Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Throughout the ancient world,

there are tales of fire-breathing beasts

descending from the sky.

No matter where we go,

we find legends of these beings.

Throughout Asia, ancient cultures reported

dragons descending from the sky.

We have dragon stories in India,

in Indonesia, in ancient Greece.

NARRATOR: These winged creatures inspired both fear

and veneration.

KATHLEEN McGOWAN: The dragon represents

something incredibly powerful

but also incredibly noble.

The dragons are here

to bring something to their people.

NARRATOR: But could accounts of dragons be based on real events?

And might the truth behind this mythical monster

be more incredible than anyone has imagined?

The dragon that came from the sky,

the sons of Heaven that came from those dragons...

...are integral to the foundation of civilization.

NARRATOR: There is a doorway

in the universe.

Beyond it is the promise of truth.

It demands we question everything

we have ever been taught.

The evidence is all around us.

The future is right before our eyes.

We are not alone.

We have never been alone.

NARRATOR: Shaanxi Province, China.

April 6, 2019.

In the ceremonial courtyard

of the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor,

10,000 people gather to watch a traditional Dragon Dance.

The dragon dance is an ancient ceremony

which for thousands of years has been a representation

of the dragons coming from the sky

and returning to the sky.

PAUL STONEHILL: This is part of the Chinese culture,

of the Chinese civilization,

so it’s very important for the Chinese to have this dance.

The Chinese people from the very little... from toddlers on

know about the dragons.

The dragons are ever present.

Ancient China was a land

where humans lived in tandem with the divine beings,

with the gods.

And the gods rode upon dragons.

And so for this reason the dragon became revered

as a sacred symbol throughout China.

NARRATOR: Here in Shaanxi,

in what is known as the Qingming Festival,

the ceremony celebrates the deity

considered to be the father of all Chinese people.

The Yellow Emperor,

also known as Huangdi,

is a legendary ruler

who founded Chinese civilization

nearly 5,000 years ago.

DOMINIC STEAVU: the Yellow Emperor Huangdi is this, uh,

semi-mythical figure in Chinese history.

He’s an originator of Chinese civilization and culture.

And he is credited with numerous inventions

that-that came to define Chinese civilization--

anything from domesticating animals

to the calendar

and various astronomical sciences.

The Yellow Emperor also crafted a magical caldron,

and one version of the story

has a dragon emerging from the caldron

and then the Yellow Emperor jumps on the dragon’s back,

and the dragon ascends up to Heaven.

JUDY CHUNGWA HO: The Chinese would say

we’re the descendants of the Yellow Emperor.

That’s one way of putting how Chinese believe him to be,

the v-very founder of Chinese civilization.

In fact, just about everything

that you would think as the basic elements of civilization

is somehow associated with the Yellow Emperor.

(speaking Chinese)

TRANSLATOR: We Chinese people consider ourselves

the descendants of the dragon.

So there should be a certain connection

between the identities of the Chinese people

both as the descendants of the Yellow Emperor

and as the descendants of the dragon.

NARRATOR: At the end of the Qingming Festival,

the dragon is released into the sky,

symbolizing Huangdi’s departure from Earth

to the heavenly realm.

The Yellow Emperor is believed

to have flown up to the sky,

um, and dwell, um, in the Pole Star

at the very center of the sky.

And there he actually would live forever.

The idea of a dragon,

a metaphysical being who looked very real,

had to come from somewhere.

They could not just imagine

a complicated being like Chinese dragons.

They had to see objects

that were flying at incredible speeds

and the superior beings riding on them.

GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: Now, from the ancient astronaut perspective,

the dragon was never a dragon.

It was a flying craft.

It is only natural

that our ancestors would describe these things

as living creatures with fire and smoke.

They had never seen anything like it before.

-(gong sounds) -One has to wonder

if Huangdi himself was misinterpreted

and that he was an extraterrestrial

and he arrived in an extraterrestrial craft.

SUN SHILI: In China, in UFO research,

a dragon is the symbol of aircraft.

There is a view that the Yellow Emperor

arrived in the wonderful land of China

through an aircraft, and he flew back afterwards.

NARRATOR: Could the story of Huangdi traveling on a dragon

be an account of an extraterrestrial

traveling in a spaceship,

as ancient astronaut theorists suggest?

In the modern world,

tales of dragons are widely considered

to be strictly a product of the imagination.

But some researchers believe physical evidence exists

that suggests

the ancient stories of dragons could be true.

The Baian-Kara-Ula mountains, Qinghai Province, China.

According to an article published in 1962

in the German magazine Das Vegetarisches Universum,

Beijing University archaeologist Dr. Tsum Um Nui

was leading an expedition here in 1936

when he and his team came upon

neat rows of graves inside a cave.

The archaeologists reported that the graves

contained the corpses of small creatures resembling humans

but with spindly arms and legs and huge skulls.

And buried with them were hundreds of strange stone disks.

There’s a fascinating story in China

where allegedly

a cave was found with hundreds of disks

and these disks were about this wide

and it seemed that they had some type of a groove in them

reminding of modern-day vinyl records.

And what’s interesting

is that allegedly

some of these grooves contained really tiny types of writing,

hieroglyphics or something.

WILLIAM HENRY: And when archeologists finally deciphered

or translated this writing,

it told this incredible story

of extraterrestrial beings called the Dropas

and how they had come from the stars,

crash-landed on Earth

and were unable to rebuild a spacecraft

in order to return to their home.

NARRATOR: Unfortunately,

after the initial research in the early 1960s,

the disks, known today as the Dropa stones,

vanished.

But mysteriously, in 1974,

photographs surfaced

of what were alleged to be two Dropa Stones

on display at the Banpo Museum in Xian City, China.

In 1994, a colleague of mine, Hartwig Hausdorf

and his colleague Peter Krassa went to China

to ask the whereabouts of these stone disks.

During the ’60s and ’70s,

there was a big cultural revolution in China,

where lots of cultural relics were, uh, destroyed.

And that’s possibly the reason

that two of the more than 700 stone disks

could have found their way down to Xian

and to this little museum.

In spring of 1994,

my way led me also into this little Banpo Museum,

where I got to speak

with the present curator of the museum.

I showed him the photographs

that were taken 20 years ago in his museum,

and he told me the former manageress of the museum,

along with the two stone disks that were on display,

they have disappeared without any trace,

and up to now, no one knows

where this lady and the two stone disks have gone.

We can speculate

that most of the stone disks

are still inside those caves

in Baian-Kara-Ula mountains.

NARRATOR: Could there be additional Dropa stones

still hidden somewhere in the Baian-Kara-Ula mountains?

For ancient astronaut theorists,

another intriguing aspect of the story

is that the Qinghai Province,

which is home to this mountain range

has a connection to dragons.

What’s interesting about the Dropa stones

is that the region they were discovered in is very close

to the Qinghai Lake which has its patron as a dragon god.

You have the fascinating story

of the Dragon King of the West Sea,

the Qinghai Lake.

And Qinghai is also in the same area

where the Dropa stones allegedly came from.

Now, one of the fascinating connections here

is that the Dragon Kings were also said to be cloud breathers.

And one of the things that we see

in the actual translation from the Dropa stones

is that the Dropa people came forth

in their clouds from the sky.

So this idea of cloud breathers as dragons

and the Dropa coming from these clouds

seems to be potentially connected.

Maybe the dragons and the Dropa are one and the same.

NARRATOR: Could it be that the dragon,

which remains sacred and iconic in China to this day,

commemorates an extraterrestrial visitation

that occurred thousands of years ago

and was allegedly recorded on the Dropa stones?

Perhaps further clues can be found

by examining other ancient traditions all over the world

of dragon gods.

NARRATOR: Kyoto, Japan.

An imposing statue of a dragon

guards the west gate of the Buddhist temple

known as Kiyomizu-dera.

It is just one of the many dragons that adorn the shrine,

and according to temple legends,

every night a dragon descends from the sky

to drink at the temple’s waterfall.

In Japan, dragons, sometimes known as naga,

are not only revered as deities.

They are also considered

to be the founders of Japan’s royal family.

It was said in ancient Japan that the dragon god

lived at the bottom of the ocean.

His daughter had a daughter,

and her child was Jimmu, the first Emperor of Japan.

To be descended from a dragon

is to be from the divine dimension of nature,

but also from the stars.

NARRATOR: According to legend,

Jimmu, the great-grandson of the dragon god,

received three divine items called the Imperial Regalia.

WILLIAM HENRY: The Imperial Regalia of Japan

was sent from the heavenly realms.

This was composed of a jewel, a sword and a mirror

that was utilized by all the Japanese emperors,

and they’re still believed to exist to this day.

They’re considered to be artifacts

of such incredible power

that ordinary people are not allowed

to come into contact with them.

TSOUKALOS: With this celestial mirror,

it is said that he was able to see

anything that goes on on planet Earth

without having to go anywhere.

What are we talking about here?

Imagine that you show your laptop or your cell phone

to your great-great-grandfather

and all of a sudden

you are showing him a magical mirror

because you can see anything on a laptop.

I think that the celestial regalia of Jimmu

are extraterrestrial artifacts

that were collected at the time

when the celestial teachers referred to as dragons

were here teaching mankind,

in this case in the area of Japan.

(speaking Japanese)

TRANSLATOR: The ancestors of the Japanese emperor

were gods...

...specifically gods in the sky.

They landed on the Earth,

and are linked to the current Japanese imperial family.

Which means that their family is related to extraterrestrials.

NARRATOR: While the dragon is a prominent figure

in East Asian cultures,

many ancient peoples who archaeologists believe

had no history of contact

also revered this supposedly mythical flying beast.

Dragons are found throughout Africa and in ancient Egypt.

They were featured in the earliest traditions

of Persia, Greece and Rome.

And North American folklore

often spoke of dragon-like creatures.

The dragon is worldwide

because, again, in Central America

in Villahermosa,

there’s a stone called the dragon monolith.

You see a man sitting inside the dragon.

You see the form of the dragon

with this open mouth like a snake,

and you see the man is sitting inside.

He has a helmet on.

He uses his hands to manipulate control.

So the story of the dragon

has come around the world from China to Central America.

HUGH NEWMAN: So dragons are found

all over the world in ancient traditions,

and there’s always an element of extreme power.

They could destroy,

but they could also become allies.

And they were great teachers, of very high wisdom,

and have extreme intelligence as well in some cases.

And yet this became a symbol of different cultures

and different leaders around the world,

but was this because they’d witnessed something

emerging from clouds, from a fiery kind of sky

and actually this is where

the whole dragon mythos really came from?

Who were the original dragons?

And why are they always depicted as flying?

NARRATOR: For researchers of mythology,

an equally intriguing question

is why so many separate cultures ended up

calling these flying entities by the same name.

Many languages use exactly the same word for dragon,

or something very similar, at least.

You have got in the Middle East,

the Philistine god

who looks like a dragon

was called Dagon.

In England you’ve got Dragon.

In parts of Finland you’ve got Dragon.

And in Eastern Europe you’ve got Dracul.

And then a bit further south, you’ve got Dracu.

NARRATOR: In Basque,

which is unconnected to any other language,

the word is Dragoi.

In India, it’s Dregan.

In Swahili, Dragoni.

And in ancient Greek, Drakon.

GRAHAM PHILLIPS: They all have similar names.

How can this be? What’s behind all this?

These people were not in touch with each other.

So, how does this come about?

It’s very curious that, no matter where we go,

we find legends of dragons with the exact same word

used to describe this creature or these beings.

It must be that there was a common source.

And it makes you wonder if it’s possible

that these beings originally introduced themselves

with this name that is something like "dragon."

NARRATOR: What can account

for this supposedly mythical creature

appearing in dozens of distinct traditions

throughout the ancient world?

As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,

the ubiquity of dragon legends

lends further support to the notion

that our ancestors encountered alien vehicles

descending from the sky.

The reason why countless ancient cultures

have references to dragons

is because many of these ancient cultures

were visited by the same beings

flying the same craft.

They’re seeing the same thing in all these different places,

and what they’re seeing is of airships

with fire and thunder and smoke and huge wings,

and so they’re describing them in-in similar ways

in different parts of the world.

NARRATOR: Could the ubiquity

of dragon worship throughout the world,

along with the curious linguistic connection,

provide further evidence that our ancestors witnessed

something very real coming down from the sky?

Perhaps further clues can be found

by examining ancient stone sculptures from North America

that depict a legendary flying serpent god

in a humanoid form.

NARRATOR: Teotihuacan, Mexico.

Dating back to at least the first century AD,

this ancient complex was once

the largest city in Mesoamerica

with a population of 125,000.

One of the most sacred temples at the site

is the Temple of the Feathered Serpent,

an enormous step pyramid

dedicated to the god Quetzalcoatl.

Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent,

goes all the way back to Olmec times,

to the BCE period.

But the first place that we really see Quetzalcoatl

is in Teotihuacan,

the city just north of modern Mexico City.

They build a actual pyramid, a temple of Quetzalcoatl,

right around 250 AD.

So, it’s probably Teotihuacan

who really put forward

the idea and the identity of Quetzalcoatl as a deity

for the rest of Mesoamerica.

Quetzalcoatl was a creator god.

He was associated with the planet Venus.

He brought the rain. He brought water.

He brought civilization. He brought the arts.

This was the creator divinity for the Aztec culture.

It was a flying serpent. It was a dragon.

Quetzalcoatl brought peace, harmony and high wisdom

and very high level of intelligence

and teaching to this particular land.

He was often depicted as a human being as well,

that he arrived on a raft of serpents

and settled on these lands.

ED BARNHART: Quetzalcoatl also shows up

in the post-classic Maya city of Chichen Itza.

But they give him a Mayan name.

They call him Kukulkan, which is basically

"The holy feathered serpent" in Maya.

NARRATOR: The ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza

lies roughly 900 miles east of Teotihuacan,

and at its center stands another massive step pyramid,

this one dedicated

to the Mayan version of the flying serpent Kukulkan.

In Chichen Itza, there we have the pyramid of Kukulkan,

and every year on the 23rd of March,

you see, when the sun is going up,

some lights and shadows,

lights and shadows like triangles

climbing down the stairway,

exactly the stairway where his head is on.

And on the 21st of September you see the opposite.

Kukulkan disappears,

and it’s only made by light and shadow of the natural sun.

So still today the message is clear--

god Kukulkan has descended to the humans.

He teached them for a certain period,

and then he disappeared again.

So right there we have living mythology

in a structure that shows this deity

descending from the sky in stone.

You wonder if perhaps a craft landed here

and this light-shadow effect

of a serpent making its way descending down the staircase,

and then emerging through a serpent head

is a recollection of that original event.

NARRATOR: Is it possible

that the Pyramid of Kukulkan

was not built to honor a mythical dragon god

but to commemorate the arrival

of an extraterrestrial spacecraft?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,

and suggest this isn’t the only dragon-themed structure

that marks a location of alien contact.

The landscape of this small Greek island

is spotted with 25 mysterious megalithic structures

called dragon houses.

TSOUKALOS: The main dragon house is at the very top

of one of the tallest mountains on the island

called Mount Ochi.

Mount Ochi comes from the word "Ochevare"

which means to descend and to drive.

And so this is interesting because, according to legend,

the reason why the dragon house

exists at the top of Mount Ochi

is because Zeus allegedly descended from the heavens

on top of that mountain.

NARRATOR: According to local legend,

these stone structures were built by a giant dragon

to venerate the god Zeus.

In ancient Greece, the word "dragon" was not only used

to describe a flying monster

but also gods and other figures

that had human-like form

but possessed superhuman powers.

Now, when you put all this together,

this sounds like the dragon house

is a meeting place of Heaven and Earth.

In UFO vernacular, that would be a landing spot.

TSOUKALOS: In my opinion,

the dragon was the craft out of which, then,

the creator people, or the teachers, emerged.

Our ancestors, basically,

they saw a crew coming out of an airplane.

NARRATOR: According to ancient astronaut theorists,

some of the structures themselves serve as evidence

that this was a place of extraterrestrial contact.

The dragon house on top of Mt. Ochi

contains megalithic blocks weighing up to ten tons

and sits at an elevation of almost 5,000 feet.

TSOUKALOS: Archaeologists have a hard time

explaining why it was even built there

because we are talking

of this gigantic megalithic structure

with a ceiling that contains blocks

that are up to ten feet long,

two feet thick,

at an altitude of 5,000 feet.

How was that done?

In my opinion, this was an extraterrestrial visitation

where Zeus may have descended in his craft

and built a day camp.

NARRATOR: Could the stone structures

found in Greece and Mesoamerica

mark the locations

where otherworldly beings landed on Earth

and ultimately returned to the stars?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,

and suggest

these alien visitors may still be here today,

pointing to legends of dragons

that come not from the sky...

...but from under the sea.

NARRATOR: Nineveh, 1849.

British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard

and his team uncover a cache of ancient clay tablets

dating back to at least the seventh century BC.

The pieces contain some

of the earliest writings of humankind,

including the Epic of Gilgamesh

and the Enuma Elis,

the Sumerian creation story centered around a sea dragon.

Ancient Sumeria is generally considered

the earliest civilization on Earth,

and their early mythology involves the Tiamat.

Tiamat comes from the sea.

She’s a sea serpent. She is chaos.

HENRY: Dragons are most often seen flying through the sky.

However, there are also examples

of dragons that lived in the water.

For example, in the Babylonian myth of Tiamat

and then in the Greek myth we learn of Hydra,

which is referred to as a dragon that lives in the sea.

NARRATOR: Serpents from the sea can also be found in Norse mythology,

in the ancient Canaanite tradition,

as well as the Maori tales of New Zealand.

But of all the stories

of sea dragons from across the globe,

perhaps there is none more well-known

than the Leviathan of the Hebrew Bible.

Often described as a gigantic sea creature,

the Leviathan wreaks chaos on the world.

Leviathan, in Biblical terms,

is considered this sea monster of behemoth proportions. Huge.

Now, in the Book of Job,

the behemoth all of a sudden is seen and witnessed.

And the way Job describes it, it’s not a biological entity

that we are familiar with today.

It is described that it has skin of metal

and ribs made out of gleaming bronze,

its limbs like bars of iron.

Its back is made of shields in rows

shut up closely as with a seal.

And then Job even describes

that it is like some type of an animal,

but what animal breathes smoke and fire and has glowing eyes?

NARRATOR: Might the eyewitness account of the Leviathan

found in the Book of Job

actually be a description

not of an underwater creature

but of misunderstood technology,

as ancient astronaut theorists suggest?

In the Book of Job we have a text line

that says that this creature’s outer skin

consists of two hulls.

So, this description in ancient biblical times

that we have a double-hull object is interesting

because we know today that submarines have two hulls.

And the reason why they have two hulls is

in order to dive and resurface.

And what happens is you fill and empty the ballast tanks.

Now, what happens when you empty the ballast tanks?

The submarine ejects a whole bunch of air

that makes the whole surrounding area look

as if the ocean is boiling.

And we have exactly this reference point in Job

that all of a sudden, the wake of the Leviathan,

it looked as if the sea was boiling.

Job describes having seen this thing also on land.

It begs the question if what we have here is an example

of a trans-medium craft,

a craft that operates

both on land and in the water.

HENRY: Today we have videos of UFOs or UAPs

that are coming and going from the ocean.

We call them trans-medium craft.

Well, this is exactly what we see

in these ancient myths about the dragons.

These are supposed to be

dragons or mythological creatures,

winged creatures that fly in the air,

but then they also go into the ocean.

And it makes you wonder, are these in fact UFOs

that were seen in the ancient world

that were interpreted or mythologized as dragons?

I was in the Navy for nine years,

and we always talked with each other

about unidentified submersible objects

that are UFOs that stay in the water

and then bust out of the top of the ocean

and off they go. It’s very widespread.

As a matter of fact, there’ve been reports

of lights down in the water following our Navy ships

and then all of a sudden

they bust through the top of the ocean

and they take off. They’re out there.

And it’s entirely possible

that people who witnessed these things a long time ago

confused them with creatures or real dragons.

Could the accounts of dragons emerging from the sea

found in mythologies around the world

be descriptions of an advanced technology capable of traveling

not only through the sky but also through water?

And if so,

might the misinterpreted craft

our ancestors witnessed

be the same UFOs reportedly seen today?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest

the answers may be found by examining the alignment

of an ancient structure to a dragon...

in the stars.

NARRATOR: Northwest Cambodia.

Just outside the city of Siem Reap

lies Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religious structure,

with each side measuring nearly a mile long.

Mainstream archaeologists believe the temple complex

was likely constructed around the 12th century AD,

but according to Cambodian legend,

it is far older--

built in 600 BC

by a half-human half-divine architect

who traveled between Earth and the realm of the gods.

TSOUKALOS: Angkor Wat was built

by none other than Preah Pisnokar.

His mother is not of this world.

She wants to bring him to where she comes from.

And so she takes her son

to what’s called Indra’s Heaven.

According to mythologies,

the center part of Angkor Wat

is a one-to-one replica

of whatever was seen out there.

NARRATOR: According to some experts,

the layout of Angkor Wat reveals

another intriguing connection to the cosmos.

In 1996,

author and researcher John Grigsby

discovered that the temple complex

appears to align with certain stars in the night sky.

John Grigsby made a brilliant discovery.

He noticed that the entire Angkor Wat complex

is a mirror image of the Draco constellation.

In Latin, the word Draco means dragon.

TSOUKALOS: If you were to take

a constellation map of Draco

and superimpose it onto a map of Angkor Wat,

there are multiple structures at Angkor Wat that line up

exactly to the main stars of the constellation of Draco.

So you have to wonder what the connection is.

And the answer to that, in my opinion,

is that if you would like to show a local population

where you are from...

you have them build something

in the constellation of where you are from.

To me, those are calling cards

where our teachers long ago came from.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that the story

of Angkor Wat’s celestial origins is true

and that it was purposely designed

to line up with the stars of Draco

because this was the ancestral home of Preah Pisnokar?

Ancient astronaut theorists point

to the temple’s many depictions of dragon-like creatures

as further evidence

that it has a profound connection

to the Draco constellation.

DOMINIC STEAVU: In south Asian traditions,

nagas occupy an important place.

They are considered to be very powerful creatures.

They are shape shifters.

And nagas share a number of interesting similarities

with Chinese dragons more specifically,

so both of them are givers of knowledge and of wisdom.

HENRY: In the same way that Kukulkan seems

to represent some sort of a craft to the Mayans,

we find the same thing with the naga at Angkor Wat.

They could represent a craft that is utilized

to transport people from Earth to Draco.

NARRATOR: Is it possible

that dragon traditions throughout the globe

originated with visitors coming to Earth

from a planet somewhere within the Draco constellation?

Curiously, Angkor Wat is not

the only ancient site that aligns with Draco.

On the other side of the world, in Ohio,

a Native American serpent effigy known as Serpent Mound

was positioned to point to Draco.

And in ancient Egypt,

all pyramids were positioned

to have an entrance passage geometrically aligned

so that Draco’s primary star, Alpha Draconis...

would be visible at night.

It’s interesting to think that the constellation Draco

may have something to do with these dragon myths,

with all of these separate cultures

around the world that are seemingly unconnected.

Whatever these flying dragons are,

perhaps they came from a planet

that was from the star system Draco.

HENRY: Virtually every culture has a legend about dragons

or dragon beings that came from the sky.

And what we’re uncovering now is the revelation

that these beings came from the sky

because they’re of extraterrestrial origins.

Is it possible that today

we’re subconsciously tapping into hidden knowledge,

something that has always been there

and is part of, like, the thought sphere of humanity?

NARRATOR: Could it be

that humankind’s long-held fascination with dragons

has a direct link to the cosmos

and possibly visitors

from the constellation of Draco?

Have stories and imagery of dragons

persisted in modern times

because of a deep-seated desire

to reconnect with our extraterrestrial past?

Perhaps further clues can be found

by examining humanity’s latest endeavors beyond Earth

and the recent launch of a spacecraft called Dragon.

MAN: And liftoff.

NARRATOR: Just off the coast of Panama, Florida,

the latest SpaceX cargo shuttle, called Dragon, splashes down.

It’s really fascinating what’s happening right now

because SpaceX just named their rocket Dragon.

The Chinese named their entire rocket fleet

based on ancient Chinese celestial mythology.

It’s called the Shengzou program,

and Shengzou means "heavenly chariot."

So, to have all of a sudden

modern cultures refer to their celestial vehicles

as dragons or heavenly chariot

to me is nothing else but a repetition of history,

meaning we are not the first to do this.

JONATHAN YOUNG: The image of the dragon still excites our imagination.

When Elon Musk decides to build a spaceship

to lift up to the stars,

he names it Dragon.

So, it’s almost like we’re acting out mythology.

We’re riding on or in a dragon

back up to the stars.

TSOUKALOS: Clearly, humankind has had a love affair,

an eternal fascination with dragons.

And in my opinion,

dragons did not really exist in a biological form,

but perhaps they were the result

of an incredible event

that happened a long, long time ago

in our collective unconscious.

It may surprise a lot of people

to know that, throughout the world,

the dragon is not a symbol of evil.

It’s certainly not in China.

It’s a symbol of good luck and fortune.

In the Middle East,

the serpent brings knowledge and understanding.

Even today, we have the symbol of a serpent, a winged snake,

associated with knowledge on the medical badge.

Virtually every culture in the known ancient world

has some kind of dragon legend, every single one of them.

The dragon represents something

incredibly powerful but also incredibly noble.

HENRY: Dragons are something that people are obsessed with.

Even today people still get tattoos

of dragons on their bodies.

And you wonder, why is it?

What is the attraction with dragons?

Well, for one thing,

dragons symbolize divine and heavenly power.

But behind that is the realization

that the dragons ultimately represent our origins.

They were the great civilizers.

They were the founders of civilization.

So by connecting ourselves with the dragons,

we’re actually trying to tap into the original power

of those divine beings.

NARRATOR: Could it be that traditions of dragons

found all over the world

tell the story of humankind’s true origins?

Is it possible

that our celebration of these winged beasts

is actually commemorating

ancient contact with extraterrestrials?

Perhaps we will find the answer

as we send our own dragons into the sky

and reconnect with our alien ancestors.

CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY A+E NETWORKS