Ancient Aliens s10e05 Episode Script

Narrator: Mysterious skulls.
Brien Foester: The DNA didn't match anything known to be human.
Narrator: Bizarre mutations.
David Wilcock: This could be reptilian type of humanoid life.
Narrator: And terrifying monsters.
Jonathan Young: The Apache had a demonic figure who could petrify you through its gaze.
Narrator: In cultures throughout the world, there are stories of strange humanlike gods.
Could our ancestors have really encountered these otherworldly beings? And might they have a connection to us? Giorgio A.
Tsoukalos: What we have are remnants of the teachers that visited mankind in the remote past.
Jason Martell: Our DNA contains a lost extraterrestrial gene that's now resurfacing at the right time.
Narrator: Since the dawn of civilization, mankind has credited its origins to gods and other visitors from the stars.
What if it were true? Did extraterrestrial beings really help to shape our history? And if so, might humans be just one link in the chain of alien evolution? Narrator: Paracas skull number 44.
Discovered in 2012, it has a weight of 2.
8 pounds, adult male skull.
It has a cranial capacity of 1,500 cubic centimeters, And it is missing a sagittal suture, the connective tissue joint found between the parietal bones in all human skulls.
This is just one of hundreds of strange, misshapen skulls that have been found on the southern coast of Peru, dating back to 1927.
It was at this time that archaeologist Julio Tello first excavated a massive burial complex, thought to have been built by the Paracas people who lived in the region from 800 BC to 100 BC.
Julio C.
Tello was the father of Peruvian archaeology and in the 1920s, he discovered mummy bundles.
And in each mummy bundle was a person with an elongated skull.
They were buried in family mausoleums, in some cases as deep as 30 feet into the bedrock.
Narrator: Mainstream archaeologists say the elongation is most likely the result of head binding, which involves wrapping the heads of infants while their skulls are still soft in order to change the shape.
It is a practice found in numerous cultures throughout the world that dates back thousands of years.
But why would people desire to elongate the heads of their children? Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that head binding originated with primitive humans who were attempting to imitate the appearance of extraterrestrial visitors.
But according to researcher Brien Foerster, the assistant director of the Paracas History Museum, head binding would not account for the other anomalies that the Paracas skulls exhibit.
Foerster: About five percent of the elongated skulls that we find in Paracas are so complex in shape and size that it's hard to believe that they're the result of any form of cranial deformation or head binding.
Not only are they elongated vertically, but also the eye sockets are much larger than normal.
There are two holes in the back of the skull called foramen, through which blood and nerve flow occurred.
And also their jaws were very robust.
Wilcock: Among the largest of them we find skulls 60% heavier than normal human skulls and a brain capacity that is 2.
5 times larger than the normal human brain.
Narrator: But if these elongated skulls were not the result of the ancient practice of head binding, then just who or what were these mysterious beings? In 2014, DNA testing was performed on Paracas skull number 44, which rendered surprising results.
Foerster: Some initial DNA testing has been done, and the results, according to the geneticist, are quite startling.
There were certain segments of the DNA that didn't match anything known to be human.
What it suggests to me is that Paracas could very well have been an ancient bloodline related to Homo sapiens but not specifically Homo sapiens itself.
When you look at this kind of archaeological evidence, you're seeing concrete, tangible, DNA testable proof that extraterrestrials walked on Earth right among us.
Personally, I think it is quite possible that what we have there are remnants of the so-called teachers that visited mankind in the remote past.
Narrator: Could it be that this skull and other similar skulls found in southern Peru are something other than human? While mainstream scholars continue to dismiss this possibility, there is now evidence that at one time the Earth was inhabited by other species that possessed intelligence equal to or even greater than humans.
Gibraltar.
September 1, 2014.
Inside Gorham's Cave on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, anthropologists announce a finding that fundamentally changes our understanding of early human history.
A pattern of cross-hatched lines carved into the rock over 39,000 years ago is the first known example of cave art created not by our ancestors but by another intelligent species, the Neanderthals.
William Leonard: Previous to this, it was generally regarded that only anatomically modern humans had that capability, that cave paintings and etchings and making of figurines was really something that was restricted to modern humans.
And so the Gibraltar site clearly indicates that Neanderthals had the capacity for symbolic representation.
Narrator: Like humans, Neanderthals are thought to have evolved from Homo erectus, but contrary to popular belief, they are not our ancestors.
They were actually a separate species that lived alongside early humans.
More and more evidence is coming to light, uh, that suggests that Neanderthals were at least socially intelligent, at least thinking in symbolic behavior, uh, and therefore may have even been, as far as we know, may have been even more intelligent than-than us.
Peter Ward: We find lots of evidence that Neanderthals used tools, perhaps in different ways than we did.
Certainly, the discovery of graves where flowers are buried.
They loved their children just as we love ours.
The technology available to them is only now being discovered.
Narrator: DNA studies show that Neanderthals lived among modern humans for thousands of years and interbred with them before becoming extinct.
And they were not the only other intelligent humanlike species in prehistoric times.
In 2003, scientists identified floresiensis known as the Hobbit people in Indonesia.
And as recently as 2008, the species Denisovan hominin was discovered in southern Siberia.
Leonard: What is intriguing about this find is the DNA evidence suggests that they are genetically distinct from both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans, suggesting perhaps that at 40,000 years ago, you had as many as three different human forms on planet Earth.
Ward: No, there absolutely have to be still unknown human lineages out there.
Whether they are totally different species or varieties.
I'm sure that the paleontologists of the present day and the near future will find more of our family tree.
Wilcock: What we're now seeing a Lord of the Rings type situation in which there are multiple hominid populations coexisting on Earth at the same time.
When we look at the Denisovans, we're seeing that they actually have traces in their DNA of a species that is completely unlike anything we've seen anywhere else on Earth.
We don't know where it comes from, and we don't know who these people are.
It's a complete baffling mystery.
Narrator: Did Neanderthals and other ancient hominids possess capabilities on par with, or perhaps even exceeding, those of our human ancestors? And if science is only now discovering the truth about these species, then what other forms of intelligent life may have also roamed the Earth thousands of years ago? Might humans have shared the Earth with, and interbred with, species not indigenous to this planet? Ancient astronaut theorists suggest there may be further clues to be found with Paracas skull number 44, by reconstructing its face.
Narrator: New York City.
March 27, 2015.
Brien Foerster has enlisted artist Marcia Moore to help him examine Paracas skull number 44 in an entirely new way.
Drawing on her experience doing facial reconstructions with 3-D models, Marcia will try to bring the ancient skull back to life by scanning it onto a computer and digitally rebuilding its face.
So, the first thing that we're going to do I'm going to get a visual.
And now it's going to laser-cut slices of this skull.
And it's going to patch up this entire skull to make a 3-D model.
And we'll get to an accurate feel of this individual.
If you'd like to take your skull away from the carousel.
Up here on the computer this is how we generated the the skull model.
With all of these little dots, the laser picked up and was able to create a fairly accurate rendering of this skull.
Foerster: That's amazing.
Narrator: Analyzing the bone structure, Marcia begins to generate virtual layers of muscle and tissue to re-create the facial anatomy of the Paracas skull.
You can tell by this skull, the cheeks are prominent.
The chin is very prominent.
The eyes obviously the sockets are much larger, and that's always difficult.
I'm adding a little bit more length to the neck.
I think that probably this skull had a very strong neck, so added material there.
Create the cranial formation of the skull.
Narrator: Based on the shape of the skull, Marcia approximates where to add additional tissue and muscle until finally a face emerges.
Foerster: That's remarkable.
Moore: Yeah, so I'm going to show you the the build-up, slowly building up the cheeks, the jawline, the eyes.
This, again, is a reconstruction, but it's an interpretation of what this physical could have looked like.
And here it is.
Well, you have brought a 2,000-year-old skull to life.
And answers some questions, but presents many more.
Absolutely.
Foerster: Marcia's interpretation I find very intriguing because what she has been able to represent is atypical of the native people that we find in coastal Peru today.
The Paracas culture disappeared 2,000 years ago.
They left no descendants, nor did they leave oral tradition or written documentation of any sort.
So we have no idea, in fact, who they were and where they came from.
From Marcia's interpretation, I believe that it is possible that beings have come from other parts of our universe to this planet and have mingled with the genetics that were here.
I believe that they're a subspecies of humanity.
Narrator: Could this be the face of an alien-human hybrid? Or might Paracas skull number 44 have origins completely outside of planet Earth, as some ancient astronaut theorists suggest? Tsoukalos: I have seen those skulls close up.
And the moment I was able to do this, it changes everything because if you compare a skull where you can prove that the skull was artificially elongated, and you compare that to one of the Paracas skulls, then you can see a marked difference between the two.
I think, personally, that they are themselves the extraterrestrials.
Narrator: Is Paracas skull number 44 evidence of another intelligent perhaps even extraterrestrial species living among humans in the distant past? Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that the facial reconstruction does resemble an ancient ruler that they believe was from the stars the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten.
Childress: He has big eyes, he has an extended head.
And in some ways, he looks like one of the Atenists like Akhenaten, or their children with large extended heads.
Narrator: Akhenaten ruled in the 14th century BC, and was considered a heretical pharaoh for changing the polytheistic religion of ancient Egypt.
He declared there was only one god Aten.
A god he depicted as a disk in the sky.
Childress: Akhenaten became enthralled with the Aten disk.
And the Aten disk was something that was supposedly the sun, but it was depicted in a completely different way than the Egyptians had depicted the sun before.
And so it's interesting to think of the Aten disk as possibly some kind of a spaceship.
And so, when you see these Atenists like Akhenaten, you have to wonder if they're not some kind of extraterrestrials.
They look a lot like Grey aliens.
Narrator: Akhenaten's reign also marked a radical change in art, transitioning from idealistic portrayals of people to much more realistic renditions a fact which has only added to the speculation about the ancient pharaoh and his family's origins.
Wilcock: There are so many illustrations of them painted on the temple walls, as well as granite sculptures of Akhenaten, of his wife Nefertiti, of their daughter Meritaten.
Even King Tut was one of the children of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.
There are busts of King Tut that also show an elongated skull.
We're also seeing that they have a very narrow ribcage.
And the distance between their neck and their waist is longer than typical humans would have on Earth.
You look at this granite bust of Meritaten, where her head extends all the way back, there's no hair, and you tell me that if a guy actually made that as a mistake that he would still be allowed to work or even allowed to finish the sculpture? He was sculpting what they really look like.
Narrator: Is the facial reconstruction of the Paracas skull the face of an ancient astronaut? Does its similarity to the depictions of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten provide evidence that our planet has, in fact, been visited by extraterrestrials? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and believe that further proof of an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth can be found within humanity itself.
Narrator: Houston, Texas.
Doctors at the Texas Heart Institute examine a 59-year-old man complaining of chest pains and make an astounding discovery: The patient has a three-chambered heart, similar to that of a reptile.
Researchers attributed the rare condition to an evolutionary phenomenon called atavism, when a lost trait of a distant ancestor reemerges in a modern organism.
Gage Crump: So the idea is, if you look at where we evolve from, we were first fish.
Fish have a two-chambered heart.
And then we came on land we're more like a reptile.
That has a three-chambered heart.
And then eventually a four-chambered heart as we became mammals and then humans.
So interestingly, during development, that same sequence of evolution is played out again as embryos.
So if there's any sort of defect in the embryo along the way, it could get stalled out at that earlier state.
And now this man has a heart that's more typical of our distant ancestors, the reptiles.
Narrator: While the discovery of a human with a reptilian heart is incredibly rare, other genetic conditions have been found that suggest a link with reptiles.
Since the 1800s, over 100 cases of human tails have been reported in medical journals.
People with the disease ichthyosis have dry, scaly skin.
And people with the diseases called syndactyly and ectrodactyly have fused fingers and clawlike hands.
But if such anatomical irregularities are a link to our ancient ancestors, as some scientists suggest, could it be that they are not the remnants of a reptilian stage in human development, but instead reveal that humans once comingled with reptilian aliens? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and believe that further clues can be found in the stories of China's first emperor, Fu Xi.
Fu Xi is one of the mythical rulers of China, and he is considered to be, uh, the original or prototypical man.
He was created along with his sister Nu Wa.
They were humanoid in form, in the sense that their upper bodies were that of humans, but their lower bodies were that of snakes.
And they're often represented with snake tails intertwined together.
Narrator: Similar stories of reptilian humanoid beings exist in cultures around the ancient world, including Japan, Greece and South America.
Childress: We even have good drawings and reliefs of many of these fantastic creatures.
And so is it possible that some of these creatures really are aliens that look like that? And it seems like, in some cases, that is probably the case.
Narrator: Other unusual anomalies also appear to mirror the descriptions of divine beings from ancient texts.
Millions of infants are born with blue patches of skin called Mongolian spots, evoking the blue-skinned gods common to India and Egypt.
There have also been many cases of gigantism throughout history, bringing to mind biblical stories of the Nephilim giants that were said to be the hybrid offspring of humans and divine beings called the Watchers.
Within us is the whole evolutionary development of humankind, as well as the other species that humans developed from reptiles, fish and so forth.
Extrapolating this idea, if extraterrestrials had a hand in retooling our DNA, then do we also carry their genetic makeup within us, as we would? Martell: We know today that our DNA contains a lot of junk DNA that we still don't understand.
So when we see these genetic anomalies surface in physical form in children, it could be that it's not an anomaly.
It's actually a lost extraterrestrial gene, a marker that's now resurfacing at the right time.
Narrator: Like the Neanderthals, did extraterrestrials breed with early man thousands of years ago? Did they leave behind genetic evidence in our DNA that still exists today? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest that Earth may at one time have been home to not one alien race, but many.
Narrator: West Virginia.
September 1952.
Multiple witnesses report seeing a strange ball of light shooting across the night sky and landing in a nearby wooded area.
Those who investigate the crash site describe seeing a ten-foot-tall birdlike creature with glowing red eyes.
Redfern: It was this huge, humanoid-type figure anywhere from about ten feet to 12 feet high, had these fiery, blazing eyes and was emitting these sparks and flashes of light.
It was described as having a cowl-like head, not unlike an ace of spades card in a deck of cards.
The entire group was unanimous in their belief that the object or the creature was utterly real, that it was connected with the overflight of the strange light and it was also connected with this red pulsating light that they saw.
Narrator: Curiously, Native American mythology also describes a similar half-bird, half-human creature that shared the planet with mankind thousands of years ago.
Young: The Apache had a demonic figure in their mythology, the giant owl man, who could petrify you through its gaze.
It was truly a terrifying presence that could come at any time and particularly in the night sky, when owls fly.
Tok Thompson: This is a pretty common theme in a lot of Native American mythology, that there was a time in the past when the Earth was overrun by pretty scary monsters of various forms.
And the big owl or the owl man is one of these sort of representatives.
Narrator: Might the stories of owl men and other strange creatures describe beings that the Native Americans actually encountered? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes and point to similar creation myths from across the world of gods that resemble not just anthropomorphic birds but also reptiles, insects and sea creatures.
Tsoukalos: All around the world, we have figurines and carvings and paintings, rock paintings of these very bizarre creatures that can be found not only on every continent, but once you compare them, they're also incredibly similar.
So one has to wonder if these figurines and these statues of these different depictions of what they referred to as the gods, if they're actually rooted in some type of reality.
Narrator: Did our ancestors really encounter these intelligent life-forms thousands of years ago? And if so, just what were they? Cambridge, Massachusetts.
February 2013.
Analyzing data gathered by NASA's Kepler space telescope, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announce that six percent of all red dwarf stars have habitable, Earth-like planets.
Because red dwarf stars burn much longer than our sun, the discovery raises the possibility that life on these planets could be much older and much different than life on Earth.
The environment plays a-a really pivotal role in sort of the direction, um, that organisms evolve.
And so you can imagine that evolution played out on a different planet might follow the same types of rules but have completely different end products, and so it'd look completely different.
Ward: Just go to any other star with planets around it.
Intelligence is going to happen because of crises.
It's going to happen because you can only survive with that intelligence.
But it could be from a reptile, that we were reptile-equivalent.
It could be from a quadruped.
It might be from a mollusk-like creature.
The cause is probably gonna be the same.
The end result, anatomically, totally different.
Henry: There could be a myriad of different forms that intelligent life takes throughout the cosmos.
When we look to the earthly record of otherworldly beings that have visited Earth, they exhibit different characteristics.
They have bird heads, dog heads, reptilian-type forms.
It's possible that these are the forms that these beings take on their home planet, and they might even coexist with beings that are even different from them.
Narrator: Is it possible that, like the Neanderthals, Denisovans and floresiensis that existed alongside humans here on Earth, there are similar intelligent beings that evolved differently from us on planets all across the universe? And if many such species do exist, might Earth have been visited by more than just one race of aliens? Ancient astronaut theorists believe that the answers lie not only in stories of divine beings from the past but in sightings that continue to this very day.
Narrator: Fort McDowell, Arizona.
February 2015.
Thousands flock to this small desert community to attend the annual International UFO Congress.
Many attendees and speakers share stories of being abducted by aliens, and their accounts describe extraterrestrials that take a variety of physical forms.
Within the field of ufology, there are multiple types of aliens reported.
This includes winged humanoids.
Like Mothman, the Houston Batman.
It also includes so-called insectoids, which as their names suggest, they look like large insects.
And then we have the reptilians, bipedal reptile-type creatures.
I think it's highly possible that they've adapted and developed physically in those fashions in relation to the conditions on their relative home planets.
I think there are all kinds of creatures with intelligence in this universe that would shock us.
I think your environment determines what you're going to end up looking like eventually.
I think, after time, that complexity of who you are physically adapts to what that planet is.
Wilcock: If you look at some of the Sumerian illustrations, you see an avian bird head on top of a very strong human body.
You look on the Egyptian paintings, and you have a human with an elongated skull and very green skin.
And there is a one-to-one correlation between modern sightings that people are reporting, both from abduction contact experiences, as well as what we hear from insider testimony, and what we see in the most ancient records of contact with the gods.
It's the same people.
They never really left.
Narrator: Could there be a connection between the strange-looking gods depicted by ancient civilizations and these present-day encounters with extraterrestrials? Are we, in fact, seeing similar beings to the ones described by our ancestors thousands of years ago? Despite the many different kinds of aliens reported, there are certain distinct similarities within such sightings.
MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, is one of the longest-lasting, most respected.
UFO research groups in the world.
MUFON's studies of UFO landings and humanoid cases has shown that most UFO events involving entities revolve around sightings of creatures that are humanoid, that's to say two arms, two legs, a body and a head.
Childress: When we look at all of the different reports of extraterrestrials coming here to Earth, and they're all generally humanoid in form.
And it would seem that the human form is very much a universal form.
Narrator: If intelligent life would evolve much differently on other planets, as mainstream science suggests, then why would so many people describe encounters with extraterrestrials that have human characteristics? Redfern: There may well have been some original proto-alien civilization that seeded the universe.
Over time, the image of creatures with two arms, two legs, a torso and a head, two eyes and a mouth pretty much rules throughout the entire spectrum of UFO activity and sightings.
Tsoukalos: Now, that would imply that our lineage is something that is bipedal.
Whether a creature walks upright with the face of an insect or the face of a human doesn't really matter.
You still have a two-legged creature that originated somewhere.
Given the number of humanoid-appearing gods, it suggests that there is a common ancestor for all intelligent life in the universe and perhaps we're on the verge of rediscovering that common ancestor.
Narrator: Could there be one common source for all intelligent life in the universe? A primordial species that seeded different planets with beings similar to ourselves? Ancient astronaut theorists believe the ultimate truth about mankind's origins might be found by examining not only our past but also our future.
Narrator: June 2013.
In an article for Forbes, graphic artist and researcher Nickolay Lamm illustrates just how the human face might change over the next 100,000 years.
With the help of a computational biologist and taking into account future technological, environmental and genetic influences, he came up with eerie renderings that show an increasingly large cranium with a pronounced forehead, huge eyes and more pigmented skin tone.
As far as the future, it's-it's always really hard to predict, uh, especially in terms of Homo sapiens sapiens, because we've been so good at, uh, modifying our environment through our technology.
So if you try to think about what we might look like in the future, again, it's a bit hard, because we don't exactly know, uh, what these environmental pressures may be on us right now.
Narrator: While Lamm's work was dismissed by some scientists as conjecture, anthropologists have found that humanity has changed greatly over the past 200,000 years.
Homo sapiens have developed more delicate skeletons, smaller faces and more pointed chins.
And recent studies have shown the human body is still undergoing significant changes.
Leonard: So over the last tooth sizes have reduced very, very dramatically.
And this is largely the product of expansion of both cooking and ultimately the development of pottery.
These cultural innovations for changing what we eat and how we eat led to dramatic declines in how large our jaws were and ultimately what our tooth sizes look like.
The future direction of human evolution is difficult to chart, but certainly we would think that some continued expansion of brain size may be something that we're gonna continue to see as we move forward in human evolution.
Narrator: In 2012, scientists from the University of Tennessee announced findings that show that human skull size has also increased dramatically just since the late 1800s.
What they found is totally amazing.
The average height of the skull increased by an astonishing eight millimeters, or almost .
3 inches.
The actual increase in brain volume caused by this height change is 200 cubic centimeters, which is the size of a tennis ball.
Our jaws are becoming longer and narrower, and the size of the head is becoming bigger.
Well, it starts to sound pretty familiar, doesn't it? Narrator: Ancient astronaut theorists speculate that extended space travel may also lead us to appear more like the Greys in the distant future.
Some have suggested that the reason why the Greys have these what appear to be atrophied bodies is because that over time their bodies changed.
They, too, at some point, had larger muscles, but because they became space travelers their muscles atrophied.
When you go to space, you don't have that pressure pushing down on you, so those muscles aren't used, and so you lose muscle very rapidly.
Also associated with that your bones begin to atrophy.
We're talking about longer and longer missions out into space, going to Mars, going farther.
And so astronauts will be subjected to these stresses for a long period of time.
Childress: Is it possible that the Grey aliens at one time looked more like us when they were planet bound? And so we're on that same track.
And we are becoming more and more like these Grey aliens themselves.
Our lineage has come about due to other extraterrestrials that are similar to us.
Perhaps the lineage began elsewhere millions and millions of years ago.
Narrator: Are humans and perhaps even other extraterrestrial races that our ancestors encountered descendants of the Greys? Did these otherworldly travelers generate intelligent life not only here on Earth, but throughout the universe? And might the course of human evolution lead us to become more and more like them? Perhaps we will discover that our true destiny is to continue their mission and one day join our alien ancestors in the stars.