Original subtitles

A 2,000-year-old computer.

It had more complicated inner workings than

a modern-day Swiss watch.

NARRATOR: Giant power plants.

It's very strange, but it's clearly a battery.

And weapons more powerful than anything that exists today.

It roared, then flashes of fire came out of it.

Throughout the world, there are artifacts and

stories that point to advanced

technology in the distant past.

Could these be products of our ancestors' imaginations?

Or might there be a more profound explanation?

It sounds fantastic to us that they could

have had some kind of alien technology.

It's clearly what they're describing.

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 we find proof

by examining mysterious devices?

The Giza Necropolis, Egypt.

1993.

A team of engineers uses a

remotely-operated camera in an attempt to discover the true

function of what is believed to be an airshaft

leading from the supposed queen's chamber of the Great Pyramid.

First discovered in 1872,

archaeologists long considered

these narrow tunnels to be ventilation ducts.

This robot traveled up this small shaft, which was

too small for a human or any

type of device to go through,

and all of a sudden, it finds a closed door

hinged by two little metal clamps.

According to mainstream archaeologists,

the door and metal handles

were intentionally built as a symbolic passageway

that the queen would travel through to the afterlife.

But some researchers have

questioned why this passageway

would have been designed

with a deliberate blockage,

and why-- on a plateau filled with

monumental pyramids believed to serve as royal tombs--

is the Great Pyramid the only one with such a door?

Egyptologists are very much fond of saying

that pyramids are tombs, and that they have been robbed at

some point in the past.

But the fact is that we have found, in the 20th century,

a number of pyramids whose central

king's chamber, so to speak, is intact.

And when they opened the sarcophagus,

they found that sarcophagus to be empty, as well.

If the Great Pyramid was not a tomb,

what may have been its true purpose?

In May 2011, another team of researchers

set out to further explore the blocked airshaft in

the queen's chamber.

This time, the crew used a robot

equipped with a micro-snake camera

to slip through a hole and reveal what was beyond the door.

When they actually penetrated this small door,

they found a hidden room within the pyramid.

What they found was copper fittings,

or the metal fittings.

Another feature of the back of these metal fittings

was that on one side,

the loop looked like it was corroded.

The camera also looked down

and scanned the floor,

and what we saw was red markings.

My interpretation of those were,

they were electrical symbols.

But why were they there?

Could these artifacts be actual evidence

that electricity once coursed through the structure?

And if so, could the Great

Pyramid of Giza have been built

to serve as not a royal tomb

but a power plant, as some researchers contend?

DUNN: If we dismiss the tomb theory,

and we look at the pyramid itself,

we see something that modern engineers can really

tune into and understand.

What we have is a very, very precise

building that has theprecision of a fraction of an inch,

is something that is very noteworthy

and not indicative of a simple, agrarian culture.

So, what we have is something that is almost like a machine.

If the Great Pyramid was a sophisticated machine,

potentially capable of creating energy,

how could it have worked?

Some researchers believe clues can be found

by exploring underneath the structure.

In 2000, maritime engineer John Cadman

proposed a theory that the Egyptians pumped water

from the nearby Nile River

into a small chamber underneath the Great Pyramid.

The pump could then create intense hydraulic pressure

that would cause the entire pyramid to vibrate.

In the subterranean chamber, there is

some evidence that shows that

there had been water present in

it and that there's water erosion on the floor

and then up in the thin area.

And then, also, because it was a hydraulic pulse generator.

See how the rarefaction wave,

this extremely low-pressure wave,

which would have struck the ceiling,

and the ceiling is actually chipped.

And that would have been from the acts

of compression waves hitting the ceiling.

That's very evident.

If Cadman's theory proves true,

what would have been the purpose of the hydraulic pulse?

Engineer Chris Dunn believes the answer can be found

by further examination of the shafts in

what some call "the queen's chamber,"

where traces of zinc

and hydrochloric acid have been discovered.

I believe the chemical coming in through the northern shaft

was hydrated zinc,

and theother chemical coming through

the southern shaft and into the chamber

was dilute hydrochloric acid.

These are actually seen on the chamber walls.

Dunn suggests that the two chemicals were poured

down through the shafts and then mixed

together inside the queen's chamber, triggering combustion.

DUNN: This vessel represents the queen's chamber.

Into the tubes, we're going to pour hydrated zinc

and then hydrochloric acid.

When you bring these two liquids together,

and a chemical reaction occurs,

and a product of that chemical reaction is hydrogen.

And you can see the vapor, the hydrogen, escaping

through the chimney.

And there you have the reaction.

Dunn speculates that the hydrogen gas

traveled from the queen's chamber into the king's chamber.

Then the vibrations from the subterranean pool

energized the hydrogen atoms

into a microwave energy beam.

The evidence that indicates the use of hydrogen

can be found in the king's chamber.

There's a shaft in the king's chamber,

has dimensions of 8.4 by 4.8,

which would be suitable for a wave guide

for a maser, or a microwave

amplification through stimulated emission radiation.

And from there we can actually

propose many different ideas of what they did with it.

The ancient Egyptians demonstrated an

exceptional level of skill

in everything that they created

during the Old Kingdom, but the question remains:

did they do it on their own?

Or did they have some access

to information or technology that was not of this earth?

If Giza was, in fact, a power plant,

could the energy have been used for some otherworldly purpose,

as some ancient astronaut theorists suggest?

Perhaps further evidence that advanced technology

really did exist on Earth thousands of years ago

can be found by examining yet another mysterious device,

the Ark of the Covenant.

NARRATOR: Approximately 17 miles northeast of Jerusalem

lies the ancient ruins of the city of Jericho.

Here, archaeologists have uncovered evidence

of settlements dating back to 9,000 BC.

According to the Hebrew Bible,

Jericho is believed to be where God spoke to Joshua,

the successor to Moses,

and instructed him to march around the walled city

once every six days with seven priests carrying rams' horns,

and followed by the Ark of the Covenant,

the golden chest containing the Ten Commandments.

Then, on the seventh day,

under orders by God,

Joshua and the Israelites

marched around the perimeter of the city one last time...

...but this time they blew the rams' horns.

The walls of Jericho fell,

and the city was sacked.

In the Old Testament, you see very clear descriptions

in Joshua 6 about the shofar,

which is described as a trumpet that

was used in the battle of Jericho

to actually bring the walls down.

To religious scholars,

the collapse of Jericho's walls was a miracle.

To most modern-day scientists and historians,

the destruction was most probably caused by an earthquake.

But could it have been something else?

Could the Israelites have possessed advanced sound wave technology?

If so, where did it come from?

In the scriptures, we have a fascinating story about

the fall of the walls of Jericho.

Armies were told to circle the wall repeatedly

and then finally blow their horns, and down came the walls.

And we know there was a powerful presence.

The Ark of the Covenant,

this mysterious, sacred item, was with them at all times, which,

of course, was part of the event and part

of the fall of the walls of Jericho.

The idea that some kind of sonic weapon

was used to destroy these huge, thick,

ancient walls to allow the Israelites

to basically take over that city, is a fascinating one.

So what kind of technology were they using?

It sounds utterly fantastic to us that they could have had some kind

of advanced alien technology.

It's clearly what they're describing.

There is little doubt that the Ark of the Covenant was a weapon.

It was described as a weapon, famously,

when the Israelites crossed over into Canaan,

and they had to pass by Jericho.

And it could be that there was some technology.

According to many ancient astronaut theorists,

Moses and the Israelites

acquired a supernatural source of energy at Mount Sinai.

This powerful energy source

was later contained in the Ark of the Covenant

and would have provided the kind of power necessary

to amplify Joshua's horns,

and make them into a powerful sonic weapon.

The Ark of the Covenant appears to be some sort

of advanced technology.

What's interesting about the Battle of Jericho

is that this particular use of the shofar

clearly seems to be the same thing that we're seeing with

particle beam technology, death ray technology,

thunderbolt technology.

It very clearly seems that, once again, we have an

extraterrestrial technology that the ancient people had at the ready

that they could use, when needed, for military campaigns.

But even if the Israelites possessed some sort of advanced,

extraterrestrial technology,

could the amplified sound of rams' horns

really bring down stone walls?

According to scientist and former astronaut,

Professor Taylor Wang,

recent research into the field of physical acoustics

suggests it is a distinct possibility.

Jericho, wall breaking apart.

If you said it has happened,

caused by acoustic, caused by sound...

Well, the possibility has to be,

somehow a resonance is built in that wall.

Ah, may not be the whole wall,

may be some of the structure material,

when that resonance happens, amplitude gets large enough.

Yes, it could destroy almost anything.

Because what the resonance does is store enormous amount of energy.

So you keep on, keep on feeding it.

Eventually, it shatters everything.

When you want to know how powerful sound is,

you have to realize that the basic

thing that sound is, is a pressure wave.

And it will come down to the amount

of energy you put into your sound wave,

and whether or not that particular pressure wave you generate

will couple or impact the thing you're trying to destroy.

You can make it quite powerful,

'cause you can make a very high amplitude,

very large pressures in the sound.

It might be at a frequency or amplitude

where we no longer hear it as sound,

but from a physics point of view, it is still sound,

because it's a pressure wave in the air.

So, it can get quite destructive if you put enough energy into it.

You could also think of it as a particle weapon,

because you're moving air around,

and you would just need something to focus the sound,

which we know how to do.

And so that would give you a directed energy beam with sound.

Did advanced extraterrestrial technology

really help the Israelites survive their exodus in the desert,

as the Hebrew Bible contends?

And, if so, might early humans have possessed other,

equally astounding technological devices?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes

and believe further clues can be found by examining an object

that dates back to the second century BC,

one that functioned as a computer.

Did aliens really inspire our ancestors

to build ancient temples and pyramids?

And if they came here,

did they leave behind any advanced knowledge of physics,

astronomy or mathematics?

If so, is there any evidence that remains to this day?

One example might be this one.

Often described as the world's first mechanical computer,

it dates back over 2,000 years.

The Antikythera device was

found in 1900 by sponge divers

diving off a small island in the Aegean called Antikythera.

There was a shipwreck there,

and in it was a coral-encrusted box,

and it was made of metal alloys.

And it then went to the Athens Museum

where, a good 50 years later,

they were able to x-ray this box

and they were able to discern

cogged wheels that were interconnected

and give us a very good depiction

of what this thing was.

And it is a computer.

It's a really sophisticated machine.

It's a very interesting piece of technology,

because it served two purposes.

One was that it was an astronomical device where you could,

by using it, chart your position to the stars

and navigate your way through the

It was also an astrological seas. device,

so that someone could tell you,

"Ah, if you were born on this date,

and your planet sign is this,

then certain things were going to happen to

you when the planets are in this alignment."

So, it was a very interesting piece of technology that, literally, had

more complicated gears and inner workings

than a modern-day Swiss watch.

And it's found to be dated, I think, like 200 BC.

So, it's really an anomaly as to

who could've created that and what it was being used for.

When archeologists first started to examine this thing in the 1950s,

they said that they never could conceive

of the ancient Greeks having such complicated machinery.

And, in fact, they said, this was tantamount to finding

a jet airplane in the tomb of King Tut.

Even older than the Antikythera mechanism

are these carvings on a wall at the Dendera Temple complex in Egypt.

To some, the strange designs look eerily similar

to objects very much in use today.

In Egypt, there is this underground crypt

at Dendera that was always secret, and only the high priests

had access to that crypt.

It's very hot in there, very narrow, low ceiling.

And on the walls, you have these reliefs

of what looks like ancient lightbulbs.

Because we have to question one thing.

How did the ancient Egyptians light the inside of their tombs?

According to most mainstream archeologists,

torches were used by the ancient Egyptians

to light the pitch-black chambers of tombs and temples.

Yet, nowhere on the ceilings

is there even the slightest evidence of soot or smoke residue.

There isn't enough oxygen

inside those tombs with which to support or feed

a flame of a torch.

The only remaining solution is,

by some sort of an artificial light source.

And that is, for example, a lightbulb.

So, at the underground crypt at Dendera,

we find reliefs of such lightbulbs.

But how could the ancient Egyptians

have used anything resembling a modern-day lightbulb

without access to electricity?

After all, electricity wouldn't be discovered for thousands of years.

That is, of course, with the exception of what scientists call

the Baghdad Battery.

The Baghdad Battery was discovered in ancient Iraq.

Scholars today say there's no way

that ancient man was using electricity or lightbulbs.

So, they look at this Baghdad Battery--

and there's about a dozen of them that have been found in Iraq--

and the only mainstream theory is that they were

using it for electroplating jewelry.

Two major proponents of ancient alien theory,

Jason Martell and Giorgio Tsoukalos,

demonstrate just how the Baghdad Battery could generate electricity,

using a modern mock-up of the device.

Well, basically, this is made out of a clay pot,

clay just found naturally in that region in Southern Iraq.

And then they would use a small copper lining

and something along the lines of an asphalt

stopper wrapped around an iron rod.

And these all applied together

and the combination of some weak acidic acid--

vinegar, grape juice, orange juice in this case, wine--

would be able to generate a charge by combining

these elements with the rod, the iron rod and the copper.

And the combination of that creates

an abundance of, uh, electricity.

So what we're gonna do is, uh,

basically just fill the clay pot with some orange juice here.

I'll try not to spill it too much.

Okay.

And then we'll go ahead and put the copper rod back in there.

Copper and iron rod.

We'll give it a moment to kind of fill that copper area there.

And then by turning on the volt meter

and applying this to each side,

we should be able to generate a charge.

And there it goes, into the positive.

Mm-hmm.

And if we give it some time

to get the electrolytes really buzzing in there,

you'll see that this volt will actually continue to rise.

It is a battery. Everybody agrees with that.

But nobody knows why they made it and how they made it.

What mind would think of that?

You know, electrical current back several thousand years ago?

It's very strange, but it's clearly a battery.

The whole idea that ancient civilizations

actually had knowledge of electricity and used electricity

is an accepted archeological fact today.

Just like in our own civilization,

where about 200 years ago,

Benjamin Franklin and other scientists began experimenting with

simple electrical devices,

we now have evidence that over 3,000 years ago,

people were also experimenting with electrical devices.

Where might it have led them?

What other electrical devices would they have been able to create?

I believe they probably created all kinds of electrical devices.

Are the Antikythera device and the Baghdad Battery

evidence that our ancestors really were in possession

of advanced technology?

And if so, might this technology have had extraterrestrial origins?

Ancient astronaut theorists believe further clues may be found

in the story of a top secret Nazi project

simply known as The Bell.

In a remote valley just outside Ludwikowice, Poland...

stands a strange circular structure

known as the Henge, or Fly Trap.

We are in the middle of a valley,

which was taken over by the SS

and transformed into a secret

research, development and industrial facility.

It was closely guarded.

Inside of this valley we have three security rings,

closing specific areas from each other.

Inside of the innermost circle

this structure stands, and it's quite mysterious.

Mainstream scholars believe the structure served

as the concrete support base to a cooling tower

used by a coalmine.

But according to Witkowski and others,

the German high command

would not have devoted so many military resources here

if the valley contained only an energy plant.

They say the Henge was used to test

a new highly advanced machine known as Die Glocke,

or "The Bell."

The Bell, was probably one of

the top secret projects of the Third Reich.

It was so secret that it's even unclear on how much Hitler was told.

There's a great deal of evidence that suggests that, uh,

the scientists, including Hermann Oberth

and Wernher von Braun and others,

were working on a bell- shaped craft

that was electromagnetic in its propulsion system.

Surviving sketches depict The Bell as having a ceramic covering

and dimensions measuring ten feet high and five feet in diameter.

Its design appears contrary to modern aerodynamic principles.

If you're starting to think about a bell shape for flight,

the-the challenge you're facing, I think,

is making it aerodynamic for when you move around

side to side and forward and backward.

'Cause you're presenting a very large

cross-sectional area to the air.

And you're gonna generate a lot of drag.

So you might be very good if you want just, like,

a hovercraft that went up and down.

But once you start moving, I think you're gonna run into trouble.

But if The Bell was not a new type of aircraft, then what was it?

According to some ancient astronaut theorists,

The Bell may have been a time machine.

There is a kind of, uh, vortices named solitons,

which are vortices isolated electromagnetically

from the outside world.

Recent research and experiments show

that the link between gravity and electromagnetic

physics is much stronger than the scientists thought for some time.

The laws of the universe being universal, if you take

the right electromagnetic field and very high voltage--

pulse it or phase it in a certain way--

you can get some very strange phenomenon.

You can make things disappear and reappear.

Therefore, it follows to reason

that this would be studied and that the Nazi Bell

was probably an-an attempt

by that regime to develop, uh, some type of flying machine

that would use these sort of advanced electromagnetic concepts.

But was time travel even a possibility?

According to German-born physicist Albert Einstein,

humans were theoretically capable of it.

His theory of special relativity actually showed,

for the first time, that time can slow down when you go very fast.

And so that has an impact on going into the future.

It allows you to travel really fast somewhere,

and your time goes slower than somebody else

and you end up in the future,

relative to what you thought you were doing.

The harder one to think about is general relativity,

where Einstein talks about gravity

and how to describe gravity.

And there you can start thinking about space-time and bending it,

and actually by warping space and time in the right way,

you end up going backwards in time.

While no records exist

indicating The Bell was ever used during the war,

as the Allied military forces pushed into Germany,

the entire project and its commander--

SS General Hans Kammler--

suddenly disappeared.

SS General Hans Kammler,

who was going to defect in exchange for immunity.

But then, by the end of the war, he disappeared.

So where did Hans Kammler go, and what did he take?

I think he took The Bell.

Did he create a wormhole? Did he create a stargate?

And this is what the Nazis were working on.

Did Kammler and the other Nazis

really use The Bell to escape justice by disappearing across time?

Or possibly to another planet?

In the spring of 1945, Germany's war effort collapsed.

And as the Allied armies advanced towards Berlin,

German scientists and engineers abandoned their laboratories.

Hitler's search for a wonder weapon failed.

Instead, it was the Americans who scored the decisive

technological edge with their development of the atomic bomb.

But according to ancient astronaut theorists,

a similar and perhaps even more devastating weapon

had already existed--

unleashed in an area that is now part of India--

more than 3,000 years ago.

An unmanned aerial vehicle hurtles across the sky.

It travels at supersonic speeds,

spitting fire, launching deadly missiles,

programmed to seek and destroy.

The effect is devastating.

High-tech warfare at its most lethal.

But what could be a page stolen from a U.S. military black project

is actually a description written down

over 2,500 years ago

in the sacred Hindu text known as the Mahabharata.

When it comes to the ancient Indian accounts,

they're really eyewitness testimony of the gods fighting.

When you read the ancient Hindu epics,

they talk about horrific weapons.

Missiles and atomic weapons,

massive laser weapons that are melting

and devastating entire cities.

I refuse to think

that our ancestors came up with these stories out of thin air.

When writing was first invented,

they wrote down their history.

The first things that were ever written down were actual events.

How is it that some of the earliest written accounts of warfare

describe sophisticated weaponry that humans

wouldn't develop for thousands of years?

For the answer, ancient astronaut theorists

point to numerous descriptions of deadly weapons

found throughout the Mahabharata.

Many strikingly similar to those used by the military today.

One example are the incendiary weapons wielded by Vishnu,

which are specially equipped to find their targets.

Vishnu has a flying guided missile, the Narayanastra.

And once it is launched,

it will destroy everything that is moving.

So, you know, according to the description,

it is a motion detecting weapon,

which is pretty much like our modern weaponry.

There is also a weapon that is heat-seeking.

Heat-seeking is a very effective way of finding something.

You would fire a missile from behind one aircraft

at an aircraft in front of you,

specifically targeted against the hot engine.

And then you were able to move off from behind the airplane,

and the heat-seeker would still be able to find the target.

I am aware that there are forces of nature.

You've got thunder, lightning, earthquakes.

But how would you go from witnessing that

to a description of heat-seeking missiles?

In addition to guided missiles,

the Mahabharata is filled with accounts

of other sophisticated weapons wielded by the gods.

In the Mahabharata, 46 different types of weapon are described.

And each one has a specific function.

The Pashupatastra is a weapon

that actually multiplies into seven different arrows.

So then it hits seven different targets at the same time.

Salva is an anti-god.

He can make his vehicle disappear.

So we're talking about a flying object that is stealth.

And he also can put people into sleep.

So we're perhaps talking about nerve gas.

They talk about weapons that are so high-tech, that it's...

Could only be from extraterrestrials.

But of all the weapons described in the Mahabharata,

perhaps the most deadly was a device called the Brahmastra.

A weapon that the texts warned was never to be used.

Brahmastra is described as the ultimate weapon.

Once it is launched, it will simply burn everything.

So it will incinerate the entire universe.

We're talking about a nuclear blast

a hundredfold magnitude of the bomb that we have seen

or experienced in our own times.

Should never be used.

And-and yet someone was going to make use of that Brahmastra.

So that's the dilemma that the books talks about in the Mahabharata.

India now has a rocket program,

and one of their rockets is called Shakti.

Shakti means goddess energy.

This is also another divine weapon.

Indians are now sort of going back to their text or their

mythology and they're reliving it by their modern technology.

Is it possible that alien beings visiting the earth

thousands of years ago

dealt with the same issues of nuclear annihilation

that humans are dealing with today?

And might the deadly weapons

currently being deployed by the world's military

really be recreations of weapons first used on earth

by extraterrestrials in the ancient past?

Perhaps.

But then it should also be possible

to predict mankind's military future

by searching through still more ancient texts.

May, 2010.

Off the coast of California.

A powerful new weapon shoots down unmanned aerial drones

during secret testing carried out by the U.S. Navy.

Firing from a warship at a distance of nearly two miles,

a ray of intense laser energy

burns through targets traveling at speeds

of more than 300 miles per hour.

But is it possible that such so-called death rays

could have been used before?

Perhaps in ancient times?

I'm quite convinced that there have been, in-in the past,

advanced civilizations on Earth

that did have such things as the so-called death ray.

Whether it was used as a weapon

or whether it was just observed being used

is a very, very open question.

In 214 BC,

Greeks living in the Sicilian city of Syracuse

prepared for an attack by a fleet of Roman warships.

Though outnumbered by a superior military force,

ancient texts suggest that Syracuse

was well defended by a mysterious and powerful new weapon.

Probably the most famous ancient death ray

was the one that was built by the Greek inventor Archimedes.

He was able to create this giant mirror

and parabolic disc and focus the sun's rays on the fleet

and set these ships on fire.

So here we have what would be a primitive kind

of death ray that really worked.

But how could Archimedes have conceived such a formidable weapon?

One far in advance of any known at the time?

Researchers suggest the inventor may have drawn inspiration

from Greek myths written nearly 600 years before the battle of Syracuse.

Myths that told the stories of gods that brandished cosmic

weapons of incredible destructive force.

If you look in the Greek tradition,

they have a very clear description of Zeus' thunderbolt,

which he was able to point at people or at

other things that he wanted to explode, hit the button,

and what they described as lightning would come out

and create a fierce and terrible explosion.

But if death ray type weapons

had been used in ancient times,

might there be some sort of tangible proof?

Perhaps there is.

Here, scattered throughout the Scottish countryside,

can be found numerous ancient ruins.

Many appear to have been forts or other enclosures,

dating back thousands of years.

Remarkably, they also appear

to have been subjected to fire and heat

so intense it practically turned the stone structures into glass.

It's a process more scientifically known as vitrification.

Here you have these stone buildings

in which an analysis of the outside

comes to the conclusion

that they were heated to over 1,000 degrees Celsius in temperature.

Conventional fire could not have reached this heat.

You needed a sustained burn

at 1,000 degrees Celsius for a long period of time.

According to Celtic legend,

there once was a god named Lugh,

also known as the Shining One,

the Sun God, and the God of War.

Like the Greek god Zeus,

Lugh was said to wield a mighty magic spear

not unlike the thunderbolts of his Greek counterpart.

When battle was near,

Lugh would draw out his spear,

and it roared and then flashes of fire came out of it

and it tore through the ranks of the enemy,

never tired of killing and slaying.

It was one amazing weapon.

I mean, how else can we explain all those numerous vitrified forts

where the surface of the stone is as smooth as glass?

And these spots can only be found

in very concentrated areas

through Northern Scotland.

All these descriptions of sophisticated weaponry

sounds almost like science fiction.

But is it really?

Because we have those weapons today.

And I think that all the stuff that we have today

has been around before and that our past

is not science fiction but science fact.

Deadly laser beams.

Acoustic weapons.

Time machines.

Were these mysterious devices

really in the possession of our ancestors thousands of years ago?

And if so, could they have been built with the help

of extraterrestrial beings?

Perhaps as our own technology continues to advance,

we will come closer-- not only to our future

but to a rediscovery of our past

and a reconnection with our alien ancestors.