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- [Narrator] Of all the mysteries in the world,

nothing is more curious than man himself.

Where did we come from?

Why are we here?

And how long have we been on Earth?

We have examples of our growth on planet Earth

throughout time.

But some of these examples befuddle even us.

When did we make these technological artifacts?

How were they made?

And in some cases, what was their purpose?

In this program, we will explore several of these

unique artifacts,

and explore the possible purpose and manufacturing of each.

Is it possible we had help?

Are we the greatest mystery of all time?

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(engine starting)

Let's begin with a mystery

that has raised eyebrows for decades,

but today has been proven to be a rather common item.

The story of the Coso artifact has been embellished

over the years, but all accounts have common elements.

On February 13th 1961, Wallace Lane,

Virginia Maxey and Mike Mikesell

were seeking interesting mineral specimens,

particularly geodes, for their

LM & V Rockhounds Gem and Gift Shop in California.

The trio were about six miles northeast of Olancha,

near the top of a peak about 4,300 feet in elevation

and about 340 feet above the dry bed of Owens Lake.

At lunchtime, after collecting rocks most of the morning,

all three placed their specimens

in the rock sack Mikesell was carrying.

The next day in the gift shop's workroom,

Mikesell ruined a nearly new diamond saw blade

while cutting what he thought was a geode.

Inside the nodule that was cut,

Mikesell did not find a cavity as so many geodes have,

but a perfectly circular section of very hard,

white material that appeared to be porcelain.

In the center of the porcelain cylinder,

was a two millimeter shaft of bright metal.

The metal shaft responded to a magnet.

There were still other odd quantities about the specimen.

The outer layer of the specimen was allegedly

encrusted with fossil shells and their fragments.

In addition to shells, there were reports

of two metallic metal objects in the crust,

resembling a nail and a washer.

Stranger still, the inner layer was hexagonal

and seemed to form a casing around

the hard porcelain cylinder.

Within the inner layer, a layer of decomposing

copper allegedly surrounded the porcelain cylinder.

The group had an anomaly.

Here was a possible geode, over 500,000 years old

with some soft of electronic device buried within it.

The object looked like a spark plug

and no one could figure out how it came to be encased

in a geode from thousands of years ago.

A spark plug encased in 500,000 year old geode

would represent a substantial scientific

and historical anomaly as spark plugs

were invented in the 19th century.

Critics say that the stone matrix containing the artifact

is not a geode but concretion that can

be explained by natural processes that can take place

over a decade or two.

Had the group really found a piece of technology

encased in a prehistoric stone from ages ago?

In 2018 an investigation by Pierre Stromberg

and Paul Heinrich with the help of members of the

Spark Plug Collectors of America

identified the artifact as a 1920's era Champion spark plug.

Widely used in the Ford Model T and Model A engines.

SPCA President Chad Windham and other collectors

concurred with his assessment.

Stromberg and Heinrich's report indicates that the

spark plug became encased in a concretion composed

of iron derived from the rusting spark plug.

Iron and steel artifacts rapidly form

iron oxide concretions as they rust in the ground.

On April 12th 2018, Pierre Stromberg was contacted

by the family of one of the co-discoverers of the artifact.

He was offered an opportunity to physically inspect

the artifact and he accepted.

And also arranged for the artifact to be

inspected by a geologist from the University of Washington

Earth and Space Science Department.

The inspections confirmed the previous conclusion.

That the artifact was a 1920's-era Champion spark plug.

The Coso artifact is a good example of not jumping

to conclusions when analyzing ancient artifacts.

There could be a simple and reasonable explanation.

However some artifacts are not simple to explain,

and seemingly, have no reasonable explanations.

(eerie music)

The Schist disc is one of those

unusual artifacts that defies explanation.

It's been thought to be anything from an elaborate candle

or incense holder to an impeller from some

technological device.

In January 1936, a strange disc was unearthed

at the plateau edge of North Saqqara,

approximately 1.7 km north

of Djoser's Step Pyramid in Egypt.

The discovery of the mysterious prehistoric artifact,

that many considered as a device,

was made in the Tomb of Prince Sabu

around 3100 BC by a famous, British Egyptologist

Walter Bryan Emery.

Sabu was the son of a high official or administrator

of a town or province probably called

"Star of the family of Horus."

The unearthed device named the Schist disc,

is approximately 24 inches by 4.2 inches in the center.

It was manufactured by unknown means

from very fragile and delicate material

requiring very tedious carving.

The production of which would confound any craftsmen today.

Now many important questions arise.

Scientists do not think the object is a wheel,

because the wheel appeared in Egypt at 1500 BC,

during the 18th Dynasty.

If the Schist disc is in fact a wheel

it would mean ancient Egyptians possessed knowledge

of the wheel about 3000 BC

during the time of the first dynasty.

This would require Egyptologists

to re-write some history books.

If the Schist disc is not a wheel,

nor modeled after the wheel, what is it?

Some scientists suggest that the fragile nature

of such an intricately carved stone object

greatly limits it's practical usage

and suggests a purely ornamental function,

being of a religious or some other ritualistic purpose.

Of course, some believe this disc

served another purpose, as a lamp.

However, critics of the theory argue

that the three-blade ceremonial lamp is hardly possible,

because of the shape and curvature of its petals,

which seems to suggest a function, not just decoration.

Egyptologist Cyril Aldred reached the conclusion that,

independently of what the object was used for

or what it represented, its design was without a doubt,

a copy of a previous, more older metallic object.

Why did the ancient Egyptians bother to design an object

with such a complex structure more than 5,000 years ago?

How could a culture who typically used chisels

to shape rock have mastered a technique

to work such a delicate material

into this extraordinary level?

Obviously the Schist disc is an object

that played an important role 5,000 years ago.

Egyptologists offer a number of theories

trying to explain what the disc was used for,

but for the moment no-one has been able

to explain the object's complex structure.

The Schist disc's futuristic design

continues to baffle all those who have seen it.

There is no doubt this particular object

continues to constitute one of the most perplexing

Egyptian and ancient mysteries

and we are left with several unanswered questions.

You can examine the Schist disc yourself,

as it is currently in the Cairo Museum.

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In 1944, as a ten-year old boy, Newton Anderson

was fueling the coal furnace in his parent's home.

He dropped a lump of coal onto the basement floor

and it broke in half, revealing

that it contained a bell inside.

The coal that was mined near his house

in Upshur County, West Virginia,

is about 300 million years old.

What is a brass bell with an iron clapper

doing in coal ascribed to the Carboniferous Period?

According to Norm Sharbaugh's book Ammunition,

which includes several coal anecdotes,

the bell is an Antediluvian artifact

made before the Genesis Flood.

The Institute of Creation Research

had the bell submitted to the lab

at the University of Oklahoma.

There, a nuclear activation analysis

revealed that the bell contains an unusual mix of metals,

different from any known modern alloy production

including copper, zinc, tin, arsenic, iodine, and selenium.

There is a wined statue at the top of the bell,

which does not resemble any known cultural depiction.

The closest depictions with similarities

would be the Babylonian Southwest Wind Demon called Pazuzu.

There is a headpiece missing on the bell,

which may have indicated the bell statue was taller.

This is not the only artifact found in coal,

millions of years old.

An iron pot was found in coal in Oklahoma.

In an notarized statement, Frank Kennard said in 1948,

he was working in the municipal electric plant

in Thomas, Oklahoma in 1912.

He came upon a solid chunk of coal

which was too large to use.

He broke it up with a sledgehammer.

The iron pot fell from the center, leaving the impression

or mold of the pot in a piece of the coal.

Jim Stull, an employee of the company,

witnessed the breaking of the coal

and saw the pot fall out.

He traced the source of the coal

and found that it came from Wilburton, Oklahoma mines.

A handful of other such artifact in coal accounts

have been recorded by Ivan T Sanderson.

Including an intricate gold chain found in coal.

The Morrisonville, Illinois Times,

on June 11, 1891, published a report

that Mrs. S. W. Culp found a circular shaped,

eight-carat gold chain, about 10 inches long,

embedded in a lump of coal

after she broke it apart to put it in her scuttle.

The chain was described as antique

and of quaint workmanship.

The story said only part of the chain

was revealed when she first broke open the coal,

and that the rest of the chain

remained buried within the coal.

The coal came from one of the southern Illinois mines.

Unfortunately the artifact has since disappeared.

Objects that are millions of years old can only mean

there was a civilization predating our modern culture.

Who made these items eons ago?

This question will probably never be answered.

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Suppose you came across a Roman dodecahedron.

Would you know what it is?

Or what it was used for?

This artifact is a small, hollow object

made of bronze or stone with a dodecahedron shape.

Twelve flat pentagonal faces,

each face having a circular hole

of varying diameter in the middle.

The holes connected to the hollowed center.

Roman dodecahedra date from the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD.

About a hundred of these objects have been found

from Wales to Hungary and Spain, and to the east of Italy.

And most found in Germany and France.

Ranging from 4 to 11 centimeters in size,

they also vary in terms of textures.

Most are made of bronze but some are made of stone.

No mention of them has been found in contemporary accounts

or pictures of the time.

Speculated uses include a candlestick

'cause wax has been found inside two examples,

dice, survey instruments for estimating distances to

or distances of objects,

devices for determining the optimal

sow date for winter grain,

gauges to calibrate water pipes or army standard bases.

Use as a measuring instrument of any kind seems improbable,

since the artifacts are not standardized

and come in many sizes and arrangements of their openings.

It has also been suggested that they may have

been religious artifacts or even fortune-telling devices.

This latter speculation is based on the fact

that most of the examples have been found

in Gallo-Roman sites.

Several dodecahedra were found in coin hoards,

providing evidence that the owners

considered them valuable objects.

Smaller dodecahedra with the same features,

holes and knobs, and made from gold

have been found in South-East Asia.

Speculation among historians has resulted

in many different hypothesis.

Which is as close as we may get to an accurate answer.

Few archeologists will even comment on it

because these objects aren't defined

to a specific cultural area and therefore,

not their area of expertise.

Even the theories that do exist are

highly debated among historians.

Can you figure out what this artifact is?

Or it's purpose?

If you can, then you may solve one of the most

perplexing mysteries of our time.

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Tiny objects are one thing to ponder over.

But what do you do when confronted with huge puzzle pieces

that fit together so perfectly you cannot

get a sheet of rice paper between them?

Throughout the world, there are large bolder-like stones

fitted together so perfectly no one has any idea

how they were quarried and placed together.

People are very creative and artistic.

But to quarry a stone over 500 tons,

move it, and put it into place where it fits perfectly

behooves even the most intelligent architect of today.

Yet these walls exist all over the world,

and no one knows how they were made or placed together.

For example, consider the walls in Peru, Baalbek

and other ancient sites around the globe.

Theories range from ancient giants that placed the stones,

to aliens with anti-gravity.

Magical talents some men had, to simple levers.

Some believe the only way to get this precision,

would be to melt the stones into place.

Today's builders and stonemasons would have

a hard time duplicating these artifacts.

Even with modern tools and technology.

Some say it simply cannot be done.

Who built these walls and how?

(vibrant music)

The Antikythera Mechanism is generally referred to

as the first known analog computer.

The quality and complexity of the mechanism's

manufacture suggests that it has undiscovered predecessors

made during the Hellenistic period.

It's construction relies on theories of astronomy

and mathematics developed by Greek astronomers

during the 2nd century BC,

and it's estimated to have been built

in the late 2nd century BC or the early 1st century BC.

It is the world's first-known computer.

A computer from the 2nd century?

Perhaps.

But some believe it may be much older.

It was found in a shipwreck in 1900,

along with statues and pottery.

But no one knows if it is an older item

that was along with the Greek pottery.

Or if it may be much older and was being transported

with current items of the time.

Scientists believe it was used to plot the movement

of the sun, moon and stars.

Thus it was a clock of sorts that could accurately predict

upcoming astrological events and tell time.

Some pieces of the clock have never been found

and it's possible there are more components

of it buried in the shipwreck and lost forever.

The scientists who have reconstructed the

Antikythera Mechanism also agree that it was

too sophisticated to have been a unique device.

That there must be others.

Of special delight to physicists,

the moon mechanism uses a special train of bronze gears,

two of them linked with a slightly offset axis,

to indicate the position and phase of the moon.

As is known today from Kepler's Law of Planetary Motion,

the moon travels at different speeds as it orbits the Earth,

and this speed differential is modeled

by the Antikythera Mechanism,

even though the ancient Greeks were not aware

of the actual elliptical shape of the orbit of the moon.

If ancient computers existed 500 BC,

could other advanced technologies have existed

in the ancient past?

What if a modern jet plane were found in an ancient pyramid?

It would of course be a major discovery.

And it may have already happened.

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Is this a helicopter?

Is this a spaceship?

A submarine or modern boat?

The 3,000 year-old hieroglyphs found

in Seti I's temple in Abydos, Egypt,

are said to depict nothing less than a helicopter,

plane,

and futuristic aircraft among the usual insects,

symbols and snakes.

The writings have become known

as the Helicopter Hieroglyphics

among pseudoscience and conspiracy circles.

With many supporters of the theory saying,

that if the ancient civilization was putting

helicopters and modern spacecraft in their artwork,

then they must have seen them, or at least pictures of them.

And for that to have happened,

someone from the future must have taken them back.

Some have even taken the theory a step further,

introducing aliens to the equation.

The question remains, why would ancient Egyptians

depict a modern helicopter above a doorway in a tomb?

If it's not a helicopter then what is it?

Why is it there alongside of what appears to be

a modern boat or submarine

and a science-fiction style spaceship?

What did the Egyptians know 3,000 years ago?

And if they knew about helicopters,

what else could be hiding in undiscovered tombs

across the African continent?

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Dropa stones are said by some

ufologists and pseudoarchaeologists

to be a series of at least 716 circular stone discs,

dating back 12,000 years.

On which tiny hieroglyph-like markings may be found.

Each disc is claimed to measure up to 1 foot in diameter

and carry two grooves, originating from a hole

in their center, in the form of a double spiral.

The hieroglyphic-like markings are said

to be found in these grooves.

No record has been found of the stones

being displayed in any of the world's museums,

and their current whereabouts are unknown.

In 1962 a Chinese researcher, Tsum Um Nui,

was reported to have concluded that the grooves on the discs

were actually very tiny hieroglyphs.

None of which were of a pattern that had been seen before,

and which can only be seen with the use

of a magnifying glass.

He announced that he had deciphered them

into a story that told of a spacecraft

that crash landed in the area of the cave,

the Bayan Har Mountains.

And that the ship contained the Dropa people

who could not fit in and therefore had to adapt to Earth.

Further, his research claims that the Dropa people

were hunted down and killed by the local Han Chinese

for a period.

Tsum Um Nui noted specifically that one glyph

apparently said,

"The Dropa came down from the clouds in their aircraft."

Our men, women and children hid in the caves

ten times before sunrise.

When at last we understood the sign language

of the Dropas, we realized that the newcomers

"had peaceful intentions."

Tsum Um Nui is said to have published

his findings in 1962 in a professional journal,

and was subsequently ridiculed and met with disbelief.

Shortly afterwards he's said to have gone to Japan

in a self-imposed exile,

where he died not long after he completed

the manuscript of his work.

The stones themselves seemed to have disappeared.

The stone discs were supposedly stored in

various museums across China.

However none of these museums have any records

or traces of Dropa stones ever being there.

They obviously existed because there

are photographs of them.

What are these stone discs?

And where did they come from?

Is the story they tell true?

And if so, is there any proof other than the stones?

The mysterious discovery was allegedly made in 1930

when Chi Pu Tei, an archeology professor

at Peking University and his students

were on an expedition to explore a series of caves

in the inaccessible mountains near Tibet.

Which were supposedly carved artificially

in a system of underground tunnels and pantries.

Now according to these events,

it's said that professor Chi Pu Tei and his students

found tombs with skeletons of four to six feet

in height buried inside them.

The skeletons had abnormally large heads and small,

thin and fragile bodies.

In addition to the skeletal remains,

professor Chi Pu Tei and his students

discovered countless other items.

After their studies on the Dropa stones,

researchers turned their attention to the people in the area

themselves, what happened to the Dropa?

The cave area where the stones were located

still had two tribes living in the vicinity,

the Dropas and the Khams.

Archeologists were called in to determine

where the two tribes originated from

but were unable to relate either tribe to a known race.

They also noticed that the people in these tribes

had a very short average height

and abnormally large heads and eye sockets.

They were extremely thin characters

with a very obvious yellow tinge to their skin color.

Could these be the direct ancestors to the Dropa?

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Have you ever seen a Waffle Rock?

There is one in Virginia and it's on display.

Waffle Rock in America is a real geology puzzle

because of the amazing patterns formed on its surface.

Called Waffle Rock because it looks like a waffle iron grid.

The question is, how was it made?

Is it natural or the imprint of some advanced

technological device that has long ago eroded

and left it's emboss on this natural rock?

The Army Corps of Engineers and geologists

say it's a natural formation.

Period, end of story.

Nothing to see here.

However, the scientific explanations don't account

for all the features present in the rock.

Aside from the unusual ancient alien talk,

many believe that the pattern is actually

an early form of hieroglyphic or primitive writing,

and that the rock is the result of Neolithic art

by pre-Columbian peoples.

The rock on display at the West Virginia Outlook

on Jennings Randolph Lake is but a small piece

of the original rock.

It was moved there to save the geologically significant

piece of history from a dam project.

Likely in in no small part, because of pressure

exerted by the original residents of Shaw,

a town removed for the dam.

Photographs of the whole rock show clearly,

the pattern or the structure of the pattern

does not run all the way through the rock,

but rather can only been seen on one side.

Most agree the rock is at least 250 million years old.

It's either a perfectly natural formation

or the work of an old ancient civilization,

or maybe even aliens.

(eerie music)

Today, you can find just about any place

with a quick Google search.

But in times past, to get from here to there

you needed a map.

Maps have been used to chart every point known

around the globe.

The more accurate, the better the map.

And when trusting your life to the sea,

you wanted the best map you could get.

So when you went there, you didn't end up somewhere else.

In 1513, a trip to the new world was all the rage,

and accurate maps were needed to get to this

newly founded land.

Enter Piri Reis, a cartographer.

Piri Reis served in the Turkish Navy,

for which he held the rank of Admiral.

He used 20 different maps and charts as his source documents

to create what today is called the Piri Reis map.

Eight of them were Ptolemaic maps,

maps of the known world according to the

2nd century Hellenistic or Greek society.

Four were Portuguese maps.

One was an Arabic map and one was drawn by

Christopher Columbus himself.

It was considered a very accurate map.

But here is where the map gets weird.

Along with depicting Africa, South America

and various islands accurately,

it appears to show Antarctica with no ice caps.

Antarctica as it would have looked over 6,000 years ago.

Antarctica has been covered with ice for over 6,000 years

and no one has sailed around the planet

before it froze over.

So how could a map referenced from older maps,

have depicted the continent so accurately?

Modern satellite mapping which can peer through the ice,

confirms the map is accurate.

It correctly shows the outline of Antarctica

as it is under the ice.

Peri had referenced a map that

displayed Antarctica correctly.

So where did that map come from?

Who would have known in 1513 that Antarctica

is a continent and not just a huge landscape of ice?

Who could have mapped it over 6,000 years ago

when no one could see it and tell it was a continent?

No one knows.

It's a huge mystery.

And now you have a new map to ponder over.

(spooky music)

If you take a tube of copper, a rod of iron,

and put them in a clay pot filled with juice

or some acidic liquid, do you know what you get?

A battery that's what.

Kind of like the potato clock novelty science toys

you can buy, the clay pot battery will actually work.

Man has known about electricity since old Ben Franklin

flew a kite in a storm, or so we are told.

What if batteries were around centuries ago?

Well apparently they were.

Or so it seems.

The Baghdad Battery is a set of three artifacts

which were found together.

A ceramic pot, a tube of copper, and a rod of iron.

It was discovered in modern Iraq,

close to the capital of the Parthian empire

from around 250 BC and it is considered

to date from that period.

Its origin and purpose remain unclear

and further evidence is needed to explain it's purpose.

It was hypothesized by some researchers

that the object functioned as a galvanic cell,

or battery, possibly used for electroplating,

or some kind of electrotherapy,

but there is no electrocauterized objects

known from this period.

An alternative explanation is that it functioned

as a storage vessel for sacred scrolls.

The battery has been proven to work.

And on the modern program Mythbusters,

several were linked together to produce four volts,

enough to barely electroplate with.

Some researchers believe four volts is

not enough to be useful for electroplating

but it could have been used for some kind of

mild electrotherapy such as pain relief.

Possibly through electroacupuncture.

What it was used for is the mystery.

That it was real and did exist is not a question.

An over 2,000 year-old battery makes you wonder

if it keeps going and going and going and going and going.

(dynamic music)

Finding odd combinations of things is the norm

in archeology.

It wouldn't be too uncommon to find an old hammer

with it's handle still intact.

But what if you found a hammer encased in rock

over 100 million years old.

In the 1930's in the city of London, near Red Creek, Texas,

an iron hammer was discovered embedded in a rock.

How did it get there?

The hammer had to have been build before

the rock was formed, hundreds of millions of years ago.

According to analysis, the rock enveloping the tool

was dated to the Ordovician Era.

More than 400 million years old.

While the hammer itself is thought to be much older,

dating back 500 million years.

The wooden handle of the hammer is so old,

that it has begun to turn into coal.

That's one very old tool.

It was determined that the hammer's head

is made of 97% pure ion, 2% chlorine and 1% sulfur.

In the 80 or so years since the hammer was unearthed,

the metal object has not shown any signs of rust,

making it a unique blend of metallurgy

that some claim to be a lost technology

from an ancient civilization.

Both researchers and historians are divided into two camps

in respect to the finding.

With one arguing that the artifact is proof

prehistoric cultures existed long before

what history books tell us.

And the other is denying the possibility.

Could this strange object be evidence of

a civilization pre-dating what is known in

our modern understanding of history?

Who made the hammer?

And who used it 500 million years ago?

That is some serious hammer time.

(eerie music)

It seems every day science is pushing back

the date man become an intellectual being.

Gobekli Tepe sits in a plateau in Turkey

and is around 20,000 years old.

20,000 years ago man is supposed to be eeking out

a living with sticks and clubs.

Yet here is a complex arrangement of statues.

Some many tons in weight with carvings

of animals and other symbols.

Gobekli Tepe includes two phases of use

believed to be of social or ritual nature

dating back to the 10th millennium BC.

During the first phase,

belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic,

circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected.

The world's oldest known megaliths.

More than 200 pillars in about 20 circles

are currently known through geophysical surveys.

Each pillar has a height of up to 20 feet

and weighs up to 10 tons.

They're fitted into sockets that were

hewn out of the bedrock.

In the second phase, belonging to the

Pre-Pottery Neolithic, the erected pillars are smaller

and stood in rectangular rooms with floors of polished lime.

Pretty sophisticated for cavemen, right?

The details of the structures function remain a mystery.

It was excavated by a German archeologist

under the direction of Klaus Schmidt from 1996

until his death in 2014.

Schmidt believed that the site was a sanctuary

where people from a wide-region periodically congregated.

Not a settlement.

The structures not only pre-date pottery,

metallurgy and the invention of writing or the wheel,

but they were built before the so-called

Neolithic Revolution that marks the beginning

of agriculture and animal husbandry.

Around 9000 BC.

The construction of Gobekli Tepe implies

organization of an advanced order,

not associated with Paleolithic society.

However, archeologists estimate that up to

500 persons were required to exact

the heavy pillars from local quarries

and move them 330 to 1640 feet to the site.

The pillars weigh 10 to 20 metric tons

with one still in the quarry weighing 50 tons.

The site continues to perplex scientists

and raise more questions than it answers.

It's the oldest monolithic site on the planet

as of today, pre-dating everything else.

It absolutely could not have been built and crafted

by Neolithic man.

(beating music)

Giant walls are built to keep people out,

or keep people in.

They are barriers, usually built for political reasons

to hold off an invading army or a group of unwanted people.

In some cases, they may be used to house people

or protect animals.

In any case, a wall is something of a huge discovery

in archeology.

If you ever find yourself driving through Rockwall, Texas,

you may ask yourself why this suburb of Dallas

is called Rockwall.

Well there is an ancient wall there.

You can't see it because it's buried but it's there.

For over 160 years, scientists have claimed the wall

is nothing more than a natural formation.

Most people living in Rockwall, Texas,

do not even know that their city is named

after an ancient rock wall city complete with the skull

of a giant that was found while some people

were digging a well looking for water a long time ago.

The wall is an almost perfect rectangle,

four miles wide, and seven miles,

encompassing more than 20 square miles long

with most of the wall being buried.

The top of the wall at all outcroppings

found to date have a uniform elevation of 550 feet

above mean sea level.

Mary Pattie (Wade) Gibson, is the granddaughter

of T.U. Wade, founder of the wall

at the Rockwall County Historical Foundation.

She described the additional digging

her grandfather and other men did at the home site.

In her description were cubicles or rooms

constructed of stone which you could walk through

and would reach a corridor which seemed to run

in a direction into the hill that the town square

sits upon.

She told of an incident in 1906 of two unidentified men

digging out the corridor which had apparently

been filled with erosion.

Their intent was to reach a room or cavity under the town

which might be full of gold,

apparently derived from a story from Indian legend.

The ceiling of the corridor had steep slopes,

describing a Gothic type arched ceiling,

much like the Mayans built.

And the further into the corridor the two men excavated,

the steeper the slope of the ceiling became.

Consequently, the men fearful of a structural failure

abandoned their search for gold.

Mary Pattie Gibson also says that during

her grandfather's exploration of the wall,

he discovered on the outside, the wall went straight down.

On the inside she described the wall going down

to about forty feet, curves inward and becomes much thicker.

Additional information provided by the daughter

of the late Mr Deweese, an early settler of Rockwall,

who described a doorway with a diagonal shaped stone

in the wall at the Wade residence on Highway 66.

This portion of the wall was open to visitors from 1936

until the late 1940's,

and was consequently back filled

because of dangerous structural conditions.

In 1949, a Mr Sanders of Fort Worth, Texas,

did an excavation of the wall.

From this excavation four large stones were brought up

with the largest weighing approximately two tons.

On these stones were found inscriptions

with what appear to be pictographs.

The Dallas Morning News on the 5 November 1967

reported that "Back in the 1920's",

T.H. Meredith said a well was dug on his farm

just east of the town of Rockwall,

and Mr Meredith declared that the digging

went along side a masonry wall which seemed

"to have an arch over a doorway or window."

Metal rings were found at the site

which was composed of tin, titanium and iron,

embedded in the rock.

You can see it in this photo just above the pick axe.

Of course all this material, and the skull,

have been lost and much of the wall today

cannot be seen.

It's also unlikely any modern excavations will happen,

because the town has grown and is now an urban section

next to Dallas.

But if you drive through Rockwall, Texas,

you can think about what mysteries may lie

just a few feet below your car.

(eerie music)

Giant skulls.

Really?

What's up with that?

The truth is, giant skulls are very real.

And have been found world-wide.

First let me warn you that there are a bunch

of fake giant skull photos floating around the internet.

So if you see one, do your own research

and determine if it is real or fake.

You see, there was a contest not long ago,

to make giant skull images in Photoshop,

and all of those contest entries are out there

now being mixed up with the real ones.

So let's take a look at the reality

versus the misinformation.

Your first question may be,

why is it so hard to find real giant skull photos?

Well the reason is simple.

Under the

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act,

a federal law was passed in 1990

requiring Native American artifacts and remains

to be handled over to culturally affiliated tribes

or provable descendants and then reburied.

The few skulls that remain in anthropological facilities

cannot be photographed under this law.

So all photos of the existence of giant skulls

were taken before 1990.

The other issue is that because giants

didn't fit the religious criteria

of early explorers and researchers,

they were often dismissed or even destroyed.

Many were sent to the Smithsonian and subsequently

destroyed by the curator, who back in the early 1930's

thought it was against his beliefs and didn't fit

his personal anthropology theories.

So, let's take a look at some real giant skulls.

(whimsical music)

(spooky music)

These are not isolated accounts.

There are literally hundreds of reports

around the turn of the century

describing large bones and skulls.

Many from accredited newspapers and doctors.

So why the mystery?

Well, even today many scientists refuse to look

at the evidence because they would have to

rewrite the history books and include

a giant civilization in North America

which apparently was here long before the Native Americans.

And existed up to colonization.

Skulls and bones found around the world, corroborate this.

With the lack of physical evidence,

and the mystery surrounding many of these finds,

science just can't be bothered to take a serious look

at the obvious.

Our only hope is that some time in the near future,

someone somewhere digs up a new find

and is wise enough to photograph and document it

before it can be taken away.

(dynamic music)

In a mysterious pyramid in China's Qinghai Providence

near Mount Baigong are three caves

filled with pipes leading to a nearby salt-water lake.

There are also pipes under the lake bed and on the shore.

The iron pipes range in size,

from some smaller than a toothpick.

The strangest part is that they may be 150,000 years old.

Dating done by the Beijing Institute of Geology

determined these iron pipes were smelted

about 150,000 years ago.

If they were indeed made by humans,

according to Brian Dunning of Skeptoid.com.

And if they were made by humans,

history as it is commonly viewed

would have to be re-evaluated.

The dating was done using thermoluminescence.

A technique that determines how long ago

crystalline mineral was exposed to sunlight or heated.

Humans are only thought to have inhabited the region

for the past 30,000 years.

Even with the known history of the area,

the only humans to inhabit the region were nomads

whose lifestyle would not leave any such structures behind.

Though some have since tried to explain the pipes

as a natural phenomenon, Yang Ji,

a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,

told that the pyramid may have been

built by intelligent beings.

He did not dismiss the theory that ancient extraterrestrials

may be responsible, saying this theory is

"understandable and worth looking into...

but scientific means must be employed

to prove whether or not it is true."

Another theory is that it was built by prehistoric humans

with techniques lost to humans of a later period.

The pipes lead into a salty lake,

though a twin lake nearby contains freshwater.

The surrounding landscape is strewn with what

he describes as "strangely shaped stones."

Rocks protrude from the ground like broken pillars.

Who could have built a pipe system 150,000 years ago?

These are iron pipes, not clay or rock.

They would have had to have been constructed.

No one was smelting iron that long ago

according to our current understanding of history.

Is it possible that an ancient race of people

lived long before our so-called historical timeline?

If so, what other artifacts exist

that prove their existence?

(dynamic music)

Spheres found in the mines of South Africa

have piqued the curiosity of researchers for decades.

Why?

Because they're 2.8 billion years old

and appear to be manmade.

According to Michael Cremo and other

researchers of prehistoric culture,

these spheres add to a body of evidence

suggesting intelligent life existed on Earth

long before a conventional view of history places it there.

Cremo has traveled the world gathering information

on out-of-place artifacts.

He compiled his findings in the popular book,

Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race.

In 1984, while investigating the spheres,

he contacted Roelf Marx,

curator of the museum of Klerksdorp, South Africa,

where some of the spheres are kept.

Marx described the spheres as being about

2.8 billion years old, with a very hard surface

and a fibrous structure inside.

He found them quite strange and puzzling.

Marx wrote, according to Cremo

"There is nothing scientific published about the globes,

for the facts are, they are found in pyrophyllite,

which is mined near the little town of Ottosdal

in the Western Transvaal.

Some of the so-called Klerksdorp spheres

are elliptical in shape with rough edges around the center.

But some are so balanced in shape and proportion,

and the grooves around them look so straight

and hand-carved, it seems unlikely

they were naturally formed.

Proponents of the theory say that the spheres

were made by intelligent beings.

Cremo, and others who hold that these spheres

are evidence of advanced prehistoric civilizations,

say mainstream science needs to be bolder,

and more willing to acknowledge evidence

that could contradict dominant views.

What was the purpose of the spheres?

And who was manufacturing them 2.8 billion years ago?

(vibrant music)

Women today carry a purse.

It's part of our modern culture.

Men wear backpacks and carry a wallet.

We have bags for pretty much everything today.

One of the more mysterious symbols

that has been found in ancient carvings,

is an image that looks uncannily like a handbag.

The shape appears in depictions made by the

Sumerians in Iraq, in the ruins of ancient Turkish temples,

in decorations of the Maori of New Zealand,

and in crafts made by the Olmecs of Central America.

Handbags can be seen in the art of various cultures

from around the world and throughout time,

with the first known instance of a handbag

appearing at the end of the Ice Age.

What is this mysterious symbol that can be found

throughout the ancient world?

The handbag image is so called

because it looks very similar to the modern-day purse.

The objects typically feature a rounded handle-like top

and a rectangular bottom,

and may include varying degrees of additional details

of texture or pattern.

The images sometimes appear as stand-alone objects.

Sometimes they are depicted in the hand of a person,

a god, or mythical being in a manner similar

to how one would hold a basket.

One of the earliest instances of the handbag motif

can be seen in the ruins of Gobekli Tepe,

located at the top of a mountain range in southeast Turkey.

Dating back to approximately 11,000 BC,

Gobekli Tepe is one of the oldest

temple complexes ever discovered.

The exact purpose of the mountain sanctuary is unknown,

however, it appears that the temple may have served

as a site for religious sacrifices.

The walls and pillars of the temple

were decorated with finely carved animal gods,

and mythical creatures, perhaps in an effort

to portray the many different creations of the cosmos.

Amidst these other carvings are three handbags.

Experts believe that early religions worshiped

the fundamental elements of life on Earth.

Therefore, the three Gobekli Tepe handbags,

taken as an early form of those icons,

could be said to symbolically define the site as a temple.

Elsewhere, the handbag image shows up

with striking similarities in two stone reliefs.

One made by the Assyrians of ancient Iraq

sometime between 880 to 859 BC and the other

made by the Olmecs of ancient Mesoamerica

sometime between 1200 and 400 BC.

In both of these images, a man-like figure

carries the handbag in his hand,

as if it were a basket or purse.

When used in Assyrian art it is said

the purse holds magic dust.

When depicted in Olmec art they postulate

that it contains herbs for getting high.

This suggests that the handbag may have been

a standard of measurement uniquely discovered

by both cultures.

In any case, these handbags appear on statues and reliefs

all around the world.

And are very similar.

What were they?

What did they contain?

And why was it important to depict this symbol

in statues and art thousands of years ago?

(vibrant music)

The Stone of the South at Baalbek, Lebanon,

is the largest worked monolith on Earth.

Weighing in at a staggering 1242 tons.

It is even heavier than the Stone of the Pregnant Woman

which weighs an estimated 1000 tons,

that sits on the other side of the road in the quarry.

Neither of these stones made it to the main

Temple of Jupiter, some 900 meters to the northeast.

But some 400-ton and 800-ton stones did make their way

to the temple, were raised 20 feet in to the air

and were placed with machine-like precision

onto the foundations of this mighty ancient complex.

Janine Abdel Massih and her team uncovered

a further monolith that sits virtually underneath

The Stone of the Pregnant Woman.

Until recently, it was buried under a few feet of dirt,

and has been measured at 19.6 meters long,

6 meters wide and 5.5 meters thick.

Because they've not yet reached the bottom of the rock

to completely clear it, they have no idea of the volume

or complete dimension of this ancient stone.

The outline of it can be seen,

and shows a kind of precision

we find in ancient Peru and Egypt.

The discovery of this new monolith,

just adds another level of mystery to the situation,

as it sits virtually under The Stone of the Pregnant Woman,

and would have had to have been lifted out,

after this other 1000-ton block was moved.

Could Baalbek have been constructed by giants?

It certainly appears to have been built by giants

when trying to work out how some of these stones

could have been moved into place.

The western wall of the Temple of Jupiter

contains some of these immense blocks

that make up the trilithon,

at least twenty feet above ground level.

So how could they have got them from the quarry

to the main site, then placed them so accurately?

The stones of Baalbek are one of the

enduring mysteries of the ages,

and it does seem like some special occult power

was employed to quarry, lift and transport

these immense blocks.

Why they decided to use stones of this size

has baffled researchers for generations.

It would have been so much easier to use smaller blocks

and put them together at the site.

Perhaps if they were giants then these stones

were not as large to them as they are to us.

We may never know how Baalbek was constructed.

One thing we do know is that we

cannot duplicate this endeavor.

(dramatic music)

How is it that the Sumerians and Egyptians

rose to become empires so quickly?

Ancient Egyptian civilization emerged in the

fertile Nile Valley, bounded on each side

by harsh deserts.

In Mesopotamia, now southern Iraq,

the land between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers,

the first cities appeared on irrigated lands.

Both resulted from the consolidation

of political and economic power.

Before 3100 BC, the Nile Valley

held a series of competitive kingdoms.

After centuries of unsettled conditions,

Egypt became a unified river valley state

under a leader named Narmer.

Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia

was a patchwork of small city states,

each with their own aggressive rulers

and patron gods or goddesses.

All depended on irrigation agriculture

and highly centralized government.

In the case of Egypt, the pharaoh was supreme ruler,

thought to be a living god.

In Mesopotamia, city rulers known as lugals

were considered to have divine powers.

They were also skilled warriors.

Who were these Gods?

And how did they manage to create such awesome empires

when man was supposed to be little more than migrant nomads?

We know much about modern history because these cultures

left stone tablets with writing.

Who taught these people to write?

How to carve and work with stone?

Some stones being huge and heavy.

Where did they get their knowledge

of mathematics and architecture?

Modern history marks these two cultures

to be the beginning of what we today call civilization.

Though there is now emerging more evidence man

may have been civilized long ago,

the Gods who ruled and taught mankind,

apparently were technologically advanced.

Could they have been aliens?

Or, is our history so fragmented, we have no idea

how technology really began?

(dynamic music)

A less ancient discovery, but very important

to modern culture, is the famous Shroud of Turin.

The Shroud is said to be an ancient cloth

that covered the body of Jesus Christ

when he ascended from his tomb.

The power of his ascension caused an image of his body

on the cloth.

Determining if the Shroud is authentic,

means following it's timeline from the tomb

to Italy, where it is now.

The history of the Shroud from the 15th Century

is well recorded.

It's the time backward, from then to the death of Jesus

that is in question.

It is said the Shroud was taken to Turkey

to Palestine then made it's way to Italy.

Connecting these dots of where it was is part of history.

The other part, is how an image came to be on the Shroud.

Tests have shown it is not a painting

or contains pigments of an impression.

Pollens from the cloth seem to tell it's origin

is indeed from the correct area Jesus was buried.

There are several reddish stains on the Shroud,

suggesting blood.

But it is uncertain whether these stains

were produced at the same time as the image

or afterwards.

The image on the Shroud, appears like the negative

of a photograph, though photography did not exist

in the time of Jesus.

The image clearly, and accurately,

depicts the wounds on Christ,

and blood that flowed from them.

Some believe the Shroud is a simple forgery.

While others point to the blood and other accurate points

within the image and the cloth itself

dating to the proper age.

In 1976, Pete Schumacher, John Jackson, and Eric Jumper,

analyzed a photograph of the Shroud image

using a VP8 image analyzer,

which was developed for NASA to create brightness

maps of the moon.

A brightness map interprets differences of brightness

within an image as differences of elevation.

They found that, unlike any photograph they had analyzed,

the Shroud image has the property of decoding

into a 3-dimensional image,

when the darker parts of the image are interpreted

to be those features of the man that they were closest to

on the Shroud and the lighter areas of the image

of those features that were farthest.

The researchers could not replicate the effect

when they attempted to transfer similar images

using techniques of block print, engravings,

a hot statue, and bas-relief.

The Shroud of Turin, is either an accurate image of Christ

on cloth or it is the cleverest forgery

ever constructed by an early man.

In May of 2018 Turin's International Center of Sindonology

held it's annual meeting in Chamberey, France.

The primary topic of discussion was a new

reevaluation of it's carbon dating.

(vibrant music)

Lost civilizations.

Out of place artifacts.

Mysterious walls and monuments.

Mankind loves a good mystery.

But these items are also important

from a historic point of view.

Our history is fragmented and much of it has been lost.

We believe in a linear existence from one point

in time to another.

But perhaps history is not a straight line

but rather comes and goes in a curved manner

of life on Earth.

Instead of thinking we have one history,

perhaps we have had several with man or some being like man

evolving up to a point then being destroyed

and having to start all over again.

Is it possible that there have been several

civilizations on Earth in it's 4.5 billion

years of existence?

If artifacts and obvious machine technology found

in ancient ruins are to be believed,

then somewhere back in time there may have been

other timelines and other civilizations before us.

If so, which one are we?

4.5 billion years is plenty of time

for several civilizations to have emerged.

Even advanced societies.

Some say, there have been at least five

civilizations on Earth.

Perhaps rather than looking for aliens

outside of our planet to explain these mysteries,

we should be looking more towards ourselves

and dig deeper to find who we were in epochs long forgotten.