Original subtitles

ANDREW COLLINS: Gobekli Tepe is the smoking gun

of a lost civilization because it confirms that,

at the time of the last ice age,

there was high culture existing in the world.

ROBERT SCHOCH: Gobekli Tepe's an incredibly sophisticated site.

There's a very important message

they were purposefully sending to us.

DAVID WILCOCK: We're actually seeing

architecture in the Cygnus star system,

just like what they paid homage to at Gobekli Tepe.

GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: Only five percent

of Gobekli Tepe has been unearthed so far.

So, what other surprises will we find there?

COLLINS: We need to know about our origins.

We need to know our destiny.

And all of it lies under the surface of Gobekli Tepe.

*

NARRATOR: Sanliurfa, Turkey.

October 1994.

While plowing his field,

shepherd Savak Yildiz spots a strangely shaped stone

protruding from the ground.

After brushing away the dirt,

he realizes that it may be part of a much larger object.

Shortly after contacting the local museum with his find,

he is visited by Klaus Schmidt

from the German Archaeological Institute.

It wasn't until German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt

visited the site and began digging,

they realized what was really at this site.

What he discovered was mind-blowing.

After discovering the first T-shaped pillar

buried at the site,

he soon found more of these massive structures.

NARRATOR: During the intensive dig,

Schmidt and his team

begin to unearth dozens of additional giant stone monoliths

covered in intricate carvings,

some weighing as much as 20 tons.

PAUL BAHN: The site of Gobekli Tepe

is a series of circular enclosures.

But then, in the center of each enclosure,

you have two particularly big T-shaped pillars of limestone

sort of facing each other.

Now, many of these pillars have remarkable carvings on them,

wonderful carvings and bas-reliefs of animals,

birds, insects, all kinds of things.

So, to fashion those and carve them and set them up

in these structures was just absolutely amazing.

NARRATOR: Archaeologists estimate

that it would have taken a team of 50 men

an entire week to move just one

of the monolithic pillars from the limestone quarry

to the top of the hill where they stand today

and over 300 hours to carve the bas-reliefs.

At this rate, each of the five stone circles unearthed so far

would have required a full year to be completed.

But why such a monumental site was built in the first place

remains a mystery.

It's very difficult to know what the purpose of something

like Gobekli Tepe could be.

And certainly Klaus Schmidt had not reached any conclusions,

except that it's clearly not a settlement.

It's not a village. There is absolutely no domestic refuse.

Schmidt always hoped that it was funerary

and that there would be burials underneath the walls

or underneath some of the pillars or so on.

But so far, they have not yet found

any human remains at the site.

There are no domestic plants in the site.

There are only wild animal bones.

Inevitably, in archaeology, if we don't know

what something is for, we think a ritual.

But, really, it's pure speculation.

NARRATOR: Intrigued by evidence that the structure might go back

to a Neolithic period,

Klaus Schmidt has the sediment layers of the site

radiocarbon-dated.

The results indicated

that the stone structures could be as much as 12,000 years old,

more than 5,000 years older

than mankind's first known civilization in Mesopotamia.

More than that,

it would place the construction of Gobekli Tepe

to a time when mainstream scholars suggest

humans were roaming the Earth as hunter-gatherers.

BAHN: Well, the site of Gobekli Tepe

really did send shockwaves through the whole world

of early prehistory, because we'd never before known

or imagined even that simple hunter-gatherers

could produce such spectacular monumental structures.

Now, in archaeology, really since it began,

we've always assumed that hunter-gatherers were capable

of producing wonderful works of art--

rock art, cave art, and things like that.

But we never imagined that they could come together

in sufficient numbers, uh, to make, uh,

monumental constructions like Gobekli Tepe.

NARRATOR: But if the currently accepted timeline

for mankind's advancement is correct,

is it possible that primitive hunter-gatherers

could have built

such sophisticated megalithic structures?

Ancient astronaut theorists say no,

and instead suggest

that Gobekli Tepe was built by the survivors of a lost society,

one that was almost entirely wiped out

by a worldwide cataclysm.

And to support their claim,

they point to recent evidence of a catastrophic event

which many mainstream scientists believe occurred

at the very end of the last ice age,

which is believed to have lasted

from roughly 108,000 BC until nearly 10,000 BC.

COLLINS: Gobekli Tepe could be the smoking gun

of a lost civilization,

because it confirms that, at the time of the last ice age,

there was high culture existing in the world.

This is something that had been speculated for many years,

but there had not been the absolute evidence.

Now we could have it.

These engineering skills, this ordering of society

is something that must have existed

before the end of the last ice age.

And arguably even earlier.

DAVID CHILDRESS: When you look at the time frame

of Gobekli Tepe, it was built

right after these huge catastrophes

at the end of the last ice age.

And it would seem that the builders were people

who had survived and had the knowledge and technology

to build something like this.

NARRATOR: According to ancient astronaut theorists,

proof of a lost civilization exists

some 300 miles away from Gobekli Tepe,

in the form of a vast underground city

known as Derinkuyu.

It extends some 13 stories underground

and had the capacity to support 20,000 people.

Although the site has yet to be scientifically dated,

some researchers have suggested

that it may have served as a prehistoric refuge.

Derinkuyu is a multileveled city

that has existed, uh, since time immemorial.

It was certainly used, uh, during Christian times.

But there's also evidence that there's prehistoric activity

going on at these places.

Archaeologists found evidence of Stone Age tools

going back to the Paleolithic era.

This is at the time of the last ice age.

And so it's possible that our ancestors escaped

the cataclysm and the ice age deep down inside them.

NARRATOR: But if Derinkuyu really did serve as refuge

from a catastrophic event,

how might it offer a connection to Gobekli Tepe?

Perhaps further clues can be found

by exploring more recently discovered caves

and the stories suggesting that they were built upon the orders

of otherworldly beings.

NARRATOR: Central Anatolia, Turkey.

300 miles from the ancient site of Gobekli Tepe.

December 28, 2014.

A local crew excavating for an urban renovation project

stumbles across a strange series of carved rooms and tunnels

deep underground.

Upon further exploration,

they find the subterranean network spans several miles

and extends hundreds of feet below the surface of the Earth,

much like the nearby caves of Derinkuyu.

COLLINS: What they discovered was that these caves extended

for a distance of 370 feet down into the rock.

NARRATOR: Archaeologists estimate

that more than five million square feet of rock,

the volume of over 370 Olympic-size swimming pools,

was removed to carve out this subterranean city.

Yet there is no evidence of the extracted material in the area.

This mysterious cave system is still under excavation

and closed to the public.

But in June 2017,

author and researcher Andrew Collins

was granted access to the site.

The sheer size of some of these rooms is absolutely amazing.

I mean, this one that we're in now is 120 feet in length.

And yet it's just one of hundreds of similar rooms

that we find inside this great hill.

These tunnels that you see seem to go on and on.

And yet what's incredible

is that not only were they full of people,

but there was also livestock down here.

And we are told that as many as 20,000 people,

perhaps even as much as 60,000,

could've lived here at any one time.

NARRATOR: Not only is there evidence

that these caves once housed thousands of people,

but archaeologists have found air vents and water wells

that would have made it possible to live underground

for years at a time.

These were cut deeply into the rock,

sometimes for hundreds of yards in depth.

And at the base of them were wells

that provided water to these underground populations.

This is what is known as a self-sealing door.

And they're in fact huge great stone wheels

made of a volcanic rock known as basalt.

And their function was that they would be wheeled

into position so that they would lock,

so that nobody was able to get inside the underground cities.

NARRATOR: When it was discovered,

historians recovered artifacts

that suggest the cave system was used

by the early Christians to escape persecution.

So they dated the site to be approximately 1,500 years old.

But based on new evidence, the caves might be much older.

COLLINS: A few years ago,

I interviewed an archaeologist by the name of Omer Demir.

And he found within it Paleolithic tools,

tools that went back at least 10,000 to 12,000 years,

and arguably even earlier still.

NARRATOR: If these caves can be dated

to at least 12,000 years ago--

around the same time archaeologists believe

the nearby site of Gobekli Tepe was constructed--

just who built them?

And what drove the builders underground?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest clues can be found

not embedded in stone,

but in the pages of ancient Persian religious texts.

Zoroastrianism is one of the world's

oldest monotheistic religions, founded by the prophet Zoroaster

in ancient Iran approximately 3,500 years ago.

The central figure of the religion

was a powerful god named Ahura Mazda,

who is often depicted seated inside a winged disk.

According to the story,

recorded in a text known as the Vendidad,

he sent a powerful warning to a young priest named Yima

about a coming cataclysm.

Ahura Mazda told the great early king Yima

that there would be a terrible disaster.

A giant serpent would descend from the heavens to the Earth.

Well, that sounds like a comet

or a large meteorite falling to Earth.

Then a winter would come such as has never been known.

NARRATOR: Prior to the event,

Yima is given very specific instructions

to build an underground shelter

in order to survive the coming "giant freeze."

Ahura Mazda instructs Yima to build a Vara.

This is a huge structure, two miles long, two miles wide,

an underground hall of sorts

where things can be protected from the terrible winter.

Yima was to hide a remnant of the people,

and an extensive seed bank,

also a pair of each of the animal species.

Once Yima is finished building the Vara,

he takes 2,000 people in, a representation of mankind.

They are there for 150 years,

but when the winter is over and they come out,

it is a barren world.

They will have to rebuild civilization from scratch.

CHILDRESS: The Vara is supposed to be a huge enclosure

that not only houses a large number of people,

but also animals and seeds.

It's a storehouse just like Noah's Ark.

So you've got this same story,

and it would seem that this is a very real thing

that ancient people knew about and wrote about.

NARRATOR: Could it be that the story of Noah's Ark

and the Vara of Zoastrianism are one in the same?

And the reference to an ark

was later misunderstood to be a large ship?

But if these accounts are in fact true,

how is it that mankind had enough advance warning

to build such sophisticated places of refuge?

The ancient texts are very clear that the gods,

they always warned people

that this catastrophe would happen so that they would save

a select group of that population.

So how was that possible?

Either they had access to sophisticated technologies

with which to predict the weather,

or what's the other option?

And if you combine that with the fact that Ahura Mazda was known

to have descended from the sky in a vehicle with fixed wings--

it looks like some type of flying device--

that would suggest

that he was in fact an extraterrestrial.

NARRATOR: According to ancient astronaut theorists,

the Vara described in the ancient Zoroastrian texts

is strikingly similar to the recently discovered

subterranean town in Central Anatolia.

HENRY: The underground caves in Turkey

sound exactly like the Vara

that was made by Yima in Zoroastrian mythology.

Is it possible that this cave system

supplies the evidence that tells us

that the Zoroastrian mythology is in fact a real, true story?

NARRATOR: If these caves provide evidence

that the account recorded

in the ancient Zoroastrian texts is factual,

did the inhabitants of the Vara emerge

to find a barren wasteland

where they were to rebuild civilization?

Might they be responsible

for the construction of Gobekli Tepe,

located only 300 miles away?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,

and suggest that this very connection

could help explain some of the mysterious figures immortalized

in the stone carvings.

NARRATOR: Gobekli Tepe, 2017.

To date, 69 massive stone pillars

have been unearthed at the ancient site,

after more than two decades of excavation.

More than one-third of the statues

contain elaborate carvings of animals,

including various mammals,

reptiles, insects and birds.

But also included

are depictions of species not indigenous to the area,

like geese, armadillos and wild boar.

There are such an incredible range of animals and birds

and insects depicted at Gobekli Tepe,

the like of which we have never seen

at that period or anywhere else in the world.

And to have a whole bunch of them together is interesting.

You can speculate till the cows come home

as to what it might represent.

We have not the faintest idea.

HENRY: In the story of Noah's Ark,

we're told that after the deluge,

Noah's Ark lands at Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey,

not far from Gobekli Tepe,

and we see some very strange animals portrayed

on the pillars at Gobekli Tepe,

almost as if it's a record of Noah's Ark itself.

Perhaps Gobekli Tepe is the place where Noah

and his descendants disembarked

and recreated civilization after the flood.

NARRATOR: If there really is a connection between Gobekli Tepe

and the biblical story of a Great Flood,

could the carvings found at the site

be an inventory of the animals that were rescued?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, but also suggest

other carvings depict a species not of this Earth.

At the center of each of the five megalithic ring structures

that occupy the archaeological site,

stand two oversized monolithic pillars.

Weighing up to 20 tons

and reaching heights of over two stories,

they visually stand apart from the T-shaped stonework

that surrounds them.

These pillars are anthropomorphic;

they are humanlike in appearance.

They have low relief arms that come round to the front

and end in these long, spindly fingers.

They wear garments.

They have belts with strange symbols.

There are no faces on these stones.

The heads are represented by T-shaped terminations

that look almost like hammerheads, basically.

BAHN: They could be gods, they could be ancestors,

or they could be very specific people who are being venerated.

We really have no idea.

HENRY: The archaeologist Schmidt himself

referred to them as the "celestial ones,"

or the "celestial ancestors."

And we have to ask if these are depictions

of the extraterrestrial gods at Gobekli Tepe.

NARRATOR: As mysterious as these statues are,

strikingly similar depictions can be found

in other parts of the globe.

An interesting feature about some of these T-shaped pillars

is the fact that these arms culminate

in the front around the navel area.

And what I find so cool is that this type of motif

can be found elsewhere around the world.

For example, in Easter Island,

with those giant statues, the Moai.

There, too, the arms go around the belly,

and they culminate in front of the navel.

And then, at Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, for example,

there is a statue that has the exact same hand position

in front of the navel.

ED BARNHART: At the city of Tiahuanaco,

in its central complex called the Kalasasaya,

is a massive monolithic statue.

The statue is said by the Inca to be a giant.

In the previous creation before men,

giants roamed the Earth.

And they inhabited the city of Tiahuanaco.

And this is actually very similar to the mythology

of Easter Island and the stories we hear about the Moai.

We get very similar type of carved pillars

as Gobekli Tepe in other parts of the world.

There is a very strong similarity in style

which tells us

that there is almost certainly some kind of relationship,

that Gobekli Tepe is not in isolation,

it's part of some kind of global culture,

the remnants of a lost civilization

that once existed in the prehistoric world.

NARRATOR: Could the figures found at Gobekli Tepe

and in other parts of the globe be a record

carved in stone of an ancient alien race

that existed prior to a catastrophic event?

If so, might the sites

where these extraterrestrials are immortalized

be the places where human survivors emerged

after the event known as the Great Flood?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,

and suggest that more recent discoveries at the site

provide additional proof of this otherworldly connection.

NARRATOR: Sanliurfa, Turkey.

June 2017.

Author and researcher Andrew Collins

travels to the Sanliurfa Archaeology and Mosaic Museum,

just ten miles from Gobekli Tepe,

to meet with curator Taha Ozyavuz.

Taha, I presume. Nice to meet you.

NARRATOR: He is there to get an up-close look

at one of the most mysterious stone structures

unearthed at the ancient site.

COLLINS: I think this is what we've come to see here.

Right.

COLLINS: And the fact that we have

three different figures here, each of different sizes,

what do you think that represents?

Why do you think that it was damaged or destroyed

in this way in antiquity?

COLLINS: So somebody came along

and deliberately destroyed it.

NARRATOR: If the stone column found at Gobekli Tepe

represents a genetic lineage,

just why were two of the figures deliberately defaced?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that perhaps it was

an attempt to obscure the truth

about humankind's otherworldly origins.

WILCOCK: What's curious about this totem pole

is that there is essentially a larger being,

perhaps an extraterrestrial,

that has its hands around this other being

that isn't exactly human

but has human-like characteristics.

It could be a primitive human.

This figure appears to be giving birth,

and the baby that is emerging from this mother's womb

is clearly a human baby with a human face.

This suggests possibly that a breeding experiment took place

leading to the development of modern humans

as we now know them.

HENRY: The interesting thing about this is that totem poles

are like a repository for information.

It's an encyclopedia; it's like a time capsule.

And so if we have a genealogical record

in this pillar at Gobekli Tepe,

and we follow the ultimate extension of it,

and we realize that what they're possibly telling us

is that their ancestors were non-human.

CHILDRESS: So you have to wonder

if the whole idea was to preserve information

from our extraterrestrial past

so that future generations would ultimately decode

the information that's there,

information possibly about our extraterrestrial creators.

NARRATOR: Many ancient cultures

have stories of the gods interacting with early humans

and even breeding with them.

According to The Book of Enoch,

an ancient text that was stricken

from the Bible's Old Testament in the 4th century AD,

there was a large-statured group of heavenly beings

that descended to Earth in the remote past.

ARIEL BAR TZADOK: There were those called the "watchers."

They were to watch humanity, not get involved.

But they violated that principle.

They came down to Earth.

And they introduced science and technology.

And they mingled with, breeded with,

married human females and sired children.

Their children,

they were known as the "fallen ones,"

the Nephilim.

They clearly would have been recognized today

as human beings.

The only difference was that they might have been considered

physically of greater stature.

Some claim that they were ten, 15 feet high.

And this was considered a corruption,

according to divine law.

And it is taught that it is because of this corruption

that God intervened to remove them from the Earth,

and that's what brought the flood.

ERICH VON DANIKEN: In the Bible,

you read that some of the fallen angels

came down on this planet.

These angels had, simply, sex with humans,

definitely, because the outcome of it were giants.

So what kind of angels are these?

Spiritual beings?

No, it was the extraterrestrials.

NARRATOR: Did the builders of Gobekli Tepe

attempt to preserve important information

about what happened here on Earth over 12,000 years ago?

And does this include a record

of the creation of mankind by extraterrestrial beings?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest an even greater mystery

can be found by examining the remaining structures at the site

that point us to the stars.

NARRATOR: Gobekli Tepe, 2003.

While using geomagnetic surveys,

archaeologists discover that the five stone circles

unearthed at the site

only scratch the surface of what lies buried below.

Not only do the enclosures appear to have been built

in different layers, one on top of the other,

but there is evidence of 16 more identical stone rings

buried at deeper levels in the mound.

NEWMAN: One of the most interesting things

about Gobekli Tepe is the fact that not only did they

construct one of the most amazing temples on the Earth

at a time when it shouldn't have been possible to do it,

they then buried each enclosure

after probably just a few hundred years of use.

COLLINS: 20 different enclosures were built.

And each one,

seemingly at the end of its useful life,

was completely covered over with rubble and soil

before the next enclosure was built.

They spent as much time and energy

covering it over in the end

as they did building it to begin with.

NARRATOR: In 2014, author Andrew Collins

published his groundbreaking book

Gobekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods.

In it, he proposes that the reason

for the multiple reconstructions of the enclosures

was to precisely track a specific celestial location.

COLLINS: The first thing that we looked at

was Enclosure D, which is the oldest

and the most impressive of all the structures,

to see where exactly

these twin pillars may have been facing

11,500 years ago.

One star came up, and this was Deneb,

the brightest star in the constellation of Cygnus.

So we then looked at the twin pillars

in the other enclosures at Gobekli Tepe.

We find that, although they're all aligned

roughly either north-northwest or south-southeast,

that there are slight differences.

And what they appear to be doing is following the same star

as it moves very gradually along the local horizon.

SCHOCH: The stone circles are lined according to stars

that they were looking at.

But because of precession--

the slow change in the stars over time in the sky--

they had to realign them periodically.

NARRATOR: Precession occurs due to the fact

that the Earth's axis rotates much like a spinning top,

changing the point of observation over time

for various celestial bodies

from any fixed point on the planet.

SCHOCH: With the stone circles at Gobekli Tepe,

they weren't just building them and covering them over

for ritualistic purposes,

but actually they were doing this

for what we might call scientific purposes.

Clearly, there was something very important

about the constellation of Cygnus--

something that made these people want to track its course

over a period of perhaps 1,500 years.

NARRATOR: Legends of gods descending from the stars

in the Cygnus constellation can be found

in traditions across the globe.

In the Mandaean teachings of ancient Persia,

the throne room of the great god Abathur-Muzania

was said to be the Cygnus constellation.

In the Egyptian tradition, the goddess of the night sky,

Nuit, was said to have come directly from Cygnus.

And in the Mayan tradition,

it was said that the sun god, Kinich Ahau,

descended from there.

So, from traditions as different as the Persian,

the Egyptian and the Mayan,

we have major deities

coming from the Cygnus constellation.

TSOUKALOS: If I were to be a visitor

from another planet and I wanted to leave behind

a calling card indicating where I came from,

then I would build structures

with the precise alignment of a constellation

of my home star system.

So, perhaps the teachers who were at Gobekli Tepe

came from Cygnus.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that the builders of Gobekli Tepe

were pointing to the place

where their extraterrestrial teachers came from

by aligning the site to that specific location

in the night sky?

In 2015,

NASA officials announced a curious phenomenon

picked up by the Kepler space telescope.

It was reported that a mysterious

dimming and flickering

was coming from a star in the Cygnus constellation.

And some scientists claim this might be caused

by an alien megastructure passing in front of it.

NASA announced that they were tracking what they called

an "alien megastructure" around the star of Cygnus.

And the speculation was that,

as they were viewing Cygnus from time to time,

the star would dim by 22%.

And what they were surmising was that

some giant structure around the star

was occasionally blocking our view of the star itself.

WILCOCK: This is the most dramatic evidence

of a potential extraterrestrial civilization

that we have ever seen, because it's actually an object

orbiting a star that absolutely should not be there,

according to NASA.

We're actually seeing architecture

in the Cygnus star system.

It could be what they paid homage to at Gobekli Tepe,

telling us, "Look over here, guys.

'X' marks the spot."

NARRATOR: According to NASA astronomers,

what they are observing

is nearly 1,400 light years away.

This means that, given the time it takes

for light from Cygnus to reach Earth,

whatever object is causing the mysterious dimming

was orbiting the star at least 1,400 years ago,

and perhaps much earlier.

Could this be further evidence that Gobekli Tepe

was indeed built to point to the home planet

of mankind's extraterrestrial ancestors?

Perhaps further clues can be found

by examining recent events unfolding in the region

and efforts to protect the secrets

that still lie buried at the site.

NARRATOR: Kobani, Syria.

June, 2015.

The militant extremist group known as the Islamic State,

or ISIS, violently takes control of the city.

During their bloody rampage through the region,

they systematically destroy historical relics

and detonate bombs at various archaeological sites.

A mere 60 miles away, across the border of Turkey,

archaeologists working at the site of Gobekli Tepe

stand terrified as they watch the smoke

rise from the battlefield.

In an effort to protect

the 12,000-year-old stone structures

from the threat of attack,

the Turkish government stops all excavations

and closes the site to the public.

They crate the stone monoliths

and relocate the most valuable artifacts

to a museum nearby.

Over the next 20 years,

the government will spend $15 million

to secure Gobekli Tepe by enclosing the area,

covering the site with a steel-enforced roof,

and installing an extensive security system.

Considering at least 80% of Gobekli Tepe

remains hidden beneath the earth,

archaeologists still have much to learn about the site.

But as it becomes dangerously close

to suffering the same fate as other sites in the region,

could its most profound secrets be lost forever?

Is it possible that the Gobekli Tepe builders

were actually sending us a message?

Yes, the stones seem to suggest that this was the case.

Perhaps they were giving us some kind of warning,

or it could be that they are trying

that they knew toabout celestial beings,n

and perhaps even extraterrestrials,

from the Cygnus constellation.

Gobekli Tepe goes back to a earlier cycle of civilization

that existed at the end of the last ice age.

They experienced catastrophic changes.

So, I am of the opinion

that there's a very important message

that maybe they were purposefully sending to us,

at least they were trying to preserve for posterity,

for future generations.

And we need to figure out exactly what that message is.

HENRY: Gobekli Tepe points us back to our origins,

and points directly to the stars

as the source of where we came from.

Once we accept this, we will be able

to answer the questions of where we came from

and ultimately where we're going as a species.

NARRATOR: Does proof of mankind's extraterrestrial past

lie buried beneath the earth at Gobekli Tepe?

Proof that an advanced civilization

existed on this planet more than 10,000 years ago?

Perhaps the answers will be found

not by examining ancient stone pillars

covered with strange carvings...

but on a star,

one that shines on us from many light-years away.

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