Original subtitles

NARRATOR: In the jungles of Central America,

the Maya people thrived for more than 2,000 years.

The Mayans were very, very sophisticated.

They built huge pyramid cities.

They created the only writing system in all of the Americas.

NARRATOR: The Maya possessed knowledge that defies explanation.

How did they understand the long, vast orbits

of the Earth through the Milky Way galaxy?

NARRATOR: And new evidence has revealed

a civilization more extraordinary

and more ancient than we ever imagined.

We have discovered a lost chapter of human history.

NARRATOR: But could the Maya's greatest secret

involve contact with visitors from beyond Earth?

WILLIAM HENRY: The early Maya themselves said we were taught by

extraterrestrial beings.

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.

Throughout Central America stand the ruins of the Maya,

considered by many to be the greatest civilization

in the history of the Americas.

While archaeologists and historians have been

studying this ancient culture for over four centuries,

there are still many questions left to answer

since much of the Maya's history is still hidden

within the jungles of Mexico and Guatemala.

The roots of the Maya are very obscure,

but traditional Maya scholarship says

that historically you have

the more primitive pre-Classical Maya

and then you've got the Classical Maya,

who are more advanced.

NARRATOR: For centuries,

scholars considered the height of the Maya civilization

to be during the Classic era,

between roughly 250 and 900 AD.

Before this was the pre-Classic era,

that began around 2,000 BC

and was believed to be made up of nomadic people

who lived in simple dwellings.

There was a thinking that the Classic period

was really where they started building cities.

But then in the '60s and '70s,

as we got deeper into the jungle,

we realized there were older cities

that were as big, and in some cases, bigger

than the Classic ones.

NARRATOR: Today, archaeologists believe

that the Maya built cities throughout Central America

and thrived as a civilization for more than 2,000 years.

They were responsible for some of the most impressive

architecture in the entire North American continent,

and this is just one of their many accomplishments.

The Maya really stand out among ancient civilizations

in terms of their achievements.

They created the only writing system

we know in all of the Americas.

And through that writing system, they were able to conduct

very scientific investigations,

and they became masters of mathematics and astronomy.

The Maya were arguably the ancient world's

best astronomers, even excelling the Greeks.

Many of the Maya sites

all through the Yucatan, Guatemala, Belize,

and throughout Mexico are kind of astronomically aligned.

Now, they even have observatories

as parts of the site,

the most famous being, really, at Palenque

and at Chich�n Itza, for instance,

where they have literally places

where they would observe the stars.

NARRATOR: Why the Maya were so preoccupied

with tracking the stars remains a mystery.

But scholars agree that they possessed

a remarkably advanced understanding of astronomy,

which is perhaps most evident

within their highly sophisticated

and complex calendar system.

Librarian Ernst F�rstemann uses his extensive knowledge

of mathematics to decipher the dots and symbols

of a 12th-century Maya text known as the Dresden Codex.

In doing so,

he unlocks the secrets of the Maya calendar.

The Maya have what's widely understood

as the most sophisticated ancient calendar ever made.

It involves so many different cycles.

It's so sophisticated, in fact,

that early scholars thought that the Maya were,

as they called, esoteric time worshipers.

The Maya are very interested in the cycles of life.

So a lot of their calendars were created

to track those cycles and look for harmonies between cycles

to better harmonize themselves with the natural world.

ANDREW COLLINS: The long count calendar of the Maya

lasted for 5,125 years.

It was backdated to have begun in 3114 BC,

which meant that it actually ended

on December 21, 2012.

And many of us will remember how it was believed

that there was gonna be a time of great transformation,

possibly the end of the world.

NARRATOR: In 2012,

over a thousand years

after the fall of the Maya civilization,

their calendar became known to people all around the world.

Many believed that the final date on the calendar

was intended to mark an apocalyptic event.

BARNHART: The idea that the Maya predicted the end of the world was really

just a Western misunderstanding of how their calendar works

and what they were using their calendar for.

Westerners see time as a line,

it goes back into the past and forward into the future,

and we're the point in the middle.

The Maya saw time as a cycle that kept going

like the hands of a clock.

When it hit 12, it didn't just explode,

it just went back around for another loop.

So Maya calendar systems were set up

to be never-ending cycles.

NARRATOR: While the Maya were exceptional at tracking time

and observing the heavens,

archaeologists were astounded

when they discovered that this ancient culture

was tracking what is known in astronomy as precession.

Precession is the wobbling of the Earth on its axis

which changes the location of constellations in the night sky.

It's actually a huge cycle that lasts 26,000 years.

And the Maya, without a shadow of a doubt,

were calculating precession.

They were able to say,

back in the distant past,

this planet would've been in that constellation.

NARRATOR: Scholars remain mystified

as to how the Maya came to have such an advanced understanding

of astronomy, mathematics and timekeeping,

and answers have been difficult to come by,

since a large portion of the Maya's writing and artifacts

have been lost or destroyed over the centuries.

There was a big cultural shift between about 900 and 1200 AD,

and one of the prevailing theories

about the end of Maya civilization was that

basically they taxed their resources,

that they created an unstable landscape

that then lent itself to landslides, to fires,

to floods,

and that can lead to societal collapse.

NARRATOR: In the 16 century, Spanish conquistadors arrived

in the Maya cities of the Yucat�n Peninsula.

They found the sites sparsely populated or even abandoned,

with many structures already in ruins.

And while Spanish colonizers were the first Europeans

to record their accounts of the Maya culture,

they were also responsible for destroying

much of the Maya's own history.

When the Spanish showed up,

they wanted to convert them to Christianity.

Step one in that process

is dividing them from their traditional wisdoms.

And those were written in the books.

So, the Spanish on purpose burned

every document they could find.

They destroyed as much as they could.

Today we have four surviving books that

at least scholarship has been able to study and know about.

There are probably more, almost certainly,

hiding in the mountains in Guatemala.

And the Maya, for good reason, hide them.

NARRATOR: Have the secrets of the Maya

and how they built such an advanced civilization

more than a thousand years ago been lost forever?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest

there are still answers to be found

in the Maya texts that have survived,

and their accounts of powerful beings

who came down from the sky.

NARRATOR: The Getty Museum opens an exhibition

displaying the oldest book ever discovered in the Americas,

called the Maya Codex of Mexico.

Like other Maya codices, the roughly 900-year-old text

consists of illustrations and hieroglyphs

written on tree bark pages

that were bound together like a book.

DAVID CHILDRESS: The Mayans had hundreds, thousands of codexes that were

describing the Mayan history and the gods

and everything that they wanted to write down.

And four Mayan codices

are known to exist and to have survived.

NARRATOR: In addition to these manuscripts,

archaeologists have found Maya hieroglyphs

carved on temples that date to as early as

the third century BC.

But since the great majority of the Maya codices

have been lost or destroyed,

scholars have only recently begun to decipher

the ancient writing system.

It's been a long process to

translate Maya hieroglyphs,

and we're not done.

Experts estimate we've got

maybe 80% of it translated,

and there are still glyphs that elude us.

DAVID CHEETHAM: About 70 years ago, Maya archaeologists

started to unravel the Maya hieroglyphic world,

and by the '70s, the '80s,

more and more of the language

was understood in terms of

its interface with the glyphs.

NARRATOR: As scholars slowly learned how to read Maya hieroglyphs,

they discovered the codices contain

richly illustrated astronomical charts,

divination tables

and instructions for religious ceremonies.

But the most important story found in the codices

is a historical record known as the Popol Vuh.

Their creation story is called Popol Vuh.

And its opening chapters outlined that the gods,

which they call the makers and modelers,

set up the world.

But the story really centers around

two boys, a pair of twins

they call the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Balanque.

And they battle with the lords of death,

and they make the world safe

for creation, us, to occur.

NARRATOR: According to the story, after the Hero Twins

have prepared the Earth for humanity,

they are followed by a larger pantheon of gods.

TSOUKALOS: Their beginning of creation, and they have a date for it,

is the 11th of August,

3114 BC.

The Popol Vuh says that on that day,

the road of the stars descended from the sky,

and the gods, 13 of them,

descended from the heavens down to Earth

and imparted knowledge

to the local population.

NARRATOR: While researchers have documented more than

250 Maya gods,

this original pantheon of 13 beings

taught the ancient Maya agriculture, mathematics

and astronomy.

The most prominent of all the Maya gods

described in the Popol Vuh

is the flying serpent Kukulkan.

Lofty thinking and knowledge

was a gift from Kukulkan,

who gave them sophistication,

the art of speech, also mathematics.

Kukulkan was the second deity

in the Maya pantheon.

And the name means both "wind" and "giver."

You find Kukulkan connected with

a lot of the happenings in the sky,

whether it's, you know, thunder, lightning,

storms, rain.

And his appearance was as a serpent,

which is a very common

symbol for wisdom.

NARRATOR: What ancient astronaut theorists find particularly intriguing

about Kukulkan is that this god

is not always depicted as a flying serpent,

but is sometimes shown as a humanoid face

emerging from the serpent's mouth.

HENRY: In Mayan iconography,

Kukulkan is shown as a serpentine being

with a humanoid head that flies through the sky.

And it makes you wonder what is going on here?

It's very possible that

it's some sort of a craft that is interpreted

as a feathered serpent

and a god being emerges from that craft

and is a culture bearer.

TSOUKALOS: Kukulkan looks like a snake shooting across the sky.

If you look at a modern-day plane,

that looks like a flying snake if you don't have

the vocabulary with which to describe

the fuselage and the wings, for example.

So, of course, we have stories of flying snakes

because those were the best terms

with which to describe what they witnessed.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that the gods

described in the Maya writings were otherworldly visitors

witnessed by their earliest ancestors,

as ancient astronaut theorists suggest?

The first known Maya codices

containing the Popol Vuh

date to the 16th century AD.

But archaeologists have clearly identified figures

from the Popol Vuh featured on Maya temples

that are hundreds of years older,

and ancient astronaut theorists suggest

they provide further evidence of an extraterrestrial influence.

Like the carvings found at

the ruins of Quirigua in Guatemala.

TSOUKALOS: What's interesting is that

often repeated motif

of what seems to be people in helmets.

In Quirigua, Guatemala,

there is this helmeted person

sitting in what seems very reminiscent of

something technological in nature,

what looks to be some type of a spacecraft.

NARRATOR: Perhaps the most extraordinary Maya depiction

of a being that descended from the heavens

can be found on a pyramid

in the ancient city of Chich�n Itza.

ERICH VON D�NIKEN: The Maya said the guardians of the sky descended.

And they showed it in their temples.

For example, the temple of Chich�n Itza,

every year on March 21st,

you can see the descending of god Kukulkan,

the feathered serpent coming down.

The sun goes up,

and because of the astronomical orientation,

because of the steps,

you see a triangle shadow going down the step,

the step exactly in the center of the pyramid.

CHILDRESS: These discoveries support

the Mayan legends of how the god Itzamna

came down and, and gave knowledge of writing and books,

while the feathered serpent Kukulkan came

and he gave them knowledge of astronomy and agriculture.

It would seem that the core Mayan knowledge

came from these gods

who were probably extraterrestrials.

NARRATOR: Could it be that stories of the Popol Vuh

aren't fictional mythology,

but are, in fact, recorded history of

ancient Maya interaction

with beings who descended from the sky?

Perhaps further clues can be found by

examining a Maya city in Honduras

that was literally built

to reflect the cosmos.

NARRATOR: This ancient site,

located deep in the jungle,

served as one of the most important city centers

of the Maya civilization.

At the peak of its power in the seventh century AD,

the kingdom of Copan had a population of at least

20,000 people and covered an area

of over 100 square miles.

Copan is a Classic Maya city

that sits at the far eastern edge of the Maya world.

Most of the Maya world is built out of limestone,

and a lot of those limestone monuments

have now melted.

But Copan's sculpture, because it's in volcanic tuff,

is beautiful.

It's deep relief and still very visible.

DAVID SEDAT: The city of Copan is probably one of the longest known

and most investigated Maya city today.

These fantastic carved stones of Copan

evoke the imagination and the mystery of this place.

It was called the Athens of the Maya world.

NARRATOR: Among the most remarkable carvings discovered at Copan

are the 15 stone statues known as "stelae"

that connect the city's ancient rulers with the gods.

CHEETHAM: The most fantastic part of Copan is

the carved monuments which are carved in the round.

They're not what we call plano-convex

like a slab with a, you know,

a low-relief carving.

These are carved in a sort of Michelangelo way

in the round, and they're absolutely fantastic.

NARRATOR: The most well-known of Copan's stelae

were built during the 36-year reign

of the ruler Waxaklajuun Ub'aah K'awiil,

better known by the nickname "18 Rabbit."

SEDAT: On one of the stelae of Copan,

18 Rabbit portrayed himself

as the foremost patron god of Copan,

the all-encompassing god K'intay Ahau.

And on the stelae,

he basically gives a dissertation on the cosmos.

TSOUKALOS: For all intents and purposes,

18 Rabbit is depicted like modern-day astronauts.

You see tubes, you see weird boxes,

you see weird canisters and tanks.

You see boots.

It's stuff that looks more technological in origin.

And what's fascinating is that in Tikal, in Guatemala,

one of the stelae shows this being

with a tube that comes straight down in the front

and then it goes to the left

and it culminates in some sort of a tank.

It all looks very technological in origin.

CHILDRESS: It would seem that these gods

of the ancient Maya

were real physical beings,

and interacting with the Mayans, giving them knowledge,

and were really instrumental in creating

this advanced culture in Central America.

NARRATOR: Do the incredible ruins of Copan serve to commemorate

the Maya's interactions with extraterrestrials?

As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,

the answer is a resounding yes.

And they suggest further evidence can be found

by examining the artwork at another famous Maya site

400 miles to the northwest.

Under a pyramid called the Temple of Inscriptions

at the ruins of Palenque,

archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier

discovers a mysterious underground stairway

obstructed with large stones.

Over the next three years,

Ruz and his team carefully clear the stairwell

consisting of 71 steps.

When the door at the base of the stairwell is finally opened,

they encounter room after room of skeletons and artifacts.

And in the final room, they find the tomb

of King K'inich Janaab' Pakal.

One of the best-known and famous Maya ahau

or "royal lord,"

was Pakal, who ruled in the seventh century AD.

And he ruled for 68 years at this site,

thus making him the longest-lived ruler

in the Americas that we know of.

NARRATOR: While Pakal became

a famous leader during his lifetime,

today he remains one of the most well-known Maya kings

because of the magnificence of his tomb and sarcophagus.

The tomb of Pakal is one of the most amazing pieces

of Maya art that we've ever found.

On the top of the lid is a very elaborate carving

that we believe is a depiction of Pakal

falling into the underworld upon his death.

NARRATOR: Although many historians and archaeologists

interpret the carving on Pakal's lid

as the king's descent into the underworld,

ancient astronaut theorists suggest

it depicts a very different type of journey.

The sarcophagus of Lord Pakal forever will remain

one of the smoking guns of the ancient astronaut theory.

He is in a reclining position.

He has a breathing apparatus attached to his nose.

His hands are manipulating some buttons.

And his feet are on pedals.

It looks as if Pakal is lifting off into space

inside some type of a rocket vehicle.

NARRATOR: As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,

the idea that King Pakal's sarcophagus lid

depicts a journey to space is supported by Maya writing

that surrounds the iconic carving.

TSOUKALOS: Those Maya glyphs say

that this is King Pakal's journey to Xibalba.

"Xibalba" means "underworld."

Well, archaeologists, about 15 years ago,

revisited the term "Xibalba" and concluded

that, actually, "Xibalba" can also be translated

as "Milky Way."

And all of a sudden, this depiction makes sense

because what we have here is a representation

of King Pakal on his journey to the Milky Way.

NARRATOR: Could it be that the carving

on King Pakal's sarcophagus

depicts the cockpit of a spacecraft?

Do the artifacts of Palenque and Copan

support the notion that the Maya did not just write stories

about gods who came down from the sky

but had real encounters with otherworldly visitors?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,

and suggest further evidence can be found

at the oldest Maya site ever discovered.

A site that, until the 20th century,

had remained hidden in the jungles of Guatemala

for more than 1,000 years.

NARRATOR: The Mirador Basin,

northern Guatemala, 1978.

A team of American archaeologists

launches a project to excavate a mysterious ancient site

that has been discovered deep in the jungle.

Called El Mirador, it features two gigantic pyramids

now known as El Tigre and La Danta.

BARNHART: The Mirador Basin is very deep in the jungle.

You can fly a plane over it,

but you don't really see anything.

Everything is covered in trees.

So, we assumed,

if humans were ever in there,

they weren't building anything of substance.

But as we got in on the ground and we could see

from the bottom of the trees instead of on the top,

we realized that a lot of the things

we mistaked for mountains were actually gigantic pyramids.

NARRATOR: Artwork carved on the pyramids

at El Mirador identified them as belonging to the Maya.

La Danta, the bigger of the two, is larger in volume

than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

CHEETHAM: La Danta, it's not just a pyramid,

it's a pyramid with pyramids on top of it.

I mean, this is a massive structure

that's rivaling or even bigger

than any other known Maya temple complex.

NARRATOR: Researchers for the Mirador Archaeological Project,

which ran from 1978 to 1983,

were astonished to find

such massive Maya structures

in this remote jungle area.

And it begged the question,

could this be one of the oldest Maya sites ever discovered,

built at a time when the environment was more hospitable?

The answer would be provided by archaeologist Richard Hansen,

who was in charge of the Tigre Complex

in the western sector of the site.

TSOUKALOS: In March of 1979,

Richard Hansen was excavating a room within a structure

called the Jaguar Paw Temple.

At the time, these structures were understood

to be from what they call the Classic Maya period,

which dates from about 250 AD to 900 AD.

And that's because archaeologists didn't think

the Maya were capable of building

large structures like this before that time.

But Hansen came upon ceramic artifacts

that he immediately recognized as Chicanel,

which means that these are artifacts from around 200 BC.

And, of course, he was shocked.

Richard Hansen himself said that he suddenly realized

the whole evolutionary model for the Maya was wrong.

And in that moment, he was the only person

in the world who knew it.

NARRATOR: Since Hansen's discovery,

other scientific data has revealed

that El Mirador dates to at least 600 BC,

and could be even older.

This is long before the Classic Maya era,

which is the period when most archaeologists had believed

the Maya started building monumental structures.

The debate on how to subdivide Maya history

has actually gone on for as long as we've been studying the Maya.

But for decades,

there was an understanding

that, before the Classic period,

they had more humble,

village-style living.

CHEETHAM: It's in the last 50 years or so,

including information from places like El Mirador,

that we have, as archaeologists, come to both understand

and appreciate the fact that a great civilization

actually predates the Classic period.

NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists,

the discoveries at El Mirador support the idea

that the Maya stories of sky gods are, in fact,

historical accounts of extraterrestrial visitation.

HENRY: The Maya said that they were in contact

with the gods and that they were given this knowledge

directly by these extraterrestrial beings.

And what we have discovered is the pyramids

that were constructed, likely, to honor

these otherworldly beings.

NARRATOR: In 2003, 24 years

after his first incredible discovery at El Mirador,

Dr. Richard Hansen got the opportunity

to conduct a survey of a much larger area of the basin

using a sophisticated remote sensing method called lidar.

Lidar is a laser-imaging detection and ranging device.

It uses light in the same way a radar uses radio

for detection and ranging.

JUAN CARLOS FERNANDEZ-DIAZ: A compact system can be flown

on a small airplane.

In four to five hours,

we can map 200 square kilometers

at really high resolution,

something that will take years or decades

for a ground crew to do using traditional techniques.

NARRATOR: Dr. Hansen spent nearly two decades

performing his lidar survey and what he uncovered was

that the pyramids of El Tigre and La Danta provide

only a small glimpse

of what is hidden in the Mirador jungle.

NARRATOR: 19 years into the vast lidar study

of the Mirador Basin, Dr. Richard Hansen

and his archaeological team announce their findings.

Incredibly, lidar surveys covering

1.6 million acres of the jungle

have revealed nearly 1,000 ancient Maya settlements

including houses, palaces

and colossal pyramids.

And they are believed to date back

at least 3,000 years--

long before the height of the Maya civilization.

CHEETHAM: These are some of the largest buildings

that were ever made by the Maya.

Some of these buildings include

things like ball courts,

temple structures, palace structures,

residential compounds, plaza groups.

It boggles the mind.

TAYLOR: What's amazing is we've found what seems to be

an entire civilization

that's rival of the Egyptian civilization

that the Mayans had built

a long time ago

we never knew were there.

There are pyramids there

that rival the pyramids in Egypt.

NARRATOR: The results of the lidar study established the pre-Classic Maya

as being just as advanced

as other great early civilizations

like the Egyptians

and the Greeks.

And archaeologists were astounded

by how much the Maya built.

The data revealed that hidden within the jungles

of the Mirador Basin

are more than 110,000 ancient structures.

Archaeologists realize

that this area was at one time

densely populated.

And they built huge pyramid cities.

There were hundreds of thousands,

if not even millions of people living there.

FERNANDEZ-DIAZ: It's really awesome when we can go

and find a city that's unknown to modern science.

I mean, that's incredible.

And for me, some of the,

like, really cool things,

it's actually being able

to see features that remind us that the Maya were

just like you and I.

And being able to see stuff like a market.

I mean, we think about pyramids

and, like, temples and stuff like that,

but finding some structures

that archaeologists interpret to be a market

where people came from different places

to exchange goods and services, that's amazing.

NARRATOR: Dr. Hansen's lidar survey

produced one incredible revelation after another.

But for archaeologists, the most astonishing of all

was an elaborate network of causeways

or elevated roads.

HENRY: El Mirador had these elevated causeways--

superhighways is the way

the archaeologists described them--

and they were actually also covered with white plaster

so that they would reflect the light of the moon

so that then they could travel during the-the nighttime hours.

These ancient Maya causeways are considered

more sophisticated than those of other civilizations

of the time, like the Greeks and Romans

due to the fact that they were elevated over many miles.

FERNANDEZ-DIAZ: The longest causeway that we know

is over a hundred kilometers long.

The largest portion of the causeway connects

the site of Mirador to other sites.

Some of these causeways were the size

of a four-lane highway.

They are probably between two and five meters in elevation

with relationship to the lowlands.

So it was a massive undertaking.

Name another city in 1000 BC

that had elevated roadways

that are as wide as a four-lane highway.

There is none.

NARRATOR: The discoveries that continue to be made in the Mirador Basin

are completely upending our understanding of the Maya,

and present new questions

as to how this sophisticated culture

emerged seemingly out of nowhere more than 3,000 years ago.

What we have discovered right there

is a lost chapter

of human history.

Because they now determined

that even a thousand years before the Classical Maya period

they had an entire network of roads

with buildings, with structures.

I mean, my mind is blown

because this is a complete rewriting of Maya history.

HENRY: We have a whole new scenario here.

The evolutionary theory of how the Maya came along

is wrong.

It's completely upset by this discovery.

NARRATOR: How is it that the early Maya developed

sophisticated cities and structures

at a time when it is thought

the entire North American continent was

populated by primitive nomadic people?

Could it be that the Maya creation story is, in fact,

a historical account of extraterrestrial visitation?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes and suggest

further evidence can be found

by examining the Maya's connection

with the Pleiades star cluster.

NARRATOR: Located over 400 light-years from Earth,

near the constellation of Taurus,

is a star cluster known as the Pleiades.

It is commonly recognized as seven bright stars

referred to as the Seven Sisters.

But there are, in fact, around 3,000 stars

in the Pleiades star cluster.

This area of the night sky held great significance

for the Maya civilization.

COLLINS: The Maya themselves associate

the celestial beings that had contact

with their own ancestors with the Pleiades constellation.

In more recent years,

this has come through the work

and the teachings

of a writer and researcher

by the name of Jos� Arg�elles,

who during the 1970s

spent a long time in the Maya lands,

having his own experiences

talking to the Maya themselves,

and coming to the conclusion

that the founders of the Mayan civilization were,

in fact, star beings that had come down in the distant past.

That had given the Maya the knowledge and wisdom

to create the foundations of their civilization.

NARRATOR: Could it be that the Maya identify

the Pleiades as the home of the gods

because this was told to their ancestors

by extraterrestrial visitors?

As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,

that question was answered by the recent

lidar studies at El Mirador.

Because what they revealed is that, incredibly,

the ancient structures of El Mirador

appear to have been intentionally positioned

to mirror the seven brightest stars of the Pleiades.

Some archaeologists have suggested that El Mirador is

aligned with the Pleiades

and that the pyramids and other structures there

are actually recreating the Pleiades star system

on the grounds in the El Mirador basin.

TSOUKALOS: In my opinion, those structures are

calling cards of our visitors long ago.

NARRATOR: Does the layout of El Mirador provide the ultimate proof

that Maya society was the product

of extraterrestrial intervention?

While ancient astronaut theorists find

this possibility intriguing,

they believe even more profound discoveries

are yet to be made.

BARNHART: The things that we've actually been able to excavate,

it's just a fraction,

a sub-percent of what's actually

out there to see.

I can say with confidence that we have dug

less than one percent of the Maya world.

Even in cities we know well, like Palenque for example,

I made a map of Palenque.

I mapped almost 1,500 buildings.

We've excavated 33.

And that's a well-known city.

We have barely begun to scratch

the surface of what's still remaining

of ancient Maya society.

CHEETHAM: As a tourist or an archaeologist going

into the Maya lowland,

it's quite remarkable to see

pyramids sticking out of the canopy of the jungle.

And you're tempted to think,

"Well, wow, there must be thousands of sites

that are remaining to be discovered."

HENRY: When we look at what is happening in Maya country now,

it's a resurgence of a civilization long lost,

but that is truly among the most magnificent

in all human history.

The modern Maya have to be

incredibly proud of this.

This is their lineage.

This is their ancestors

that built these magnificent cities

that are now being unveiled and uncovered.

I think what we're gonna be finding here is

some incredible new discoveries among the Maya.

And it's ultimately gonna point to the Pleiades

and extraterrestrials as the ones that were

the teachers of this civilization.

NARRATOR: Could the lost cities of the Mirador Basin--

that archaeologists are only now beginning to explore--

hold incredible new evidence about,

not only the Maya

but the origins of human civilization?

Are the jungles of Central America hiding

the ultimate proof of ancient alien visitation?

Perhaps as we continue to unravel

the mysteries of the Maya,

we will learn that their stories of sky gods are,

in fact, historical accounts

of our extraterrestrial past.

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