All language subtitles for Ancient Aliens - 04x08 The Da Vinci Conspiracy

NARRATOR: Amazing inventions

centuries ahead of their time.

The helicopter, the airplane, the
submarine, all of these were

Leonardo da Vinci's concepts.

NARRATOR: Paintings said to
contain hidden messages.

It is only a portrait, and yet
it seems to have dimensions

and mysteries that have
yet to be explained.

NARRATOR: And sophisticated robots
designed more than five centuries ago.

People would never have seen
something like this that was

able to move on its own.

NARRATOR: Leonardo da Vinci
is considered one of the most

brilliant minds the
world has ever known.

But what was the source of
his profound intellect?

He was absolutely immersed in
finding out, maybe even proving,

that we were not alone.

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, might there have
been a secret extraterrestrial

connection to Leonardo da Vinci
and other artists of his time?

sync and corrections by bellows
www.addic7ed.com

Four, three, two, one...zero

NARRATOR: February 24, 2011,

embarking on its final voyage,
Space Shuttle Discovery

docks with the International
Space Station.

Its mission: to deliver the
most advanced model in robotic

engineering to date, Robonaut 2.

But believe it or not, this
masterpiece of modern technology

is the latest in a line of
humanoid robots whose design is

based on illustrations created
more than 500 years ago

by Leonardo da Vinci.

MICHAEL DENNIN: When you
look at Robonaut 2, you can

trace his lineage back
to Leonardo da Vinci.

The basic design and structure
and ideas you can see in what

Leonardo was working on.

JONATHAN YOUNG: They're like
three-dimensional blueprints.

You could virtually create a
human being from these, which is

essentially what the
NASA engineers did.

BETTY ANN BROWN: Leonardo
holds the position as the

greatest human genius that we know of.

He had very high intellectual
ability, extraordinary creative

range, and used them to
accomplish quite a bit.

MARTIN KEMP: Leonardo is
somebody who is able to operate

across all these various
fields, which is very unusual.

He was trained as a painter, a
sculptor, but he manages to move

into geometry, optics,
mechanical design, anatomy,

geology, and so on, and in each of
these, he has extraordinary insight.

So, if you're wanting to talk
about a universal genius, which

is a very Renaissance idea, then
Leonardo is the definition of that.

NARRATOR: Leonardo da Vinci's
work, covering a staggering

range of disciplines, is still
influencing science, technology,

medicine, art, and numerous
other fields nearly half a

millennium after his death, but
just who was Leonardo da Vinci?

Was he simply a man of profound
intellect and imagination?

Or is there, perhaps,
something more to his genius?

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
was born just outside Florence

in Vinci, Italy, on April 15, 1452.

He lived during the height of
the Italian Renaissance, an era

marked by great artistic and
scientific achievement and a

universal quest for knowledge.

BROWN: Renaissance is French for
"rebirth," and it saw itself

as giving birth again to the
values that they somewhat

romantically attributed to the
classical past, to Ancient

Greece and Ancient Rome.

And they see the thousand years
that have passed between Rome

and the rise of the Renaissance
as a dark age, and they want

to bring the light of humanism
back to the world with

intellectual and artistic innovation.

GODFREY HARRIS: Florence was
larger than London, larger than

Paris, larger than Rome at the
time Leonardo lived there.

All these bright people had gathered.

NARRATOR: But while the
Renaissance is considered an age

of enlightenment, it was also a
time fiercely dominated by the

Roman Catholic Church.

SEAN-DAVID MORTON: When we
come to the Renaissance, the

Church is pretty much running
everything, so every artist,

pretty much anybody who can
read and write is either in the

monastic system of the Church,
and of course, the Church is the

main patron for all the different
artists in the Renaissance.

NARRATOR: At a time when
everything was subject to the

scrutiny of the Church, a young
Leonardo da Vinci accepted one

of his earliest artistic assignments--

the illustration of a wooden shield
with a likeness of the mythical Greek

monster, Medusa, a Gorgon whose head
was literally covered with live snakes.

WILLIAM WALLACE: Leonardo drew
the Medusa so frightening that

his father believed that he was
actually looking at live snakes.

NARRATOR: But why, when the
most prominent artists of his

day were painting images from the
Judeo-Christian Bible, would

Leonardo have chosen to depict a
mythical Greek monster, one that

many ancient astronaut theorists
believe may have been based on

an extraterrestrial creature?

PHILIP COPPENS: When we compare
him to modern geniuses,

we know, for example, that
these beings were absolutely

interested in the idea that we
were not alone in the universe,

that somehow we had been contacted
by extraterrestrial beings.

Leonardo da Vinci is a person
who believed in the existence

of extraterrestrial beings.

NARRATOR: While still a
teenager, Leonardo earned an

apprenticeship with one of the
most renowned artists of the

time, Andrea del Verrocchio, and
it is widely considered that

their most notable collaboration during
this period was The Annunciation,

a scene depicting the moment
when the Virgin Mary is informed

that she will soon be made
pregnant with God's child.

KEMP: Verrocchio seems to have
begun the picture and begun

it in a traditional medium of
egg tempera, which is an egg

binder for the pigments, and at
some point, Leonardo intervened

and finished the picture,
and he painted an angel.

NARRATOR: In 1989, experts in
Florence performed an extensive

examination of The Annunciation
to verify if the angel in the

painting was truly the
work of Leonardo.

After close expert and scientific
inspection, it was concluded that it was

undoubtedly the artist's work,
but they also discovered

something strange and unexpected.

When subjected to X rays,
Leonardo's angel became invisible.

SEAN ROBERTS: Verrocchio used a
lead-based paint for at least

parts of his Virgin Mary.

Leonardo, on the other hand,
seems to have used, uh, rather

different pigments.

GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS:
Leonardo completed it using a

non-lead-based paint, which is
why, when looked at with certain

X-ray technology, Leonardo's
angel disappears.

Now, why would Leonardo, being
the apprentice, finish his

mentor's work with a
different type of paint?

And one possibility is that he
was leaving some type of message

because he was notorious for hiding
things inside his own paintings.

NARRATOR: Might Leonardo da
Vinci really have painted the

angel knowing he would be
creating a secret message that

wouldn't be discovered for 500 years?

And if so, why?

Some believe the answer may be
found by examining the next

phase of the legendary artist's life.

DAVID CHILDRESS: From the years
of 1476 to 1478, there is

a gap in his life.

We don't really know where he was or
what he was doing in those years.

BROWN: There are years in which he
disappears from the historical account.

There is a hiatus, and we don't
know even what town he was

living in, much less with whom he
was working or what he was doing.

NARRATOR: What could account for
a man of Leonardo da Vinci's

stature literally disappearing
from all known historical

records, especially when it was
precisely during this period

when he was just beginning
to come into prominence?

CHILDRESS: One possible
scenario here is that during

those years, Leonardo da Vinci
was, in a sense, tutored by some

special individuals; people who
were showing him things that a

normal person wouldn't
necessarily have seen.

Perhaps like the biblical prophet
Enoch, he was even taken

aboard a spaceship, and the
aliens showed him Earth from

above and gave him a concept
of the cosmos and machines and

inventions and of Earth that no
one before him had ever had.

NARRATOR: Is it really possible
that Leonardo da Vinci

had received guidance from
extraterrestrial beings, as many

ancient astronaut theorists contend?

One fact is certain: that after
Leonardo's return to Florence in

1478, his creative output reached
a whole new level, going

beyond art and extending to
numerous other disciplines.

He would produce aerial maps of Italian
cities with incredible accuracy.

He would design and build the world's
first self-propelled vehicle.

And he would invent machines years and
even centuries ahead of their time.

MORTON: There are some people
that think that maybe there's an

extraterrestrial influence to
what he knew, because you have

people throughout history who
would magically, mysteriously

come along every few hundred
years or so, that then

contribute to the fantastic
advancements to the human race

and the human species.

NARRATOR: What was the secret
behind Leonardo da Vinci's

incredible burst of creativity?

And why-- during the age which
gave rise to the likes of

Copernicus, Michelangelo and
Shakespeare-- did da Vinci tower

above his contemporaries?

Ancient astronaut theorists
believe answers may be found by

examining Leonardo's paintings

and the many secret messages
that can be found hidden within

his famous works of art.

NARRATOR: The Vatican.

Set within the fortified walls
of a 110-acre plot of land and

surrounded by the city of Rome,
it is the smallest independent

nation state in the world.

And it was here from 1513 to
1516 that Leonardo da Vinci

began performing an act that--
during the time-- was a crime

punishable by death:

the dissection of human corpses.

HARRIS: Leonardo was brought from
Milan to the Vatican to paint.

But because the Vatican had
these great catacombic depths,

they were very cool places, and
so you could dissect a body

without losing it to decomposition.

A number of autopsies we know
were performed in the Vatican

under the nose of the Pope,
who-- policy of the Catholic

Church-- was to forbid that.

COPPENS: Da Vinci stops at nothing
to find out about the human body.

He buys dead bodies even though
there is a penalty of death on

doing the things he is doing.

It's like he cannot stop himself.

He needs to know.

Da Vinci has this extraordinary
drive to know and understand

despite the fact that
it might kill him.

NARRATOR: In his 36 months at
the Vatican, Leonardo da Vinci

documented dozens of dissections
with incredible detail.

But to keep his work secret, his
notes on human anatomy were

recorded in code using a device
known as mirror writing.

WALLACE: We know from early in his
life Leonardo adopted mirror writing.

At a later point in his career
it also served his purposes.

HARRIS: Mirror writing
is writing backwards.

Why did Leonardo do it?

He wrote backwards so prying eyes
couldn't see what he was writing.

CHILDRESS: He realized that the
things that he was working on,

including various inventions and
even anatomy, were something

that the Church would not approve of.

So he had to do these things,

uh, in secret, and he knew that
it was dangerous.

TSOUKALOS: Da Vinci
implemented mirror writing in

all of his creations and he most
certainly was not playing games

when he did this.

It was in order to preserve the
knowledge that he had gained

from the uneducated masses.

NARRATOR: But why was Da
Vinci so obsessed with

the workings of the human body?

What secret and forbidden knowledge
was he trying to uncover or reveal?

Florence, Italy, 1503.

Leonardo da Vinci begins work
on a portrait commissioned by a

wealthy silk merchant for his
wife, but it is a painting he

will never part with, obsessing
over every detail for what would

be the last 16 years of
his life-- the Mona Lisa.

WALLACE: It is only a
portrait and yet it seems to

have dimensions and mysteries
that have yet to be explained.

ROBERTS: The Mona Lisa's smile
is not the kind of smile

that we tend to see in portraits.

She seems to know
something that we don't.

KEMP: What starts as a portrait,
a representation of a

woman, turns into something
quite different.

It turns into a kind of
philosophical meditation on all

his intellectual concerns.

NARRATOR: What was it about
the Mona Lisa that would so

consume the final years of
Leonardo da Vinci's life?

And why would he dedicate so
much of his time to a single

20-by-30-inch portrait?

WALLACE: There are a lot of
theories that Leonardo has

secret symbols and secret
messages in his paintings.

Everything he's doing he's
rethinking even traditional

subjects in the very beginning
and really imagining them in new

and creative ways.

NARRATOR: All his life Leonardo
da Vinci incorporated a

technique called mirror writing.

Is it possible that he also
used a similar technique in his

artwork, leaving hidden messages
that can only be revealed with

the use of mirrors?

COPPENS: The mirror writing is
something which defines him.

And so, the possibility that he
was also using the mirror as an

unknown dimension whereby he
needs to have the mirror to see

certain things within his
paintings is definitely

something which I think
we need to explore.

NARRATOR: At Northeastern
University in Boston, Massachusetts,

graphic designer Terrence Masson
uses computer

technology to search for hidden
messages in Leonardo's masterworks.

TERRENCE MASSON: We know that
he was insatiably curious about

reflections and refractions and
optics and the human anatomy of

the eye, and how that mirrored
reflections of conical-shaped mirrors.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that
Leonardo applied his mirror

technique to hide secret
messages in the Mona Lisa?

But if so, why?

MASSON: Here's our classic Mona Lisa.

Leonardo's portraiture always has
very dramatic hand positioning.

His hand position was a clue to
the access points of rotation

of the mirror.

So if we try this, what will we see?

(taps keys)

NARRATOR: Is this
helmet-shaped creature simply

the product of a parlor trick?

If so, then why can a similar
creature be seen in another

famous painting by da Vinci:

Virgin and Child with St. Anne?

MASSON: Well, this painting--
Virgin of the Rocks-- we always

notice the dramatic
hand poses of Leonardo.

Is that giving us a hint about
where to put the reflective plane?

So, we're in a 3-D environment here.

We can do anything we want.

We just make a little duplicate.

That's a little spooky.

So, interesting similarity to what
we did with the Mona Lisa, right?

We've got something close to modern
understanding of alien heads.

NARRATOR: Could there really
be hidden messages in Leonardo

da Vinci's paintings?

Messages that reveal the artist's
connection to otherworldly beings?

And why was the artist so obsessed
with dissecting the human form?

Was it for purposes of his art?

Or was there another, more
extraterrestrial reason?

Perhaps the answer can be found
by examining the work of other

artists during the Renaissance.

(bell tolling)

NARRATOR: London, England.

Housed here, in the British
Library, is Leonardo da Vinci's

Codex Arundel, a collection of
283 papers containing drawings,

inventions, thoughts and
writings covering numerous

scientific and creative disciplines.

KEMP: Leonardo is quite
well-documented compared with

most artists of the time.

We've got thousands and
thousands of pages of writing,

which tell us a lot about what
he's thinking about, but there's

almost no personal
record, interestingly.

Leonardo is quite a private
figure in that respect.

NARRATOR: Found among
Leonardo's papers were a few

personal anecdotes, composed
just after his two-year

disappearance between 1476 and 1478.

In one account, the artist
details his youthful adventure

encountering a vast, mysterious cave.

ROBERTS: He describes being on
the edge of this dark cave,

and saying that he felt terrified by
the darkness of that cave and what

might be within it.

On the other hand, he felt
a certain desire to try to

understand what was in there.

TSOUKALOS: Some have speculated that
this incident occurred around the

same time in his childhood as
when he fashioned his famous

shield with the head of the
monstrous Medusa on it.

So the question is, what exactly
did Leonardo find in this cave?

We can assume that this was a
very significant event in his

life, because it made a strong
enough impression on him to

write it down as one of the few
autobiographical notes he ever made.

NARRATOR: Why did Leonardo da
Vinci, a man who wrote almost

nothing of his personal life,
choose to write about this cave

as one of the first
entries in his journal?

And why was his experience with
the cave so important to him?

Some ancient astronaut theorists
believe that several of the

artist's paintings and drawings
provide evidence that da Vinci

may have had an
extraterrestrial encounter.

ROBERTS: One of the things
that we see in the grotesque

heads is a fairly marked
departure from the natural

appearance of the human body,
the human face, even in its

most extreme manifestation.

KEMP: Visually, the works
are so compelling.

They're often slightly creepy.

They've got this very
strange presence to them.

YOUNG: They are misshapen faces,
elongated skulls, flattened faces.

Very eerie, troubling,
monstrous images.

Now this is an artist known for
careful, realistic depiction of

what he was looking at,

which raises the question-- what
in the world was he looking at?

Did he actually encounter
creatures that looked like this?

They're very, very strange.

NARRATOR: Are Leonardo's
grotesque heads simply products

of the artist's creative imagination?

Or might they be evidence of
Da Vinci's encounters with

otherworldly beings?

According to historical records,
there were, during the

Renaissance, a large number of
unexplained phenomena seen in

the skies over parts
of Europe and Asia.

During the siege of
Constantinople in 1453, soldiers

reported that a fire descended
on them from the sky.

In 1458, a giant moon-like disc
was seen soaring above the

landscape in Japan.

And in 1492, during Christopher
Columbus' epic journey across

the Atlantic, weird lights were
seen floating above the ocean.

COPPENS: Just before Christopher
Columbus reaches the

New World, he sees anomalous lights
in the sky, and he reports them.

People see them from his ship.

These lights cannot be explained.

CHILDRESS: Some ancient UFO was
seemingly guiding Columbus'

ships to the New World.

So here we may well have ancient
aliens making sure that Columbus

would do something so important
as discovering the New World.

NARRATOR: Might Leonardo da
Vinci have been aware

of these early UFO sightings?

Ancient astronaut theorists believe
the answer is a profound yes.

And point to even greater
evidence that can be

found by studying the works
of other Renaissance artists.

COPPENS: In the Renaissance
period, what we see is this

extraordinary explosion of
paintings which show anomalies

in the background, anomalies
which today we identify as UFOs.

TSOUKALOS: There are paintings that
depict something very odd in the sky,

depictions of UFOs, of strange orbs,
or rays coming out of the sky,

or falling stars with people
sitting inside of them.

NARRATOR: Why would 15th
century artists depict

mysterious objects in
paintings of biblical scenes?

Were they trying to communicate
something about the origin of

Christianity?

Or could these otherworldly
images be linked to the numerous

sightings of bizarre
flying objects in the sky?

At Northeastern University,
researcher Terrence Masson

examines the strange images
found in Renaissance paintings.

TERRENCE MASSON: One specific
example, The Baptism of Christ

by Gelder, is just bizarre.

So many other examples can be explained
by different iconography, graphic

representations of angels in
clouds and lights, but if you

look at this painting, it's just
a solid, shiny disk with four

laser beams shining down
at the Christ child.

A specific example is The
Madonna with Saint Giovannino.

You look at this, and it's not
one of those that is easily

explained away as being a
literal interpretation of an

angel in the cloud, for instance.

So, the striking feature of this is
what is that, exactly, in the sky?

See if I can get a little close.

Zoom in.

And we can see it's clearly something.

It's not a mistake.

It's not a blemish.

It was obviously painted there.

You can see the brushstrokes,
uh, even more so now that the

composition of the painting shows
our shepherd shielding his eyes.

It's definitely not
an angel or a cloud.

Something is flying, and it's
unidentified, so when pressed,

we have a 16th century
painting of a UFO.

CHILDRESS: It's as if the painter
is trying to depict some

divine messenger, and those
depictions, apparently, are of

UFOs, and here we have the
Renaissance painters, basically,

bringing us Jesus and a UFO
together in the same painting.

During the Renaissance, people
like Da Vinci may well have had

knowledge of extraterrestrials.

NARRATOR: Might the mysterious
images in Renaissance

paintings be evidence that
Leonardo and his contemporaries

had encounters with extraterrestrial
beings during the 15th century?

For the answer, ancient
astronaut theorists turn not to

Da Vinci's artwork but to
his incredible inventions.

NARRATOR: The Boeing
AH-64 Apache helicopter.

This four-blade, twin-engine
attack aircraft has a top speed

of 192 miles per hour and can
reach heights of 21,000 feet.

It is also able to fly just a
few feet above the ground in an

effort to avoid radar detection.

But even more amazing than this
modern-day aerial marvel is the

fact that its construction may
have never been possible without

the designs for vertical flight
first drawn up by Leonardo

da Vinci nearly 500 years ago.

MORTON: The helicopter, the
airplane, the submarine,

all of these were Leonardo
da Vinci's concepts.

He invented all of the modern weapons
that we're actually using today.

If we had developed the various
ideas, concepts, and scientific

discoveries of Leonardo da
Vinci, there is an argument to

be made that we, possibly, could
have landed somebody on the moon

in about the 1800s.

BROWN: He was 500 years before
his time, and many of his

devices could not have been
constructed during his time.

They didn't have the technology.

NARRATOR: One design of
Leonardo's that the inventor was

actually able to realize during
his lifetime was this one: the

world's first fully functional robot.

In 1517, at the famous Chateau
du Clos Luc� in Amboise, France,

65-year-old Leonardo da Vinci
presented King Francis I with a

gift in the form of a
full-sized mechanical lion.

(roaring)

Like the replica that exists
today in the ch�teau museum, the

mechanical lion could move
independently and was able to

display amazing dexterity.

ROBERTS: From the accounts that
we have of Leonardo's lion,

we know that it moved across
the floor on its own power.

The vast majority of people who
were watching this presentation

to the king would probably have
encountered the mechanical lion

with fear because, in their
experience, they would never

have seen, uh, something like this
that was able to move on its own.

NARRATOR: But how did Da Vinci
even conceive of such an

elaborate and sophisticated device?

One that wouldn't be duplicated
for another 300 years?

BROWN: He was challenged
by the engineering.

How do I get a robot to walk?

Even if it's a lion robot, and
even if he didn't use the word

robot, he did create
a functioning robot.

JOHN RODGERS: For Leonardo
to take those ideas in his

drawings and literally be able
to project their use in the

future is just remarkable.

He's given credit for all mechanical
and robot ideas that we know today.

NARRATOR: Here, at the Leonardo da
Vinci Machines Exhibition in St. Louis,

Missouri, Italian artists and
engineers have painstakingly

recreated over 60 of
Leonardo's inventions.

RODGERS: This is the
first tank we know of.

Leonardo da Vinci had the idea
for the 360 degree firepower.

(cannons firing)

It was originally designed for
horses, but the horses became

spooked so easily that he quickly
designed it to the human being.

At the time that is was
presented, the tank was a bit

impractical, and it was not
built until centuries later.

This is Leonardo da Vinci's
underwater breathing apparatus.

Leonardo theorized that you did
not want to exhale into the air

that you were inhaling.

He had the idea for carbon
dioxide, and he brought down

another tube that you could
exhale into that tube, only

receiving fresh air from the surface.

HARRIS: He invented the air compressor.

Somebody on shore or on a boat
could press down and force the

air through the tube to the helmet,
allow the person to breathe.

When the British replicated the
Leonardo design, it worked.

(bubbling)

NARRATOR: But of all Leonardo
da Vinci's incredible

inventions, perhaps the most
impressive are those involving

aircraft technology.

Nearly 400 years before the
Wright brothers' first flight at

Kitty Hawk, North Carolina,
the 15th century inventor had

designed numerous flying
machines, including a hang

glider and an aircraft that operated
like a modern-day helicopter.

RODGERS: This is Leonardo da
Vinci's famous air screw, and

this is the first attempt that
we know of for vertical flight.

This was designed to have four
human beings run around in a

circle, providing power, literally
screwing it up into the air.

The air screw resembles our
modern-day helicopters.

COPPENS: Leonardo needed to
know answers to some of the big

questions, which the ancient

alien question has as well--
the question of flight.

TSOUKALOS: There is no
question in my mind that a

person like Leonardo da Vinci
most certainly asked himself the

question: are we alone
in the universe?

And his conclusion even
at that time was: no.

NARRATOR: What was the source
of Leonardo da Vinci's

incredible and prophetic inventions?

Were they the product of his
immense genius, or is it

possible, as ancient astronaut
theorists believe, that Leonardo

had been influenced by an
otherworldly intelligence--

an intelligence he encountered
in the past or one that he

possessed from within?

NARRATOR: The North Apennines, Italy.

Here, in the mountains just
outside Florence, a young

Leonardo da Vinci spent much of
his time examining the mysteries

of nature.

Because his parents were not
married, he was excluded from

the prestigious academies attended
by many of his contemporaries.

COPPENS: In Florence the
Platonic Academy is reformed and

this institute of
learning comes about.

Now, we know that Leonardo da Vinci
is not allowed to enter this academy.

WALLACE: This is a young man
who is pretty much left on his

own in some ways for up to 19 years,
traveling around the countryside.

He was looking at rocks.

He was studying birds.

He was looking at the flow of water.

He was studying mountains.

He was literally immersed in nature.

No other artist in the
Renaissance really showed that

much interest in the natural
world and the surrounding world.

COPPENS: He strives for knowledge.

He strives for information.

He is able to create a body of
knowledge which is on par with

the body of information which the
Platonic Academy, as a group

of beings, is able to put out.

NARRATOR: It was also in the
North Apennines Mountains that

Leonardo is believed to have
discovered the cave that he

wrote about in his journal.

ROBERTS: The story of the
cave-- it's very likely that it

happened around 1480, since it
appears that that's the moment

at which this is written in the codex.

The fact that Leonardo chooses
to record this encounter with

the cave, I think, indicates
that it had a significant impact

on the artist psychologically.

NARRATOR: But although the exact
location of the cave-- and

the date Leonardo discovered
it-- remains unknown, there are

many who believe that it may
provide the key to understanding

the source of the artist's
incredible genius and the answer

to the mystery of what happened to
him during his missing two years.

WILLIAM HENRY: He goes inside the
cave and then he disappears,

and it suggests to me
time travel portals.

He's opening portals or star
gates and beaming to either the

past or the future and then
returning to the present time.

CHILDRESS: In history you
have certain people like

Leonardo da Vinci, whose genius
is just so incredible and the

visions that they have-- in many
ways it's like they are able to

see the future and they're not
going to just influence the

world then, but what they're
going to do is going to

dramatically change the world
forever, and you have to wonder

where people get this kind of
inspiration, and in the case of

Leonardo he was able to see
things and invent them, in a

sense things that we weren't going
to have for hundreds of years.

NARRATOR: Is it really possible
that Leonardo da Vinci

may have obtained his incredible
creative and scientific

knowledge as the direct
result of an extraterrestrial

encounter, or might Leonardo
have fallen through a time

portal-- one which allowed him
to actually visit the future--

a future where robots,
helicopters, military weapons,

and other amazing machines
actually existed...

and which the artist would
later try to duplicate?

Some ancient astronaut theorists
believe the answer can be traced

back to work he did on
The Annunciation and the

significance of his so-called
"disappearing angel."

ROBERTS: Leonardo and
Verrocchio's Annunciation

portrays the moment at which the
Angel Gabriel has arrived and is

telling the Virgin Mary that she
is pregnant with the Son of God.

TSOUKALOS: What some scholars
have speculated is that by

painting the angel in The
Annunciation so that it

disappears under X ray, he is
telling us that, like Gabriel,

he is the messenger, and then
with his next painting we're

told that this great gift to mankind
has arrived, and Leonardo da Vinci's

contributions to mankind are
truly a gift to the world.

CHILDRESS: You have to wonder
if Leonardo wasn't doing this

because he was being encouraged
in secret by some kind of

extraterrestrial masters who
were somehow behind him.

NARRATOR: Might Leonardo da
Vinci, the man many have called

the greatest genius who ever
lived, have been chosen by

extraterrestrial beings to accelerate
the advancement of the human race,

or was he merely trying to
communicate the incredible

future inventions he had
witnessed firsthand?

HARRIS: Without doubt the most
influential personality of

the first millennium was Jesus.

Now, you go to the second
millennium and I believe

Leonardo is the most important,
dominant personality, made the

most contributions in the most
areas during those thousand years.

COPPENS: Wherever we look in
ancient times we find that the

genius was always identified with
superhero, divine qualities.

Even today we put geniuses on a separate
pedestal and almost worship them.

And this is really something
throughout mankind's history.

So the question is: where
does this come from?

And whenever you look into
mythology, you'll also find that

the geniuses were the ones who
were created by the gods.

Genius and divine go hand in hand.

NARRATOR: Leonardo da Vinci--

the man who created some of the
most famous artwork in the

world, designed machines 500
years ahead of their time, and

laid the groundwork for
today's advanced robotics.

Was he a time traveler-- a man
who, by accident, was provided a

glimpse into the future-- or was
he chosen to serve an unknown

agenda-- a human messenger who
conspired to keep a secret pact

with extraterrestrial beings?

Perhaps the answer lies not in
space but right before our eyes,

hidden in plain sight within the
smile of a 500-year-old portrait.

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