Ancient Aliens s06e08 Episode Script
Mysterious Relics
A mysterious cloth bearing a divine image.
It represents the supernatural transformation of a human.
Gold hats worn by strange, mystical beings.
The wearing of a golden hat would tend to amplify the signal that you were getting from higher-up beings.
And powerful stones believed to have otherworldly origins.
It is said that every wish was granted.
Could these mysterious objects simply be the targets of human imagination? Or are they evidence of something even more profound? We have to wonder if possibly all of these metallic books aren't part of some extraterrestrial library.
Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings.
What if it were true? Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history? And if so, might the evidence be found in the world's most mysterious relics? The White House, February 11, 2013.
President Barack Obama presents a Medal of Honor to Army Staff Sergeant Clinton Romesha for his courageous actions during the deadly battle of Kamdesh in Afghanistan.
These 53 Americans were surrounded by more than 300 Taliban fighters.
If you seek a measure of that day, you need to look no further than the medals and ribbons that grace their chests.
This tradition of honoring brave soldiers by decorating their chest with medals dates back to at least the second century B.
C.
, when the ancient Roman military used sculpted discs of metal to reward superior acts of service.
But why? What is it about the properties of metal that make them chosen objects of adornment and commemoration? The tradition of adorning people with metal really goes back thousands of years.
In the case of the Bible, we have stories about how the priests actually had to wear certain metals before they were able to enter the Holy of Holies and make contact with the divine.
Today, we are confronted with symbolism.
Our heroes are given pins and medals because somehow we set them apart as great people who somehow have superseded the human race, but in the past, this was to be taken literally.
Do certain metals actually enhance mankind's ability to connect with divine, or some would say, extraterrestrial forces? And is this the reason why gold, platinum and silver jewelry, along with other metal adornments and relics, have been so prized throughout human history? Definitely the belief is that we hold the relic there, because the relic is linked either to a deity or to something magical.
Relics can be any number of things.
Pieces of wood, bits of statues, literally anything can be a relic if it has been kind of invested with a divine power.
And that means you have a piece of the god, and therefore a piece of the god's power with you.
It seems to have always been the case with human beings that they've wanted to possess items which they thought were, uh, either from the gods, to do with the gods, or in some way associated with the gods.
Berlin, Germany, 1996.
The Museum of Prehistory and Early History acquires a glittering artifact from an anonymous Swiss collector.
A tall, cone-shaped hat crafted from a thin sheet of pure gold, and embellished with dozens of sun and moon symbols.
It is one of four that have been unearthed at various sites throughout Europe, and is believed by historians to date back as far as 1000 B.
C.
What is so important about them is that they indicate that there was a common culture.
The images on them represent astronomy, the study of the stars.
They also have complicated mathematical implications, suggesting a level of philosophical development that's very advanced for what we thought was available at that time.
German researchers carefully studied the symbols on the golden hat, and concluded they represent a complex mathematical table.
One that can accurately calculate the long-term cycles of the sun and the moon.
But how could such ancient people have been able to make such advanced and highly sophisticated astronomical predictions? The suggestion is that they belonged to what might be referred to as oracles, people that could fall into an altered state and prophesize.
Could come up with statements relating to the future or otherworldly situations.
Though most mainstream scholars believe these mysterious hats were worn by king-priests during religious ceremonies, ancient astronaut theorists have another, even more astounding theory.
The golden hats are kind of interesting, because if gold is something that actually enhances your connection with energies and higher-up celestial beings, then the wearing of a golden hat, especially in a conical shape, would tend to amplify the signal that you were getting from on high.
So, it seems to me that ancient cultures logically would build them to get connected with the gods who had perhaps left them behind and gone back to their celestial birthplace.
In the case of the golden hats, what we're seeing there is that all of this technology seems to have been part of a larger framework, whereby once again it seems this is a civilization which made contact with the gods.
But we just don't know who would have made these or why, and they're so incredibly unusual and tall.
Perhaps the extraterrestrial gods were wearing some kind of conical hat like this.
Could the so-called king-priests of the ancient past have been otherworldly visitors, utilizing metal's unique properties? If so, might additional evidence be found of other ancient peoples using metal relics for advanced, even metaphysical purposes? Khirbet Qumran, Israel, 1952.
Hidden deep in a cave on the desert cliffs, archaeologists discover a mysterious written on a sheet of copper.
Known as the Copper Scroll, this mysterious relic was found at the same site as the ancient religious writings known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
All the Dead Sea Scrolls that have been found were written on either, uh, leather or papyrus.
The Copper Scroll is the only one made of copper.
You got to keep in mind, copper was valuable, and to hammer out a whole scroll would take a lot of time and a lot of technique, - so it has to be very important.
- Scholars examining the language on the Copper Scroll agree it is unlike anything found in other texts of the period.
The script that's on it is-is a little different, but it's not just in Hebrew; it's in or Aramaic.
It also has Greek, uh, letters on it.
So it's quite peculiar.
The thing that makes the Copper Scroll so fascinating is that it mentions hidden treasures.
The Copper Scroll lists and around that area that buried treasure is located.
Maybe the key is, in the 64th location, it says there's another copper scroll that will help explain the rest of it.
Because we haven't found the treasure yet, I somehow suspect there could be another code within this treasure map, a code within a code.
What is the origin of the mysterious Copper Scroll? And at is its true purpose? Mainstream scholars and archaeologists have been puzzled by these questions for more than half a century.
Maybe the Copper Scroll is missing a piece.
Many times with treasure maps, you need a second piece in order to complete the entire map, so who knows if there's a piece missing? It seems to be an oddball artifact.
And it's written in metal.
And you have now the stories of other ancient books supposedly written in sheets of gold.
Joseph Smith, Jr.
, who began the-the Mormon Church, he claimed also to have been shown gold-plated books.
So we have to wonder if possibly all of these metallic books written in copper or gold plates aren't part of some extraterrestrial library.
Could the mysterious Copper Scroll have extraterrestrial origins? And is the fact that it is made of copper evidence of a connection between metal objects and otherworldly beings? yes and believe further proofsay can be found by examining the similarly strange properties attributed to other mysterious relics found all over the world.
Bulgaria's Black Sea Coast.
July 2010.
Here, in the ruins of a medieval church on St.
Ivan Island, six small human bone fragments are discovered inside a marble hagus.
Through radiocarbon dating and DNA testing of one knucklebone, scientists conclude that the bones are from the first century A.
D.
But what is even more incredible is the belief by many that the bones are actually those of St.
John the Baptist.
In Christianity, John the Baptist is specifically important because he is known as the forerunner, the precursor, the one who comes before the Messiah.
And in the stories of John the Baptist, he becomes extremely important for Christians because he announces that a greater messiah is coming after him.
And the legends around John's bones were always legends of extreme power.
John was a prophet.
Now on tour in churches throughout Bulgaria, tens of thousands of the faithful come to visit, pray and even worship these tiny bone fragments.
But why? What is it about ancient bones even those thought to have belonged to a saint that compel people to come and visit them? Could it be they possess some mystical or otherworldly power? The idea of saints' bones and relics having power is something that goes back to the very early days of Christianity.
And certainly in the latter part of the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, they became very big business.
If you had saints' relics in your church or in your cathedral, you could bring in a lot of pilgrims who would also There was a strong belief by the nobility and the royalty that the bones of these saints actually did contain some kind of power.
Humans always want to worship their celebrities, their kings.
Whatever was linked with mysteries, humans worshipped it.
So, in antiquity, it entered already into altars.
When a high priest died, part of his body, part of his bones, was sometimes separated, brought to different countries.
And everyone worshipped the bone in an altar.
That's still happening in Christianity.
Kushinagar, India.
Siddhartha Gautama, the great spiritual teacher upon whom Buddhism is founded, dies.
According to legend, after Buddha was cremated, several small pieces of his body remained intact and were retrieved from the ashes.
After his cremation, the ashes were fought over by a lot of his disciples.
And finally, they resolved to the problem by dividing, um, them into eight different parts.
When the Buddha's ashes were divided and there's a claim that there's a tooth found there it was considered it was very valuable.
Right away, when the tooth was given to a king, the relic the tooth relic itself became associated with the power of kingship.
And it is believed that the king who possesses the tooth will be able to rule properly and there will be peace and prosperity in his kingdom.
Could such a tiny but tangible relic from the mouth of the dead Buddha really have such power? Is a physical link to a holy and venerated leader really a means of connecting to the afterlife and, even more profoundly, some divine life force? The worship of relics, actually, is as old as the Buddhist religion itself and many other religions, too.
The Buddha himself approves of the worship of relics because he believes that his followers need something very concrete to remind them of his presence and his teachings.
The relics are supposed to be actually the essence of the saints.
So, in a way, the relics are the saints themselves, so they have the powers of the saints.
The importance here is why is it that objects like this can gain such an incredible spiritual value? And, quite clearly, it's to do with the-the psychology of the importance of-of individuals like the Buddha, who is seen to be personifications of God or the gods themselves and that just to own this or to have some part of it imbues you with the same power as the gods themselves.
So you have to wonder just why these relics are so important.
We give them power, these bones and these teeth.
But what they areat least in a scientific manner is a piece of DNA from the Buddha himself.
I think they knew that in a far future, the gods, the extraterrestrials, would return again.
And some of these gods may have said to one of his darlings on planet Earth, "If we find your body or your cells are still existing, then we are able to reconstruct your body.
" Cloning dead saints using DNA from their relics? Could this incredible notion be one of the reasons why bone fragments and other human remains have been so prized throughout the centuries? And might this now very real scientific possibility be connected to ancient religious notions of rebirth and resurrection? Perhaps the answers can be found in another mysterious relic that some believe depicts the greatest religious figure of all time.
The Cathedral of Turin, Northern Italy.
Here lies the sacred relic known as the Shroud of Turin, a large piece of linen which, when photographed, bears the eerie image of what appears to be a crucified man.
The Shroud of Turin is a piece of ancient linen cloth, measures about 14 feet long by three and a half feet wide, and what's so important about this cloth is, there's a very faint imprint of a human being on the cloth who appears to have been crucified, which matches the biblical descriptions of Jesus Christ.
So, many believe that this shroud, this relic, is the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ, and bears the wounds of crucifixion.
The Shroud of Turin has such a fascinating history, Is it authentic? Those who are against it say, no, this could easily have been a fake, and a body would never have left such an image and so on.
The chemicals of an embalmed body would not have done such a thing.
But the people who say that are not able to explain how the figure did get there.
It's not painted.
It doesn't seem to be a pigment that's applied to the cloth.
The shroud has been studied, actually, by some of the top scientists and researchers in the world.
And with all the scientific knowledge and equipment, we still do not know how the image of the shroud was produced.
And this is what I think continues to fascinate us about it.
Regardless of what you believe, whether you are a Christian and a believer and bieve that this is the image of the resurrected Christ, or if you just believe that there is some other extraordinary metaphysical event that causes this, you have to be fascinated by the fact that this extraordinary relic could not have been created by any means that in the 21st century we can identify.
Could the Shroud of Turin really be a divine relic? Tangible evidence of the existence of an almighty power? And in 2011, Italian scientists were able to prove that the Shroud of Turin was created by a supernatural flash of light, an unearthly flash of light.
In my opinion, the Shroud of Turin is proof that Jesus transformed himself into a being of light, and projected himself through the Shroud of Turin.
Does the Shroud of Turin actually contain an image of the crucified Jesus? Or could this sacred object be something else? Might it, in fact, be evidence of an incredibly advanced, otherworldly technology? Perhaps the answer can be found by examining another, even more perplexing, ancient artifact.
One found on a land known as the Emerald Isle.
Southern Ireland.
Here, approximately five miles northwest of the small city of Cork, lies the Blarney Castle.
Built more than 500 years ago, this nearly 90-foot-tall fortress houses the world-famous Blarney Stone, a relic that more than 300,000 people come to kiss each year.
It is not in a convenient location.
It's in the castle wall high up on the outside.
So, to kiss it, you've got to dangle over or sneak around so that you're really at some peril of falling a very great distance.
According to legend, it grants whoever kisses it the power to speak in an articulate and charismatic way and to flatter and blandish in any circumstance.
Here you have a stone that has been kissed and revered by probably millions of people.
Blarney is the gift of gab, and so the idea is that somehow kissing this stone gives you the ability to talk better or to somehow amplify your verbal prowess.
Composed of a single block of bluestone the same material used at Stonehengethis stone relic's magical powers are widely renowned.
But could a stone really have such power? One that could actually affect an individual's power of speech? And the story is, in the 15th century, Cormac MacCarthy had a court case coming up, and he was concerned about this and called upon the goddess Cliodhna, the Queen of the Banshees, to help him find the right words and present a good case.
She did.
She said, "Listen, on your way to court, kiss the first stone you see, and you'll be eloquent, you'll find the words.
" And he did this.
He went to court, he was very persuasive, and won his case.
On his way home, he picked up that rock and carried it back, and had his workman fashion it into a stone and set it into the wall of his castle where it is still to be found.
When you look at Irish mythology as a whole, it starts to become pretty obvious that these people such as Cliodhna were not ordinary earthborn humans, but were, in fact, most likely extraterrestrial humans, who came to the earth and shared their technology.
And Blarney being the gift of gab, the gift of talking more eloquently, is something that may have been impregnated into the stone by an extraterrestrial technology using energetic means that we're not now aware of.
Is it possible, as ancient astronaut theorists suggest, that the Blarney Stone is actually evidence of some ancient and otherworldly power? Technology that helps to prove that ancient man was in direct contact with highly-developed beings from another part of the galaxy? If so, might the character known in Irish folklore as the goddess Cliodhna, actually have been a celestial traveler? Perhaps more clues can be found by investigating another mysterious stone relic, located just 160 miles away.
County Meath, Ireland.
On top of this mound, known as the Hill of Tara, lies the Lia Fáil, or Stone of Destiny one of four magical treasures said to have been brought to Ireland by mythical deities called the Tuatha De Danann.
The Lia Fáil was a stone that was considered magical.
All of the kings of Ireland, up until the fifth century of the common era, were said to have been crowned on this.
It seemed to know who the true king was.
They say, if the true king put his feet up on it, it would roar with delight.
It also had the power to give strength to the leader, to help him solidify his rule, and, in some cases, to heal, if that was necessary.
To mainstream scientists and archaeologists, this stone relic represents nothing more than the coronation stone of Ireland's ancient kings.
But according to Irish mythology, the Hill of Tara was also a sacred dwelling place for the gods.
The Hill of Tara is a mound and, like many mounds in Ireland, like many of these sáÂdhe mounds, it is allegedly the entrance to the realm of the sáÂdhe, or these otherworldly people.
The word sáÂdhe means both the people themselves, the otherworldly people, and the mounds in which they are said to dwell.
And the Hill of Tara is allegedly an entrance to the other world.
The Hill of Tara is considered the sacred center of Ireland.
The kings ruled from there for many centuries in ancient and in, uh, early history.
And this was considered a sacred portal to another dimension, to the other world, so it had more than the authority of kingship.
It had the authority of the supernatural.
In Irish mythology, the Tuatha De Danaan were gods who had magical powers.
They arrived from the landof the west, these mythical lands of the gods.
They were said to come in these dark clouds, which then landed in the mountains of Ireland.
And when they came, there were three nights and three days of darkness.
So you have to ask yourself what kind of power they had, and were they some kind of celestial visitors arriving in UFOs? Maybe the extraterrestrials found a way to help society make advancements, including the selection of a virtuous leader.
It's entirely possible that this stone is not just something that was coming out of a mythology, that the Lia Fáil was an engineered device, that those leaders were able to be assessed by the stone and even maybe see into their destiny, see into their future.
Might the Lia Fáil, a stone relic imbued with power like the Blarney Stone, really be evidence of highly advanced knowledge brought to mankind by the so-called gods? And do these sacred objects provide proof of ancient man's extraterrestrial connections? Perhaps the answers can be found by examining strange and unusual relics fallen from the sky.
Valley of the Kings, Egypt.
November 1922.
Archaeologist Howard Carter discovers King Tutankhamun's tomb, containing a treasure trove of artifacts.
Among them is King Tut's magnificent breastplate with a yellow jewel as its centerpiece, a jewel created as the result of a meteorite impact.
In Egyptian culture, there was a fascination with Libyan desert glass.
And while it's not actually a meteorite, Libyan desert glass is the product of a meteorite impact.
Millions of years ago, an enormous meteorite crashed into what is today the Egyptian desert, and the heat and pressure of that impact melted the sand in the desert, forming a beautiful yellow impact glass.
And it crystallizes the sand; it forms glass.
And you get these wonderful, almost like jewel stones you get.
And they clearly imagined these stones to be celestial, to have been created by the impact of a star.
And therefore they were given cosmic meaning.
Humans have long had a fascination with meteorites and have fashioned many tools and spiritual objects from them.
But why? There are many magical stories of meteors, meteorites and meteor showers.
Aeschylus in Prometheus Unbound talks about an angry Zeus throwing rocks down at the Earth.
In the Aeneid, Virgil speaks of meteors.
He describes a meteor shower as indicating Troy is about to fall.
Such folk liefs about meteors, shooting stars, meteorites were common in the ancient world, where, clearly, a piece of stone from the heavens is worshipped as a divine item.
The reason why they were so important was because they inherently had the power of the gods in them because they were already forged in the universe and they descended from the sky.
Meteoric gemstones like Libyan desert glass have been venerated throughout history.
But one particularly mysterious green gemstone could be the most sought-after relic of all time.
Moldavite is the name given to a green impact glass of extraordinary beauty and rarity that's only found in one small region of the Czech Republic.
It's very old.
Metaphysically, moldavite creates thistrange pulsating energy field that amplifies human thoughts or intention.
If you're a loving or compassionate person, it will amplify that, or it can bring chaos if your thoughts and energy and emotions are chaotic.
According to some legends, the Holy Grail, the cup from which Jesus and his apostles drank during the Last Supper, was carved from a green gemstone that had fallen to Earth from the heavens.
It is said that there was discord in the heavens involving Lucifer, and a stone dropped.
It was a stone that at one time had been the center of Lucifer's crown when he was an important angel.
It dropped to Earth.
It was then a piece of Heaven on Earth and had great power and was greatly venerated.
It was carved into the Holy Grail, which was not made of metal but of this beautiful emerald, a precious stone from Heaven.
Could the green gemstone that supposedly fell from Lucifer's crown have been made not of emerald but of moldavite? Perhaps more evidence can be found in the legends of another sacred stone that fell from the sky more than 4,000 miles away.
Yumbulakang Palace, Southern Tibet.
Here, according to legend, the 28th king, Lha Thothori Nyantsen, obtains a magical jewel called Cintamani.
It is said to be one of four revered relics that fell from the sky in a chest.
The Cintamani Stone is a fascinating myth that could well have meteorite associations.
It describes a jewel that's meant to have enormous properties that it can bestow upon its owner, and there are legends that some of the greatest warriors and leaders in all of history, including King Solomon, owned this jewel, that it was passed from one great ruler or leader to another.
In both Hindu and Buddhist tradition, um, there are stories relating to a so-called wishing jewel.
And it wielded great power.
It had a-a connection between this world and the next, that it could be used to interact, uh, not just with other worlds but the center of the universe itself.
It is said that whoever possessed the Cintamani stone was able to control destiny, that every wish was granted.
Now, a stone or an object which is able to change reality, truly that is something which is a piece of technology, and how our ancestors got this is a gigantic question mark, which fortunately our ancestors have answered for us.
Their answer is that this came from the sky, that it was given to us by the gods, and that it played a role in this exchange between us and the divine.
Could the legends of the Cintamani stone be based on fact? If so, might this otherworldly stone, as well as other sacred and mysterious relics, hp forge a connection between mankind and extraterrestrial forces? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and believe the ultimate proof can be found in one of the most sacred objects in the world.
Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
this is Islam's holiest city.
It was here in 2000 B.
C.
that Muslims believe the prophet Abraham built the Kaaba, a cube-shaped structure that draws millions of pilgrims each year.
But just what is it about this building that is so sacred? And why do so many people line up to touch it? On the eastern side of the Kaaba is a meteorite stone which is embedded in the corner of the Kaaba.
Now, according to Muslim belief, this meteorite stone was sent from heaven to Adam and Eve.
And that stone was used to build the first temple.
And this really makes Mecca the most holy place to Muslims.
Muhammad himself threw out all of the other gods, the deities and statues.
But he retained the one strange the black stone, the extraterrestrial object that's still worshipped today at Mecca.
So, you have to wonder why Muhammad specifically chose that object as part of his religion that would remain, as part of the Muslim faith.
It would have to be some memory of an extraterrestrial event.
Might the black stone of Mecca and other sacred relics really possess great power? Could they be gateways, not only to ancient knowledge, but to other worlds and even other dimensions? Perhaps the answer can be found by examining what many believe to be the most sacred and powerful of all the Earth's the cross of Jesus Christ.
Jerusalem.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
According to some researchers, this sacred site is the place where the crucified Jesus was buried, and after three days, rose from the dead.
And it was near here, in 326 A.
D.
, that the remains of a relic thought to be Jesus's cross were discovered by a Roman empress.
Empress Helena was the mother of the emperor Constantine, and she was an early convert to Christianity.
According to legend, she journeyed to the holy land to found a number of churches there, and when she was there she was drawn to the-the Hill of Calvary, where Jesus was allegedly executed.
And she had the pagan temple which she found there torn down, and in the rubble of that temple, she allegedly discovered the true cross, the cross where Jesus was crucified.
She found three crosses.
Well, Christ was crucified with two thieves, so three crosses might be the right artifacts.
But to test them, she brought a woman with terminal disease, very near death, to touch the crosses.
She touched the first two and her condition was unchanged.
When she touched the third cross, she was miraculously healed, and Helena declared that to be the true cross upon which Christ died.
The true cross, it's sacred.
Sacred to many, many, many people.
And people collect these, or like to say that they they may have pieces of this cross, because it brings them closer to the one they love, or their Lord and Savior, call it what you will.
Literally hundreds of Christian churches lay claim to the fact that they have pieces of the actual cross that Jesus died on.
Like many relics or pieces of saints' bodies, the true cross where Jesus was crucified was believed to have all kinds of miraculous powers, including healing powers and the power to grant, um, salvation.
So if you were to touch or own a relic of the true cross, a piece of the true cross, some of that power that Christ had would transfer itself to you through the power of touch.
It's a fascinating thought that relics like the true cross could contain some divine energy that will heal people, even raise them from the dead.
So is it possible that they are some kind of extraterrestrial artifacts with some kind of power in them that we don't understand? Could fragments of Jesus's cross, like other ancient stones and relics, really have harnessed strange extraterrestrial energy? Could legends concerning mysterious healing powers really be true? It's very human for people to want to possess, whether it's a piece of cloth, a stone, uh, a follicle of hair to posses an object that means something to them, an object that can perhaps help them in their life.
Could these relics assist us in-in invoking otherworldly power? I think we need to be open.
We need to be open to that possibility.
Clearly, our ancestors thought so.
Well, ancient relics were very important to many different ancient cultures, um, just as they still are today to religions.
And the reason for this is that it was believed that they were access points to otherworldly environments wherein the gods, the spirits, the immortals dwelled.
Throughout history, we find that some of our most powerful figures, our most powerful leaders, have gone on relic quests.
They're looking for the Holy Grail, the Spear of Destiny, the Key of Life.
And the belief is that if we can acquire these relics, we will acquire powers beyond human comprehension.
Powers that originally came from the gods that will make us more godlike if we can get our hands on them.
The relic tradition, this tooth from a-a deity, the bone from a saint, all of these aspects really tie in that somehow, this deity, this saint is able to link us mere mortals to the realm of the divine.
Sacred bones golden hats and fragments of sacred objects thought to possess healing properties.
Is it possible that these ancient and mysterious relics help to prove that extraterrestrials not only visited Earth in the ancient past, but remain strangely connected to us throughout space and time? Perhaps the truth of mankind's origins has been right before our eyes for hundreds and thousands of years, in fabric, metal and stone, and in the DNA of holy saints and martyrs, who someday, thanks to modern science, may even rise again.
It represents the supernatural transformation of a human.
Gold hats worn by strange, mystical beings.
The wearing of a golden hat would tend to amplify the signal that you were getting from higher-up beings.
And powerful stones believed to have otherworldly origins.
It is said that every wish was granted.
Could these mysterious objects simply be the targets of human imagination? Or are they evidence of something even more profound? We have to wonder if possibly all of these metallic books aren't part of some extraterrestrial library.
Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings.
What if it were true? Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history? And if so, might the evidence be found in the world's most mysterious relics? The White House, February 11, 2013.
President Barack Obama presents a Medal of Honor to Army Staff Sergeant Clinton Romesha for his courageous actions during the deadly battle of Kamdesh in Afghanistan.
These 53 Americans were surrounded by more than 300 Taliban fighters.
If you seek a measure of that day, you need to look no further than the medals and ribbons that grace their chests.
This tradition of honoring brave soldiers by decorating their chest with medals dates back to at least the second century B.
C.
, when the ancient Roman military used sculpted discs of metal to reward superior acts of service.
But why? What is it about the properties of metal that make them chosen objects of adornment and commemoration? The tradition of adorning people with metal really goes back thousands of years.
In the case of the Bible, we have stories about how the priests actually had to wear certain metals before they were able to enter the Holy of Holies and make contact with the divine.
Today, we are confronted with symbolism.
Our heroes are given pins and medals because somehow we set them apart as great people who somehow have superseded the human race, but in the past, this was to be taken literally.
Do certain metals actually enhance mankind's ability to connect with divine, or some would say, extraterrestrial forces? And is this the reason why gold, platinum and silver jewelry, along with other metal adornments and relics, have been so prized throughout human history? Definitely the belief is that we hold the relic there, because the relic is linked either to a deity or to something magical.
Relics can be any number of things.
Pieces of wood, bits of statues, literally anything can be a relic if it has been kind of invested with a divine power.
And that means you have a piece of the god, and therefore a piece of the god's power with you.
It seems to have always been the case with human beings that they've wanted to possess items which they thought were, uh, either from the gods, to do with the gods, or in some way associated with the gods.
Berlin, Germany, 1996.
The Museum of Prehistory and Early History acquires a glittering artifact from an anonymous Swiss collector.
A tall, cone-shaped hat crafted from a thin sheet of pure gold, and embellished with dozens of sun and moon symbols.
It is one of four that have been unearthed at various sites throughout Europe, and is believed by historians to date back as far as 1000 B.
C.
What is so important about them is that they indicate that there was a common culture.
The images on them represent astronomy, the study of the stars.
They also have complicated mathematical implications, suggesting a level of philosophical development that's very advanced for what we thought was available at that time.
German researchers carefully studied the symbols on the golden hat, and concluded they represent a complex mathematical table.
One that can accurately calculate the long-term cycles of the sun and the moon.
But how could such ancient people have been able to make such advanced and highly sophisticated astronomical predictions? The suggestion is that they belonged to what might be referred to as oracles, people that could fall into an altered state and prophesize.
Could come up with statements relating to the future or otherworldly situations.
Though most mainstream scholars believe these mysterious hats were worn by king-priests during religious ceremonies, ancient astronaut theorists have another, even more astounding theory.
The golden hats are kind of interesting, because if gold is something that actually enhances your connection with energies and higher-up celestial beings, then the wearing of a golden hat, especially in a conical shape, would tend to amplify the signal that you were getting from on high.
So, it seems to me that ancient cultures logically would build them to get connected with the gods who had perhaps left them behind and gone back to their celestial birthplace.
In the case of the golden hats, what we're seeing there is that all of this technology seems to have been part of a larger framework, whereby once again it seems this is a civilization which made contact with the gods.
But we just don't know who would have made these or why, and they're so incredibly unusual and tall.
Perhaps the extraterrestrial gods were wearing some kind of conical hat like this.
Could the so-called king-priests of the ancient past have been otherworldly visitors, utilizing metal's unique properties? If so, might additional evidence be found of other ancient peoples using metal relics for advanced, even metaphysical purposes? Khirbet Qumran, Israel, 1952.
Hidden deep in a cave on the desert cliffs, archaeologists discover a mysterious written on a sheet of copper.
Known as the Copper Scroll, this mysterious relic was found at the same site as the ancient religious writings known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
All the Dead Sea Scrolls that have been found were written on either, uh, leather or papyrus.
The Copper Scroll is the only one made of copper.
You got to keep in mind, copper was valuable, and to hammer out a whole scroll would take a lot of time and a lot of technique, - so it has to be very important.
- Scholars examining the language on the Copper Scroll agree it is unlike anything found in other texts of the period.
The script that's on it is-is a little different, but it's not just in Hebrew; it's in or Aramaic.
It also has Greek, uh, letters on it.
So it's quite peculiar.
The thing that makes the Copper Scroll so fascinating is that it mentions hidden treasures.
The Copper Scroll lists and around that area that buried treasure is located.
Maybe the key is, in the 64th location, it says there's another copper scroll that will help explain the rest of it.
Because we haven't found the treasure yet, I somehow suspect there could be another code within this treasure map, a code within a code.
What is the origin of the mysterious Copper Scroll? And at is its true purpose? Mainstream scholars and archaeologists have been puzzled by these questions for more than half a century.
Maybe the Copper Scroll is missing a piece.
Many times with treasure maps, you need a second piece in order to complete the entire map, so who knows if there's a piece missing? It seems to be an oddball artifact.
And it's written in metal.
And you have now the stories of other ancient books supposedly written in sheets of gold.
Joseph Smith, Jr.
, who began the-the Mormon Church, he claimed also to have been shown gold-plated books.
So we have to wonder if possibly all of these metallic books written in copper or gold plates aren't part of some extraterrestrial library.
Could the mysterious Copper Scroll have extraterrestrial origins? And is the fact that it is made of copper evidence of a connection between metal objects and otherworldly beings? yes and believe further proofsay can be found by examining the similarly strange properties attributed to other mysterious relics found all over the world.
Bulgaria's Black Sea Coast.
July 2010.
Here, in the ruins of a medieval church on St.
Ivan Island, six small human bone fragments are discovered inside a marble hagus.
Through radiocarbon dating and DNA testing of one knucklebone, scientists conclude that the bones are from the first century A.
D.
But what is even more incredible is the belief by many that the bones are actually those of St.
John the Baptist.
In Christianity, John the Baptist is specifically important because he is known as the forerunner, the precursor, the one who comes before the Messiah.
And in the stories of John the Baptist, he becomes extremely important for Christians because he announces that a greater messiah is coming after him.
And the legends around John's bones were always legends of extreme power.
John was a prophet.
Now on tour in churches throughout Bulgaria, tens of thousands of the faithful come to visit, pray and even worship these tiny bone fragments.
But why? What is it about ancient bones even those thought to have belonged to a saint that compel people to come and visit them? Could it be they possess some mystical or otherworldly power? The idea of saints' bones and relics having power is something that goes back to the very early days of Christianity.
And certainly in the latter part of the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, they became very big business.
If you had saints' relics in your church or in your cathedral, you could bring in a lot of pilgrims who would also There was a strong belief by the nobility and the royalty that the bones of these saints actually did contain some kind of power.
Humans always want to worship their celebrities, their kings.
Whatever was linked with mysteries, humans worshipped it.
So, in antiquity, it entered already into altars.
When a high priest died, part of his body, part of his bones, was sometimes separated, brought to different countries.
And everyone worshipped the bone in an altar.
That's still happening in Christianity.
Kushinagar, India.
Siddhartha Gautama, the great spiritual teacher upon whom Buddhism is founded, dies.
According to legend, after Buddha was cremated, several small pieces of his body remained intact and were retrieved from the ashes.
After his cremation, the ashes were fought over by a lot of his disciples.
And finally, they resolved to the problem by dividing, um, them into eight different parts.
When the Buddha's ashes were divided and there's a claim that there's a tooth found there it was considered it was very valuable.
Right away, when the tooth was given to a king, the relic the tooth relic itself became associated with the power of kingship.
And it is believed that the king who possesses the tooth will be able to rule properly and there will be peace and prosperity in his kingdom.
Could such a tiny but tangible relic from the mouth of the dead Buddha really have such power? Is a physical link to a holy and venerated leader really a means of connecting to the afterlife and, even more profoundly, some divine life force? The worship of relics, actually, is as old as the Buddhist religion itself and many other religions, too.
The Buddha himself approves of the worship of relics because he believes that his followers need something very concrete to remind them of his presence and his teachings.
The relics are supposed to be actually the essence of the saints.
So, in a way, the relics are the saints themselves, so they have the powers of the saints.
The importance here is why is it that objects like this can gain such an incredible spiritual value? And, quite clearly, it's to do with the-the psychology of the importance of-of individuals like the Buddha, who is seen to be personifications of God or the gods themselves and that just to own this or to have some part of it imbues you with the same power as the gods themselves.
So you have to wonder just why these relics are so important.
We give them power, these bones and these teeth.
But what they areat least in a scientific manner is a piece of DNA from the Buddha himself.
I think they knew that in a far future, the gods, the extraterrestrials, would return again.
And some of these gods may have said to one of his darlings on planet Earth, "If we find your body or your cells are still existing, then we are able to reconstruct your body.
" Cloning dead saints using DNA from their relics? Could this incredible notion be one of the reasons why bone fragments and other human remains have been so prized throughout the centuries? And might this now very real scientific possibility be connected to ancient religious notions of rebirth and resurrection? Perhaps the answers can be found in another mysterious relic that some believe depicts the greatest religious figure of all time.
The Cathedral of Turin, Northern Italy.
Here lies the sacred relic known as the Shroud of Turin, a large piece of linen which, when photographed, bears the eerie image of what appears to be a crucified man.
The Shroud of Turin is a piece of ancient linen cloth, measures about 14 feet long by three and a half feet wide, and what's so important about this cloth is, there's a very faint imprint of a human being on the cloth who appears to have been crucified, which matches the biblical descriptions of Jesus Christ.
So, many believe that this shroud, this relic, is the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ, and bears the wounds of crucifixion.
The Shroud of Turin has such a fascinating history, Is it authentic? Those who are against it say, no, this could easily have been a fake, and a body would never have left such an image and so on.
The chemicals of an embalmed body would not have done such a thing.
But the people who say that are not able to explain how the figure did get there.
It's not painted.
It doesn't seem to be a pigment that's applied to the cloth.
The shroud has been studied, actually, by some of the top scientists and researchers in the world.
And with all the scientific knowledge and equipment, we still do not know how the image of the shroud was produced.
And this is what I think continues to fascinate us about it.
Regardless of what you believe, whether you are a Christian and a believer and bieve that this is the image of the resurrected Christ, or if you just believe that there is some other extraordinary metaphysical event that causes this, you have to be fascinated by the fact that this extraordinary relic could not have been created by any means that in the 21st century we can identify.
Could the Shroud of Turin really be a divine relic? Tangible evidence of the existence of an almighty power? And in 2011, Italian scientists were able to prove that the Shroud of Turin was created by a supernatural flash of light, an unearthly flash of light.
In my opinion, the Shroud of Turin is proof that Jesus transformed himself into a being of light, and projected himself through the Shroud of Turin.
Does the Shroud of Turin actually contain an image of the crucified Jesus? Or could this sacred object be something else? Might it, in fact, be evidence of an incredibly advanced, otherworldly technology? Perhaps the answer can be found by examining another, even more perplexing, ancient artifact.
One found on a land known as the Emerald Isle.
Southern Ireland.
Here, approximately five miles northwest of the small city of Cork, lies the Blarney Castle.
Built more than 500 years ago, this nearly 90-foot-tall fortress houses the world-famous Blarney Stone, a relic that more than 300,000 people come to kiss each year.
It is not in a convenient location.
It's in the castle wall high up on the outside.
So, to kiss it, you've got to dangle over or sneak around so that you're really at some peril of falling a very great distance.
According to legend, it grants whoever kisses it the power to speak in an articulate and charismatic way and to flatter and blandish in any circumstance.
Here you have a stone that has been kissed and revered by probably millions of people.
Blarney is the gift of gab, and so the idea is that somehow kissing this stone gives you the ability to talk better or to somehow amplify your verbal prowess.
Composed of a single block of bluestone the same material used at Stonehengethis stone relic's magical powers are widely renowned.
But could a stone really have such power? One that could actually affect an individual's power of speech? And the story is, in the 15th century, Cormac MacCarthy had a court case coming up, and he was concerned about this and called upon the goddess Cliodhna, the Queen of the Banshees, to help him find the right words and present a good case.
She did.
She said, "Listen, on your way to court, kiss the first stone you see, and you'll be eloquent, you'll find the words.
" And he did this.
He went to court, he was very persuasive, and won his case.
On his way home, he picked up that rock and carried it back, and had his workman fashion it into a stone and set it into the wall of his castle where it is still to be found.
When you look at Irish mythology as a whole, it starts to become pretty obvious that these people such as Cliodhna were not ordinary earthborn humans, but were, in fact, most likely extraterrestrial humans, who came to the earth and shared their technology.
And Blarney being the gift of gab, the gift of talking more eloquently, is something that may have been impregnated into the stone by an extraterrestrial technology using energetic means that we're not now aware of.
Is it possible, as ancient astronaut theorists suggest, that the Blarney Stone is actually evidence of some ancient and otherworldly power? Technology that helps to prove that ancient man was in direct contact with highly-developed beings from another part of the galaxy? If so, might the character known in Irish folklore as the goddess Cliodhna, actually have been a celestial traveler? Perhaps more clues can be found by investigating another mysterious stone relic, located just 160 miles away.
County Meath, Ireland.
On top of this mound, known as the Hill of Tara, lies the Lia Fáil, or Stone of Destiny one of four magical treasures said to have been brought to Ireland by mythical deities called the Tuatha De Danann.
The Lia Fáil was a stone that was considered magical.
All of the kings of Ireland, up until the fifth century of the common era, were said to have been crowned on this.
It seemed to know who the true king was.
They say, if the true king put his feet up on it, it would roar with delight.
It also had the power to give strength to the leader, to help him solidify his rule, and, in some cases, to heal, if that was necessary.
To mainstream scientists and archaeologists, this stone relic represents nothing more than the coronation stone of Ireland's ancient kings.
But according to Irish mythology, the Hill of Tara was also a sacred dwelling place for the gods.
The Hill of Tara is a mound and, like many mounds in Ireland, like many of these sáÂdhe mounds, it is allegedly the entrance to the realm of the sáÂdhe, or these otherworldly people.
The word sáÂdhe means both the people themselves, the otherworldly people, and the mounds in which they are said to dwell.
And the Hill of Tara is allegedly an entrance to the other world.
The Hill of Tara is considered the sacred center of Ireland.
The kings ruled from there for many centuries in ancient and in, uh, early history.
And this was considered a sacred portal to another dimension, to the other world, so it had more than the authority of kingship.
It had the authority of the supernatural.
In Irish mythology, the Tuatha De Danaan were gods who had magical powers.
They arrived from the landof the west, these mythical lands of the gods.
They were said to come in these dark clouds, which then landed in the mountains of Ireland.
And when they came, there were three nights and three days of darkness.
So you have to ask yourself what kind of power they had, and were they some kind of celestial visitors arriving in UFOs? Maybe the extraterrestrials found a way to help society make advancements, including the selection of a virtuous leader.
It's entirely possible that this stone is not just something that was coming out of a mythology, that the Lia Fáil was an engineered device, that those leaders were able to be assessed by the stone and even maybe see into their destiny, see into their future.
Might the Lia Fáil, a stone relic imbued with power like the Blarney Stone, really be evidence of highly advanced knowledge brought to mankind by the so-called gods? And do these sacred objects provide proof of ancient man's extraterrestrial connections? Perhaps the answers can be found by examining strange and unusual relics fallen from the sky.
Valley of the Kings, Egypt.
November 1922.
Archaeologist Howard Carter discovers King Tutankhamun's tomb, containing a treasure trove of artifacts.
Among them is King Tut's magnificent breastplate with a yellow jewel as its centerpiece, a jewel created as the result of a meteorite impact.
In Egyptian culture, there was a fascination with Libyan desert glass.
And while it's not actually a meteorite, Libyan desert glass is the product of a meteorite impact.
Millions of years ago, an enormous meteorite crashed into what is today the Egyptian desert, and the heat and pressure of that impact melted the sand in the desert, forming a beautiful yellow impact glass.
And it crystallizes the sand; it forms glass.
And you get these wonderful, almost like jewel stones you get.
And they clearly imagined these stones to be celestial, to have been created by the impact of a star.
And therefore they were given cosmic meaning.
Humans have long had a fascination with meteorites and have fashioned many tools and spiritual objects from them.
But why? There are many magical stories of meteors, meteorites and meteor showers.
Aeschylus in Prometheus Unbound talks about an angry Zeus throwing rocks down at the Earth.
In the Aeneid, Virgil speaks of meteors.
He describes a meteor shower as indicating Troy is about to fall.
Such folk liefs about meteors, shooting stars, meteorites were common in the ancient world, where, clearly, a piece of stone from the heavens is worshipped as a divine item.
The reason why they were so important was because they inherently had the power of the gods in them because they were already forged in the universe and they descended from the sky.
Meteoric gemstones like Libyan desert glass have been venerated throughout history.
But one particularly mysterious green gemstone could be the most sought-after relic of all time.
Moldavite is the name given to a green impact glass of extraordinary beauty and rarity that's only found in one small region of the Czech Republic.
It's very old.
Metaphysically, moldavite creates thistrange pulsating energy field that amplifies human thoughts or intention.
If you're a loving or compassionate person, it will amplify that, or it can bring chaos if your thoughts and energy and emotions are chaotic.
According to some legends, the Holy Grail, the cup from which Jesus and his apostles drank during the Last Supper, was carved from a green gemstone that had fallen to Earth from the heavens.
It is said that there was discord in the heavens involving Lucifer, and a stone dropped.
It was a stone that at one time had been the center of Lucifer's crown when he was an important angel.
It dropped to Earth.
It was then a piece of Heaven on Earth and had great power and was greatly venerated.
It was carved into the Holy Grail, which was not made of metal but of this beautiful emerald, a precious stone from Heaven.
Could the green gemstone that supposedly fell from Lucifer's crown have been made not of emerald but of moldavite? Perhaps more evidence can be found in the legends of another sacred stone that fell from the sky more than 4,000 miles away.
Yumbulakang Palace, Southern Tibet.
Here, according to legend, the 28th king, Lha Thothori Nyantsen, obtains a magical jewel called Cintamani.
It is said to be one of four revered relics that fell from the sky in a chest.
The Cintamani Stone is a fascinating myth that could well have meteorite associations.
It describes a jewel that's meant to have enormous properties that it can bestow upon its owner, and there are legends that some of the greatest warriors and leaders in all of history, including King Solomon, owned this jewel, that it was passed from one great ruler or leader to another.
In both Hindu and Buddhist tradition, um, there are stories relating to a so-called wishing jewel.
And it wielded great power.
It had a-a connection between this world and the next, that it could be used to interact, uh, not just with other worlds but the center of the universe itself.
It is said that whoever possessed the Cintamani stone was able to control destiny, that every wish was granted.
Now, a stone or an object which is able to change reality, truly that is something which is a piece of technology, and how our ancestors got this is a gigantic question mark, which fortunately our ancestors have answered for us.
Their answer is that this came from the sky, that it was given to us by the gods, and that it played a role in this exchange between us and the divine.
Could the legends of the Cintamani stone be based on fact? If so, might this otherworldly stone, as well as other sacred and mysterious relics, hp forge a connection between mankind and extraterrestrial forces? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and believe the ultimate proof can be found in one of the most sacred objects in the world.
Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
this is Islam's holiest city.
It was here in 2000 B.
C.
that Muslims believe the prophet Abraham built the Kaaba, a cube-shaped structure that draws millions of pilgrims each year.
But just what is it about this building that is so sacred? And why do so many people line up to touch it? On the eastern side of the Kaaba is a meteorite stone which is embedded in the corner of the Kaaba.
Now, according to Muslim belief, this meteorite stone was sent from heaven to Adam and Eve.
And that stone was used to build the first temple.
And this really makes Mecca the most holy place to Muslims.
Muhammad himself threw out all of the other gods, the deities and statues.
But he retained the one strange the black stone, the extraterrestrial object that's still worshipped today at Mecca.
So, you have to wonder why Muhammad specifically chose that object as part of his religion that would remain, as part of the Muslim faith.
It would have to be some memory of an extraterrestrial event.
Might the black stone of Mecca and other sacred relics really possess great power? Could they be gateways, not only to ancient knowledge, but to other worlds and even other dimensions? Perhaps the answer can be found by examining what many believe to be the most sacred and powerful of all the Earth's the cross of Jesus Christ.
Jerusalem.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
According to some researchers, this sacred site is the place where the crucified Jesus was buried, and after three days, rose from the dead.
And it was near here, in 326 A.
D.
, that the remains of a relic thought to be Jesus's cross were discovered by a Roman empress.
Empress Helena was the mother of the emperor Constantine, and she was an early convert to Christianity.
According to legend, she journeyed to the holy land to found a number of churches there, and when she was there she was drawn to the-the Hill of Calvary, where Jesus was allegedly executed.
And she had the pagan temple which she found there torn down, and in the rubble of that temple, she allegedly discovered the true cross, the cross where Jesus was crucified.
She found three crosses.
Well, Christ was crucified with two thieves, so three crosses might be the right artifacts.
But to test them, she brought a woman with terminal disease, very near death, to touch the crosses.
She touched the first two and her condition was unchanged.
When she touched the third cross, she was miraculously healed, and Helena declared that to be the true cross upon which Christ died.
The true cross, it's sacred.
Sacred to many, many, many people.
And people collect these, or like to say that they they may have pieces of this cross, because it brings them closer to the one they love, or their Lord and Savior, call it what you will.
Literally hundreds of Christian churches lay claim to the fact that they have pieces of the actual cross that Jesus died on.
Like many relics or pieces of saints' bodies, the true cross where Jesus was crucified was believed to have all kinds of miraculous powers, including healing powers and the power to grant, um, salvation.
So if you were to touch or own a relic of the true cross, a piece of the true cross, some of that power that Christ had would transfer itself to you through the power of touch.
It's a fascinating thought that relics like the true cross could contain some divine energy that will heal people, even raise them from the dead.
So is it possible that they are some kind of extraterrestrial artifacts with some kind of power in them that we don't understand? Could fragments of Jesus's cross, like other ancient stones and relics, really have harnessed strange extraterrestrial energy? Could legends concerning mysterious healing powers really be true? It's very human for people to want to possess, whether it's a piece of cloth, a stone, uh, a follicle of hair to posses an object that means something to them, an object that can perhaps help them in their life.
Could these relics assist us in-in invoking otherworldly power? I think we need to be open.
We need to be open to that possibility.
Clearly, our ancestors thought so.
Well, ancient relics were very important to many different ancient cultures, um, just as they still are today to religions.
And the reason for this is that it was believed that they were access points to otherworldly environments wherein the gods, the spirits, the immortals dwelled.
Throughout history, we find that some of our most powerful figures, our most powerful leaders, have gone on relic quests.
They're looking for the Holy Grail, the Spear of Destiny, the Key of Life.
And the belief is that if we can acquire these relics, we will acquire powers beyond human comprehension.
Powers that originally came from the gods that will make us more godlike if we can get our hands on them.
The relic tradition, this tooth from a-a deity, the bone from a saint, all of these aspects really tie in that somehow, this deity, this saint is able to link us mere mortals to the realm of the divine.
Sacred bones golden hats and fragments of sacred objects thought to possess healing properties.
Is it possible that these ancient and mysterious relics help to prove that extraterrestrials not only visited Earth in the ancient past, but remain strangely connected to us throughout space and time? Perhaps the truth of mankind's origins has been right before our eyes for hundreds and thousands of years, in fabric, metal and stone, and in the DNA of holy saints and martyrs, who someday, thanks to modern science, may even rise again.