Original subtitles

MISSION CONTROL: Houston, you are go for landing. Over.

ASTRONAUT: Roger. Understand.

Go for landing. 3,000 feet.

NARRATOR: July 20, 1969.

Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin

became the first men to land on the Moon.

NEIL ARMSTRONG: That's one small step for man...

one giant leap for mankind.

NARRATOR: Just like aliens,

visiting from another world.

It had been the stuff of science fiction.

Now... everything that could be imagined seemed possible.

If mankind could travel the skies and go to other planets,

why couldn't beings from other planets visit the Earth?

Amidst a wave of modern UFO sightings,

a new theory emerged--

that aliens visited Earth in antiquity

and were regarded as gods.

But if that were true, wouldn't there be proof?

Perhaps there was.

All we needed to do was open our eyes and our imaginations.

The proof, perhaps, was all around us.

NARRATOR: In May of 2008,

a startling proclamation was issued by the Vatican.

For the first time in its 2,000-year history,

the Catholic Church acknowledged the possibility

that intelligent life could exist on other planets,

and that a belief in extraterrestrials

did not contradict a belief in God.

Which means, of course,

that we are now entering an age in which, uh,

the universe is beginning to be conceived in different ways

from where it was before.

And if it is a reality for us,

why could it not have been a reality

for other beings in the universe

who could have visited our Earth

and perhaps guided culture in ancient times.

NARRATOR: But just what sparked this sudden turnaround

in religious thought?

Could the church have been influenced

by recent scientific discoveries?

In 2002, the Mars Odyssey spacecraft

detected enormous reservoirs of ice

beneath the Martian surface.

The presence of ice-- and the possibility of water--

suggested that life could be sustained, or even generated,

on another planet.

After decades of orbiting space shuttles and robotic rovers,

the idea of sending man back into space, to Mars and beyond,

ignited the imagination, and brought back the notion

that mankind, and alien beings, had crossed paths before.

In 1968, just one year before

Neil Armstrong's epic space flight,

a book was published that forever changed

the way many in the scientific, religious,

and creative communities would view their home planet.

Written by Swiss author Erich von Däniken,

Chariots of the Gods? attempted to prove that

alien explorers had visited the Earth thousands of years ago.

I was educated as a strict Catholic, in a boarding school.

And there we had to make translations

of part of the Bible, Greek to Latin, Latin to German.

For example, in the first Book of Moses,

before the Lord descends on the Holy Mountain,

Moses was ordered to construct a gate around the mountain,

otherwise the Israelites would be damaged.

I was shocked. I said, this is impossible.

My God, He would never use, first,

a gate to protect Himself, or to protect the Israelites.

What are they talking about?

And now the work started.

I started to read thousands of pages

of the beginning of religions of every mythology,

its always the same story.

Of course with different names, with different heroes.

Somebody descends from the sky to the humans.

Our forefathers could not understand it.

They believed that these are some gods.

I was shocked.

I asked the question:

Were primitive humans influenced by extraterrestrials?

Not gods.

And if it all was like I suggested, where's the proof?

So you start trying to find at least indications.

That's what I have done now for at least 45 years.

We have pictorial evidence, we have artifacts in archeology

and you have what has come out of the old literature.

Hundreds of indications which you cannot deny anymore.

MICHAEL CREMO: What it means is

that we need new explanations for human origins.

That perhaps we are not alone in the universe.

And that human-like beings came to this planet

from some other planet elsewhere in the cosmos.

I think that's a very good idea myself.

DAVID CHILDRESS: And it really excited people.

It was a new way of looking at the past.

Looking at ancient civilizations.

And it put this very modern space-age spin

to the whole thing.

NARRATOR: Chariots of the Gods? caused a sensation--

fueled, in no small part, by the popular response to books

like Frank Herbert's Dune, television shows like Star Trek

and feature films like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Because everybody was talking of possible space travel,

of possibility of extraterrestrials.

So it was all wonderful, coming together.

But it was not planned.

NARRATOR: After a Swiss newspaper printed excerpts of it

on a weekly basis, more than 10,000 copies of the book

were sold before ever hitting the market.

So it was a running best-seller,

starting in Switzerland first, then going over to Germany,

and then the rest of the world.

They had to print and print and print and print.

It was absolutely incredible.

NARRATOR: In 1970, a feature-length documentary

was released to theaters,

followed by dozens of best-selling books--

and growing legions of fans and supporters.

Chariots of the Gods? was tremendously influential.

It somehow spoke to people who want to believe.

When I was a boy, Chariots of the Gods?

was one of the books I first read.

I mean I ripped it apart.

I digested it.

I couldn't get enough of it.

I just fell in love with that book.

'Cause it really opened up all kinds of new questions.

And Von Däniken was able to point out many anomalies

in history that the mainstream archeologists

can't answer very well.

He had what was a revolutionary new idea.

That of gods from outer space coming to the planet.

Helping create civilization.

When I first read Chariots of the Gods?,

I couldn't put that book down.

Because it answered a whole bunch of questions that I had,

and it was a great combination

of archaeology and adventure.

And it's just a wonderful way to see the world

and pursue these ancient mysteries.

And it truly was, I think,

the catalyst for what people like I do today,

and that is to talk about the mysteries

and the unusual and the paranormal.

He paved the way for a lot of us

to talk about these strange stories.

And that continues to grow.

And it's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

People want answers to questions

that they can't answer themselves.

But in spite of the book's enormous popularity--

or, perhaps, because of it--

von Däniken's theories were scorned by scientists

and jeered at by theologians.

I was completely attacked,

especially by the scientific newspapers.

They said, come on, he's just telling stories.

He's a liar or he's a fraud or whatever.

There is not a single piece of evidence

that von Däniken puts forward that cannot be attributed

to human ingenuity, technology and development.

ILIA DELIO: Don't try to reduce the Scriptures

to a science book.

Or don't try to reduce the Scriptures

to an explanation of our modern world today.

I don't expect that the scientific community

now embraces and kisses me and say oh, wonderful.

Great, you did.

We have to live with critics.

This is normal.

Chariots of the Gods? was full of speculation.

I had 238 question marks.

Nobody read the question mark.

They always said, "Mr. von Däniken is saying."

Uh, I did not say.

I asked the question.

Would that be a possibility?

And in Chariots of the Gods?

I made clear differences between speculations and facts.

NARRATOR: But as controversial

as many of von Däniken's theories are,

believers point to tangible evidence.

How, for example, could a centuries-old map

chart a land mass that has only recently been discovered?

CREMO: It would tend to indicate that the map was made

at a time when Antarctica was ice-free,

which would be many millions of years ago.

NARRATOR: And how could a primitive civilization

know how to harness electricity?

Or even build a computer?

This was tantamount to finding a jet airplane

in the tomb of King Tut.

NARRATOR: And just who were these mysterious designs,

only visible from high altitudes, intended for?

The signs are made for somebody who flies.

There is no way out of this.

NARRATOR: Could von Däniken's theory,

that ancient gods were really alien visitors,

contain any serious scientific merit?

The answer involves a search around the world,

and even right before our eyes.

If alien beings from other planets

had visited the Earth thousands of years ago,

how would our ancient ancestors

have tried to communicate with them?

And wouldn't there be some physical evidence

of the time they spent here?

One answer may lie in the Nazca Desert of Peru.

There, atop an arid plateau

that stretches for nearly 50 miles,

countless geometric patterns and figures

decorate the landscape.

The lines look like airstrips.

They start abruptly, they end abruptly.

The longest of it is 23 kilometer.

Right away, not one curve.

Just incredible.

And ending in one of these so-called airstrips.

In the mixture of large lines and small lines,

you see gigantic figures in the ground--

figures of fishes,

monkeys,

spiders,

apes--

but of such over-dimensional size

that you can see them only from the air.

GEORGE NOORY: People built them, or somebody built them

hundreds and hundreds of years ago--

perhaps maybe even thousands of years ago,

that could be signs of "Hello up there. Here we are."

It's something.

NARRATOR: Various disputed explanations suggest

that the lines could have been used for irrigation ditches,

giant astronomical calendars or pathways,

perhaps used for religious worship.

GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: Looking at Nazca from the air,

it looks like an airport.

And it really does,

because you have all these bands,

wide bands that look like airstrips

that are laid on top of each other.

But you also have these gigantic, long straight lines

that go for miles and miles over valleys, over mountains.

So once again, you've got this idea of, like,

okay, people are creating this.

But what is the reason?

Is it to show these gods in aerial vehicles

a "land here" kind of a thing?

Because we just don't have a good idea

of why people would do this.

And it really does seem that they're trying to signal people

who are in the air, in space or flying around our planet.

NARRATOR: During World War II,

American troops created air bases on remote Pacific islands.

To natives who had never witnessed advanced technology,

the sight of giant metal birds touching down

looked to them as if the gods themselves

had turned the Earth into a planetary pit stop.

CHILDRESS: They would see these big planes land,

and it was all technology that just, out of the sky.

They didn't know how these things worked.

But they could see them land.

And what they liked about it

was they were getting free stuff.

They were getting cargo.

Suddenly, when the war was over,

all these airstrips were abandoned and everyone left.

And the islanders scratched their heads,

and they all said to themselves, "Wow, wasn't it great

"when all these planes came out of the sky

"and gave us free cans of corned beef and stuff?

We really liked that cargo."

Entire religions sprung up from this,

where priests actually said, "Yes, you know,

uh, that was our dead ancestors sending us cargo."

So what they did then

was they began going to the old airstrips,

and they would build mock wooden airplanes

to try and get those planes to come back from the sky

and deliver the cans of corned beef to them again.

And so you can see how then an analogy with modern cargo cults

plays exactly into the ancient astronaut scenario

where something like this could have easily happened in the past

and entire religions built around ancient astronauts.

NARRATOR: But gigantic geoglyphs

aren't the only mysteries surrounding Nazca.

hanging out the aircraft with the camera and shooting

and shooting and shooting.

I have more or less about 4,000 pictures about Nazca.

-That's incredible. -This is really fascinating.

You see, this is one of the pictures which prove

that this mountain was made flat artificially.

Because you compare with the mountain around there.

There, the mountain's cap comes up from both sides.

Here it is flat. This is absolutely incredible.

This is one of the most craziest pictures I made

about Nazca.

TSOUKALOS: The crazy thing is, the rubble,

the remains of that summit or that mountaintop, gone.

It's nowhere.

It's not in the valley down below.

It's nowhere in the region.

What happened to it?

Because all the mountains around it have their summits.

It's there.

And then you have other mountains

that are as flat as a table,

with bands on top that look like runways.

NARRATOR: Another question: Why would visiting E.T.s

be drawn to the bone-dry deserts of Peru?

TSOUKALOS: Let's just say, hypothetically,

that a spaceship arrives here on planet Earth,

and you wanted to quickly find out

what this planet consists of.

Nazca would be the perfect place to go and visit

for some sampling and for some experimentation.

Because Nazca, still today,

is one of the most abundant areas in the world

regarding raw materials.

There, you find everything.

You find gold, you find, uh, uranium,

what have you.

It's basically the Cliffs Notes of planet Earth.

You go to Nazca, and you immediately know everything

about what our planet consists of,

because all the raw materials converge there at high volumes.

JAVIER GRILLO-MARXUACH: Why do we have to believe

that these simply could not be an expression

of an artistic impulse, you know?

Is it really that outlandish to believe that, you know,

that these natives in Peru might have wanted to create

some large-scale work of art?

And to say that such a large-scale work of art

could not have been created

merely for the possibility of having created it,

rather than the Nazca lines are so inhumanly vast

that they could only be admired

by people who are capable of flight.

Well, you know, you can say the same thing

about the Great Wall of China.

And yet, the Great Wall of China has a purpose

that is political, that is martial.

Somebody might have walked the Nazca lines

as a spiritual labyrinth

in the shape of a spiritual totemic object,

and were, in their own way,

supposed to get a kind of epiphany from that.

The fact that we don't understand

the purpose of a thing

opens it to tremendous speculation.

make no sign seen from the Earth.

You have to fly over it.

The signs are made for somebody who flies.

There is no way out of this.

I hope archaeology, sooner or later,

will come to a similar conclusion.

NARRATOR: But if visitors from other planets

were thought to be gods,

wouldn't there be written accounts of them?

Perhaps the answer can be found right in front of us,

in one of the most shocking places of all.

NARRATOR: Ironically, Erich von Däniken's firm belief

that Earth has been visited in the past

by beings from other planets is entirely consistent

with his belief in God and the Bible.

It is merely a question of interpretation.

I was a very, very deep believer in God.

By the way, I am still a believer in God.

I never lost my God.

But, uh, for a young man, my God had to be almighty.

My God would never need a vehicle in which to move around,

a vehicle to go from point A to point B.

NARRATOR: In what Christians refer to as the Old Testament,

there are, in fact, several accounts

of God and his angels visiting the Earth.

Sometimes these visitations are accompanied by tremendous noise

and clouds of billowing smoke.

In the book of Ezekiel, for example,

the prophet claims that he witnessed a visitation

by heavenly beings coming down from the skies

aboard a fantastic flying machine.

As far as von Däniken is concerned,

it's a highly detailed description

of an alien sighting.

Ezekiel not only describes what he sees,

he also describes what he hears.

He describes the whole thing as being the splendidness of God.

NARRATOR: The prophet also details

several four-faced, winged creatures

who appeared in the likeness of men

and who traveled upon a gleaming, wheeled device.

there was something like a throne,

and on this throne was a being sitting,

looking like a human, in glittering clothes.

And beneath it, he saw some vehicles.

He saw some wings.

He describes the noise of the wings.

He describes the noise of the wings

with the thundering of a waterfall.

REVEREND BARRY H. DOWNING: Ezekiel saw this wheel

within a wheel.

This sounds more high-tech than supernatural,

and we can't suppose that, um, people 3,000 years ago

would understand the difference

between the supernatural and high-tech.

NARRATOR: But what if there is more

to Ezekiel's heavenly visions

than the imaginative insights of a religious man?

What if there was a scientific foundation for them?

DR. LUIS NAVIA: Yes, I once had the opportunity of meeting

and spending time and traveling with

a gentleman by the name of Josef Blumrich.

He was a senior chief engineer of NASA,

personally involved in the Mariner expedition to Mars.

He was also in charge of the landing gear

for the Mariner spaceship.

And he told me himself that the idea of the design used

for the Mariner spaceship that landed on Mars

came to him from the reading of the biblical text

in which there is talk about wheels within wheels.

So here you have another example of a person of curiosity

who conceives of these ideas.

NARRATOR: Another biblical figure

who continues to fascinate von Däniken

is the character of Enoch.

In the Bible, in the Old Testament,

you find maybe just one phrase about Enoch.

That's all.

But among the apocryphal texts,

there are volumes and volumes if you know them.

You find the Book of Enoch.

Enoch is the first person in antiquity

who writes in the first person.

"I did." "I heard." "I was there."

NARRATOR: In one of the ancient texts,

this great-grandfather of Noah

is said to have been taken away by God for 300 years.

He was taken up to the sky.

Up there, he meets the highest-- the so-called highest.

In religion, they call it God.

He meets the highest, and the highest says to his servants,

you teach this young man in our language,

and then you teach him writing.

So he writes books.

Of course, he knows all these foreigners by name.

He quotes them by name.

He knows their profession.

He knows which of these extraterrestrials

was the astronomer.

So Enoch is the only in first person,

thousands of years ago,

who gives some of the names of the extraterrestrials

and gives some of their professions.

How is this possible?

We have an eyewitness, and nobody speaks about it.

So I really was confused.

ROBERT R. CARGILL: That would be the argument

that the followers of von Däniken would say:

Why is it so absurd for aliens to come

when it's completely acceptable for God

to intervene in human history?

The difference is, von Däniken's arguing that aliens came

and gave technologies to people to advance those cultures.

So basically, they gave objects.

They gave, you know, new ideas and new technologies,

and that those cultures advanced because of them.

Whereas, at least in the Bible,

it's not like God gave humankind a magic watch, you know,

or a new missile that they could use to defeat their enemies.

God gives instruction-- at least the Bible records

that God gives instructions on how to live

but not how to build new devices

that further or advance a specific culture.

DELIO: Can we liken Ezekiel's chariot to a UFO?

The ancients used myth and metaphor and images

to describe their experience of God.

I think what we don't want to fall to

is a type of fundamental literalism.

The stories of the Old Testament emerge

out of the people of that time, out of their own context,

to make sense of their experience of God.

We can gain insight by reading the Old Testament

and reading about Ezekiel's chariot,

but it's not to draw a strict analogy

between his chariot and a UFO.

TSOUKALOS: When all of these stories were written down,

writing was a fairly new invention.

The very first thing they wrote down

is something that actually happened to them,

it was so important, so compelling,

so significant to them that they had to put it in writing.

Why can't modern society come to grips

that these stories might be true after all?

NARRATOR: Von Däniken's research turned up evidence

of other arguably extraterrestrial phenomena--

and not only in the Bible.

Almost every religion has similar stories

about deities with spectacular powers and abilities

who come to Earth and directly influence the lives of men.

"Now, come on,

"this is similar, the stories, in so many old religions.

Are they talking about extraterrestrials?"

These so-called gods are here, they give orders,

they force the humans to do certain things,

and one day they disappear.

But they always disappear

with the promise to return in a faraway future.

CREMO: If, as I believe, people in ancient civilizations

were familiar with space travel,

people in ancient civilizations were in communication

with human-like beings from other planets,

then I think we should expect to find evidence for this

in their literatures, which we do find.

NARRATOR: Throughout the ancient Sanskrit epics of India,

there are numerous descriptions of vimanas,

or mythical flying machines.

One of these accounts even dates back over 5,000 years.

CREMO: In the Bhagavad Purana,

which is an ancient Sanskrit history,

there is a description of a spacecraft

that was piloted by a king named Shalva.

It's described that it was made of metal.

It was described that it sometimes appeared to be

in two places at once.

It was described as having a motion

similar to that of a butterfly.

And these descriptions are consistent

with what people who observe UFOs today report.

NARRATOR: In other Sanskrit texts,

such as the Mahabharata, the Rig Veda and the Ramayana,

there can be found descriptions of vimana

measuring as wide as 100 feet,

and often equipped with the capabilities of modern aircraft.

One vimana produced a shaft of light,

which, when focused on a target, consumed it with its power.

It's like a Buck Rogers

or Flash Gordon movie from the '30s.

They read like the wildest science fiction.

People are flying around in airships called vimanas,

blasting each other and having aerial fights,

destroying entire cities.

And the crazy thing is

that all of those stories are totally accepted

in the modern society of India.

CREMO: I don't think we could say

that these descriptions are simply imagination,

because even though they were written thousands of years ago,

they match what many people today

report in terms of observing the actions of UFOs.

Were they just mythological tales

that they were making up, fantasy?

Or are these physical, real events,

and they were trying to describe them

as the best that they could.

That seems to make more sense to me.

TSOUKALOS: I got to tell you this,

I would be out of a job in India,

because, there, if I were to talk about

ancient aliens and ancient gods,

they would say, "Okay, so what else is new?"

NARRATOR: When backing up their claims

of extraterrestrial visitation,

ancient alien theorists draw upon two kinds of examples:

There's the evidence you can read,

such as that found in ancient texts,

and then there's the evidence you can actually see.

Among the earliest types of physical specimens?

Numerous cave and rock drawings

and stone sculptures found all over the globe.

You know, pictures are worth a thousand words, absolutely.

When you see pictures depicted, for example,

on a cave in Italy that show two astronauts with helmets on,

what the heck could it be?

What could it be?

NARRATOR: Each of these ancient illustrations or statues

depict figures dressed in strange attire for the times

and sporting unusual headgear.

But could they really be representations

of alien astronauts-- visitors from other worlds

who touched down upon the Earth thousands of years ago?

TSOUKALOS: All over the world

we have statues and sculptures

and paintings and depictions of these extraterrestrial beings.

Even in the United States at Sego Canyon, Utah,

we have petroglyphs of very weird-looking creatures

that have antennae on their heads, helmets.

And halfway around the world in Kimberly, Australia,

for example, we have the exact same depictions

of these helmeted beings with a halo around their heads.

And the question I have is: What did our ancestors see

that compelled them to put this on their cave walls?

On yet another continent, in Guatemala City,

we have a sculpture that looks eerily reminiscent

of a modern-day astronaut.

I mean, that thing is wearing a helmet.

There is some type of a mouthpiece.

And on his chest are some type of controls

or a breathing apparatus.

How is this possible 1,500 years ago?

And in Colombia, there were thousands of tomb artifacts

that look like modern-day airplanes.

It has fixed wings, it has a fuselage,

and it has an upright tail fin,

which is not intrinsic to nature,

but it is intrinsic to modern-day aerodynamics.

Did our ancestors see something similar flying in the air?

Absolutely.

Another compelling artifact that was found

was at the Istanbul Museum

where you have this headless spaceman

sitting inside some type of a space vehicle.

You can see his hands and you you can see tubing

that go to some sort of devices.

He's wearing a suit.

His legs are crammed in there.

I mean, even to the untrained eye,

this looks very aerodynamic

and it looks something that, you know, came from outer space.

NOORY: These people witnessed something.

They were told something.

And they tried to depict it the best way they could

with the kind of technology they had at the time.

And that was simple tools and simple artwork.

Many of these ancient civilizations

were widely separated in space and time.

They weren't in communication with each other.

But still, they have the same kinds of accounts.

I think it's because they all experienced these things.

And they all have the idea

that we're part of a cosmic hierarchy of beings.

So, I think we can't explain things away so easily.

NARRATOR: But for Erich von Däniken

and other proponents of his ancient astronaut theories,

perhaps the most significant illustration

can be found in Mexico.

The Mayan archaeological site of Palenque

had been abandoned for centuries

before it was stumbled upon by Spanish explorers.

CHILDRESS: So we get to the top of this,

and suddenly,

here are the great pyramids of Palenque.

NARRATOR: Here, deep within a secret tomb,

under one of the age-old temples lies the seven-ton sarcophagus

of Palenque's 7th-century ruler Pacal the Great.

CHILDRESS: Lord Pacal apparently died here at Palenque.

He was apparently this mysterious Mayan leader.

He was a giant.

Seven- or eight-feet tall, actually.

And then they built this pyramid around his tomb.

The Mayans literally worshipped him as some kind of a god.

NARRATOR: King Pacal's sarcophagus

is adorned with a carving

that has become a famous example of classic Mayan art.

Most believe the illustration shows Pacal

descending into the Mayan underworld.

But ancient astronaut theorists

interpret the carving a vastly different way.

On this slab is an incredible chiseling.

You see a man and he is sitting in a sort of capsule.

He has some sort of mask on his nose

and you see his upper hand, he's manipulating some controls.

From the lower hand, he's turning something on.

The heel of his left foot is on a kind of pedal.

And outside of the capsule, you see a linking flame.

This is incredible.

This is absolutely a proof for extraterrestrials.

MISSION CONTROL: Three, two, one, zero.

Liftoff.

JASON MARTELL: If we look at the similarities

of what our astronauts look like when they are in a rocket ship

or in the space shuttle and have gear attached to them,

there are similarities being shown.

So one just has to ask the question of, you know,

is this just an artifact symbolically showing something?

Or are they trying to depict,

with their own limited understanding of the time,

what was taking place?

CHILDRESS: Was Lord Pacal just some Mayan king

that everyone liked?

Was he some important visitor from some far-off land?

Or was he, even possibly,

some extraterrestrial from another planet?

NARRATOR: Although most scientists and archaeologists

discredit von Däniken's interpretation

of the Palenque carvings,

visitors to the site are often treated to stories

and offered souvenirs that support his claim.

This is Erich von Däniken's theory,

the chariots of the gods, no?

You see, Pacal is supposed to be driving the rocket,

holding the controls,

the pedals, the engine,

and the fire of the rocket.

This will be the cabin, no?

And this is the oxygen.

Mainstream archeologists claim

that it's really a depiction of Lord Pacal

and his journey to the underworld.

He's going under the ground rather than out into space.

Both are interesting theories,

and either could be right in my mind.

NARRATOR: In recent years,

Pacal's tomb has been closed to tourists and casual visitors.

Although the sarcophagus is off-limits,

ancient astronaut theorists can still find a wealth of evidence

in the carvings along the walls of Palenque.

CHILDRESS: This is very similar

to what's on the lid of Lord Pacal, of his tomb.

The way he's got his left hand, right here,

in like an odd position and his wrist.

Also some kind of rocket exhaust

or something is coming out of him.

NARRATOR: But Lord Pacal may not have been the only alien

who once walked the Palenque ruins.

CHILDRESS: The Mayans had such an advanced calendar

and mathematical system.

Why were they so obsessed with the stars?

One of the most advanced of any ancient cultures.

And yet the Mayans just vanished around 500 AD.

We don't know where they went.

And one explanation is that the Mayans

were some kind of extraterrestrials,

and they literally left our planet.

NARRATOR: But ancient cave drawings and stone carvings

aren't the only types of illustrations

that fascinate ancient alien theorists.

In 1929, historians discovered a map

which had been painted onto a piece of gazelle hide.

They traced the document back

to a 16th-century Turkish admiral named Piri Reis.

But in stark contrast to other maps dating back to that time,

the map depicts landmasses that were still, as yet, unexplored.

CREMO: It shows the coast of Antarctica

as it exists under the current ice cover.

Now, that's really pretty amazing

because it would tend to indicate that the map was made

at a time when Antarctica was ice-free,

which would be many millions of years ago.

NARRATOR: The map also accurately charts

the coasts of Europe and North Africa.

But it's the illustration of northern Antarctica

that truly astonishes ancient astronaut theorists

because this region wouldn't even be discovered

for another 300 years.

MARTELL: We have to remember

that Antarctica is covered by at least a mile-thick ice.

We didn't have ground- penetrating radar until 1958.

So for a map to exist in 1531

accurately showing the topography,

it's pretty interesting.

NARRATOR: When cartographers superimposed the Piri Reis map

over a modern map of the world,

they were amazed to discover that the ancient chart

was fantastically accurate in the most minute of details.

But how could the creators of a centuries-old map

have known of mountains or rivers

that had yet to be discovered?

MARTELL: In 1531, I really don't know of anyone

who was flying above the surface of the Earth

high enough to map topography,

and how would they see underneath the ice?

CHILDRESS: Their maps were so accurate.

I mean, we know that they didn't go

to Antarctica and explore it.

But yet they were able to draw these maps of it.

NARRATOR: But if ancient aliens possessed the technology

to travel the universe,

would the only evidence of their journey

be in the form of a few carvings or a mysterious map?

Wouldn't there also be signs of a highly advanced technology?

Signs that might be too large to overlook?

NOORY: You mean to tell me

that people of that time period did this by hand?

I don't think so.

NARRATOR: When it comes to searching

for evidence of ancient aliens,

Erich von Däniken literally leaves no stones unturned.

for more than 40 years, information,

and there are two sorts of evidences

to support my hypotheses.

The one sort is literature.

This might be archeological or mythological literature.

And the other sort are practical objects.

For example, the pyramids are linked to the gods,

the gods who once descended from the sky to us earthlings.

NARRATOR: Without a little interplanetary help,

how else could early Egyptians have learned to stack

the nearly two and a half million limestone

and granite blocks that create the Great Pyramid?

How could prehistoric man

move the immense boulders at Stonehenge?

And how could ancient builders at Cusco

fit stones so closely together

that even a razor blade can't fit between them?

CHILDRESS: As you travel around the world

trying to piece together this puzzle of the ancient world,

there's not that much to really get a good grasp on.

But what there is is giant blocks of stone--

huge articulated granite or basalt blocks in many cases.

Sometimes they weigh 1,000 tons.

These things are the size of railway cars.

And you find them in Peru and Bolivia

and Mexico and ancient Egypt.

You have to ask yourself,

why and how could ancient people have dragged

these railway-car-size blocks of stone,

stacked them up together into these giant buildings?

NARRATOR: Perhaps the most familiar, and most mysterious,

megalithic structure in all the world

is the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The oldest and largest of Egypt's three great pyramids,

this miracle of engineering

is believed to have been constructed

during a 20-year period, ending around 2560 BC.

But to ancient alien theorists,

those numbers just don't add up.

The Great Pyramid was not built in only 22 years,

because logistically speaking, you would have to cut,

transport and put into place one stone every nine seconds.

And there are modern engineers who have come forward

and said we couldn't do this in 22 years either.

NOORY: There are all kinds of theories

on how the Great Pyramid of Giza was built.

So many theories, you just sit back and shake your head.

And that includes E.T. visitations,

levitating the blocks with some kind of sound system,

anti-gravity...

...thousands of workers pulling long ropes

on a ramp that had to be almost two miles long

to get it up to where it is.

All I know is that they are so finely aligned

and that the architecture is so precise

that even modern people today with great technology

would have a difficult time being that good.

How, for example, in the inside of the pyramids and the tombs,

could they build granite and marble areas

that were just so perfect and so clean?

You mean to tell me

that people of that time period did this by hand?

I don't think so.

NARRATOR: The enormous size and weight of the stones,

multiplied by the sheer number of them,

makes one thing certain--

the construction of the Great Pyramid

remains one of the greatest marvels and mysteries

of architectural engineering.

MARTELL: I don't want to discount human ingenuity,

because I do believe that we do have the ability

to do these things, over a longer period of time.

But the knowledge to build some of these monuments,

there had to have been some type of intervention

or some type of knowledge given to ancient man

to carry out those instructions.

They couldn't have just come up with it on their own.

saying the Great Pyramid was constructed

by a foreigner with the name of Souritt.

And then they say Souritt is the same

which the Hebrew community calls Enoch.

Enoch is a prophet in the Old Testament.

There are books of Enoch called the apocryphal texts.

You make a connection with Enoch

to these extraterrestrials.

He clearly says he met these extraterrestrials.

Now we have writings in the Book of Enoch,

and he gives the order to construct a building

which cannot be destroyed

by the thousands of years of the future.

TSOUKALOS: And the ancient Egyptian texts

speak that the pyramids were built by human beings

with the assistance of the guardians of the sky,

meaning the gods.

And so we have proposed that the pyramids

were built by human hands

but with the assistance of extraterrestrial technology.

NARRATOR: As one of the Seven Wonders of the World,

the Great Pyramid remains not only

an archaeological mystery, but a geographical marvel.

In 1877, author and theologian Joseph Seiss demonstrated

that the Great Pyramid resides at the intersection

of the longest line of latitude

and the longest line of longitude--

the exact center of all the landmass in the world.

Also, each of its four sides aligns almost precisely

with the four points of the compass--

though such an instrument wasn't even designed

until thousands of years later.

But is it just mere coincidence that pyramid construction--

very similar to that practiced in ancient Egypt--

was also evolving halfway around the world?

CHILDRESS: There are pyramids on remote Pacific islands

and in India and in Mexico.

So this is something that's all over the world.

Archeologists haven't really been able to explain

why dissimilar cultures, separated by huge oceans,

are building the same structures,

and in many ways, the same way.

NARRATOR: Here in Central Mexico stands an ancient city

that dates back more than 2,000 years.

Its name, Teotihuacán, literally means "City of the gods."

And located at its center is the Pyramid of the Sun.

Incredibly, this pyramid's perimeter

is virtually the same as that of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

A structural coincidence?

Or could it be that both were inspired by the same designers?

NOORY: Couple theories for that.

Okay, one, maybe they were all taught the same thing

by an extraterrestrial race.

Two, there were ancient travelers

from within this planet who went from one area to another

over the thousands of past years.

And then as some skeptics will say,

"Hey, that's the greatest archeological way

to make it, so they just knew it."

I don't think that's the case.

CHILDRESS: At Teotihuacán, here you have

a giant Pyramid of the Sun and a giant Pyramid of the Moon.

According to the legends, these things were built by gods,

who were giants at the end

of one of the destructions of the world.

Civilizations such as the Aztecs and the Mayans

and the Hopi Indians of northern Arizona,

they believe that the world has been destroyed

four times in the past.

One time by ice, once by fire, once by water.

Each time, mankind rebuilds again.

And Teotihuacán supposedly was built

just at the beginning of one of these four worlds.

NOORY: You may ask the question,

why build these huge, huge structures?

For what purpose?

Well, in Egypt for example,

either the pharaohs had incredible egos

and they wanted to outdo themselves, right,

so they built these huge museums for themselves,

or it's also possible that these ancients

wanted to leave behind something for us.

TSOUKALOS: It is written in ancient Egyptian texts,

the purpose why the pyramid was built was to store knowledge.

300 books which allegedly contained

the knowledge of the universe

dictated by the guardians of the sky.

NARRATOR: Of course, the pyramids aren't the only

ancient monuments that continue

to baffle scientists and archaeologists.

There are literally hundreds of them,

and they can be found in every corner of our world.

NARRATOR: In a remote area of the Pacific Ocean

lies one of the most isolated

yet inhabited locations in the world: Easter Island.

Here, over 800 stone guardians, called moai,

stand watch over the island's coastline.

But are they primitive native carvings,

or eerie portraits of alien visitors

from thousands of years ago?

Whatever they were for,

they're made to last for thousands of years.

They're built out of blocks of stone

that weigh many, many tons.

Not only are people building structures

out of these huge, megalithic blocks of stone,

but this was going on around the world.

And yet, supposedly, it's just primitive people doing this,

for no really good reason, it would seem.

MICHAEL DENNIN: I think one of the things

that comes into our considerations

of what ancient cultures could've accomplished

is whether they were able to write it down or not.

We're very tied to, if we have evidence

that they wrote down how they did it,

then we believe we know how they did it.

So Egypt, we have a lot more writings and drawings

that show them building the pyramids,

give us an idea of the technology.

If you go somewhere like Easter Island,

we don't have any real written evidence of what they did.

And sometimes that leads us to question their innovativeness.

NARRATOR: 3,000 miles away, in the Republic of Bolivia,

stonework exists which is amazingly similar

to the statues of Easter Island.

Tiahuanaco is, in fact,

so ancient that it defies modern dating techniques.

It is estimated to be over 17,000 years old--

perhaps the oldest city in the world.

And somehow, the sculptures at Tiahuanaco

were constructed in the same style

and with the same enigmatic expressions

as their distant cousins on Easter Island.

A lot of the stuff with Tiahuanaco,

you can see in earlier civilizations.

All the way back, you know, before into the...

into the centuries BC in Peru,

you see some of these same patterns,

some of the same iconography, imagery.

And you can see the ancestry of this.

NARRATOR: But while tourists flock

to the ruins of Tiahuanaco,

perhaps the most mystifying of all ancient sites

lies just a few hundred yards away.

Of relatively little interest to most visitors,

Puma Punku is a field of stone ruins

that both thrills and stimulates

the imaginations of ancient alien theorists.

In my opinion,

the most significant piece of evidence that we have

in this entire ancient astronaut puzzle,

is Puma Punku in the Highland of Bolivia.

While the pyramids at Giza

are an incredible feat of achievement,

compared to Puma Punku,

the pyramids are child's play.

Logic does not exist at Puma Punku, because there,

we have megalithic structures

which just lie about this entire site

as if ripped apart by-by some sort of a great force.

NARRATOR: The blocks of Puma Punku were so finely cut

that they once perfectly interlocked,

like the pieces of an elaborate puzzle.

But with the nearest quarry over ten miles away,

how did these colossal stones,

some weighing hundreds of tons, even get here?

We are talking about a place 4,000 meters over sea level.

That means there are no trees up there

which you could use for rollers.

Nothing grows, except a few grasses and bushes.

TSOUKALOS: I have stood in front of many monuments.

However, Puma Punku takes the crown.

Because what we find there is so inexplicable,

so in-achievable that the question remains,

how was it done, and for what purposes?

Mainstream archaeologists say that Puma Punku was built

by the Aymara Indians.

And we would all have to agree that,

in order to build something like Puma Punku,

you need writing, you need planning,

and you need some sort of a idea where which piece goes

and how it ultimately all fits together.

But there is one thing

that all the mainstream archaeologists agree upon--

that the Aymara didn't have any writing.

So how was it possible that they built all of this without plans?

CHILDRESS: What's really amazing,

and why the ancient astronaut theorists

are so drawn to Puma Punku and Tiahuanaco

is that the quality of the stonework

and the immense size of these blocks

is so incredible and perfect

that there's actually evidence of machining.

And that they were using machine tools

to cut these blocks.

One of these platforms is 800 tons.

And they are so smoothly polished.

You have some stone, megalithic stones,

with grooves which are just few millimeters inside.

Which definitely cannot be made with Stone Age chisels.

It doesn't work with Stone Age chisels.

So there is another technology behind it.

NARRATOR: The lines cut into these rocks

are exactly straight and precisely the same depth

from one end to the other.

It's as if only master builders

were allowed to work there.

Because everything is so precise,

everything is so perfect,

you wonder how any of this was even possible.

One of the most intriguing things there

is that the stones that were used there

aren't sandstone, they're granite and diorite.

The only stone that's harder than diorite is diamond.

So the only way that this could've been achieved

is if the tools were tipped with diamonds.

with their computer and modern measurements,

they were really shocked.

In their literature, they say it is impossible

to reconstruct Puma Punku.

It's absolutely impossible.

NARRATOR: But is it really difficult to believe

that ancient peoples

could have so precisely carved these stones,

or could build such an incredibly

intricate structure from them?

If it was ancient astronauts

teaching them these building techniques,

why don't we see just perfect

almost skyscraper-like vertical edifices?

Everything was all pyramid-like?

Stone-cutting techniques have been invented and reinvented,

and independently invented all over the world.

If you think of yourself as a god king,

and you want to have a structure built

that's going to last thousands of years,

it's much better to build it out of perfectly fitting stones

without mortar that degrades and decays

and has to be maintained.

So we see mortar-less structures,

megalithic structures all over the world.

CHILDRESS: You have an anomaly here.

Where on one hand,

these people are supposed to be very primitive--

they’re just one step out of the Stone Age--

yet what they're doing are things

that we couldn't even do today, apparently.

Or would have extreme difficulty.

And that is building with these giant blocks of stone,

perfectly fitting them together with other blocks,

interlocking them.

The ancient people of our time, on this planet,

truly saw strange things.

They witnessed bizarre events.

But those stories, other than in depictions and some artwork

and things like that, they're gone.

For some reason they're just gone.

But left behind are incredible things that we have

that make you wonder how in the heck were these things built?

Those are great mysteries,

and I think one of the things that keeps people

just continuing to push for the answers

are the fact that these things are so out there

that they can't figure it out.

NARRATOR: But uncovering the mystery

of just how these incredible structures

were built would only solve one piece of the puzzle.

Finding out why they were built and how theywere used,

poses equally compelling questions.

Questions that may not be answerable here on Earth.

NARRATOR: Did aliens really inspire our ancestors

to build ancient temples and pyramids?

And if they came here, did they leave behind

any advanced knowledge of physics,

astronomy or mathematics?

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

One example might be this one.

Often described as the world's first

mechanical "computer," it dates back over 2,000 years.

CHILDRESS: The Antikythera Device

was found in 1900 by sponge divers

diving off a small island in the Aegean

called Antikythera.

There was a shipwreck there.

And in it was a coral-encrusted box.

And it was made of metal alloys.

And it then went to the Athens Museum, where,

a good 50 years later, they were able to X-ray this box.

And they were able to discern cogged wheels

that were interconnected,

and give us a very good depiction

of what this thing was.

And it is a computer.

It's a really sophisticated machine.

MARTELL: It's a very interesting piece of technology

because it served two purposes:

One was that it was an astronomical device

where you could, by using it, chart your position to the stars

and navigate your way through the seas.

It was also an astrological device,

so that someone could tell you,

"Ah, if you were born on this day

"and your planet sign is this,

"then certain things are going to happen to you

when the planets are in this alignment."

So, it was a very interesting piece of technology

that literally had more complicated gears

and inner workings than a modern-day Swiss watch.

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

So, it's really an anomaly as to who could've created that

and what it was being used for.

When archaeologists first started

to examine this thing in the 1950s,

they said that they never could conceive

of the ancient Greeks having such complicated machinery.

And in fact, they said this was tantamount

to finding a jet airplane in the tomb of King Tut.

NARRATOR: Even older than the Antikythera mechanism

are these carvings on a wall

at the Dendera temple complex in Egypt.

To some, the strange designs look eerily similar

to objects very much in use today.

TSOUKALOS: In Egypt,

there is this underground crypt

at Dendera that was always secret

and only the high priests had access to that crypt.

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

and on the walls, you have these reliefs

of what looks like ancient light bulbs.

Because we have to question one thing:

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

NARRATOR: According to most mainstream archeologists,

torches were used by the ancient Egyptians

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

Yet nowhere on the ceilings

is there even the slightest evidence

of soot or smoke residue.

But if torches weren't used,

how else could these ancient rooms and hallways

have been illuminated?

Another theory that was proposed

is that the light was directed from outside by copper mirrors.

And then there was light.

RICK: Hey,that is a neat trick!

And they've actually tried to recreate that theory,

but unfortunately, they failed

because only after a few corners,

the sunlight dissipated

because the copper mirrors were too weak.

Also, there isn't enough oxygen inside those tombs

with which to support or feed a flame of a torch.

I was once inside the King's Chamber

inside the Pyramid of Giza,

and somebody turned off the lights,

and immediately we were in pitch darkness.

And I said, "No problem,

I'll just take out my lighter from my satchel."

And I turned on the lighter, and it didn't work.

So how were the insides of their temples lit?

I mean, the only remaining solution

is by some sort of an artificial light source.

And that is, for example, a light bulb.

So at the underground crypt at Dendera,

we find reliefs of such light bulbs.

CHILDRESS: Egyptologists' explanation of this,

and they have to have some explanation--

there's got to be one.

It has to be pretty mundane.

It can't be that it's an electrical device.

Their explanation is that it is a lotus flower.

And what appears to be a bulb

around is the aroma of the lotus flower.

And so it's just a very odd depiction of a flower.

But another explanation, of course,

would be they actually had electrical lights.

NARRATOR: But if the ancient Egyptians

had used some kind of electric light

to illuminate their passageways,

why does the visual evidence exist

only in the temple at Dendera?

In Egypt, you had different areas of specialty.

And Dendera was the area

where the knowledge of the light-giving source was kept.

And this secret knowledge was kept by the high priests.

They're the only ones who were privy

to this type of information

because Dendera was the special place

where this specific knowledge was guarded and kept.

The scientific community is not saying,

"Oh, there are no extraterrestrials"

or "They never did it."

They are judging whether or not

this is a valid scientific theory.

And what do I mean by that?

For something to be a scientific theory,

it really needs to be something

you can test with a obvious experiment.

NARRATOR: But how could the ancient Egyptians

have used anything resembling a modern-day light bulb

without access to electricity?

After all, electricity wouldn't

be discovered for thousands of years.

That is, of course, with the exception

of what scientists call "The Baghdad Battery."

MARTELL: The Baghdad Battery was discovered in ancient Iraq.

Scholars today say there's no way

that ancient man was using electricity or light bulbs.

So, they look at this Baghdad Battery,

and there's about a dozen of them

that have been found in Iraq, and the only mainstream theory

is that they were using it for electroplating jewelry.

NARRATOR: Two major proponents of ancient alien theory,

Jason Martell and Giorgio Tsoukalos,

demonstrate just how the Baghdad Battery

could generate electricity,

using a modern mock-up of the device.

Basically, this is made out of a clay pot.

Clay just found naturally in that region in southern Iraq.

And then they would use a small copper lining

and something along the lines of an asphalt stopper

wrapped around an iron rod.

And these all applied together

in the combination of some weak acidic acid,

wine, would be able to generate a charge

by combining these elements with the iron rod and the copper.

And the combination of that

creates an abundance of electricity.

So what we're gonna do is basically

just fill the clay pot with some orange juice here.

-I'll try not to spill it too much. -Okay.

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

Copper and iron rod.

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

And then by turning on the voltmeter,

and applying this to each side,

we should be able to generate a charge.

And there it goes into the positive.

TSOUKALOS: Mm-hmm.

MARTELL: And if we give it some time

to get the electrolytes really buzzing in there,

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

NARRATOR: But while some see the Baghdad Battery

as evidence that man was sparked on

by extraterrestrial wisdom,

others look at it and simply say "So what?"

DR. MICHAEL SHERMER: You could take

some ancient technology, like the Baghdad Battery,

which probably was used for something like metal plating

in which you just mix chemicals,

and it has certain chemical reactions to it

that they're using for this reason,

and we can take and put a voltmeter on it and go,

"Oh, look, we're able to get a reading out of it."

Well, so what?

Um, that's just a chemical reaction.

If they were using it, say, this battery

to operate other machines, where are the other machines?

If they were sending the electricity down wires,

where are all the wires

that would have been all over the culture?

In other words, it's not likely a one-off invention like that

is going to survive without all the other inventions

that would have been there at the same time.

It is a battery.

Everybody agrees with that.

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

What mind would think of that?

You know, electrical current back several thousand years ago?

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

CHILDRESS: The whole idea that ancient civilizations

actually had knowledge of electricity

and used electricity

is an accepted archeological fact today.

Just like in our own civilization

where about 200 years ago,

Benjamin Franklin and other scientists

began experimenting with simple electrical devices,

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

people were also experimenting with electrical devices.

Where might it have led them?

What other electrical devices

would they have been able to create?

I believe they probably created all kinds of electrical devices.

NARRATOR: Tombs...

temples...

ancient light bulbs...

even electricity.

Here on Earth exists evidence

of architectural and technological wonders,

centuries before we ever believed them possible.

But if evidence of ancient astronauts exists here on Earth,

what about elsewhere?

Might we find what we are looking for

by looking in the sky?

NARRATOR: Here at the ancient city of Teotihuacán in Mexico,

evidence suggests that ancient cultures possessed

an incredibly accurate knowledge

of our neighboring planets.

Some scholars have even interpreted

the number and orientation of its pyramids

to perfectly reflect a model of our own solar system.

TSOUKALOS: Along the Avenue De Los Muertos,

the "Avenue of the Dead," the pyramids there align

in perfect distance of each of the orbits

of our planets in our solar system.

NARRATOR: Perhaps significant is the fact

that the large Pyramid of the Sun is positioned

at the center of the other structures,

reflecting the fact that the Sun

is at the center of our solar system

and that the planets revolve around it.

It was a known fact back then already

that the Sun was at the center of our solar system,

which "Western science" didn't find out until much, much later.

NARRATOR: But just how could Teotihuacán's designers

have known so early on that the planets in our solar system

revolved around the Sun?

Didn't that take many more centuries

of scientific progress and investigation to figure out?

Interestingly enough, debunkers will say,

"Oh, this is just coincidence

"that these pyramids are aligned

with the planets of our solar system."

But if we go on the other side of the planet to Stonehenge,

we have another ancient site

which is way older, by the way, than Teotihuacán.

Where if you look at Stonehenge from a bird's-eye view,

you see that these are all concentric circles.

And each of these circles corresponds exactly

with the orbit of all of our planets in our solar system.

So we have two places on Earth where we have the same thing.

NARRATOR: In recent years,

Stonehenge has also been interpreted

by some archaeologists

to be a kind of astronomical calendar,

one which could be used to calculate events

such as solar eclipses.

But if that were true, whoever aligned these massive stones

on the barren English landscape

would have to have had precise astronomical knowledge

of the path of the Sun.

Built between the seventh and ninth centuries,

the stone temples of Tikal tower more than 200 feet

above the Guatemalan rain forest.

Tikal is home to one of the largest excavation sites

in the world, one where thousands of structures

still remain buried beneath the jungle.

According to most scientists,

Tikal's pyramids played an essential part

in helping the Mayans devise their calendar.

By aligning the sightlines

between the highest points of the structures,

ancient astronomers could pinpoint

the most important dates of the year,

such as an upcoming equinox or solstice.

But what also excites ancient astronaut theorists

is how perfectly the layout of Tikal's pyramids

correlate to the star map

of the Pleiades-Orion region of the sky.

An overhead view of the structures

almost exactly mirrors the alignment of the constellation.

This same outline has been spotted

in an area far from Tikal...

much, much farther.

Recently discovered on Mars is a cluster of landforms

that offers a near-perfect replication

of the pyramid pattern of Tikal.

Three distinct locations, one unique pattern.

Coincidence...

or design?

TSOUKALOS: At Tikal, the legends and the mythologies

that we have all speak of a time when the gods intermingled

and interconnected with our ancestors.

So Tikal also was built as a message

for future generations to see that a long, long time ago,

we were visited by extraterrestrials.

Someone who had seen this had to have actually

relayed the information to them

because they couldn't have just guessed.

So it really starts to raise the question

of saying this ancient astronaut theory

really needs to have more light shed on the topic.

DR. SARA SEAGER: It's certainly possible

that the ancient people not only measured

all of these astronomy events,

but were able to come up with a mathematical theory

to put them together, and then to predict new things.

We shouldn't think that the ancient people were dummies.

Early man, people in ancient times

didn't have dashboard-mounted GPS units.

They had the path of the Sun through the sky,

the path of of the Moon through the sky.

They could see the stars at night.

These were permanent fixtures that they could navigate from.

So it's not surprising at all that almost every culture

recorded astronomical phenomenon.

SEAGER: We never look up at the sky

and enjoy the beauty of it.

Ancient people would not have been able to avoid

looking at the sky.

With no electricity, the skies would be so dark

and the stars would be so bright.

Not only that, but they relied on the sky for directions,

for seasons in which to plant and for a variety of things.

Today, with our GPS units and navigation systems

and computers, we don't need to look at the sky.

TSOUKALOS: I want to be very clear about one thing.

That our ancestors were as smart as we are today.

However, I don't believe that ancient astronauts

visited the Earth in the remote past.

I am convinced of it

because of all the countless indications

and pieces of evidence that we can find

from all around the world in different ancient cultures,

in different mythologies and legends.

I know it happened because if you look at all the pieces,

it's the only conclusion that you can draw.

NARRATOR: But just why were ancient peoples

so focused on the sky and the stars in the first place?

Were they waiting for something to happen?

Or perhaps for something...

or someone to return?

NARRATOR: Four decades may have passed,

but the ideas put forth by Erich von Däniken

are still captivating his followers

and frustrating his skeptics to this day.

Like an Old Testament prophet or an ancient shaman,

the author is still out there,

spreading his firmly held message,

that we are not alone.

NARRATOR: But while the proof of von Däniken's theories

may be debatable, their influence on movies,

TV series,

and even radio programs is undeniable.

GRILLO-MARXUACH: It's a tremendous lightning rod

for fiction and for fictional storytelling.

The classic Battlestar Galactica series

started with a narration that said,

"There are those who believe that life here

"began out there with tribes of humans

"far across the universe

"that may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians

and the Toltecs and the Mayans."

You know, that's straight out of von Däniken,

as in that kind of belief, you know?

It puts us in contact

with an idea of a mythological intelligence.

And that is one of the things

that we as human beings crave desperately,

is to know that we're not alone in the world,

and that somebody else out there

is either looking after us or coming to fight for us,

and that will unite us against a common enemy.

WOMAN: I was reading, uh, a lot of books

from Eric von Däniken.

And I can imagine that's true, what he wrote in his books.

And so, I can imagine this, that we had, uh, help from aliens.

But I don't know. I'm not sure.

EMILY GAUD: We only know so much in this world,

and what we do know is so limited.

And every day, we're finding more that require us to ask

more questions and bigger questions and think bigger.

It's possible that something from another planet came,

some other life-form, um, intelligent life-form

came and did this.

GREGORY SANDERS: I mean, who knows?

It could be because, uh,

the origins of many things are lost in antiquity.

All we have are remnants and shreds of evidence

to suggest what might have happened.

LINDSAY CONROY: If someone told me that it was proven

that aliens had a part in this, I wouldn't be that surprised.

Why not?

TODD DISOTELL: To be honest, ancient astronaut theory

has never cropped up in a discussion with my colleagues.

I don't care how many pints into it we've been,

we have never discussed ancient astronaut theory

in any credible way whatsoever.

CHILDRESS: One of the good things

about ancient astronaut theory

is that it makes us think.

It brings out the "What about this?

What about that?"

We need explanations for all these things.

And I think that one of the main reasons

why mainstream archaeologists get a real knee-jerk reaction

to the ancient astronaut theory

is that it's very disturbing to them,

because they don't have all the answers.

NOORY: Now, some of them may believe

that life could exist in the universe,

but their bottom line is: "Show me the proof.

"Show it to me for real.

"I want to see the spaceship.

"I want to see something concrete,

"not just a few pictures that everybody can

interpret as being this or that."

NARRATOR: Farfetched.

Ridiculous.

Insane.

Ancient aliens visiting Earth centuries ago,

building monuments, influencing scripture?

But what if it all turned out to be true?

What would happen if just one piece of evidence turned up--

one stone, one key-- that proved that von Däniken

had been right all along?

And if he is right, what does that suggest about our future?

If alien visitors had come here before...

would they come again?

DENNIN: Even I think the idea of aliens

and them visiting us is very exciting and interesting,

and it would be really cool if that happened.

So it gets people excited about the question.

Maybe they start thinking about it.

And like many things, they might ultimately

come to thinking about the physics or the archaeology

and get involved in the scientific process.

So that can be a positive side effect

of these theories and their popularization.

TSOUKALOS: If it turns out

that the ancient astronaut theory is wrong,

I will be the first one to say, "Okay, no problem."

But so far,

certain pieces of evidence have not been debunked.

SEAGER: If the ancient alien astronaut theory

is somehow proven to be true,

this would be a huge boon to my work

and to the search for other planets like Earth

with life on them.

Because if alien astronauts have visited Earth

in the distant past, it means they're pretty nearby.

And it means that we don't have to look very far

to find planets like Earth with signs of life on them.

But evidence has to be treated with a great deal of caution,

because it has different meanings.

I'm not sure what the reaction of the population will be.

DOWNING: It will strengthen the general concept

that our history of religions

in the world needs to be looked at again

with more respect and also with more wonder.

Meaning, what are we supposed to make of this now?

And what are we supposed to be doing with this now?

DELIO: If science detects life on Mars,

if science detects a UFO,

then we need to take what science is saying to us

and begin to rethink about ourselves on Earth

in light of the possibility of new life.

Does that change our understanding of God?

It should, if anything, broaden it.

If we do find alien life, we should rejoice.

(chuckles)

NOORY: And honestly, the way things are going

on this planet right now,

I would welcome a visitation

every once in a while-- a little help.

will be accepted by the mainstream.

It's maybe a question of just five or ten years.

Sooner or later, we will have contact with someone out there,

and then the thinking changes completely.

And one day, they will return.

And if you don't listen to Erich von Däniken,

you will have the shock of the gods.