Original subtitles

NARRATOR: President Thomas Jefferson...

Christopher Columbus...

Crusaders in the Middle Ages...

What did they have in common?

They either experienced

or believed in the possibility of alien encounters.

BILL BIRNES: And the fact is there have been

so many descriptions by various chroniclers

talking about a strange cloud in the sky that glowed red.

C. SCOTT LITTLETON: Columbus, on his first voyage,

he noted in the log a glowing object

rise out of the water

and head off into the atmosphere.

NARRATOR: Could alien beings have been responsible

for biblical floods,

medieval plagues

and even ancient nuclear attacks?

GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: Visitations occurred

since before recorded history all the way to today.

NARRATOR: Millions of people around the world believe

we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings.

What if it were true?

Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history?

And what if these visitations didn't only occur

thousands of years ago,

but much more recently?

Might there be evidence of real-life close encounters?

NARRATOR: Alamogordo, New Mexico.

White Sands Proving Ground, July 16, 1945.

Early in the morning,

a number of U.S. military officers and scientists

gather to watch a powerful new weapon being tested.

Some believe the device will be a complete failure.

Others think it might destroy the entire state of New Mexico.

As a precaution, viewing stations are placed

from ten to 20 miles away from the test site.

At precisely 5:29 and 45 seconds,

the first atomic bomb is detonated.

MAN: Three, two, one...

Fire!

NARRATOR: The blast emits a fireball over 600 feet wide

and produces an explosion equal to 20,000 tons of TNT.

The mushroom cloud reaches over seven miles in height,

and the reverberations can be felt nearly 100 miles away.

The world had a new weapon;

one so terrifying it left even its creator,

Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, shocked and shaken.

J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER: A few people laughed.

A few people cried.

Most people were silent.

NARRATOR: For the first time in its history,

the Earth had been assaulted

by a manmade weapon of incredible power.

But what if it had all happened before?

What if an explosion

of even greater force and destructiveness

had long ago shaped the Earth's history?

Some people have suggested

on the basis of a number of lines of evidence

that there may have been atomic warfare, atomic bombs,

atomic explosions, in the very distant past.

NARRATOR: Atomic warfare among ancient civilizations

may sound like something out of a science fiction novel,

but descriptions of similar deadly occurrences

can be found in the very same text

Dr. Oppenheimer quoted after the New Mexico atomic test.

OPPENHEIMER: I remembered the line

from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita,

"Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

NARRATOR: Part of an ancient Hindu scripture

known as The Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita was written

sometime between the fifth and second century B.C.

This massive 100,000-verse text contains stories

about the ancient empire of Rama,

which it is said existed over 12,000 years ago,

or roughly 5,000 years before

the earliest recorded civilization in Mesopotamia.

TSOUKALOS: If you read the ancient Indian epics,

they read like modern-day science fiction.

Yet they are thousands of years old

with references not only of flying chariots

and of these gods

that had these incredible technological capabilities,

but incredible weapons that they used in those epic battles.

NANCY RED STAR: They had what was called a Brahma weapon.

There were many people that were singed and burned

and... and melted by the Brahma weapon.

NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut theorists

believe the Brahma weapon was an early nuclear device

because the descriptions of its deadly aftereffects

are eerily similar to the effects

of exposure to intense radiation.

It is a theory largely discounted

by conventional science.

There is no evidence that a nuclear bomb was described

in The Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita.

It describes a battle.

In battles, there are explosions.

Big explosions.

It's one thing about suggesting

that, you know, battles have explosions,

but that's not really what we're looking at.

You've got to look at the whole picture.

One reference that we have, for example,

speaks of these explosions

that were brighter than a thousand suns.

And when these blasts occurred,

the suns were twirling in the air,

trees went up in flames

and there was just this mass destruction.

After those blasts, people who survive

start to lose their hair and nails start to fall out.

I mean, right there, we have a concise reference

to radiation poisoning, nuclear fallout.

And those texts are thousands of years old.

NARRATOR: But if The Mahabharata is based on fact,

wouldn't archaeologists have uncovered physical

or radiological evidence?

According to ancient astronaut theorists, they have.

The Indus Valley, Southern Pakistan.

In 1922, an officer

with an Indian archaeological survey group

discovered the ruins

of an ancient city known as Mohenjo-Daro.

According to mainstream archaeologists,

the city, whose name means "mound of the dead,"

had flourished between 2600 and 1900 B.C.

However, scientists in Pakistan

have suggested Mohenjo-Daro is much older.

Mainstream archaeologists believe the city was abandoned

as a result of climatic changes or possibly a decrease in trade.

But when the ruins of Mohenjo-Daro

were discovered in the 1920s,

44 skeletons were found lying face down in the street,

many holding hands.

Their faces and body positioning

suggested they suffered a sudden, violent death.

PHILLIP COPPENS: You have a culture of people

who literally were lying dead in the street.

Archaeologists have found human remains,

and something big has happened to these people.

NARRATOR: What, in fact, did happen

to the people of Mohenjo-Daro?

Why is there evidence that wild animals

avoided scavenging their remains?

And why, even after thousands of years,

had their bones not decayed?

TSOUKALOS: In certain areas of that site,

you find increased levels of radiation.

And radiation exists all over the place.

When, all of a sudden, you have higher levels

of radiation in certain areas of the world,

the question arises, "Why?"

NARRATOR: Is it possible that Mohenjo-Daro

was one of the cities mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita--

a city that suffered the equivalent

of a sudden atomic attack?

In his 1979 book,

Atomic Destruction in 2000 B.C.,

British researcher David Davenport

claimed to have found a 50-yard-wide epicenter

at Mohenjo-Daro where everything appeared

to have been fused through a transformative process

known as "vitrification."

TSOUKALOS: Vitrification is a process

in which regular-type stone

gets molten into a magma state

and then it hardens again.

But once the stone is hardened again,

it feels like glass.

At Mohenjo-Daro, we find evidence of vitrification,

which could have only been achieved

if the material was exposed to extreme heat

by some type of a blast.

DAVID CHILDRESS: When British and Indian

and Pakistani archaeologists

began doing excavations in the Sian Desert,

on the borders of India and Pakistan,

in the late 1940s and early 1950s,

what they found in these cities--

Mohenjo-Daro, Harrapa, Kot Diji--

was archaeological evidence to show

there were apparently atomic weapons.

Only it happened in ancient times.

There's other evidence in parts of Africa and the Middle East,

where it would seem to be like some sort

of atomic explosion had taken place there,

and had turned the desert sand into glass.

And that's exactly what happened at Alamogordo, in New Mexico,

when they detonated the first atom bomb in the desert.

NARRATOR: Could the strange ruins

found in the Indus Valley

really contain evidence of an ancient atomic explosion?

If so, where did these powerful weapons come from?

Who was using them?

And why?

TSOUKALOS: In the ancient Indian texts themselves,

it says, and I quote, "At one point,

three giant cities were orbiting the Earth."

And those giant cities were often described

as being made of gleaming metal and iron.

And at one point,

those three cities went to war with each other.

And it's described how the gods

threw weapons at each other,

destroying those cities, that they all went up in flames

and fire came raining down onto Earth.

So, when you read those passages, the question I ask is:

What is it that our ancestors tried to describe here?

And I think that it was some type

of a technology that was witnessed,

yet our ancestors, while being highly intelligent,

didn't understand the nuts-and-bolts aspects

behind that technology.

And so they created something divine out of it,

something supernatural, yet it never was divine.

It never was supernatural.

NARRATOR: If, in fact, The Mahabharata

is describing historical events,

might we also find similar accounts

in other ancient writings?

As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,

we need look no further than in the pages of the Holy Bible.

According to one of the stories

contained in the book of Genesis,

angels were sent by God

to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah

because of the sins of their inhabitants.

Only a righteous man named Lot,

along with his family, was to be spared.

But while making their escape,

Lot's wife ignores the angels' warning not to look back,

and upon gazing at the horror and devastation,

is turned into a pillar of salt.

TSOUKALOS: When you are at a nuclear testing range

and you witness a nuclear blast,

you're told to look away and not to look straight into the blast.

And here we have a similar description

in an ancient biblical text where instructions were given,

"Whatever you do, don't look back

because you will die."

And sure enough, it happened to Lot's wife.

NARRATOR: Could it be that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah

is really a description of a nuclear explosion,

similar to the one described in the Hindus' Mahabharata?

Do the stories of The Mahabharata and the Bible

represent actual historical events?

For ancient astronaut theorists,

the answer is a resounding "yes."

And they believe the so-called "angels"

who brought forth the devastation

were, in fact, beings from another planet--

alien visitors armed with advanced weaponry.

September, 2000.

The Black Sea, Turkey.

Marine archaeologist Robert Ballard

and his team of underwater scientists

discover what appears to be a farmhouse

some 330 feet below the surface.

Estimates suggest the submerged dwelling

to be approximately 7,500 years old.

Ballard and other scholars speculated

that rising ocean levels could have caused

the Mediterranean Sea to burst through a natural dam,

creating a flood so great

it drowned an estimated 58,000 square miles

under 500 feet of water.

But more than finding the ruins of an ancient dwelling,

had Ballard actually discovered proof

that the biblical story of Noah and the great flood was true?

CHILDRESS: And those villages, of course,

weren't built underwater.

So Ballard concluded that the Black Sea, as we know it,

was only created some 8,000, 9,000 years ago.

And that is exactly what we're talking about

with Noah's Ark and the flood,

the same area where all that happened.

And, in fact, mainstream archaeologists know

that in the Mediterranean

there are over 200 known sunken cities.

Those cities, too, were somehow flooded

the same time that the Black Sea was flooded.

NARRATOR: Also written in the book of Genesis,

the story of Noah tells how God

"saw that the wickedness of man was great,"

and decided to destroy all of creation.

Only Noah, his family and the animals aboard the ark

were allowed to survive and repopulate the planet.

But is this the whole story?

Was Noah selected only for his virtue?

Or was there another reason he was chosen to save the planet?

Ancient astronaut theorists

believe the Bible doesn't tell the whole story.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s,

a series of ancient texts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls

were discovered in a cave

located in what is now Israel's West Bank.

Among the ancient writings are various stories

not found in the traditional Hebrew Bible.

One such story tells of Noah

and his strange, miraculous birth.

ERICH VON DANIKEN: One of the Dead Sea Scrolls

is called "The Lamech Scroll."

What is Lamech?

Lamech was a shepherd.

And one day, Lamech, his woman was pregnant.

And he said to her, "This is impossible.

I was not here for months."

But his woman with the name Bathenosh swears,

"No one touched me."

But Lamech doesn't believe his wife, Bathenosh,

and he goes to his father, which was Methuselah.

And Methuselah says to Lamech, "I can't help you.

"I don't understand this.

"I believe your woman, Bathenosh,

"that nobody touched her, and I believe you.

What shall I do?"

So Methuselah goes to his father,

the grandfather now of Lamech.

His name is Enoch.

Now, Enoch tells to Methuselah that the guardians of the sky

have made an artificial insemination

into the womb of Bathenosh, the wife.

And he should accept this child, because this child

will be the father of a new human generation.

And in the Bible, this is Noah.

NARRATOR: What if, as ancient astronaut theorists believe,

the story of Lamech is true

and the guardians of the sky described in the story

are, in fact, aliens?

Does this mean that Noah

was the product of an artificial insemination,

a genetic experiment performed by extraterrestrials?

If so, what was the reason for the great flood?

L.A. MARZULLI: Well, the reason for the flood--

and we need to understand this--

what it tells us is that Noah

was pure in all of his generations.

What does that mean?

You know, why would the account, you know, specify

"pure in all his generations"?

NARRATOR: According to the Bible, God sent the flood

because of man's wickedness and corruption.

But ancient astronaut theorists believe the flood

was actually a means of ridding the Earth

of biological imperfections.

By using Noah and his family, they could repopulate the planet

with a genetically superior species.

VON DANIKEN: Part of this human society

is, again, genetically backward, closer to the animal.

What can we do?

These humans were spread out over the planet.

So they said, "We have to kill them all by a great flood,

and then we have to restart again."

NARRATOR: Another familiar element

in the story of Noah

involves the collection of animals brought aboard the ark.

In the Bible, God commanded Noah

to collect two of every kind of living creature--

animal, bird and insect.

But many biblical scholars and theologians agree

that such a task would have been both physically

and biologically impossible.

Could there be another more scientific explanation?

TSOUKALOS: The story of Noah's Ark

is pretty implausible, if you think about it.

You have two animals

of each creature on planet Earth on a boat.

Not only would the boat have to be huge,

but how are you going to collect every animal on the planet

and put it on that ship?

So, could it be possible that Noah's Ark

and Noah's Ark was a DNA bank?

JONATHAN YOUNG: Could it be a story?

Could it be technology somehow gathering up

all living things as in a DNA bank of some kind?

It fits together.

Hard to imagine, uh, how that would happen so far back,

but if it did happen, it would need to be told as a story,

and the story of a boat works.

CHILDRESS: Perhaps this is really

an extraterrestrial DNA bank as well.

The extraterrestrials need plants and animals

and minerals on this planet, too.

Just like when we go to Mars or something,

we'll be using what we can use on that planet.

So, extraterrestrials coming here

would want to do that as well.

And if they knew that some cataclysm was coming,

they, too, would want to preserve

certain kinds of animals and plant life,

and create, you know, what we think of as Noah's Ark.

NARRATOR: Alien DNA bank?

Is there any evidence that such a thing is even possible?

In 2008, on the Arctic island of Svalbard,

a vault was built to store the seeds

of hundreds of thousands of plants

in the event of a global catastrophe.

Elsewhere, similar efforts are reportedly underway

to store animal and human DNA as well.

Cutting-edge science

or merely history repeating itself?

TSOUKALOS: The Frozen Ark Project

is a program that was initiated

by the London Natural History Museum.

What they've done is they started to store DNA

of endangered species

for future generations, for preservation.

And, as of today, over a thousand species

have been preserved in small little vials.

And so, the question arises,

could it be possible that Noah's Ark

wasn't necessarily a boat made out of wood,

but what if Noah's Ark

was some type of a DNA storage facility

that was used in order to preserve

all the species on planet Earth?

If each species can be held in a tiny vial like this,

then it all becomes very logical.

And, once again, we have to look at it from a perspective,

"What did our ancestors try to describe?

What did they witness?"

NARRATOR: Aliens artificially inseminating humans...

Ancient DNA banks...

Could such ideas really help our understanding of the Bible?

And is it possible that extraterrestrials

have influenced the development of mankind?

There are many who claim

that the proof can be found in some astonishing places.

For those who believe

that close encounters with alien beings

have helped shape Earth's history,

it is important to remember

that it isn't only ancient history

that has been so influenced.

There have been literally hundreds

of credible accounts of strange creatures,

UFO sightings and otherworldly phenomena

that took place, even in the so-called Dark Ages.

BIRNES: There have been sightings

all over the world throughout the Middle Ages.

There are stories

going from Scotland to England

to Italy to the Crusades.

Remember the Crusades took place over hundreds of years.

And at certain points in the battle,

in some cases over Turkey,

in some cases over Jerusalem, there are images

captured in writing by various chroniclers

talking about "a strange cloud in the sky that glowed red.

A strange image coming out of a cloud in the sky."

Why would we say this is a UFO?

Because, traditionally, UFOs mask themselves

by forming a cloud around themselves.

And it's a cloud that's going through the sky--

that's their invisibility cloak.

NARRATOR: In his 13th century historical work

titled Otto Imperialia, Gervase of Tilbury

wrote about an aerial craft over the city of Bristol, England,

which caught an anchor in a church steeple.

BIRNES: He uses specifically the term "anchor."

Now, we don't know what kind of anchor that is.

But a creature-- a man-- climbs out of this craft

and tries to free the anchor from the steeple.

And all the people in the village start stoning him,

thinking he's some sort of evil demon.

NARRATOR: But for ancient astronaut theorists,

evidence of an alien presence during the Middle Ages

isn't only found in literature.

All throughout the Middle Ages,

there are some magnificent paintings.

And in certain areas of the painting,

there are what looks like to be UFOs.

They're always floating up in the sky--

usually above the Virgin Mary or above Jesus on the crucifix--

or somewhere we have sceneries

that depict what looks like UFOs.

One very interesting painting

is where Jesus sits up in the clouds

with quote, unquote, "God,"

and they're holding onto the antennae

of what looks like Sputnik;

and theologians say what is depicted here

is nothing else but the Earth.

But why would Earth have two antennae sticking out of it?

And why would it be round?

Because the mainstream viewpoint at the time

was that the Earth was flat.

LITTLETON: And here are pictures of the crucifixion

dated around 1350 from Kosovo.

Here are, presumably, vehicles with people driving them

in attendance at the crucifixion.

Could this be a crude...

an attempt on the part of the artist

drawing on a tradition-- obviously, he wasn't there--

drawing on a tradition?

Could he be reflecting a folklore?

Possibly.

BETTYANN BROWN: The people of the Middle Ages

depicted devils

and angels frequently in their art.

They did not depict

what we today consider aliens, specifically.

But angels are heavenly creatures

that come from outside of our sphere, aren't they?

NARRATOR: Did the medieval artists

include strange creatures

and flying spacecraft in their paintings

because they had seen them in real life?

Or were they trying to communicate their belief

that the miraculous events of the New Testament

had otherworldly origins?

MAXIMILLIEN DE LAFAYETTE: The most famous painting

that, without any doubt in my mind,

depicts a UFO with its laser beam,

was made by Crivelli in 1486.

The Annunciation to Mary.

In medieval art, in The Annunciation,

when Mary is told that she will have a child,

but she will still be a virgin, and the angels tell her this,

over Mary's head is a space capsule.

But what's a UFO, or a space capsule, doing over Mary?

Maybe the artist saw it

and he's putting it in the painting

to bring together his own vision of a UFO,

the annunciation from the Bible, and the mystery of salvation

that there could be a virgin birth.

NARRATOR: According to ancient astronaut theorists,

the UFO-shaped objects found in medieval paintings

aren't the only evidence of an alien presence during the era.

In his book, The Gods of Eden,

author William Bramley cites private journals

and other publications throughout Europe

which contain accounts of cigar-shaped flying objects

emitting noxious mists.

The first reports of this kind

began during the mid-14th century,

closely corresponding to the outbreak

of the worst health epidemic in human history--

the black plague.

GEORGE NOORY: The black plague back in the 1300s,

many have said, was caused by a virus

from a rodent bitten by fleas.

This disease that wiped out

75-plus million people on the planet at the time.

But there's another theory

by a fellow by the name of William Bramley

who says that the black plague was created by ETs,

that they wanted to eradicate human beings

for whatever horrible reason.

WILLIAM BRAMLEY: We know that plague can be spread by rodents.

But there weren't that many rodent infestations

being reported back then, at least not enough

to account for all of the breakouts that we had.

So what you find in the literature from that time

are numerous reports of bright lights moving through the sky,

emitting gas, or what they call "mists."

And we find them in China, you find them in Europe.

There are similar reports

from the Justinian plague from earlier in history,

and even later plagues, the cholera epidemics.

You find similar stories of mists

that are the cause of the plague.

We have weapons like that-- biological warfare.

As for the motive as to why this happened,

I can only kind of scratch my head,

because in the UFO phenomena,

we see certain consistent patterns,

but we don't always understand the motive.

NARRATOR: Italian historian Matteo Villani,

who both chronicled the Black Death

and died from it in the 14th century,

wrote of pestilential fogs

reported by travelers from Asia.

He even wrote that people were convinced

they could actually see the plague

coming through the streets.

But what some ancient astronaut believers

find to be even stronger evidence

of alien involvement, are the numerous reports

of mysterious black-cloaked creatures

who would appear on the outskirts of villages

just before plague broke out.

Contemporary accounts describe them

as having "terrifying faces" and "waving long,

scythe-like objects dispensing noxious mists."

It's the image we know today as the Grim Reaper.

BRAMLEY: These figures in black

would appear usually on the outskirts of a town.

They were carrying these long devices that look like scythes.

These figures in black

would just start sweeping in the fields

as though they were cutting down the wheat.

Then immediately there would be an outbreak of the plague.

NARRATOR: Although ancient astronaut theorists

are divided on Bramley's proposal

that aliens were behind the plague,

his research, like the artwork of the time,

has led to one important conclusion.

TSOUKALOS: What is evidenced

is the fact that visitations occurred

since before recorded history all the way to today.

It's not like ancient astronauts

only happened thousands of years ago,

and then all of a sudden we have Roswell.

The fact alone that these visitations

have been going on for all this time--

thousands of years-- that's sensational.

NARRATOR: Flying cylinders spreading plague from the sky?

Black-clad aliens looking to destroy humans?

But even if possible, why?

And, if true, wouldn't there continue to be evidence

of even more close encounters--

encounters that would take place much closer to home?

When Columbus and his men first set foot

in what to the Europeans was the "New World,"

the indigenous people had never encountered anyone like them.

Their skin was pale.

They wore strange clothes

made of bright, often shiny materials.

They arrived in massive ships and had powerful weapons.

To the natives, the visitors were truly aliens

from a strange, faraway world-- powerful beings

who might just as well have been sent from the heavens.

CHRIS PITTMAN: Columbus wrote in his journal

that the inhabitants

eagerly came out to see their ships,

and asked them if they had come from the heavens.

And despite the fact that Columbus and his men indicated,

"No, we didn't come from the heavens,"

they called out to the people still on the shore,

"Come out and see the people who have come from the heavens."

Certainly, it seems interesting

to wonder why it is that instead of thinking

that possibly they came from some other part of the sea,

that they'd come from the sky.

NARRATOR: But there is more to the story.

Less well-known is that Columbus

had an alien encounter of his own,

one reported in his log

just days before he reached the shores of the New World.

At about 10:00 p.m. on the 1 1th of October, 1492,

the anxious explorer was on the deck of the Santa Maria

when he saw a "light glimmering at a great distance."

Columbus wrote, "The admiral,

"standing on the quarterdeck, saw a light.

"Calling to Pedro Gutierrez, he told him he saw a light,

"and bid him look that way, which he did and saw it.

"The admiral again perceived it once or twice,

"appearing like the light of a wax candle

moving up and down."

Summoning another member of the crew, the two watched

as the light vanished and reappeared repeatedly.

BIRNES: Seeing lights in the water isn't really an anomaly.

We all know that certain kinds of underwater life

give off lights.

But this light actually traveled along with the ship.

Columbus noted in the log

a glowing object rise out of the water,

and head off into the atmosphere.

NARRATOR: What did Columbus see?

A phosphorescent sea creature?

An hallucination?

Or was it something more?

Something from out of this world?

What did Columbus's men see?

What they saw was a luminous object

that, upon breaking the water's surface, became a UFO.

NARRATOR: To UFO researchers like Bill Birnes,

Columbus's sighting is significant,

not only because of when it occurred,

but also because the object was spotted

coming out of the sea, ruling out the possibility

that what he saw was a comet or a shooting star.

LITTLETON: What's intriguing is that this was in

what we call today the Bermuda Triangle.

The Bermuda Triangle, that area,

particularly off of Bimini and the Bahamas,

may in fact be-- and I'm way out on a limb here--

colony headquarters underneath that.

Your UFO goes down into the water

and then into a subterranean.

What better position would be to monitor South America,

Middle America, Egypt than the Caribbean?

PITTMAN: Many people believe that it's possible

that UFOs could have established bases on the seafloor.

To some extent, it's true that we know more about the Moon

or some parts of outer space than we do

about the deepest parts of our own oceans.

This event is extremely important

because it is the world's first recorded event

that illustrates the appearance of UFO

as object emerging from the water.

NARRATOR: If Columbus's sighting was so extraordinary,

why do we only find record of it in his log?

Some believe another account of this event exists

in the official records of the Spanish Inquisition.

UFO researcher Maximillien de Lafayette

claims that Columbus's shipmate, Pedro Gutierrez,

reported him to the Inquisition after hearing Columbus

describe the lights in the sky

as resembling the Jewish menorah.

LAFAYETTE: When they went back to Spain,

Gutierrez went directly to the infamous Inquisition.

This is the Catholic organization

created by the Vatican

to persecute and kill the infidels.

The infidels means the Jews,

the Muslims and Christians who are not Catholic.

The Inquisition called him for explanation, deposition.

"Did you say that you saw menorah?

"Why did you say menorah?

Oh, so you are a Jew."

He said, uh, "I'm not a Jew."

In the deposition, which is lengthy,

you find more details-- meticulous details--

of what Columbus saw above the water.

The file of the Inquisition is in the vault of the Vatican.

And good luck if you can go to the secret file of the Vatican

and try to dig for a document as explosive as this one.

NARRATOR: Secret files of the Spanish Inquisition?

UFOs and alien sightings in the time of Columbus?

Farfetched, perhaps.

But to proponents of ancient astronaut theory,

these precolonial close encounters

are considered commonplace events.

For them, it offers additional proof

that we are not alone.

ALEX CHIONETTI: They have several sightings

of what we would call UFOs today

along the discovery of America, during the conquest of America.

Columbus was not the only one.

Also on the trip of Magellan.

Fernando de Magellan, the discoverer of the Strait,

who circumnavigated the world after Columbus,

he have also sightings.

NARRATOR: Seafarers often encounter strange lights

both in the sky and below the surface of the ocean.

Skeptics argue that Columbus's sighting,

like many others, was simply a natural phenomenon.

BRAMLEY: At night, there are all kinds of things--

for example, bolides.

Bolides are these very large comets,

and they're spectacular.

It's just like this enormous bright light

with a trail that just arcs through the sky.

But we can tell the difference.

When you have a meteor like that or a bolide,

the characteristics are very different

than the ones of genuine UFOs.

PITTMAN: As far back as the 19th century,

people have speculated

about what that light could have been.

Explanations have centered around the possibility

that it could have been a light or a torch

being carried by an island inhabitant.

They were, in fact, more than 35 miles away from any land,

which makes that impossible.

The other possibility is that it was a meteor

traveling very close to the horizon,

and that the movement of the ship is actually

what made the light appear to be moving up and down.

NARRATOR: But what if conventional science is wrong

and the ancient astronaut theorists are correct?

What if Columbus, Magellan and the early explorers

really did see evidence

of extraterrestrial creatures visiting our planet?

What does this say about our past?

Our history?

And our future?

Germany, April 14, 1561.

At dawn, the citizens of Nuremberg awoke

to what was described in a local news flier

as "a very frightful spectacle."

Various strange objects were spotted in the sky,

engaged in what appeared to be an aerial battle.

Could they have been witnessing a close encounter?

BIRNES: They see this incredible sight as the sun is coming up.

They see what they describe as cigar-shaped objects,

circles in the air and crosses-- flying crosses.

And suddenly, these shapes begin emitting other shapes.

PITTMAN: The spheres and discs were seen for a long time,

as they apparently were fighting

in some kind of a battle over the city.

In fact, the battle was so evident

that the people in Nuremberg

were actually able to perceive which side was winning.

Some of the objects were seen to crash into the ground

and disappear in a cloud of smoke or steam.

Other objects were seen to fly off

and disappear in the direction of the sun.

BIRNES: This entire event

becomes memorialized in a broadsheet.

Now, a broadsheet in the 16th century

was literally a newspaper.

And that broadsheet exists today in Zurich, Switzerland.

PITTMAN: The Zurich Central Library to this day

retains a copy not only of the famous woodcut

that shows the 1561 sighting over Nuremberg,

but also a 1566 woodcut showing a sighting from that year

that was quite similar in Basel, Switzerland.

What's fascinating is it's a very similar event.

People saw a bunch of circles in the air.

In fact, a proliferation of circles in the air.

They didn't necessarily interpret that

as a battle in the air,

but they did interpret it as some kind of heavenly sign.

NARRATOR: The broadsheets that were distributed

both in Nuremberg and in Basel five years later

advised people to "repent for their sins"

and interpreted these extraordinary events

as signs from God.

LAFAYETTE: In old time, everything paranormal,

extra, extra-- hyphen-- ordinary

belongs to the realm of divinity, of Gods.

"God's doing this! God is punishing us!

God is blessing us! Go repent! Go to church!"

PITTMAN: It's interesting to read the Nuremberg description

because it is written with religious iconography in mind.

They talk about crosses seen in the sky on the previous day

during that sighting.

Now, what we might think of as a fuselage with wings

might have appeared as a cross to people

who saw religious symbolism constantly

in their everyday life.

It's difficult to imagine

how these things might have appeared,

but it's certainly possible

that if these were to appear in the sky today,

we would describe them quite differently.

NARRATOR: Could the people of Nuremberg

have actually witnessed a battle between warring alien factions;

an event eerily similar to the one written about

in the Bhagavad Gita over 3,000 years earlier?

And if not, what else would explain

the vivid accounts of luminous globes

and blood-red crosses appearing in the sky?

Throughout the Middle Ages, visions of strange happenings

were often attributed to God or to the supernatural.

But moving into what is known

as the early modern period of the 17th century,

people began to look more and more

toward science and the stars for answers.

And with the invention of the refracting telescope in 1608,

there would be more eyes trained on the stars

than ever before.

Ironically, the first report of a UFO

witnessed through this new device

came from colonial America's best-known Puritan minister,

Cotton Mather.

BIRNES: There was an incredible sighting

that the very famous New England preacher, Cotton Mather, had.

Cotton Mather said that he was looking

through a telescope at the Moon, and in the telescope,

he saw a flying light over the surface of the moon.

Well, how did this get recorded?

By none other than NASA.

And people can find it themselves.

Go to the NASA report

on lunar anomalies over 500 years,

and they will find Cotton Mather's sighting

of a UFO over the surface of the Moon.

PITTMAN: There are a vast number of natural atmospheric phenomena

that can appear as bright lights in the night sky.

Certainly, uh, meteors are a possibility.

Even certain kinds of terrestrial phenomena

do materialize as glowing balls of light

that, seen from a distance, may appear to be a star.

And it's incredibly difficult to judge the distance

of a point source of light in the night.

So he may have thought that it was on the surface of the Moon,

or... or hundreds of miles away, when in reality,

it could have been quite close to where he was.

NARRATOR: Though it is uncertain what Cotton Mather saw,

ancient astronaut theorists find it significant

that a prominent religious figure

would report such a sighting not as a vision from God,

but as an astronomical event.

They see it as a sign,

not only of the sighting's authenticity, but that views

on the possibility of extraterrestrial life

were starting to shift,

even within the Christian church.

BIRNES: Cotton Mather was known

as a fire-and-brimstone preacher.

But there's a rational part of Cotton Mather as well.

Because this was the very beginning;

the dawn of the industrial revolution.

And in this context, people were thinking about science,

they were thinking about machines,

and really thinking about, could there be something in space?

NARRATOR: Although sightings like Cotton Mather's

were still rare in the 1700s,

the increasing interest in astronomy

sparked a new debate over a centuries-old theory

called "the plurality of worlds;" the idea

that life might exist elsewhere throughout the universe.

MICHAEL CROWE: By the end of the 18th century,

the majority of people-- at least of educated people--

were convinced that all throughout the solar system

there was intelligent life: on Jupiter, on Mars, on Saturn.

All of them had extraterrestrials.

Very possibly, the Moon would have intelligent beings on it.

I once did a tally

of the leading intellectuals in the 18th century.

Over half of them included ideas

of extraterrestrial life in their publications.

NARRATOR: The premier 18th-century astronomer,

William Herschel, also supported the theory

that life existed on other planets.

So did Thomas Paine, one of America’s Founding Fathers,

along with many religious leaders of the time.

CROWE: Preachers were preaching about extraterrestrials

as a proof of God's goodness.

That's the idea that if there is a good and beneficent God,

he would populate all the planets, all the stars.

NARRATOR: Though there was open debate about the existence

of extraterrestrial life in the 1700s,

the discussion did not often extend

to the idea of aliens visiting Earth.

But in 1731,

a series of sightings occurred across Europe

that were so compelling,

the possibility could no longer be ignored.

In modern UFO sightings,

the communications about UFOs are instant.

It's on the Internet, it's on YouTube.

But what about some of these 18th-century

or Renaissance sightings?

Here's something incredible.

In 1731, over Kilkenny, Ireland, there was a sighting

of a luminous object coming out of a red cloud.

That same sighting is reported

in the span of a week over the rest of Europe,

particularly over Romania in Eastern Europe.

Now, here are two countries

that are not communicating with each other.

Newspapers don't go back and forth,

they don't speak the same language,

there's no radio and there's no television.

Yet a UFO was spotted traveling from the Irish Sea,

across Europe,

all the way to Eastern Europe and towards Asia,

and is spotted in different places as it goes.

Independent observations that don't cross-pollinate.

NARRATOR: Could these nearly identical reports

of a strange object passing through the sky

be mere coincidence?

And if it was an alien craft, is it possible

that earlier sightings simply weren't reported

because they were interpreted as signs from God?

In colonial America, the idea that aliens were visiting Earth

was gaining ground.

And in the 1800s, this controversial theory

would even make its way to the White House.

The United States officially declared its independence

from Great Britain in 1776,

and just 14 years later, a report

of the first UFO sighting in American history appeared

in the newly published journals of John Winthrop,

the second governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony.

His journals, which are now known

as "A History of New England, 1630-1649,"

are still considered the preeminent record

for that period in American history.

When the journals were finally published in 1790,

over 140 years after Winthrop's death,

they were found to contain an alarming account

of a possible close encounter over Boston's Muddy River.

PITTMAN: One night in March of 1639,

James Everell, who is described as being

a "sober and discreet man," and two of his companions

boarded a little boat in the Muddy River of Boston.

As they paddled along the river,

they saw a great bright light that hovered in the sky.

As they watched, the light flared up

and then contracted into what they described

as the figure of a swine.

It's difficult to imagine anybody seriously reporting

a sighting of a glowing, flying pig.

Looking at the sighting, one can't help but wonder

if they were struggling to describe

an oval-shaped fuselage and four short,

what we might now call landing struts or landing gear,

in a way that made sense in the 17th century.

NARRATOR: Winthrop's account states

that the object moved swift as an arrow,

jetting back and forth, as well as up and down,

for two to three hours.

And when it finally disappeared,

the three passengers in the boat,

who had been drifting downstream the entire time,

were astonished to find themselves

back at the point where they began their trip.

PITTMAN: What Winthrop describes in his journal

is really difficult to explain.

Certainly, it seems hard to fathom

that, for two or three hours,

three men in a boat watched a bright light

moving around in the sky over the city of Boston.

And it seems almost inconceivable

that their boat could have been drawn back

against the tide without their noticing it.

These type of strange and inexplicable phenomena

are now associated with the phenomena

that's called "alien abduction."

LINDA HOWE: And as the abduction cases evolved,

you heard people say all of a sudden

everything around them was slowing way, way down.

And they associate the slowing way, way down

with whatever this event is

that we call the "human abduction syndrome."

NARRATOR: Could this event at Muddy River

be not only North America's first documented UFO sighting,

but also the first account of an alien abduction?

Those who believe the account in Winthrop's journals

was an actual alien encounter

point to the last line of his report, which states,

"Other credible persons saw the same light."

By the time Winthrop's history was published in 1790,

the debate over the possibility of extraterrestrial life

was more heated than ever before.

In fact, the question of whether life existed

on other planets had become so hotly contested,

it caused one of America’s Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine,

to be unofficially exiled to Europe.

Thomas Paine enters the extraterrestrial life debate

in a very dramatic way.

He was an Englishman, but famous American patriot.

1793: Thomas Paine publishes a book called The Age of Reason.

And in The Age of Reason, he makes

one of the most vigorous attacks on Christianity ever made.

The bottom line on it is, he says, you must believe

in extraterrestrials if you know any modern astronomy.

The idea of God made the entire universe

going from planet to planet redeeming people

is just impossible to believe.

(angry shouting)

That creates a sensation.

Thousands of copies of the book were sold.

NARRATOR: In December of 1793,

Thomas Paine was arrested in France as a result

of supporting a political party that was no longer in power.

When the American ambassador refused to speak on his behalf,

Paine believed that George Washington

had abandoned him because of his writings

supporting the idea of extraterrestrial life

and refuting traditional Christianity.

In 1802, he was invited back to America

by the third president, Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson, an intellectual,

was considered a genius by many in his time,

both for his skill as a statesman

and his scientific aptitude.

And some believe he was also a proponent,

like his contemporaries Ben Franklin and John Adams,

in the concept of the plurality of worlds.

PITTMAN: The concept of a plurality of worlds

was a very widely accepted concept in the 18th century.

People like John Adams and Thomas Paine

didn't view extraterrestrial life as a possibility,

but rather as a matter of fact that everybody knew to be true.

The new rationality in science changed the way

that these Founding Fathers talked about religion.

1825: Thomas Jefferson is hiring faculty

for the University of Virginia.

And John Adams writes to him

and gives him advice on how to do that hiring.

He says, "Do not hire any European professors.

"If you hire a European professor,

"they are liable to believe in Christianity,

"and that is a very dangerous doctrine

that we should stay far away from."

PITTMAN: Other Founding Fathers also agreed with this view,

which included a belief

in the existence of life on other planets.

Benjamin Franklin wondered if there were different gods

for every sun that harbored intelligent life.

Many of them felt it was clear

that there were intelligent beings--

conceivably through the whole universe--

and that the notion that God came to this planet as a person

who was spit on and persecuted simply was ridiculous.

And they rejected that long-held traditional belief,

which was a very radical thing at the time.

NARRATOR: America's Founding Fathers

defending the concept of extraterrestrial life

against Christianity?

A revolutionary idea, to be certain.

But perhaps not so revolutionary

to the country's earliest inhabitants,

who long before claimed to have met visitors from the sky.

In northwestern New Mexico lies a vast concentration

of ancient ruins known today as Chaco Canyon.

Built from sandstone blocks and timber

between 900 and 1 150 A.D.,

the 15 major complexes of Chaco Canyon

contained four-story structures with hundreds of rooms

that required thousands of man-hours to construct.

Until the 19th century,

they were the largest buildings in North America.

Chaco Canyon was a center of activity

for a lot of different Indian tribes-- Pueblo tribes.

Archaeologists, anthropologists

have a lot of theories about what that was.

But what I have studied and what I can tell

by just some of the chants

from our own tribe and other Pueblo tribes

is that this would have been a big center of activity

for technological-spiritual activities.

There's a lot of places on there

that has direct bearings up into the universe.

NARRATOR: When archaeologists

first excavated these ruins in 1896,

they marveled at their architectural precision.

But even more astonishing

was the fact that many of these ancient structures--

like those found in Egypt, England and South America--

suggested the inhabitants

had a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy.

A number of devices designed

for tracking solar events were found.

And at Fajada Butte, which sits at the entrance of the canyon,

three giant slabs of rock are positioned

near two spiral petroglyphs etched on a cliffwall.

During the solstice and the equinox,

these rocks catch the sun in such a way

as to shine daggers of light

on different areas of the petroglyphs.

But why would early Native Americans

spend so much time building the structures at Chaco Canyon

along such precise astronomical alignments?

And why build them in such a desolate area of the country?

COPPENS: It is one of those sites

which has been posing so many questions,

and which science is only slowly beginning to explain.

But really, there are more questions than answers

at this moment in time about Chaco Canyon.

NARRATOR: In his 2006 book, The Orion Zone,

archaeo-astronomer Gary David proposed

that the geographical layout

of Hopi ruins in the American Southwest

precisely mirrors the star patterns

of a number of constellations.

COPPENS: When you look at where the ancestral Pueblan

major ceremonial sites are actually located,

Gary David has identified that when you just map these,

you actually find that they depict constellations.

Specifically, Orion is very important.

NARRATOR: Orion's Belt points

to the brightest star in the sky-- Sirius.

If one looks at the Hopi mesas as the stars of Orion's Belt,

they also point to an important location-- Chaco Canyon.

But why Orion?

And could it be merely a coincidence

that this constellation pattern has been found

at other important sites around the world,

and always with the belt pointing

toward a place of significance?

Ancient astronaut theorists

have discovered the constellation of Orion

lining up with the Mayan complexes

along the Street of the Dead in Mexico City.

And here, Orion's Belt points to Cholula,

the largest pyramid in the world.

They also find it at the Giza Pyramids in Egypt,

with the belt pointing toward the city of Heliopolis,

a place of worship for ancient Egyptians.

COPPENS: One thing we know about Orion's Belt

is that this is a theme which is recurring in Mayan mythology.

It's also actually a theme which is occurring

in Egyptian mythology.

Orion's Belt, and the stars around it,

were seen as the heart of creation.

It is where everything began.

And it's probably not coincidental

that the Hopis see the place where they are living

as the heart of the world.

BIRNES: These are ancient people.

All they had to go by were the stars.

And so, they believed-- as astrologists believe today--

that the stars have certain powers

over what goes on on planet Earth.

NARRATOR: According to their legends,

the Hopi believe there were three worlds

that preceded the one we are in today.

Each of those worlds was wiped out

when guardians of the sky called to the Creator

to tell him that his finest creation, humans,

were no longer living according to his plan.

And they called to him by setting off a warning

through the Earth's axis,

a vibration strong enough to shift the balance of the planet.

Is it possible the structures at Chaco Canyon

were built along precise celestial alignments

so that the Hopi could predict the periods

of Earth's devastation and renewal?

Could the guardians of the sky have led them here

so they could monitor the position of the sun?

THOMAS O. MILLS: Why in the world

people settled at that location wasn't...

wasn't something that they did on their own.

There's no running water there.

There was no reason to live there.

There's no good soil.

They did that because their guardian

told them to live there.

NARRATOR: During the times of the summer and winter solstices,

as well as the spring and fall equinoxes,

the people at Chaco Canyon could gauge the Earth's balance

by watching the path of the sun daggers at Fajada Butte.

If the daggers did not pierce the petroglyphs

at the same points as the previous year,

they would know that the Earth was out of balance.

And since the Earth fell out of balance

at the end of the previous three worlds,

this could mean the end was coming once again.

(deep, rumbling boom)

Scientists from NASA determined

the earthquake that hit Chile on February 27, 2010

shifted the Earth's axis by three inches.

Would the ancestral Pueblo people

have seen this as a sign from the guardians above?

MILLS: Well, do you think that's going to show up

at Chaco Canyon on that dagger stick

that comes down at the time of the solstice?

Do you think the Indians were watching that?

NANCY RED STAR: It's what the Hopi call koyaanisqatsi.

We are living in koyaanisqatsi right now.

We are living in a life that's out of balance.

NARRATOR: Could these Native American legends

be more than just myth?

Is it possible that these stories,

along with the ancient texts of India

and the stories of the Bible,

are all describing alien visitations?

For ancient astronaut theorists, the answer is yes,

and the proof may lie

on a small, uninhabited island in Nova Scotia, Canada.

In 1795, three Nova Scotia farm boys

set out to explore nearby Oak Island

after witnessing strange green lights

coming from its shore in the middle of the night.

TSOUKALOS: As they came to the island,

they saw that there was one little, you know, pit

that they thought, "Well, this is very odd,"

so they started to dig in that particular spot.

They came across different platforms

made out of wood, especially out of oak,

and the deeper they dug, they also came across

a mat made of coconut fiber,

and they came across a stone slab

that had very bizarre writing on it.

One thing is crystal clear:

Canada does not have any coconut trees,

so the mat made of coconut fiber--

where did it come from?

That's a very intriguing question--

how all these different levels were made.

NARRATOR: The initial excavation stopped at a depth of 30 feet.

But since that time,

over a dozen professional excavations

have been attempted and funded

by everyone from actors John Wayne and Errol Flynn

to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

TSOUKALOS: Mining and excavation companies

have dug multiple shafts

surrounding the whole Money Pit

with the hopes of achieving

or reaching whatever is buried down there.

They've even tried to dig in sideways,

and even that didn't work.

NARRATOR: Based on the findings from numerous excavations,

the Money Pit contains a series of oak platforms

starting at a depth often feet

and recurring every ten feet thereafter,

going at least 200 feet down.

In between these platforms are slabs of flagstone--

not indigenous to the island-- and layers of puddle clay.

Efforts to reach the bottom of the pit

have proven so dangerous,

six people have died in the attempt.

(Peter Fiebag speaking German)

(translated): Its underground is covered with canals--

flooding canals that lead seawater into the system.

Each time there seemed to be progress,

underground floods in the canals

would make further searches impossible.

So, this is what we know:

many centuries ago, someone constructed

a giant hydraulic system under this island.

It couldn't have been pirates.

It had to be someone with great expertise

for architecture and hydraulics.

TSOUKALOS: We still haven't been able

to access whatever is down there

because of the incredible flooding system.

These treasure hunters

poured red paint into one of these shafts,

and not only did it come out on one side of the island,

but also on the other side.

Up to three shafts have been discovered.

I mean, it's ingenious.

NARRATOR: But who-- or what--

constructed this elaborately booby-trapped pit?

And, perhaps more importantly,

what-- if anything-- lies hidden at the bottom?

Some have speculated that it might be

the crown jewels of England, pirate treasure, Viking hoards

and even the original manuscripts of Shakespeare.

But perhaps the most audacious theory of all

is that the Money Pit is the hiding place

for one of the most sacred objects in the world.

There is a possibility

that the Ark of the Covenant, with its contents,

has been hidden on Oak Island.

NARRATOR: The Ark of the Covenant?

The most sacred object in all of Judeo-Christianity?

The gold chest that is supposed to contain the tablets

on which the Hebrew God wrote the Ten Commandments?

Why would this religious relic be placed at the bottom

of an elaborately booby-trapped pit

in northeastern Canada?

Ancient astronaut theorists believe the Ark

may have been hidden because of the powers it held--

powers from out of this world.

TSOUKALOS: According to the ancient astronaut hypothesis,

the Ark of the Covenant housed an extraterrestrial device

which was given to the Israelites

during their 40-year wandering through the desert.

GRAHAM HANCOCK: When you go back to the biblical descriptions,

it becomes a weapon.

It rises up into the air.

It rushes towards the enemies of Israel.

When the Philistines briefly capture it, um,

they make the mistake of opening it and filing past it.

Suddenly, thousands of people start to die.

The biblical account states quite clearly

that the cause of death was cancerous tumors.

This is a very mysterious and puzzling thing.

What kind of object could have

these almost machine like attributes

and cause deaths that sound like radiation sickness?

NARRATOR: What powers the Ark held

is the subject of wide speculation,

but an even bigger mystery is what happened to the Ark

and where it might be located today.

One legend says that it was taken during the Crusades

by an elite band of monk-like warriors

known as the Knights Templar.

HANCOCK: The cover story-- and it feels like a cover story--

is that they were to protect pilgrims

on the route between the coast and Jerusalem in the Holy Land.

But they don't ever seem to have done any of that.

Um, right soon after they were founded,

they took possession of the Temple Mount,

uh, in Jerusalem.

And, uh, for the best part of 80 or 90 years,

they devoted themselves to what looked like

an archaeological expedition on the Temple Mount.

And I'm pretty certain they were looking

for the Ark of the Covenant.

NARRATOR: The legend tells of the Knights taking the Ark

to Scotland, where they formed an alliance

with the powerful Sinclair family.

Some historians believe

William Sinclair may have taken the Ark

to Oak Island in Nova Scotia in the 1400s

to protect it from English invasion.

Here, Sinclair and his men could have built

what might be the most impenetrable vault ever made--

the notorious Money Pit.

But, if so, where is the evidence?

(speaking German)

(translated): In the 1990s, some scientists were able

to send cameras down into one of the shafts.

There, they discovered strange objects

that had a rounded, tubular shape.

Their C-14 values were diverse,

and their radiometric age ranged from very old to futuristic.

Now, that is basically impossible.

However, there is some chance that that effect

could be caused by some kind of radioactivity.

That's why we suspect that a nuclear reactor

may have been taken there and hidden

inside this ingenious hydraulic system...

...so that it would be kept safe forever.

NARRATOR: What would it mean if the Ark of the Covenant

really was discovered at the bottom of the Money Pit?

Would it provide the proof of alien intervention--

the very proof that ancient astronaut theorists

have been waiting for?

TSOUKALOS: If the Ark of the Covenant

is found at the bottom of the Money Pit,

well... story's over.

NARRATOR: Perhaps.

But an even greater question persists: why?

Has mankind been helped

by the intervention of beings from other worlds,

as ancient astronaut proponents contend?

Or was there a more ominous intention?

Could the Ark, if discovered, be a sort of Pandora's box

that, once opened, would reveal more about our origins

than we would ever want to know?

As the 20th century dawned,

the industrial revolution suggested

that nothing conceived by man could be impossible.

We could now ride through the countryside

in horseless carriages...

(car horn honks)

(ship horn blows)

...sail the seas in huge ocean liners...

fly through the sky in airships.

Even the idea of building rockets and flying them

to the Moon, Mars and beyond seemed well within our grasp.

It was the era of science fiction writers like H.G. Wells

and inventors like Einstein,

Tesla, Edison and Ford.

In 1896, there were widespread reports

of strange airships hovering over various locations

in the American West.

Coincidence or consequence?

There were sightings throughout history,

and of course, there were a large number

of sightings in the 19th century.

But it wasn't until 1896

that there were waves of sightings.

Thousands of people in 1896 and 1897 in the United States

saw phantom airships, the origin of which was never explained.

These reports were catalogued, discussed in newspapers.

BIRNES: There were sightings in 1896, 1897, 1898.

And, in fact, we kind of know

from newspaper reports from the Southwest

that people were seeing craft with wings.

And the Wright Brothers didn't fly an airplane

until 1903, so what were these craft?

Well, on the one hand,

people were flying balloons in the 19th century.

So, balloons were not high technology.

What was high technology back then

was affixing a gasoline engine to the gondola of a balloon.

BRAMLEY: That whole airship mystery--

my guess is that some of those

were just dirigibles that people were flying around.

On the other hand, during that time,

we also find reports of objects

that moved really too quickly to be dirigibles.

And some were maybe too shiny really to be the types

of balloons that they were making at that time.

BIRNES: The prevalence of these balloons

powered by gasoline engines flying around

in the late 1890s in the turn of the century

probably opened up people's minds

to the possibility that there could be

literally unidentified flying objects.

People began, to put it bluntly, looking up.

So it could be said that modern UFO history began

with these mysterious airships of the 1890s.

PITTMAN: It certainly seems possible,

if we believe that the airship sightings

were sightings of extraterrestrial spaceships,

that perhaps the aliens were interested

in human activity at the time

because of the rapid increases being made in technology.

BIRNES: Some people have suggested

that aliens have been interfering

with the lives of human beings for thousands of years.

And because they were always here

at significant points in human history,

they introduced various kinds of technologies

to spur development along a certain line.

NARRATOR: Could the same alien presence

that some believe had been visiting the Earth for centuries

have been responsible for inspiring

our great leap into the modern age?

Or could the increased close encounters with UFOs--

which would persist through the next century--

be a sign that we were in danger of going too far?

A very common idea that we have today

is that, as we develop technologically,

we're going to see an increase in UFO phenomena--

that UFOs are basically monitoring us.

Decades ago, we saw a lot of UFO activity

around air bases, around atomic bases

and also UFOs following airplanes

and maybe following our aircraft.

I would say that certainly,

as we keep developing, we will continue to see

that monitoring aspect to the UFOs.

Especially as we continue going to space,

we're going to continue seeing more UFO activity.

Whether it's for our benefit or not, that's hard to say.

BIRNES: Our history,

the history of human beings on planet Earth--

whether we ourselves are the aliens

seeded from another planet

or that the aliens created us,

as the stories of the Anunnaki say--

regardless, it may be that human beings

are being directed toward a certain end.

NARRATOR: In the 20th century, the inhabitants of planet Earth

were capable of blasting off and touching the stars.

We were also capable of harnessing the atom...

...and using it to inflict the deadliest of devastations.

We would send satellites into orbit,

land on the Moon and reach Mars.

But what would we find?

A barren, empty universe of dead planets

or something else?

TSOUKALOS: In the 1960s,

mainstream scientists were already exploring the question

of whether or not we're alone in the universe.

And there was only a handful of scientists

who actually proposed the idea

that, yes, there are other civilizations out there.

Now fast-forward 50 years.

You'd be very hard-pressed to find any scientist today

saying that we're alone in the universe.

HOWE: What we're coming up to now

in the 21st century is going to be a redefinition.

Our entire history may have to be revised,

in the context of nonhuman intelligences coming and going.

And what else is out there in this incredible universe

of which we humans are a part?

NARRATOR: Perhaps the dawn of the space age

was a signal to whatever-- or whoever-- was out there

that, after centuries of writing on cave walls,

building temples and mapping the skies,

the inhabitants of planet Earth were at last ready.

Ready for their return.