Original subtitles

Traditions designed to commemorate

the arrival of celestial visitors.

Rituals that echo lost technologies.

And ceremonies intended

to reconnect with otherworldly beings.

For nearly two decades,

Ancient Aliens has traveled the globe

exploring towering megalithic structures,

mysterious artifacts

and stories of otherworldly beings

in a quest for evidence that might

reveal the truth of our extraterrestrial origins.

You know, it's fascinating that we have these rituals

where people dress up to look like spacemen or aliens.

Now, we take a look back

through the Ancient Aliens archives

to the show's very origins

to examine the evidence that we are not alone.

We have never been alone.

Some of the most compelling evidence we have

of our extraterrestrial past is found in our rituals,

these deliberate practices and ceremonies that we've created

that typically honor some otherworldly entity.

Right, and oftentime, you see ancient cultures

wearing these elaborate

outfits commemorating some extraterrestrial contact.

And my question is: Could that be living mythology?

Yeah, it's like there's something in our DNA

that wants us to commemorate things in humanity's past.

And Ancient Aliens covered this way back in 2011.

The same year Giorgio's meme was born.

Correct.

The Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.

Here, among the ancient Mayan ruins of Chichén Itzá

stands the great pyramid of El Castillo.

Built by the Maya sometime between the 9th

and 12th centuries AD,

El Castillo served as a temple

to the feathered serpent god Kukulkan.

It is also believed to be the site of the Mayans'

most important ritual:

human sacrifice.

They would bring human victims

up the stairs of their temples,

they would cut out their beating hearts, and that would be

the form of sacrifice the Mayans engaged in.

In the rituals,

there was the central importance of blood sacrifice,

that by shedding blood, they could

empower their desire

and be granted what they wanted.

So, there is a theme of blood

that runs through this system of sacrifice.

That blood must be shed.

Although ritual sacrifice

is no longer practiced at El Castillo...

...worshippers still come to celebrate a time

when the Mayans say god Kukulkan

descended from the heavens to bring wisdom to man.

They light fires to unite with the spiritual realm,

perform sacred dances and repeat prayers

in numerical sequences to enter a deep state of meditation.

But the most powerful ritual that takes place at El Castillo

is a reenactment of Kukulkan's descent to Earth,

a reenactment that is literally built into the pyramid itself.

This is a model of the pyramid

of Chichén Itzá in Mexico.

And every year, on March 21st,

when the sun goes up,

directly on the stairway here

is created triangles of light and shadow

coming down the stairs,

which represents god Kukulkan

has descended to the humans.

At the end, you see the face of god Kukulkan.

On, uh, September 21st, it's the opposite.

This time, when the sun rises up in the morning,

god Kukulkan goes up the stairs and ends

in a bright light up on the little temple.

Which means god Kukulkan visited the earthlings,

teach them, and after a certain period,

he disappeared again into the sky

with the promise to return one day.

It could be that not only

are the Mayan celebrating

their extraterrestrial ancestors, but it could well be

that the ancient aliens who came to Earth

instructed the societies that they helped to maintain

a connection with them by performing certain rituals,

celebrations at the appearance of stars,

and keeping the story

of the extraterrestrials alive in their legends.

Did the Maya really conduct these elaborate

and bloody rituals to honor a mythical deity?

Or might they have been,

as ancient astronaut theorists contend,

commemorating an actual visitation

by extraterrestrial beings?

A ritual is absolutely a way to kind of reconnect

with, uh, with the gods.

So, not only are you reenacting your faith in this god, right?

You are actually reenacting the original moment

when the god did a very specific thing.

All over the world, ancient people and modern people

are using the rituals to connect them with-with gods,

yet these gods may well be ancient astronauts.

The Hill of Uisneach, Ireland.

Each year, on the first day of May,

the local citizens celebrate the sacred festival

of Beltane, similar to the one first performed

by the ancient Celts more than 2,000 years ago.

Like the ceremony at Chichén Itzá,

it is designed to connect and communicate

with beings from outside our world.

This day was the day when you would set fires,

bonfires.

And then you would walk your cattle between the fires

as a way to protect them for the coming spring and summer.

And these Mayday fires were a magical way

of calling down protection upon animals and human beings.

But why fire?

What was it about this most basic of elements

that made it so important to the ancient Celts?

The association of

fire with Beltane

suggest that this is a time when extra vision,

extra knowledge, is available.

And what the Celtic peoples were most interested

in knowing about was, in fact, the otherworld.

There is this notion that at Beltane,

there is a greater opportunity for

actually, perhaps, meeting people from the other world.

Might the fire rituals of the Beltane festival

have been started by the early Celts

as an attempt to recreate the strange lights

and ignitions they saw from an alien spacecraft?

Although no written records exist to explain

the event's true origins, there are those who believe

that such an incredible idea is possible.

And to prove it,

they point to a ceremony practiced each year

by the Kayapo people of Brazil.

A long time ago, Bep-Kororoti appeared

descending from the sky.

And when he landed, there was a lot of wind.

The earth was shaking and trembling.

There was a lot of noise.

The appearance of Bep-Kororoti has been preserved

to this day.

In fact, it's a medicine man wearing a straw suit.

And that straw suit looks eerily similar

to a modern-day astronaut suit.

The Kayapo remember the very special suit

this man or alien wore...

...which essentially completely enclosed the body.

And what's more interesting is

what a neighboring tribe said, namely the Bakairi.

They already had such a thing

hanging in a hut in the 19th century.

But for the Kayapo, the Bep-Kororoti festival

is only one of the ways they honor

an ancient visitation by an extraterrestrial being.

They also recount his visitation in their everyday lives

by wearing symbolic headdresses made of feathers.

There is this feather headdress

that has a row of feathers,

and when it's worn, it looks like a halo.

And these feathers represent no more

and no less than outer space.

The Kayapo see outer space as being a flat disk,

spreading out into infinity.

The band that holds these feathers together

is a symbol for the rope that the Kayapo ancestors

used to climb down to Earth from a celestial world.

Could the Kayapo rituals of Brazil

really have been inspired by an extraterrestrial visitation?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining a sacred

African tradition encrypted with a knowledge of the cosmos.

You know, it's fascinating that we have these rituals

where people dress up to look like spacemen or aliens.

Right, or for example, in Africa,

where we have the Dogon people, who celebrate

this celestial deity Nommo every year

by wearing these elaborate,

very bizarre-looking wooden masks.

And they even say that their creator god

comes from a star called Sirius B.

Which can't even be seen with the naked eye.

- Right. - We covered this

in the first season of Ancient Aliens

in an episode called "The Visitors."

Mm-hmm.

Mali in northwest Africa.

Deep in a remote valley live the Dogon people,

who are the descendants of a nomadic tribe

that settled here around 1000 AD.

The Dogon claim a very long

and ancient tradition,

and in my opinion, maintain some of

the ancient Egyptian traditions

and myths that have been carried on

right into the present age.

Parts of ancient Egypt may not have died.

They were carried on, to this day, among the Dogon.

But what exactly are their beliefs?

Dogon mythology holds that the sky god Amma

created the first living creature known as Nommo.

Still today, Dogon celebrates

a festival in the honor of Nommo

and that visitation that occurred in the remote past.

How do we know this? For this festival, they have

wooden masks that date back

to a very long time ago, when this festival began.

Dogon masks tell the mystic stories

of their ancestors.

This is a sculpture of the creator.

They call him Amma.

He's embracing the universe.

This is how they pass on information

from generation to generation, by stories carved in masks.

But could Nommo have been a real person?

Some see eerie similarities between the Dogons' legend

and the story of the mysterious Pharaoh Akhenaten.

Akhenaten believed he was directly descended

from the sun god Aten.

Nommo was said to have been created by the sky deity Amma.

Is it a coincidence that both cultures,

although thousands of miles apart,

shared mythical tales of beings coming from the skies?

And both Nommo and Akhenaten

were depicted with elongated heads.

Is it possible that these legends

were based on real events?

The Dogon dwell in the central plateau region

of Bandiagara.

Their knowledge is centuries old,

and their priests have been sharing it

with chosen individuals only.

In the 1920s, French anthropologist Griaule

and ethnologist Dieterlen visited the tribe

and were invited to share their secrets.

But one secret stood out.

The Dogon claimed that their god Amma

came from a specific star in the Sirius constellation,

the same place where the ancient Egyptians

believed their god Osiris was born.

This star, which modern astronomers

refer to as Sirius B,

the Dogon called Po Tolo.

But what baffles experts is that the star is so far

from Earth, it's impossible to see with the naked eye.

I was very intrigued by this, by the way.

I mean, the Dogons should not have known

about the existence of this star.

Sirius is the second nearest star from our solar system.

It's eight light years away.

In fact, it's not even visible with standard telescopes.

It was first seen, literally seen

and photographed in the 1970s.

Modern science has corroborated

that Sirius B does indeed exist.

Problem is,

the Dogon knew about this

before modern science corroborated it.

I mean, that's spooky.

Measurements taken with the Hubble telescope

in 2003 have confirmed

that Sirius B is what's known as a white dwarf,

or a partially burnt-out star with extremely dense mass.

Although it is smaller in size than Earth,

it's estimated to weigh eight times as much as our sun.

But how did the Dogon acquire

this ancient knowledge of astronomy that seems to be

centuries more advanced than that of modern science?

The mystery is: How did this story

get passed on down generations?

If the story came from a time before astronomers

knew there was a companion star to Sirius,

which can't be seen with the human eye.

This is the Dogons' symbol for Sirius.

When you move it around, you can see an orbit

around the center marked by Sirius A.

Sirius B circles around it, so it is a circular system.

This sign is practically an astronomical model

that the Dogon could not have invented

because only Sirius A is visible.

Sirius B and C are invisible.

However, their description of the orbit is correct.

One assumption is that this god, Nommo,

who brought them this knowledge, could have been

an extraterrestrial intelligence.

Since the early 20th century,

the tribe has been routinely studied

and researched by anthropologists.

This has led many modern historians

to claim that the Dogon must have learned

about astronomy from Westerners.

When critics suggest that this knowledge

was given to them by modern ethnologists,

that's simply incorrect, because we know

that the story goes back

hundreds of years earlier

than any modern ethnologist ever went there.

If it were ever proven

that all this information is exactly correct,

including the parts that are still being studied

by astronomers, this would mean that the Earth had visitors

from outer space in prehistoric times.

Either they inherited that knowledge,

and the question is: from where?

From a previous civilization

or from some sort of extraterrestrial civilization?

Or it's a coincidence.

In my view, it is not a coincidence.

If the Dogon people really possessed

this advanced astronomical knowledge,

were their legends based on real events?

The ancient Egyptians and Dogon were far from alone

in their belief in gods or mystical beings

that came from the sky.

Is there an explanation

for similar myths shared by ancient cultures

all around the world?

And what does that reveal as to

who these visitors may be?

Perhaps the answer can be found

not in northern Africa but here,

in the rocks and canyons of the American Southwest.

30 miles south of Gallup, New Mexico,

lies the Pueblo of Zuni.

Sheltered from the desolate high plains,

this adobe city is home to the Zuni Indians,

one of the oldest indigenous tribes in North America.

They have inhabited this land for almost 2,000 years,

and have protected their secrets even longer.

The Zuni are a very interesting culture

in that they're one of the few cultures

that really have not opened up, uh,

to the rest of the world

about their star knowledge traditions.

Most of this type of information

is-is very closely held, uh, by the-the natives.

And, um, I-I really find it, uh, very intriguing

that this is the time, uh, period in history

where now, we're starting to learn more and more

about their star knowledge.

Much of the Zuni people's history

is etched in the rocks in the New Mexico desert.

Tribal Elder Clifford Mahooty

and archaeologist Dan Simplicio

have studied the Zuni's secret history firsthand.

They've collected stories passed down through generations

that are rooted in the belief that the tribe's

creators and protectors

are supernatural beings from the sky.

This one's kind of interesting here.

I would imagine it was created in last century,

but from this design, you can see the star figure.

Celestial images oftentimes are depicted

in a lot of our cultural petroglyphs.

And this is one of 'em where it depicts the star.

It could be the supernova of the Crab Nebula.

Our Zuni mythology

in the prayer system, in the ritualistic protocols,

talk about these people that came over here

and told us how to actually live our lives

as beings, sky people.

If you listen to a lot of religious chants and songs

and prayers, that's all they talk about.

They're talking about space.

They're talking about out there in the universe

where they came from.

So, they depict it on a rock wall here,

but the actual meaning of it is somewhere more profound

and more complex than that.

These drawings are thought to have been created

around 1200 BC, yet they appear to depict

modern space travelers and their vehicles.

If you move back a little bit, you can see another figure here.

It has a dome.

It has eyes.

Uh, there's something coming down.

- And a nose. - Like a nose, through the nose,

but it kind of flares out.

I think it has something to do with

the ancient ones, when they saw something,

they took as much description of it to put in on there.

Of course, it's not gonna be exactly what they saw

but that's as best as they can do for something that they saw.

With all petroglyphs and-and things like that,

I mean, they're up to interpretation.

Sometimes they're just doodlings of people.

But other times, they may well be

actual descriptions and-and depictions

of some kind of god from outer space,

some ancient astronaut.

And when you go around, say, like the Zuni Pueblo,

I mean, that's what they'll tell you those petroglyphs are.

Even the Zunis themselves call them the spacemen.

This one seems to have

two legs coming out like that.

It has a broad,

diamond-shaped body. Um...

There probably was a better head that chipped off here.

Uh, that's very

different-looking than humans are.

Now usually, they're called UFOs.

But in the Zuni way,

we've always been taught that they're

the keepers of the upper world, which means space.

You know, they're sky people.

Beings that are of the extraterrestrial origin.

And this is still within our mythology

and our religious practices today.

Like most Indian tribes,

the Zunis call these sky people "kachinas."

According to the Zunis' creation story,

the kachina gods came down from the sky.

Every year, the Zunis participate

in a ceremony known as the Shalako Festival.

Dressed in traditional costumes to represent the kachinas,

the Indians celebrate the arrival of the gods on Earth.

This is, uh, a figurine

of kachina gods,

and these guys are some gods from the sky who came down.

Uh, they wear weird helmets.

This one has a helmet as a head,

and if you look at

the whole body of it, it's as if

it wears some type of a, of a suit.

This one here also

has the helmet and the visor.

For the Pueblo Indians like the Zunis,

these are their-their sky gods that, every year,

they have special ceremonies. People put on

these special costumes and masks

to reenact the coming of the gods.

They really look like ancient astronauts.

If you look at the poetry and the legends

and the stories from American Indian tribes in the Southwest,

they have the legend of the star people.

The star people came to Earth

and seeded planet Earth, and they came on flying ships.

If you speak to the elders, they will tell you that,

"A lot of us believe in the existence of extraterrestrials."

The Zunis don't have a written language.

The storyteller comes and he tells the young children

how it all happened.

All of their songs that they do in their ceremonies

tell the story over and over,

and that's how they pass them down.

Traditions, customs, beliefs,

they tell it in the Indian way.

They use things they understand

to explain things that they don't understand.

I remember my grandparents talking about

a craft that flew and had actually crash-landed on

one of the mesas east of here.

There's no interpretation of what an aircraft is,

so the closest thing that they could

interpret as anything capable of flight

is a bird or our masked kachina dancers.

We are very, very superstitious people.

It's always been in the history of Zuni

that they have always been here, even right here,

where we're sitting right now, but you just don't see them.

They're in a different frequency.

And those are very, very sacred,

and those are very, very secret.

They're out there somewhere.

Could rituals really serve as ancestral records

of contact with extraterrestrials

who came to Earth in the remote past?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes

and suggest further proof

can be found in an elaborate ceremony

that honors their descent from the sky.

You know, it's incredible to me how many

of these ancient rituals involve the power of flight.

In Mexico, for example,

you have the participants descend from the sky

commemorating the arrival of their so-called gods.

Right, and anthropologists might argue this has something

to do with bird worship, but that's not what

the ritual looks like at all.

They're not flapping their arms like wings,

they're attached to a pole and they're smoothly gliding

- through the air. - Yeah.

Yeah, right. It's like they're mimicking

something technological, like a glider or an airplane

- or something. - Right.

Five men in ceremonial dress

ascend a 100-foot pole.

Once at the top, one of the men performs

a sacred dance while playing a flute and drum

atop a platform.

The other four men launch themselves off.

It is a ritual known as "La Danza de los Voladores,"

or "The Dance of the Flyers."

The ritual has the leader

stand on the top of the pole, a tiny little platform,

and the four flyers wrap a cable

around that pole and then branch out

and fly around in a pyramid shape

in perfect synchronous order.

It's a stunning and daring thing to do.

And they are representing the birds,

they are representing the four

cardinal directions, they are representing

the elements, heavily symbolic

and mythic, and it is a powerful ritual.

The Totanac people who practice this ceremony today

claim it is a dance that was invented 500 years ago

as a plea to the gods to end a severe drought.

But could this ancient ritual

have different, perhaps otherworldly origins?

What we have here

with the Voladores is 100%

living mythology.

Something that describes and illustrates,

in front of our living eye, the descent

of the gods from a long time ago.

According to ancient astronaut theorists,

the Voladores ritual is a reenactment of a close encounter

with alien visitors in the distant past.

They believe extraterrestrials descended upon

the flat mountaintops of the Palpa region in Peru

around 500 AD,

dropping from their aircraft

and gliding down to Earth in spiraling circles.

The Voladores ritual was very technological, as in,

you know, these beings descending from the sky,

and the circle signifying arrival of the gods.

Where does that flying or descending gods motif originate?

Our ancestors saw something,

because why would you hurl yourself

from a 100-foot pole out of nothing,

to imitate a bird?

Birds are not that important.

Something very significant happened.

Could an alien encounter

really be the inspiration for the Voladores ritual?

And could the Totanac people who created the ceremony

really have been trying to mimic the ancient gods'

power of flight?

As further evidence that early humans may have encountered

alien visitors equipped with the power of flight,

ancient astronaut theorists point to various artifacts

and statues depicting ancient gods.

One such example is the Mayan god Ah-Muzen-Cab,

also known as the Flying Bee God.

Another is the most prominent god

of early Mesoamerican culture,

the winged deity Quetzalcoatl.

The Mesoamericans believed in the plumed serpent,

or Quetzalcoatl, which, uh,

came from the sky, bringing wisdom, uh,

powered the wind and also influenced everything

that happened in the daily life of the Mayans.

In fact, they looked to the sky for all their answers,

from everything as simple as

when to plant corn to when to go to war.

Uh, they believed all answers in the universe

came from the sky and trying to relate that

to their daily lives.

The ancient record

are loaded with fantastic

examples of the gods flying around.

These are the ancient aliens, and humans are being shown

the ultimate capability of these gods.

In my eyes,

because we are the sons of the gods,

we are the offsprings of the gods,

whatever humans can dream,

whatever humans think,

was once reality in the past

or will be reality in the future.

July 31, 2003.

The English Channel.

Felix Baumgartner becomes the first person

to cross this 22-mile-wide body of water

in freefall, using a specially made fiber wing.

But the Austrian daredevil is just

one of many who have used wingsuits to simulate

flying by means of a free fall.

A wingsuit is basically a jumpsuit

that you put on under your rig,

and it's designed to

actually make you fly when you exit the plane.

Uh, the material inflates underneath your arms,

in between your legs,

and creates, basically, an airfoil

that you glide on through the air.

It's an amazing feeling because

you're actually the pilot and the plane.

It is total freedom.

You feel as though you're flying.

Though you are falling,

you're using the air to maneuver your body.

And the wingsuit helps you cover a lot of ground

as you're descending.

Some people have been exceeding two-to-one glide ratio.

For example, three-to-one would mean for every foot

you descend, you're traveling three feet forward.

We got these flying guys that have these wings

attached to their backs, and they hurl themselves

out of planes, and some even have

rocket engines attached to them.

And so they essentially themselves become airplanes.

Now imagine showing that

to someone from 100 years ago.

That person would be in complete awe

of what they're witnessing,

not understanding that there is technology involved with this.

Just using our own body, we cannot fly.

We have no wings.

But, of course, we have the fantasy

and we have the technology to develop

wings that we can fly.

The pursuit of flight

has been one of the most sought-after quests

in all of mankind's history. Why?

Because with flight, you could reach,

conceivably, the realm of the gods.

From the ancient Greek myth

of Icarus fashioning wings

of feathers and wax,

to modern daredevils like Felix Baumgartner,

human beings have been fascinated with,

and often frustrated by,

their desire to fly.

But have birds really served as mankind's inspiration?

Or something else?

Something extraterrestrial?

And if so, might ancestral rituals

preserve the memory of their visitation?

Perhaps further evidence of otherworldly contact

can be found in our oldest and most sacred

funerary rites.

When you're thinking about rituals that involve

whole communities of people,

you're typically not thinking about funerary rites,

but these are some of the most

powerful and mysterious practices we have.

Right, and they include some pretty interesting rituals,

like mummification, for example.

And the Egyptians, you know, were very elaborate

in how they prepared the body.

Right, and we're told that, allegedly,

all of this was done in order to prepare them

for the afterlife.

But my question is: Did they witness extraterrestrials

getting ready for a journey to space?

In fact, we covered that question

in a 2014 episode called

"Secrets of the Mummies."

Vatican City.

April 2nd, 2005.

Pope John Paul II dies...

...bringing his historic 26-year papacy to a close.

His corpse is chemically preserved and transported

to Saint Peter's Basilica for public viewing.

In a funeral service watched by millions,

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

speaks of the beloved pontiff's soul

being guided to the eternal glory of heaven.

His body is then interred

in a large underground tomb beneath the church.

We can see that a great deal of care

was taken to preserve Pope John Paul's body.

And the idea is that death, in fact,

is just the beginning of this journey.

Many modern funerals,

those that take place in Europe and the Americas,

many of the initial ideas

actually have their roots in ancient Egypt.

In ancient Egypt, bodies were mummified

and put into sarcophagi that resemble human beings.

And this is still done today in many religious traditions,

including the Roman Catholic Church.

The preserved body of Pope John Paul II

is, essentially, a mummy.

But why do so many people go to such great lengths

to preserve the body after death?

Our ancestors believed in an afterlife

and that the proper ceremonials rites

at time of death allow the departed

to travel to the reward, to the next life...

...which was often imagined to be in the heavens, the stars,

and that this travel allowed

the person to come into their full reward.

You have, all over the world,

people continue to preserve bodies,

and it's because there is this idea of living forever,

that death is not the end,

it's a beginning, it's a transitory state.

For some reason, everyone has this idea

that we need the body to live forever.

If people truly believed there was a spiritual essence

that infused the body that left at the moment of death,

they can't justify mummification.

What can explain the fact

that for thousands of years,

in cultures throughout the world,

people have held a belief

that the preservation of the body

is necessary to transition into the afterlife?

Ancient astronaut theorists believe clues can be found

hidden beneath the desert sands of Upper Egypt.

The Valley of the Kings.

Located on the western bank of the Nile river

lies one of the most expansive burial grounds in all of Egypt.

The tombs were constructed

between 1539 and 1075 BC

for pharaohs and other nobility.

To date, 63 tombs have been discovered

in the Valley of the Kings.

One of the best-preserved is that of Pharaoh Ramesses VI,

who ruled from approximately

1145 to 1137 BC.

More than 4,000 years ago,

King Ramesses would have started digging this

to become his tomb.

Or as he called it, his "House of Eternity."

For ancient Egyptians, a tomb wasn't just a place

where they would end up dead.

A tomb was a place where they would start

their eternal life.

The Egyptians believed that, in death,

the soul would split into several parts,

and begin the journey to the afterlife.

But to make this transition,

it was essential to reunite the soul

with the physical body.

And while the Egyptians were not the first to mummify their dead,

no other ancient culture went to such great lengths

to preserve the body

and ensure entrance into the next life.

Ancient Egyptians would put a body, um,

that needed to be mummified in a dry room.

And they would first take out the internal organs,

and they'd pack that body with natron salt

to start the drying process.

And then they would remove the brain.

And then they would rinse the body

with sweet-smelling oils

and they'd cover the entire body in natron salt,

and it would stay that way for about 35 to 70 days.

Once the body was all dried out, they would wrap the entire body,

putting amulets and other special jeweled objects

in the linen and then, once it was completely wrapped,

and be done.

The Egyptians understood

the most important factor in mummification:

the removal of fluids,

which ensures that bacteria cannot survive

and the body will not decay.

Although archeologists have discovered

much about how these mummies were prepared,

the Egyptians left behind no texts

or instructions on mummification.

Just how the Egyptians came to create

this complex practice remains a mystery.

But they did leave behind extensive records

regarding their thoughts on the afterlife.

This right here is a very good depiction

of the journey of the afterlife with King Ramesses.

You see him here on a solar barge

being protected by all the different gods behind him.

Goddess Isis and god Osiris.

This right here is god Anubis.

And god Anubis is the god of the mummification.

The most important story

in Egyptian mythology is the god Osiris,

how his brother Set coveted

his brother's power and killed him.

Then his wife Isis, in grief, got help from Anubis,

who then helped Isis breathe life back into him,

to survive into the next life with the help of Anubis,

the inventor of embalming and mummification.

The mummification process in Egypt

is often-- be related to, uh, the star Sirius,

which we call the Dog Star.

And the mummification rites were overseen

by the Egyptian god Anubis, who was a jackal-headed god.

And so, you have to wonder if Anubis

wasn't some real, physical extraterrestrial god.

The ancient Egyptian temple walls

are-are covered with images of-of transformation.

And what it reveals is that their core sacred science

was about human transformation

or ascension into celestial beings.

So, you wonder: Is it possible?

It's because those who originally taught us

these concepts came from the stars.

Could it be that the ancient Egyptians' beliefs

about the afterlife were influenced

by extraterrestrial visitors?

Was it from these visitors

that they learned the process of mummification?

And if so, what was their ultimate agenda?

Perhaps further clues can be found

by examining the rituals of the Inca,

who believed that mummies could communicate with beings

from beyond Earth.

Cuzco, Peru.

This sacred city was once the capital of the Inca Empire,

and by the 13th century, was the center

of one of the largest and most sophisticated

pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas.

The Inca were renowned

for their proficiency in architecture,

and widely regarded as the most important

of their many temple complexes was the one known as Coricancha.

Historical accounts describe it

as a magnificent palace of gold that housed

the most holy objects of worship for the Inca...

...the mummies of their dead kings.

That's where the king

did his most important rituals

and where the mummies of the previous Sapa Incas,

or kings, were kept.

And those mummies were communicated with

on a regular basis.

Even today, descendants of the Inca

recreate the centuries-old practice

of using the mummies in sacred ceremonies.

Four times a year, they were brought out,

and the living descendants would then consult with them

about the affairs of state,

as well as what they should do in the future.

It was believed that these mummies could communicate

with deities, or otherworldly beings,

in this twilight realm...

...or in this state between life and death.

They even had people specially trained

to take care of the royal mummies.

And some of the duties that these caretakers had

were interpreting what the mummy wished to say,

arranging meetings with the living and the dead

and strangely, even taking the mummy outside

so he could urinate.

But why would the Inca,

the most advanced civilization in South America at the time,

treat corpses as though they were living, thinking beings?

Perhaps the answer can be found

by examining the Incan creation story.

The Incan creation myth describes

how the world was created by the Ayar brothers.

And the word "ayar" actually means "mummy."

So, written right into the myth from the very beginning

is the idea that mummification is of central importance

to whomever and whatever these gods are.

Is it possible that those mythical gods

were actually extraterrestrial

flesh and blood beings of some kind?

But if the Ayar brothers

really were extraterrestrials,

why would the Inca have used the same term

for these alien visitors

as they did for their mummified dead?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that the Inca

may have witnessed these otherworldly space travelers

emerging from a state of suspended animation.

What if they were trying to mimic

whatever it is that they saw?

And so, if someone with no technological knowledge

witnesses someone who is in suspended animation,

and then they come alive,

they have just witnessed the resurrection of someone--

someone coming back from the dead--

when in reality, that was never the case.

Is it possible that the Inca

witnessed alien visitors coming out of hibernation,

and that this is why they mummified their dead?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,

and claim that this might also explain mummification

in other cultures, most notably the Egyptians.

It's possible that the extraterrestrials

who visited Egypt would have needed to have

some sort of hyperbaric isolation chambers

to get from their home world to here.

Now, if that is true, then it's also possible

that the mummification ritual actually originated

from this long-term hyperbaric storage

that they were doing with their bodies

inside sarcophagus-like chambers.

One idea, certainly, is that human beings

and these societies were seeing extraterrestrials

who were wrapped in certain body suits,

and then they would come back alive.

They were put in a special suspended animation

that was similar to mummification,

and perhaps this is why

the Egyptians were doing mummification.

Could mummification really have been an attempt

by ancient people to imitate

extraterrestrial space travelers?

Perhaps, but ancient astronaut theorists propose

that there may be an even more profound explanation,

that early humans were not simply imitating alien visitors

but intended to join them in the future.

And they suggest that other ritualistic processes

were left behind, granting humans

the ability to commune with otherworldly beings at will.

You know, while we have a lot of rituals

that are about people commemorating the past

or past encounters, we also have a lot of rituals

that are about people contacting the gods.

Oh, absolutely.

There are multiple cultures

that talk about creating specific sound frequencies

in order to communicate with the gods.

But that's not all.

They also took mind-altering substances

in order to access other realms.

Yeah, and all these cultures

had shamans and priests that that acted as guides.

And we still have them today.

So, you wonder, were some of our present-day rituals

taught to our ancestors by extraterrestrials

- to make contact with them? - Mm-hmm.

The Amazon jungle, Peru.

Stretching from the Andes Mountains

to the eastern shores of Brazil, this rainforest is home

to more than 80,000 species of plants,

many of which shamans and religious healers

have consumed for thousands of years

as a way to access realms

they say are inhabited by otherworldly beings.

In the Amazon, one of the shaman's jobs,

aside from going to the other world

and speaking with the spirits...

...is to find the plants right here on Earth

that can heal the people of his tribe.

And in the Amazonian belief systems,

each plant in the jungle has its own spirit.

And one of the shaman's gifts

is that he can communicate with these plant spirits.

Originating in the Central Andes

of South America,

ayahuasca, meaning the "vine of the souls,"

is a psychedelic brew

consisting of two different types of plants

cooked with water.

And this is drunk by the shaman

in order to enter the spirit world

to gain information about diseases,

to foresee the future,

um, to carry out a healing for somebody.

We know some of the history of ayahuasca

because archaeologists have found artifacts

from the rainforest which date back

three and a half thousand or 4,000 years.

But those are only the surviving artifacts that they've found.

Potentially, this could go back to the beginning of time.

Ayahuasca contains dimethyltryptamine, or DMT,

one of the most powerful hallucinogens known to man.

But strangely, this chemical compound

only works when consumed under precise conditions.

Ingest DMT, it's inactivated

in the intestine by, uh, by certain enzymes.

So, in order to get the DMT

to be activated and to be able to be absorbed,

they had to combine it with other plants.

Ayahuasca contains a mixture of two plants.

There's actually quite subtle and sophisticated knowledge

of plants goes into the preparation,

'cause these two things on-- separately will not work.

You have to mix them together, and let's not forget

that there's a 150,000 different species

of plants and trees in the Amazon.

It's really quite an amazing achievement

of ancient chemistry

to bring these two plants together to produce

a highly psychoactive, uh, visionary brew.

But how did ancient people

living in the jungles of Peru

over 3,000 years ago,

with tens of thousands of plants to choose from,

figure out that combining these two particular plants

would produce these powerful visions?

According to the mythology of the Achuar people of the Amazon,

their ancestors didn't discover this on their own

but were guided by extraterrestrial beings.

The shamans communicated with their spirits

and were told to go into the jungle

and turn two corners, as the myth goes,

and then they would find this plant.

And they brought that back to the village,

prepared it in the appropriate way.

The oral tradition says that ayahuasca

is a linkage to the upper world,

and it is entirely possible

that they were given this gift by their own gods,

which may be extraterrestrials.

If the Achuar story of how their ancestors

discovered ayahuasca is true,

could they have been guided not by spirits

but by extraterrestrial beings,

beings who communicated with them

on another plane of reality?

Between 1990 and 1995,

scientists at the University of New Mexico

administered DMT,

the active ingredient in ayahuasca,

to 60 volunteers,

and discovered shocking results.

Medical researchers actually administered DMT

to patients in a controlled medical setting,

and they had exactly the same experiences as those

reported in the jungles of South America

and elsewhere who are experiencing ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca users typically experience

hallucinations in the visual form,

and a lot of them say that they see other beings.

And a lot of them say that they get messages

sent to them from these beings.

In several cases, those intelligent entities

said to them, roughly, the following:

"We're so pleased you've discovered this technology.

Now we can communicate with you more often."

Perhaps what we're dealing with here

is intelligent inhabitants of other dimensions.

Why would so many people

report such similar experiences while using ayahuasca?

Is it possible extraterrestrials gave the ancients

the recipe for this powerful concoction

as a way to communicate healing powers with shamans?

And if so, might the very core of mankind's knowledge

about medicine have come from an otherworldly source?

Hua Shan Mountain, China.

This 7,000-foot-high peak in the Shaanxi province

is believed to have been the place where Shennong,

a benevolent emperor that ruled the area

more than 4,500 years ago, was conceived.

According to accounts from the Han dynasty,

Shennong not only introduced agriculture to mankind

but also developed a profound knowledge of Chinese herbs.

Shennong pledged that he would

venture out into the world

and test every plant on the planet

in order to determine its, uh, benefits for humans

and also to catalog, uh, the more, uh,

toxic or dangerous effects of ingesting these plants.

Sometimes he would ingest, of course, poisonous plants

and he would suffer poisonings up to 70 times, uh, per day.

More than 2,000 years later,

Shennong's findings were compiled

in The Divine Farmer's Herb-Root Classic,

a medical journal that became

one of the foundations of Chinese medicine.

But just how could this mysterious being

have tested so many herbs,

some even containing deadly poisons?

Shennong was a quite unusual person.

It's said that he had a transparent stomach.

And he himself, after ingesting these poisons,

would look into his own stomach and see how

these poisons were interacting with himself.

And then he would take the antidotes for it.

So, you have to wonder if he's not

some kind of extraterrestrial.

Shennong could, in fact, have been

an astral, or star being,

who came to Earth to teach the secrets of healing.

This idea would explain his strange appearance

and also his ability to withstand ingesting

poisonous plants without ever being harmed.

Might Shennong have been an alien visitor?

One who traveled to Earth in order to educate mankind

about medicine and the healing nature of plants?

And is this proof that ingesting DMT,

a practice that dates back thousands of years,

actually connects shamans with extraterrestrial beings?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes

and claim further evidence lies

with the supernatural healing rituals of the San bushmen.

The Kalahari Desert, South Africa.

Here, the native San bushmen hold elaborate fireside rituals

lasting for hours into the night.

During these ceremonies,

their shamans perform what's known as a trance dance,

through which they reach an altered state of being

and access other dimensions.

The trance dance is thought to activate an energy

in their body called n/um.

And this energy opens a portal of sorts

that enables them to travel into the spirit world.

And when the Bushmen activate this energy, they're able to put

their hands in the fire without being burned.

They can see vast distances and it's as if,

in every way, shape and form,

they're transformed into super powerful beings.

By accessing the power of n/um energy,

it is believed that a shaman can extract illness,

see the insides of the sick

and travel out of their own body to the land of the gods.

This n/um goes up the body and then,

often, it goes out of the crown of the head,

and that's usually when

the out-of-body experience occurs

and they travel to the spirit world.

I've seen a bushman put a coal in his mouth

and he wasn't burned.

They'll put their heads in the fire,

and although their hair might singe and even catch fire,

their face won't be burned.

So something is happening with this n/um energy.

They call it "boiling energy."

It's almost like there's a vibrational change

in their whole body and probably in their DNA in some way.

Could the so-called n/um energy

really be inherent in shamans,

accessed only while in a sort of dream state?

And is it possible that the genetic makeup

of these medicine men is what allows them

to access other dimensions?

The San bush people have a tradition

that they are the first tribe ever created.

They're the oldest people in the world.

DNA tests have shown that they probably are.

That all other cultures and all other peoples

that spread throughout the world

came, originally, from

where the San people are now.

When we look at the San bushmen

and we see the clear genetic evidence

that they are the primordial seed

of human civilization and life on Earth, it is possible

that their DNA is especially well equipped

to have this potential to access

these non-ordinary states of consciousness

which may, in fact, be a key

to physically journeying into them,

giving these people the ability

to do things that most of us seemingly cannot.

Is it possible that the San bushmen

have special knowledge of how to alter their genetic makeup

in order to access other realms,

a knowledge that is shared by shamans around the world?

And might this knowledge or power have been given to them

by alien beings?

Ancient astronaut theorists believe an undeniable connection

between shamans and extraterrestrials

can be found in cave paintings

that date back thousands of years.

The Lascaux caves, southwestern France.

Discovered in 1940 near the village of Montignac...

...this cave complex is covered in Paleolithic paintings

dating back more than 17,000 years.

Anthropologists believe ancient shamans

used these subterranean chambers to perform sacred rituals.

And curiously, among the many Ice Age animals

that are depicted on the walls,

there is a strange creature

that has the body of a man and the head of a bird.

The technical term for such a creature

is a "therianthrope,"

and that's from the Greek "therian,"

which means "wild beast,"

and "anthropos," which means "man."

Clearly, these are not things that one encounters

in everyday life.

The imagery of cave art

is best explained as the experiences

that shamans undergo in a deep state of trance.

When they return from the trance state...

...they then depict on the cave walls

the visions that they have seen

in this deeply altered state of consciousness.

The bird man found in Lascaux is reminiscent

of one of the Egyptians' most important gods, Thoth.

It is also consistent with the depiction

of the Sumerian sky gods, the Anunnaki.

But is it mere coincidence that these shamans

are encountering the same types of beings while in a trance

that the world's earliest civilizations

depicted as their gods?

In all of these different Indigenous cultures

around the world, there are remarkable similarities

of what types of beings

people claim to be meeting when they go out of body.

This suggests that, in the dream plane

and in the shamanic state,

there is, in fact, a real place that we are going

and real beings that we are encountering when we get there.

This is where the ancient astronaut theory

suggests that they were the same teachers,

the teachers that went to all the ancient cultures

and brought them the basics for what we've accomplished today.

There was a-a big, noticeable change

in human behavior around 40,000 years ago,

exactly at the time that our ancestors

begin to manifest the first amazing, uh, c-cave art.

But what is clear is that it's not a coincidence,

that at the moment that the cave art begins,

we also witness, in the archeological record,

a radical change in human behavior.

Could the Lascaux cave paintings

be proof that shamans

really do communicate with extraterrestrial beings,

as ancient astronaut theorists suggest?

And if so, might it be that the rituals

performed by tribal elders enable them to bridge the gap

between humans and these otherworldly entities?

Perhaps the answer can be found

by examining a somewhat more traditional ceremony,

one still performed to this day,

and to an audience of millions around the world.

You know, a lot of these ancient ceremonies

have survived to the present day.

Like, for example, coronation ceremonies.

Yeah. Look at the British Royal Family.

Uh, their rites, with the coronation,

involve scepters and crowns and other objects

as part of their coronation, going on for centuries.

Yeah, they even have this strange object

called the Stone of Destiny

that they place in the throne.

And what all this is doing is elevating

the king or queen to a higher realm.

These strange rituals give them the right to rule.

Edinburgh Castle, Scotland.

In the Crown Room lies a 336-pound oblong stone block.

Known as the Stone of Destiny, and also as the Stone of Scone,

it has been present at the coronation

of nearly every English and Scottish monarch

for more than 800 years.

Its purpose: to unite the new ruler with God.

And there are those who believe it is part of a meteor

that fell to Earth more than 3,000 years ago.

The Stone, it was seen as an axis mundi,

the connection point between heaven and Earth.

It was almost like the English strengthened

their own belief that Westminster Abbey

was the axis mundi.

They placed it within a throne

right in front of the Cosmati Pavement.

And within this Cosmati Pavement are circles and swirls

and lines that represent the universe as a whole.

And the monarch becomes

what's known as a "cosmocrator,"

looking over not just what was going on

on the Earth but the stars,

the heavens as a whole, by sitting on the throne.

Is this ancient stone merely a symbol of divine right?

Or might it, at one time,

have held some strange, unknown power?

Throughout recorded history, coronation rituals

have incorporated devices like the Stone of Destiny

as a way of linking the new ruler

with superior beings beyond our world.

What is coronation in the first place?

Well, it's the idea that the monarch can embody

some kind of cosmic consciousness,

something that is divine.

And this is actually best seen through the eyes

of the old traditions relating to the Japanese mikados.

They would have to sit upon the throne,

which would be considered to be

at the point of creation of the world.

There's a notion called the divine right of kings

that, um, certain British kings had,

that somehow, the sovereign

is God's representative on planet Earth.

But for the ancients, it went steps further.

But if some otherworldly power

is actually being handed down,

who or what is the source of that power?

If you were an extraterrestrial

and you came down to this planet,

one of the first things you'd try to do

would be to mingle with leadership.

And I think the pharaohs

believed that they might have been gods themselves.

The king was considered a deity.

Did he go back into his room and sit and talk with the gods?

Uh, we don't know, we weren't exact-- we weren't there.

But he certainly did communicate

with the deities through these rituals.

In addition to the Stone of Destiny,

another ritualistic symbol which features

in most coronation ceremonies is that of the scepter.

The scepter is a symbol of divinely granted authority,

and in ancient times,

it often took the form of a staff or a golden wand.

According to historians,

its use dates back to ancient Egypt,

and there are those who believe

it is connected symbolically to the Egyptian ankh.

When it comes to the ankh in ancient Egypt,

we find that it is intimately familiar with Isis.

Isis symbolizes the ankh because she is the one

who was able to restore life.

It is the symbol of transformation,

the symbol of alchemy, the symbol of ritual.

You have to wonder here

if the original ankh wasn't some kind of high-tech device

that the ancient astronauts used,

and then it was given to the kings for their use.

And with a coronation ritual and holding a scepter,

suddenly, normal people become as gods.

And today, all we have is a symbolic representation

of this high-tech object.

If the throne and the scepter

are identified with a connection

to otherworldly or extraterrestrial power,

what about the most iconic of all coronation symbols,

the crown itself?

What says kingship? It's the crown.

It's clearly a device, whether you see a crown as a symbol

or whether you see a crown as something literal,

it's clear that somehow, it was very specific.

Something placed on your head established this connection.

Some historians believe the idea for the crown

may have originated with the divine image of the halo.

Sumerians described their gods,

the Anunnaki, as literally having a glow about them.

And this was carried into more recent times

as angels with a halo over their head.

These are the beings that from heaven came to Earth.

Kingship now wants to have that same lineage of connection

with the gods by placing a crown on the king's head.

That headpiece symbolized the translation

of a human being heir apparent

into a sovereign, to deify that sovereign,

to make that sovereign extraterrestrial.

Some of the earliest cave drawings

we can find in the world show these humanoid beings

with halos around their heads.

And that is very fascinating because if you look today

at modern-day astronauts,

if you have the Sun rising behind them,

or even just with their flashlights

that they have on the sides of their helmets,

well, if someone who is not knowledgeable in technology

sees this, well, it looks like their head

is surrounded by this divine light.

Which, it's not divine at all.

It's a light source.

So, over time, people-- our ancestors--

started to imitate the gods,

these extraterrestrials, by wearing crowns.

The throne,

the scepter,

the crown.

Could these symbols of coronation

have been inspired not by the imagination

or even spiritual visions

but by some sort of alien encounters?

If so, what other ancient rituals

might find their roots in a kingdom not of this world?

s

are very important to the human experience,

and the ones we most commonly practice today are religious.

The Catholic Mass, for instance.

Right, and there are so many ancient rituals

that we are doing today

while we have no idea why we're doing them

or how they came about, but we are still doing them.

Yeah, and this may trace back to the extraterrestrial visitors.

To me, it goes back to this notion

that there's something embedded in our DNA

that compels us to commemorate and honor the past.

Vatican City, Italy.

Pope Benedict XVI walks down the aisle

in Saint Peter's Basilica carrying a golden crucifix.

Upon reaching the altar, he lifts the thurible,

a metal vessel suspended from chains

in which incense is burned for purification.

The pope recites the Eucharist Prayer,

and then he and his congregation

consume the consecrated bread and wine.

They are, according to the most sacred laws of the Church,

eating the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ.

The mass, the communion, the transubstantiation

of eating the-the body of God,

allows us to ingest the divine energy.

This is called manna, or magical energy,

and the-the almost cannibalistic aspect of the ritual is crucial

for a-atonement, which is "at onement,"

to become one with the divine source.

But what does it mean to become one with the divinity?

Most historians say the ritual of the Catholic Mass

can be traced back to the Last Supper,

when the act of Jesus serving bread and wine to his disciples,

during what was actually a Passover Seder,

created a powerful spiritual bond that must not be broken.

But there are others who believe the Catholic Mass

stems from a ritual practiced thousands of years earlier.

Scholars have speculated that the Mass

is actually inspired by Egyptian mythology

and a similar ritual that was done for the god Osiris.

The idea is we take the divine substance,

the body of the god into us

so that we are one with that transcendent energy.

The legend of Osiris tells how he was killed

and dismembered by his jealous brother,

then resurrected from the various parts of his body

by his wife Isis.

Egyptian priests reenacted this ancient event

with a ritual involving clay and wheat.

The ritual has to do with making wheat, uh, cakes

that resemble the pieces of the dismembered god,

which are then hidden and, uh, a woman playing,

uh, the-the wife goes and finds the pieces.

And then, in the end, the priests eat the pieces.

Those who ate the sacramental wheat cakes

believed they had brought the god Osiris

back to life within themselves.

But where did early Egyptians get such a profound idea?

The question then is:

Are they mimicking things which they saw...

...and it somehow involved this transformation

from a dead Osiris to a person who was regenerated?

When we're looking at some of these rituals,

really, contact with the divine is a technology,

whether it's the ritual or whether it's practical

or whether it's to mimic extraterrestrials.

Could the Roman Catholic ceremony

of eating the body and blood of Christ

actually have its origins

in the ancient Egyptian story of Osiris?

And if so, does it suggest that the Catholic religion,

like other ancient beliefs, has its roots

in an extraterrestrial encounter?

A ritual is a participatory performance,

and the main objective of a ritual

is to communicate something

about an underlying belief or an idea.

These ancient rituals coincided with the appearance

of various constellations in the sky, various stars.

All across the world, in ancient societies,

there was a belief that human beings were placed

on planet Earth by the star people.

Mythology, like legend, has real history in it.

There's a strong sense of connection to those sources

when one enters into ritual.

Our deepest yearnings are for things we cannot remember.

We yearn for lost wisdom, lost possibilities.

It seems we work toward goals we do not understand.

It seems we are driven by aspirations

that are truly mysterious.

The ones who come from another world,

our relatives,

are the ones that bring the laws and the instructions

and the ceremonies and the rituals here

so that people will go through this process of evolution.

Are today's frequently practiced rituals

such as prayers,

funerals

and coronations,

really based on early man's attempts

to emulate ancient alien visitors?

Or are they something even more profound?

Could they provide an actual means with which humans

may communicate with,

or even return to,

another perhaps extraterrestrial existence?

If so, we may only know the truth

when we, ourselves, make the journey.

Or perhaps, when they return.

The word "ritual" means right, or truth.

So, when we're enacting a ritual,

it is a performance of the original truth.

And then it's up to us, then, to pull on the thread

and ask the question: Where did it come from?

Yeah, and so, by studying them

and finding their origins, if-- we can, you know, understand

what these rituals are really about.

Right. I think many of these rituals

still in existence today are breadcrumbs

that lead to a past

of extraterrestrial contact where our ancestors

didn't quite understand, "We're communicating

with flesh-and-flood extraterrestrials."

CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY A+E NETWORKS