Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Enormous megalithic structures

of mysterious origins.

DAVID CHILDRESS: There are huge walls, gigantic limestone blocks.

They've been there for thousands of years.

NARRATOR: A vast underground complex...

This is a remarkable structure,

hewn from solid rocks.

...containing the remains

of what some believe to be otherworldly beings.

WILLIAM HENRY: We find this enormous collection of elongated skulls.

Are we dealing with extraterrestrials?

NARRATOR: Could the ancient mysteries that exist

on the Mediterranean islands of Malta

be connected to local legends

of alien visitation and giant hybrid beings?

This right here is a smoking gun.

ERICH VON DÄNIKEN: We have to accept the fact

that there were teachers from the sky.

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.

In the center of the Mediterranean Sea,

between Italy and Africa, lies a three-island archipelago

that makes up the Republic of Malta.

LYNN PICKNETT: Malta is this really small island nation

just south of Sicily.

And it's so small, it's only 122 square miles in its entirety.

But because it's dead center of the Mediterranean Sea,

Malta really packs a punch historically.

NARRATOR: Malta has been a strategic outpost

for many of the most powerful cultures in the world,

from the Phoenicians

to the Romans

and even the British Empire.

But what makes Malta

one of the most unique locations on Earth

are its massive stone ruins, whose origins could date back

thousands of years before any known civilization

ever set foot on her shores.

JASON OSEQUEDA: It was assumed that Malta

was a long-lost Greek colony from the Mycenaean period.

And this goes from, you know, maybe 800 BC

to sometime before 1200 BC.

However, because of radiocarbon dating

in the mid-20th century,

we discovered that Malta

is actually one of the oldest megalithic sites in the world.

NARRATOR: Mainstream archaeologists now know

that Malta's oldest megalithic structures

were built at least 5,600 years ago.

But little is known about who these ancient builders were

and how long their culture existed.

PICKNETT: One of the most pressing questions about

the megalithic builders is, what happened to these amazing,

super smart guys who built all this stuff?

Because the last known evidence of them being there

is about 3,000 years ago.

They were there one minute,

archaeologically speaking, and gone the next.

NARRATOR: While the world's first known human civilization,

the Sumerians, is said to have emerged

in Mesopotamia around 4000 BC,

some researchers believe the ancient inhabitants of Malta

lived on the Mediterranean islands

thousands of years earlier.

As evidence, they point to mysterious carvings

found throughout the area

called cart ruts.

Something that Malta is very well known for archaeologically,

besides the megalithic temples, are the cart ruts.

These are ruts literally in the limestone rock.

The traditional view is that they were

eroded into the rock literally by carts

being pulled over the soft rock.

GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: We have cart ruts

that go into the Mediterranean Sea.

And then they also come out on the other side.

How is this possible?

NARRATOR: Some of the cart ruts that extend from dry land

down into the sea have reportedly been found

at depths of as much as 140 feet.

This presents a critical clue as to just how long ago

they must have been created.

I suspect that some of these cart ruts are really ancient.

And when I say really ancient, that is going back

to before the end of the last ice age,

approximately 12,000 years ago.

The Ice Age ended, we know, by incredible warming,

incredible rises in sea level.

So if some of these cart ruts go back to an early enough period,

what looks like it's going into the water,

that would have been dry land when sea levels were much lower.

If you propose the idea that 12,000 years ago,

which is a fact, the worldwide water levels were lower,

then all of a sudden these cart ruts that go

into the Mediterranean Sea make sense.

The last time that area was free of water

and when also Malta was connected to Sicily

and to Italy with a land bridge,

that was 12,000 years ago.

So the fact that these cart ruts exist

to me illustrates that an advanced civilization

must have existed at that time.

NARRATOR: Could the cart ruts provide evidence

that civilization existed on the islands of Malta

as much as 12,000 years ago?

Until recently, mainstream scholars

would have considered such a notion to be impossible.

But then, in 1994, archaeologists discovered

the ruins of Göbekli Tepe in Southeast Turkey.

TSOUKLALOS: It is the first archaeological site

in the world that proves its age

dating as far back as 12,000 years,

around 10,000 BC.

The discovery and the official acceptance

of Göbekli Tepe's dating

has changed the history of archaeology.

HUGH NEWMAN: Göbekli Tepe is a series of kind of oval-shaped

stone circles that have T-shaped pillars as the stones

with two central pillars in the center.

The thing is, many of these stones are over 20 feet tall.

They're huge, they're serious monoliths,

and this was the era of hunter-gatherers.

So who could have done it?

We really don't know.

SCHOCH: I've studied Göbekli Tepe in great detail.

The Malta temples, by conventional dating,

go back maybe 6,000 years ago.

But I wonder,

and this is based on my own work and analysis,

if the origins of the Malta temples

may go back to a much earlier period, also.

HENRY: We have to be open

to the possibility that whoever built the structures on Malta

were not in fact human beings,

but were perhaps a separate race.

And their existence and even their origins

is completely shrouded in mystery.

NARRATOR: Could it be that the incredible megalithic structures on Malta

are as much as 12,000 years old?

If so, who created them?

Perhaps further clues can be found

by closely examining the island's mysterious temples

and the local traditions about a giant being

who came from the stars.

NARRATOR: The Republic of Malta.

Situated across the island nation's 122 square miles

sit the remains of seven megalithic sites.

These include the two temples of Ggantija,

Hagar Qim and Mnajdra,

Tarxien,

Ta' Hagrat

and Skorba.

These marvels of ancient construction

were all built with the same type of Maltese limestone,

which was extracted from local quarries.

SCHOCH: The fact that they were moving around

these multi-ton blocks, building these temples

and actually, when you look at them,

moving the blocks within very, very narrow confines.

Okay, it's one thing to move a block

out in the open that's multi-ton,

but to then place it systematically

and very carefully next to another one,

next to another one, next to another one

to form these beautiful temple structures,

that's a real engineering feat.

NARRATOR: While there are some researchers who believe

that Malta's megalithic temples

could be as much as 12,000 years old,

mainstream scholars believe they were created

no earlier than 3600 BC,

during what is known as the Neolithic Age.

And they also theorize that the massive structures

were built by a human culture

that used only primitive stone tools.

TSOUKALOS: Archaeology suggests at the time,

we barely invented the wheel.

We barely had tools.

There was no known language,

and we had no writing.

Well, let's step back for a moment and think about this.

From an evolutionary and technology, uh, perspective,

that makes no sense because you begin with simple,

you continue bigger, bigger,

and then biggest.

But you start small.

What we have in the case of the Maltese structures

is that the biggest are the oldest.

So, that makes zero sense from a logical perspective

because there was no evolution in technology.

The archaeologists, they agree with this.

OSEQUEDA: To construct similar temple after similar temple,

um, with the same material without evidence of writing,

shows a high degree of communication.

And we find terracotta models, in fact, of temples.

And archaeologists have suggested perhaps

that this is an early architect's rendering.

This is more evidence of the high level

of thought and ability that went into

the construction of these temples.

NARRATOR: No written records have ever been discovered

to explain who built the megalithic temples in Malta.

However, local traditions of the Maltese people

have offered a stunning possibility.

They claim that the massive structures

were built by a race of giant beings

who came to Earth from the stars.

There is a story that a meteorite came down

from the heavens and turned into a goddess, a giant,

named Sansuna.

And the locals, of course, were terrified of this giant.

But at a place called Ggantija,

she started building a temple

and moved stones much larger than any human

could ever move and assembled this structure

that was so massive,

it remains to this day,

still a place of mystery, still a giant's construction.

HENRY: When you see these Cyclopean stones,

some of them weighing as much as 50 tons,

you can appreciate why we have the story

of this giantess Sansuna.

NARRATOR: The local legends of Sansuna may sound incredible to some.

However, in the 17th century, a Maltese nobleman named

Gian Francesco Abela claimed to have found forensic evidence

that these legends may have been based in fact.

In the early 1600s, Gian Francesco Abela

was living on the island of Malta,

and he actually wrote about

the fact that giants were involved

in the construction of these sites.

One of the reasons he wrote this is because

he said he found bones, skulls and even giant teeth

all across the island,

and there were other reports of them coming forth at this time.

NARRATOR: In order to investigate the local legends connecting

giant extraterrestrial beings

to the massive structures on Malta,

in 2022, ancient astronaut theorist Giorgio Tsoukalos

traveled to Malta's oldest megalithic structures,

the temples of Ggantija on the island of Gozo.

There, he met with Frans Van Avendonk...

I'm Giorgio. Pleasure to meet you.

NARRATOR: ...an expert in Maltese history

who has lived on the island since 1991.

Look at this. I mean...

-Gigantic. -It is gigantic.

Ggantija means the giant goddess,

and it makes sense why.

Because right now, I feel like an ant.

We are so small, and especially

when you're right next to it.

-VAN AVENDONK: It's very impressive. -TSOUKALOS: Truly.

And, uh, in my opinion, still a massive question mark.

VAN AVENDONK: There are still questions here now, definitely.

What can you tell us about the dating?

Well, when it was excavated,

because we don't talk about discovery,

-it was always visible, -Mm-hmm.

people thought it was a Phoenician temple.

-Okay. -Much later, they realized

it must have been prehistoric.

So it was put in the 2000s before Christ.

Then it moves back to the 3000s.

Now we're saying 3600 at least.

Technology has improved,

different ways of looking at things,

so therefore they're getting older.

They were built much earlier than we thought before.

NARRATOR: When viewed from above,

the two adjacent temples of Ggantija

are designed with large apses resembling a cloverleaf.

Each housed an altar,

and artifacts suggest a wooden roof

covered the entire temple.

Many of the stone blocks stand 20 feet tall,

and some weigh in excess of 50 tons.

Is it possible that we've lost some type of masonry knowledge?

Because you could create it using smaller stones.

Clearly, this required planning.

-It required logistics. -VAN AVENDONK: Yes.

TSOUKALOS: In my opinion, master builders were at work here,

and mainstream archaeologists are suggesting

that whoever built this did not have any writing.

Well, not only would it require writing,

but you have to have calculations.

-And leadership. -Exactly.

With the evidence of how old or when it was built,

-who built it and how it was built... -TSOUKALOS: Mm-hmm.

might be there, but we haven't found it yet.

I can imagine that people saw this and thought

this must have been the work of a giant.

Right.

OSEQUEDA: Throughout the Mediterranean,

you see an association with giants

constructing megaliths.

For instance, in Mycenaean Greece,

there is a structure called the Lion's Gate.

Aristotle mentioned that this construction style

was called Cyclopean masonry because of the large stones.

The ancient Greeks figured that only

a giant called Cyclops could have had the strength

to move these.

Well, the same sort of Cyclopean masonry

is present in the Maltese temples as well.

TSOUKALOS: These stories of giants have been an integral part

of our entire human history since the beginning of time.

So, is it possible that the reason why

we have these stories of these giants

is because at one point they actually existed?

And the answer to that is yes.

NARRATOR: Could it be possible that the temples at Ggantija

were built by gigantic, otherworldly beings

who inhabited the islands of Malta thousands of years ago?

To search for further clues, Giorgio will next visit

one of Malta's most mysterious megalithic complexes,

where he is joined by his longtime

friend and mentor, Erich Von Däniken.

NARRATOR: The island of Malta, 2022.

While investigating local legends

that a race of giant extraterrestrial beings

once inhabited this area

more than 5,000 years ago...

We're here.

-We're here again. -We made it.

NARRATOR: Giorgio Tsoukalos meets with his longtime friend

Erich Von Däniken,

author of the 1968 international bestseller

Chariots of the Gods, which established

the foundation for the ancient astronaut theory.

They have arranged to visit

one of the most mysterious sites on the island,

called Hagar Qim, which archaeologists believe

might be Malta's second oldest megalithic structure,

built shortly after Ggantija.

OSEQUEDA: Hagar Qim is a Maltese temple complex

that has multiple temples on it as well.

The oldest one in the northern temple

dates to the mid-fourth millennium BC.

CHILDRESS: You see colossal, huge stones,

huge walls and doorways,

and it's clear that it's very, very old.

It's something that would be almost indestructible,

and in fact,

it's been there for thousands of years.

NARRATOR: Located near Malta's southern shores,

the temples of Hagar Qim

are believed by mainstream archaeologists

to have been constructed by the same primitive culture

who created the temples of Ggantija

on the neighboring island of Gozo.

-Good morning, gentlemen. -How are you?

-Pleasure. -Fine, thank you.

Erich Von Däniken.

NARRATOR: Joining Giorgio once again,

is local historian Frans Van Avendonk.

Incredible. Look at this, guys.

And so what are we talking about here?

-How tall is it? -About six meters.

Wow. So that's about 17, 18 feet?

Yeah, something like that.

Maybe it was even bigger because of erosion.

It could have been a bit higher,

-and surely had a roof. -Mm-hmm.

I mean, just incredible.

VAN AVENDONK: Now, whether it was a stone roof or a wooden roof,

there is still discussion about it, but it was covered.

And the whole wall must have reached at least this height.

And the whole temple is orientated astronomically?

Yes. So the sunrise on the winter solstice,

you'd be here at the back,

you would see the sun coming up

-over the horizon through the entrance. -TSOUKALOS: Mm-hmm.

And if you are patient and you stay here till the evening,

you'll see over there another temple

which will have a light phenomena

during the sunset on the same day.

It's all oriented, so it had to do something

with the stars, with the universe. Definitely.

VAN AVENDONK: This must have been a very important building for them,

and that's why they put so much effort in creating the building.

NARRATOR: Mainstream historians continue to debate

what purpose the temples at Hagar Qim might have served,

but a recent discovery

has led some to suggest that the site

has an otherworldly connection.

VAN AVENDONK: And this is known as the oracle room.

And the room has something special.

Look at the oval inside.

There is a very strong magnetic field inside that oval.

It's believed that women went in there

and they would have certain experiences,

hear sounds, see flashes.

It was contact with the gods.

The so-called "oracle chamber"

is believed to have been used

thousands of years ago

as a place where worshippers

communicated with their goddesses.

And it is here that a statue was discovered

which is believed to represent one of those deities.

VAN AVENDONK: In this room, behind the partition,

they found a number of statues.

Among them, the famous Venus of Malta,

which is a statue of the goddess.

NARRATOR: Mainstream researchers believe

the Venus of Malta is approximately 5,000 years old

and was used in fertility rituals.

But ancient astronaut theorists

suggest it served an even more profound purpose,

and it depicts an otherworldly being.

As evidence, they point to similar effigies

of Sansuna, the giant goddess

who was said to have built the temple of Ggantija.

CHILDRESS: Sansuna was this huge person, a giant,

and she was carrying

a half-human, half-giant, uh, child of hers.

So she's a giant like the extraterrestrials,

but she's mating with a human.

We also have the same story found in other areas as well.

NARRATOR: Curiously, similar accounts of giant beings

mating with humans can be found in the traditions

of ancient civilizations all around the world,

including those of Mesoamerica,

India,

Egypt,

and even in scriptures contained in the Holy Bible.

JONATHAN YOUNG: There are tales of giants in all corners of the Earth.

Various monumental structures have been attributed to giants.

But we have scriptures

that there were giants among men.

In the Bible, these giants are called the Nephilim.

ANDREW COLLINS: We first meet the Nephilim in the book of Genesis,

chapter six, and where it tells us that

the sons of God came upon the daughters of men

and that they beget these giant children

called the Nephilim.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that Malta was once home

to a race of extraterrestrial giants,

as ancient tradition suggest?

Perhaps further evidence can be found

by examining another of Malta's engineering masterpieces,

one that doesn't tower above ground, but tunnels...

deep beneath it.

NARRATOR: The island of Malta. 1902.

While constructing a new housing development

in the town of Paola,

a team of laborers makes a perplexing discovery.

They uncover the entrance

to a massive underground cavern system

that has been ingeniously carved out of the bedrock.

The accidental discovery is considered by many

to be the greatest engineering feat of the entire Neolithic Age

and comes to be known as the Hypogeum of Hal Saflieni.

COLLINS: Archaeologists realized

that this was a huge underground network

of chambers and corridors.

You enter down into it and there are a series

of three different levels.

All of them are interconnected.

NARRATOR: The three levels of the Hypogeum

descend more than 30 feet below ground.

The connecting chambers, halls and passageways

cover more than 5,000 square feet.

PICKNETT: This is a remarkable structure,

particularly when you bear in mind

they didn't have metal tools,

but it's-it's subterranean.

Hewn from solid rocks somehow,

and it's just mind-boggling.

NARRATOR: Based on pottery sample analysis

and examination of human remains,

mainstream archaeologists have dated

the Hypogeum to around 3700 BC,

and believe it was made by the same people

who built Malta's aboveground structures.

However, ancient astronaut theorists suggest

that just like with the megalithic temples,

there is evidence that the Hypogeum

could be more than 12,000 years old.

NEWMAN: There was this bull fresco that was painted in black.

It was actually recorded and written about

by various archaeologists up into the 1970s and '80s.

It has been noted that this bull fresco

resembles Paleolithic cave art

that goes back to 15,000, 20,000 years

in places such as Spain

and other European countries.

And this particular design,

which was made of black manganese oxide,

which we know was used in Paleolithic times,

was actually cleaned away and rubbed out, if you like,

by just one of the workers there in the 1980s.

So, these sites could be much older

than what the archaeologists are telling us.

NARRATOR: For reasons of preservation,

access to the Hypogeum

is currently restricted by the Maltese government.

So to learn more about the subterranean structure,

Giorgio Tsuokalos and Erich Von Däniken

travel to Malta's National Museum of Archaeology.

Good to see you again. How are you? Okay.

NARRATOR: There, they are once again, joined by local historian

Frans Van Avendonk

to examine a miniature scale model of the structure.

Has anybody, uh, figured out

why any of these chambers existed

and was there chambers that existed earlier,

or did all of this happen at once?

It started with a cave, and on top of that cave,

a surface temple was built.

And then they started expanding the cave

slowly, slowly downwards and also horizontally.

And they developed a maze of-of chambers

and of different sizes and different functions.

Look at this. You have a spiral staircase going down.

And I remember being there in the late '80s,

and if you stood back there and you whispered

and you had another person over here,

they could hear you perfectly.

So the acoustics in there are amazing.

Yes, there are very special acoustics.

Voices of a certain timbre are heard magnified,

but others, they are not audible in-inside other parts

of the underground structure.

Why they did it like that, we can't explain.

NARRATOR: In February 2014, archaeoacoustics researcher

Linda Eneix assembled a team

of audio, geology and archaeology experts

to test the acoustic properties of the Hypogeum oracle room.

LINDA ENEIX: Archaeoacoustics is a multidisciplinary study

to explore what was going on

with sound in ancient places and how people were using it.

I was very familiar with Malta's Hypogeum

and the sound effects that were quite peculiar in that place.

And when I learned about archaeoacoustics,

it sort of lit a fire.

NARRATOR: What Linda and her team discovered

while examining the Hypogeum was sensational.

ENEIX: The oracle chamber resonates

at several frequencies

that are very close to 110 hertz.

The number, uh, 110 hertz can be identified clearly with a note,

with A on the musical scale

at a lower octave within the baritone range.

NARRATOR: In 2013, Dr. Ian Cook, the associate director

of the UCLA Laboratory of Brain, Behavior, and Pharmacology,

conducted an experiment

to determine if the 110 hertz sound frequency

has any effect on the human brain.

ENEIX: His tests were on a group of volunteers.

At 110 hertz, he found something happened.

-There was a shift in brain activity. -(beeping)

COLLINS: That frequency will deaden certain brain patterns

and bring alive others.

And there is a sense of connection

with the otherworldly.

So it would seem that whoever created

the Hypogeum did this with the specific

reason of whoever went in there

could attain communion with the gods themself.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that the Hypogeum of Hal Saflieni

functioned as a place where humans could interact

with otherworldly beings thousands of years ago?

And was this subterranean structure connected to Malta's

ancient legends of giants that came down from the stars?

Perhaps further clues can be found

by examining an incredible discovery

that was made deep within the Hypogeum:

thousands of elongated skulls.

Five years after the discovery

of the Hypogeum of Hal Saflieni,

archaeologists excavating the subterranean chambers

begin to uncover human remains.

In total, they find an estimated 7,000 skeletons,

and reportedly, a great many of them

have skulls that are noticeably elongated.

NEWMAN: It was found that some of the skulls

were actually elongated.

They were almost like the head going backwards

rather than upwards.

Does that represent the fact

that they were doing head binding,

and they were pressed into shape

when these people were babies?

NARRATOR: Head binding, also known as artificial cranial deformation,

has been a practice of numerous primitive cultures

around the world, dating from prehistoric times

all the way into the 20th century.

It involves tightly wrapping the heads of infants

before their skulls fully harden,

resulting in an elongated shape.

TSOUKALOS: Archaeologists and anthropologists

agree that this was done

because of worshipping some type of deity.

A deity with an elongated skull?

That's interesting.

Where did they get this inspiration from?

So, I am suggesting that our ancestors

were visited by beings, flesh and blood beings,

that had actual elongated skulls

and that that was their natural appearance.

Our ancestors wanted to imitate their gods.

And so they did artificial head binding

so that the skull would grow

in this elongated fashion.

And this happened on all continents around the world,

including Europe and on the island of Malta.

NARRATOR: Who could these elongated skulls have belonged to?

Are they the result of head binding?

Or could they have belonged to beings

who are of otherworldly origin?

Today, only a handful of the elongated skulls

that were discovered in the Hypogeum still exist.

They now belong to Malta's National Museum of Archaeology,

where Giorgio and Erich

have been examining the model of the Hypogeum.

Although the skulls have been temporarily removed

for scientific study, Erich and Giorgio

are given rare access to a custom piece

of the museum's collection.

We previously had, um, an exhibit

of the original skulls,

-but at the moment it's being studied. -Mm-hmm.

But these are a perfect replica,

-that you can handle and examine. -Wow. Wow. Wow.

NARRATOR: The museum replica is modeled after

one of the actual elongated skulls

Giorgio had the opportunity to examine in person

on a previous trip to Malta in 2014.

Something is wrong here.

-Something is definitely wrong here. -Exactly.

-Look at this. You're missing the sagittal suture. -VON DÄNIKEN: The fontanelle.

NARRATOR: The sagittal suture connects to the sides

and roof of the cranium.

This suture is open when a person is born

and closes around the age of 35.

So I actually brought a picture

of what a human sagittal suture would look like,

which would go across here, and it is missing.

This is not, in our opinion,

the result of artificial head binding.

-No, no, no, no. -But this is authentic. It's real.

So the ones that do not have the sutures,

in my opinion, could be the extraterrestrials.

The conclusion is so easy.

The facts are facts that these skulls are not human.

NEWMAN: Do the skulls represent a genetic trait

possibly linked with giants

intermingling with the local population,

and the genetic alterations then occurred?

And so we're looking at possibly

almost like a different type of human existing in ancient Malta.

NARRATOR: Could the few elongated skulls

that have survived from the excavation of the Hypogeum

provide a clear link to extraterrestrial beings

that may have once inhabited Malta?

For Giorgio Tsoukalos and Erich Von Däniken,

there is one site on the islands

that may tell the story

of Malta's otherworldly past better than any other:

the megalithic temple Of Mnajdra.

NARRATOR: For more than 5,000 years,

Malta's megalithic temples

and incredible underground structures

have stood as testament

to a once great culture, of whom very little is known.

And some researchers believe

that this civilization existed on the islands

thousands of years earlier

than mainstream archaeologists suggest.

To further investigate this intriguing theory,

Giorgio Tsoukalos and Erich Von Däniken,

along with local historian Frans Van Avendonk,

have traveled to another one of Malta's

most mysterious ancient sites:

the temple of Mnajdra.

So what are we looking at here, with this corridor here?

It is believed this is one of the oldest

solar, uh, calendars in the world.

We find that that stone

at the winter solstice, the right edge is lit up.

Alternatively, this is the summer solstice stone.

So at sunrise, light will fall through

the entrance and touch upon this stone.

Now, if you look at it today,

the alignments are maybe different

than it was in the past, in the very, very far past.

But the oldest culture, roughly 4,000 or 5,000,

according to archaeology?

According to archaeology, this is around

3,300 before modern era.

VON DÄNIKEN: But then we have another solution,

which one of your local... Dr. Micallef came forward, too.

TSOUKALOS: Right. And Micallef calculated

that with one of these stones,

for it to line up correctly,

it would have to correspond to a date of 10,200 BC.

NARRATOR: In his 1992 paper, Mnajdra: A Calendar in Stone,

Maltese land surveyor and cartographer Paul Micallef

proposed that based on celestial alignments,

the temple of Mnajdra appears to have been built

far earlier than mainstream archaeologists claim.

TSOUKALOS: We know for a fact that the tilt of the Earth has changed,

but with modern-day computer technology,

we can sort of rewind the night sky

to the time as it was back then.

And he determined that was 10,200 BC,

when the light on both the winter

and the summer solstice

would actually line up exactly

on both ends of that slab.

So clearly we have another connection to the stars,

a celestial bridge, so to speak.

And, you know, Frans said this is the oldest

-part of the temple. -It is.

Which means far back, maybe 5,000 years or more,

these people were watching the stars.

They were looking for something.

They were hoping for something.

Maybe they were waiting for the return of the gods.

The old question remains: which gods?

Right.

NARRATOR: While excavations of ancient sites

continue throughout Malta,

many scholars agree that the archaeological wonders

found both above ground and below

provide an unparalleled glimpse

into the planet's earliest human societies.

And as far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,

Malta holds the secrets of a profound past

that we have only begun to uncover.

HENRY: When you put all the pieces together

of what we see in these temples on Malta,

the engineering knowledge that was required,

the astronomical knowledge that's encoded within them,

and you realize you're dealing with a primitive time,

someone had to have brought it from somewhere.

Who were these beings?

If we can ultimately answer this question,

it's going to lead to a revelation of perhaps

some of the greatest mysteries of all of human history.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that Malta was once home to giant beings

who were part human and part extraterrestrial?

And might the most extraordinary evidence of all

lie hidden in some ancient underground chamber

still waiting to be discovered?

Perhaps the latest excavations on Malta

will lead to the profound revelation

that the island's megalithic temples

serve not as monuments to the gods

but to our alien origins.

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