebody got a pooper-scooper?

A big one.

Did man and dinosaur coexist?

Should we rip up our history books?

- I think that people actually watch the Flintstones

and think it's reality programming.

- [William] Ancient Peruvian stone carvings

pose a shocking question,

did our ancient ancestors walk alongside dinosaurs?

Archaeologist Ken Feder doesn't think so.

- I think that people actually watch the Flintstones

and think it's reality programming.

It's not, it's a cartoon, folks.

Fred did not have a pet dinosaur.

That really didn't happen.

- [William] But how can Feder be sure

humans never saw dinosaurs?

He points to the tens of thousands

of fossils collected worldwide

which confirm they died out 66 million years ago.

- We have a whole lot of evidence that dinosaurs

died off long before there were people.

and the fact that we have a bunch of stones with carvings

and people riding around on dinosaurs

is not strong evidence at all.

- [William] But if ancient Peruvians didn't see dinosaurs

how do we explain the Ica stones?

- They're fakes. They're hoaxes.

The story of the Ica stones from start to finish

mirrors the stories of lots of other archaeological hoaxes.

It starts small, but once it becomes clear

that there's a guy willing to buy some stones,

suddenly we have thousands of these things,

and the actual stones themselves

become more and more elaborate.

- [William] Rather than finding them in caves,

could the Peruvian peasants simply

have made the stones themselves?

There's only one way to find out.

Art student, Justine McGraw has been asked

to test Feder's theory that the stones are merely fakes.

She's going to attempt to replicate the stones

using basic tools.

- So, I begin by just copying out the image.

It's a very simple line drawing.

- [William] The drawing complete, Justine begins carving.

She uses a power tool for speed,

but the etching could easily be done by hand.

Although the pattern is complete,

the stone doesn't have an ancient look.

Justine has an inexpensive solution.

- I'm going to cover the stone

in a mixture of manure and olive oil.

- [William] It's a rather down to earth solution.

Her method of baking the stones is equally low-tech,

but could some manure, olive oil, and a barbecue

really recreate the mysterious Ica stones?

- After just three hours of baking,

this is what my Ica stone looks like.

- [William] For Feder, the results of this

experiment are decisive.

- You have two possible explanations in science,

one that requires overturning everything that we know

and one that simply requires that people

are trying to make a buck by hoaxing.

So, it's a lot easier for me to accept

the possibility that people are making fakes

than to completely rewrite everything we know

about geology, biology, an so on.

This compressing, this sort of pushing all of human history

into just a few thousand years

is sort of absurd on its face.

Again, when you have a convergence of evidence,

convergence of data, archaeological evidence separate,

geological evidence separate, biological evidence,

separate, paleontological evidence separate,

historic evidence separate,

and when all that data converges

that points in exactly the same direction in ancient earth,

dinosaurs dying off tens of millions of years ago,

first human ancestors five, six, seven million years ago,

walking upright in the plains of Africa.

All of that evidence converges.

It all is mutually supportive.

This notion, there really isn't any place

in that history for people riding their dinosaurs

to the drive-in movie theater.

- [William] Is this the end of the mystery?

Are the Ica stones just fakes?

Author Andy Lloyd is not so sure.

- They weren't just created in someone's shed

in the back garden 20 years ago.

Some scientific work that has been done on them

appears to indicate that there is a degree

of oxidation over the engravings

which would indicate that they're of some antiquity.

- [William] So, if the stones really are ancient

that proves that the images they depict

must have happened, right?

Well, not necessarily.

- I don't think that's very very likely

that man and dinosaur could have shared

the Earth at any time.

However, that's not to say that there isn't something

rather wonderful about the Ica stones in this regard,

and one of the ideas that I've put forward

is that the makers of the Ica stones, the artists

from Ancient Peru who created them

may have received knowledge about dinosaurs

from ancient civilizations whose own understanding

of the dinosaurs was as good as ours.

- [William] Civilizations stretching back

to ancient Greece unearthed dinosaur remains.

They thought they were the bones of giants,

but what if some ancient civilization

did know what they were?

Who could have done such a thing?

- Atlantis is an excellent candidate

because the discussions and descriptions of Atlantis

show that it was a very technologically

advanced civilization for it's time.

- [William] The lost city of Atlantis,

an advanced ancient civilization that is said

to have flourished around the time

of the ice age before falling into the ocean.

Could Atlantians have discovered dinosaurs?

- We can speculate that the Atlantians had a very

good understanding of natural history

because their ability with science and technology

was evidently quite far advanced

and they would have probably dug up dinosaur bones

during their mining expeditions and piece

together a dinosaur in the same way that we did.

- [William] But many believe Atlantis

to be little more than a legend based on stories

told by the Greek philosopher, Plato.

Is this strong enough evidence of its existence?

- We can't authenticate the existence of Atlantis

through anything other than Plato's writings,

but some of his writings are some of the most

important literature from that period.

It seems odd that it's a story

that Plato would have made up.

This has been the missing Atlantian link

in our understanding of ancient civilizations and knowledge.

- [William] Could the Atlantians have traveled the world,

spreading a knowledge that was kept alive in stories and art

or could the Ica stones be definitive proof

that our ancestors shared the Earth with dinosaurs?

Or are they one of the most elaborate hoaxes of all time?

Perhaps, one day we'll know for sure, but in the mean time,

it's most certainly weird or what?

(dramatic music)

A 2,000-year-old wooden model excavated

from Egypt's oldest pyramid reveals an amazing secret.

Did the ancients invent modern flight?

- It could have been launched easily

from the top of a pyramid.

- You know, I like to think of myself

as a bit of an adventurer, sort of an Indiana Jones

if you'd like, Raaa,

Let's see, I've been all over the world

and collected some amazing relics.

Wrong relic.

Of course, some are more amazing than others.

And some make you wonder what they might say

if they could talk.

But can you imagine

finding something that could truly change the world?

Well, here it is.

Saqqara, Egypt.

In one of the country's oldest burial grounds,

French archaeologists begin to unearth

the burial tomb of the third century BC official,

Pa-di-Imen.

Among the artifacts recovered is what looks

to be a model of a bird.

It's cataloged and stored at the Cairo Museum

for over 70 years.

But no one could predict the shock waves

Special Register 6347 would soon make.

The late Egyptologist, Dr. Khalil Messiha

realized the model was very unusual.

It leads him to a breathtaking conclusion.

- Dr. Messiha had found evidence of what appears

to be a glider or an airplane.

Something that the ancient Egyptians

supposedly didn't have.

- [William] Author, David Childress thinks

Dr. Messiha has much to teach historians and the world.

- To me the research of Dr. Khalil Messiha is very important

because here we have a mainstream Egyptologist

finding an artifact that we know is authentic

coming from over 2,000 years ago,

a model, a very miniature model of an airplane,

much like the early airplanes that were built

in America and around the world at the turn of the century.

- [William] Could the artifact be a model

of an ancient flying machine?

It's a stunning revelation.

Our histories tell us, the first powered

human flight was in 1903.

If Dr. Messiha is correct, the ancient Egyptians

may have beaten the Wright Brothers

by over 2,000 years.

(drum music)

Although met with initial skepticism,

tests by leading aeronautical engineers,

proved that the model, now known as the Saqqara Bird,

was designed for flight.

- Ancient cultures have many stories of flight,

of the mannas, of magic carpets, of flying chariots,

but here with the Saqqara Bird, we have an actual model

of what could be an ancient airplane.

(dramatic music)

- [William] Did the ancient Egyptians

experiment with flight?

Is the artifact a model of a full-sized glider or plane?

- It's very important that we find artifacts

like the Saqqara Bird and other strange artifacts

from these ancient cultures because it really helps us

place their legends and myths in context. such as flight.

Is it possible that they actually had flight

like we do today?

And I think they did.

- [William] Is the Saqqara Bird proof

that the ancient Egyptians had technology

2,000 years ahead of its time?

And if they did, how did they get it?

- This is going to throw Egyptology and the way we view

ancient civilizations completely topsy-turvy.

- [William] A man discovers a model

wooden bird in a Cairo museum.

Is the Saqqara Bird proof the Egyptians took

to the skies 2,000 years ago?

Katja Goebs is an Egyptologist, she has her doubts.

- When I first heard that the Saqqara Bird was being used

to support such claims of early aviation,

I was completely taken aback.

Certainly, they were fascinated with the skies.

They believed that their dead ascended to the sky

to become celestial gods after death.

Their chief deities were seen to be

traveling through the sky,

the sun god being most important there.

But there is no evidence whatsoever

to suggest that the Egyptians had an interest in aviation.

- [William] But if the Saqqara Bird was not

the model of a glider, what was it?

- The symbol of a bird is extremely important

within the Egyptian religious and political system.

We find them used in the hieroglyphic writing system.

We find them as images protecting the king.

- [William] One bird in particular, the falcon,

had a role which explains why it would be placed in a tomb.

- The deceased Egyptian wishes to ascend to the sky

and it sometimes says he does so on falcon's wings.

In particular, the falcon with the outstretched wings,

you will find at the back of the king's head

indicating that he is afforded the protection of the gods

and he is, in fact, Horus on Earth.

And we find amuletic representations of falcons

as protective devices in funerary contexts,

that means in Egyptian tombs,

decorating the coffins of the dead,

being placed as little protective object, amulets

on the actual mummies or painted on the coffins,

painted on the sides of the,

sorry, on the walls of the tombs, and so forth.

- [William] There's one problem though.

The Saqqara Bird looks nothing like

the other Egyptian falcons,

so what can explain its flat tail and plane-like wing?

- It is not unheard of that toys

were given to deceased children

and they would be put into their tombs

so they would be accessible for their afterlife

and for their eternal pleasure.

- [William] Could the mysterious artifact be nothing

more than a simple child's toy?

Are the smooth body and flat tail

the result of armature craftsmanship

and not deliberate design?

- Even thought there are a few idiosyncrasies

in its representation the Saqqara Bird

is most likely an image of a falcon.

There is no evidence that the Egyptians

experimented with aviation technology.

The claim is ludicrous to say the least,

so it is not inconceivable that the Saqqara Bird

was a toy that was given to a child

or even to an adult who wanted to take

his favorite childhood toy with him in to the afterlife.

- [William] Are we reading too much into an ancient toy?

Not everyone thinks so.

- Artifacts like the Saqqara Bird are important

because science likes to think

it's got everything explained.

We can explain how the Egyptians built the pyramids

and all of their ancient technology,

but items like the Saqqara Bird throw a monkey wrench

into some of these old theories

because suddenly it's possible that the ancient Egyptians

and other civilizations could do much like we did

and have flight, have electricity, have machines.

When we look at ancient civilizations

like the ancient Egyptians,

we see that they made so many magnificent buildings

and their sciences were very exact.

They were good engineers.

They studied nature tremendously.

So the Saqqara Bird seems to indicate that yes,

the ancient Egyptians knew about flight and had it.

- [William] But how can Childress be so sure

that what looks like a bird is really a model airplane?

- It's clearly an aerodynamic design

and not just some simple toy.

The wings are at what is known as the dihedral angle.

That's a special angle that the wings of a glider

have to be at in order to achieve lift.

And the Saqqara Bird has that.

- [William] So, the wings are airworthy,

but what about the tail?

- Dr. Messiha had also found evidence that the very top

part of the tail rudder had been broken off,

and he theorized that it had in fact had also

another vertical tail much like a modern jet would have.

- [William] But if the Saqqara Bird was a model

of an ancient glider, there's one big problem.

Where in Egypt's flat desert could you glide from?

- If it was a glider, it could have been launched easily

from the top of a pyramid, perhaps,

much like hang-gliders themselves launch today

off of cliffs and mountains, or even

the Egyptians could have developed a relatively

primitive catapult type of launching system

that would have given this glider the power

to get in the air and then fly over areas of Egypt.

I believe that the ancient Egyptians and other civilizations

had powered flight, as well as gliders

and airships and balloons

and even they had electricity and lights,

even they must have had power tools in some of their cases

to build some of the buildings they had.

- [William] Were the crowning achievements

of Egyptian civilization used as a launch pad

by an ancient pair of Wright Brothers?

- If scientists are right that this is a model

of a functioning glider,

this is going to throw Egyptology and the way we view

ancient civilizations completely topsy-turvy.

- Okay, this is blowing my mind.

Are they honestly trying to tell me that this 2,000-year-old

ugly duckling is evidence of an ancient mastery

of the laws of aerodynamics, that it could fly?

Well, there's only one way to find out.

(suspenseful music)

Anybody got any glue?

A simple bird replica or evidence of early flight,

what is the Saqqara Bird?

Martin Gregorie designs gliders.

He thinks he knows the answer.

- When I first heard the Saqqara Bird was to model

for a full-sized airplane, I was skeptical to say the least.

I knew for a start that the ancient Egyptians

didn't have anything that could be used as an engine

to power an airplane and that gives you the clue

because Egypt's pretty flat and you're going to need

some way of getting the airplane into the air,

and you also, if you're going to use it for carrying cargo,

going to need something to power it,

so it can travel a useful distance.

I decided the only way I could find out

if the Saqqara Bird could have been a flying model

was to build one myself.

- [William] Using the exact dimensions

of the ancient artifact,

Gregorie constructs an identical replica.

He'll launch it with a device used

to test scale glider models.

- I'm just about to launch the Saqqara Bird

in its original form as it came out of the pyramid

with no tail plane.

(buzzing)

(click)

That flight did what I expected it to do.

It's lack of aerodynamics kicked in

and it tumbled and fell to the ground.

- [William] The test is conclusive.

- A model of that size needs a stabilizing tail.

- [William] Dr. Messiha believed that the Saqqara Bird

originally had a tail,

which had snapped off with age.

Could a tail make a difference?

- Next we're going to launch the Saqqara Bird again,

but this time fit it with a tail plane.

This will stabilize it and let us see

how good or poor a glider it is.

(buzzing)

- [William] 2,000 years of history

hang on this one test.

(click)

(eerie music)

It travels further but not much.

The end results are the same.

- The wing has rounded edges

and that just doesn't generate very much lift at all.

And in terms of stability, all modern airplanes

have the wing bent up at the tips for stability

instead of swooping down like this one does.

- [William] So, does the experiment prove

that the Saqqara Bird was really a child's toy?

Following his experiment, Gregorie has a theory of his own.

- I think there's a possibility that it was a wind vane.

I discarded the child's toy theory on the grounds

that all real birds have a flat, horizontal tail

rather than a vertical fin

and most children will be able to recognize the difference

and not fooled by the presence of the fin.

To find out whether it was,

could have been a wind vane,

I put a pivot on the belly of it

and as you can see, I think it's a far better

weather vane than it is a flying model.

- [William] So, is the answer to a 2,000-year-old mystery

really blowing in the wind?

Was the Saqqara Bird simply an ancient play thing?

Or could it be evidence of mankind's

first attempt at flight?

We may never know.

Weird or what?

(dramatic music)

(drum music)

So, there we have it.

Three ancient artifacts that bring into question

everything we understand about history.

A bizarrely shaped skull is found in a Mexican cave.

Is it proof that aliens once visited Earth?

Scenes depicted on ancient stone carvings

question our natural history.

Did man and dinosaur share our planet?

And a 2,000-year-old wooden model suggests the impossible.

Did an ancient civilization fly?

You decide.

Join me again next time for more stories

that will undoubtedly be weird or what?

(dramatic music)