Ancient Aliens s16e07 Episode Script
Impossible Artifacts
NARRATOR: An ancient
hammer of an incredible age.
JEFF WILLIAMS: The hammer was found in sandstone.
It takes about 140 million years to form.
Who was here 140 million years ago? NARRATOR: Strange figures of unknown origin.
DOMINIC STEAVU: The Sanxingdui humanoid statues have really striking features that are unlike anything that has ever been excavated.
NARRATOR: A sophisticated computing device recovered from a 2,000-year-old shipwreck.
DAVID CHILDRESS: They actually said it was like finding a jet plane in the tomb of King Tut.
NARRATOR: Throughout the world, artifacts have been found that defy explanation.
Is it possible that they were purposely left behind by alien visitors? GIORGIO A.
TSOUKALOS: All these so-called impossible artifacts that have been found worldwide all of a sudden become very possible if you take into consideration the extraterrestrial question.
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.
Cape Canaveral, Florida, February 21, 2019.
SpaceX, a private aerospace company, launches a Falcon 9 rocket carrying an Israeli spacecraft called the Beresheetlander, destined for the Moon.
Within the lander is a digital time capsule called the Arch Lunar Library, containing over 30 million pages of data, including a full copy of the English-language Wikipedia.
The Lunar Library is a multi-billion-year artifact that we designed to send a message of our civilization's history to whoever inhabits our solar system in the deep future.
The Lunar Library contains 30 million pages of human history, culture, knowledge, art, science.
NARRATOR: On April 11th, seven weeks after the launch, the lander reaches its destination.
But as it descends towards the lunar surface, Beresheet's gyroscope fails, and the main engine shuts off, causing the lander to crash on the Moon.
While the lander is likely destroyed, its cargo, the Lunar Library, was built to be nearly indestructible, and is thought to have survived.
SPIVACK: We used quartz crystal.
That is incredibly durable.
It can last 14 billion years.
There are 25 different layers.
The top four layers consist of 60,000 analog images of pages of text, photos.
Below that are 21 layers of digital information.
The analog layers teach important information to get the digital information off the deeper layers.
Storing this record of human history on the Moon means that once If and when our planet is destroyed, something happens and all of our records are wiped out, there is something in a place that has stood the test of time for four billion years.
NARRATOR: In addition to providing a record of humanity that will survive for potentially billions of years, the project has another less conventional motivation.
SPIVACK: We were interested in retracing the steps of potential ancient aliens.
If there were ancient aliens, and they were preserving a message for us to find, what would they have done? NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists, the mission is a milestone event, and one that is long overdue.
As far as they are concerned, what humans have now undertaken with the Lunar Library is exactly what extraterrestrials did on Earth thousands of years ago.
The question is always, well, where is the evidence? Where is the evidence? Well, all you have to do is open your eyes.
It's everywhere! NARRATOR: Throughout the world, countless mysterious artifacts have been discovered that defy any conventional explanation.
And while skeptics may insist that proof of alien visitation could only come in the form of some highly advanced technology, ancient astronaut theorists suggest even the most mundane items can serve as evidence.
In fact, in 1936, a local couple in London, Texas were walking along a creek when they came upon one of the most puzzling ancient artifacts ever found a hammer.
WILLIAMS: It was a prehistoric hammer, if you will, with part of the handle still in place inside some very old rock.
And part of the handle actually is starting to go through a process called "coalification.
" It's where you have inorganic material and organic material changing into coal.
Now, how old is this hammer? The hammer itself was found in the Travis formation.
It's a concretion of sandstone.
And it usually takes about 140 million years for this to form.
Who was here 140 million years ago? TSOUKALOS: Modern-day archaeology suggests that we've only been around for about 10,000 years, so this falls into the category of out-of-place artifacts.
Around the world, there are so-called out-of-place artifacts commonly referred to as "OOPArts.
" And those OOPArts are challenging mainstream archaeology because they do not fit into the accepted chronology of what mainstream science says.
NARRATOR: Could a 140-million-year-old hammer really have been discovered in Texas? Skeptics argue that the couple who came upon this hammer must have been mistaken about where they found it.
But could there be so-called impossible artifacts whose authenticity is beyond question? Egypt, Valley of the Kings.
November, 1922.
British archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discover what will prove to be one of the most important finds in the history of Egyptology: the tomb of King Tutankhamun.
To this day, it is considered the best preserved and most intact tomb ever discovered in the Valley of the Kings.
And within it, a very puzzling artifact was found.
WILLIAM HENRY: While they're unpacking Tut's mummy, they discover these incredible daggers.
One of them had an iron blade with a gold handle and a crystal knob on it.
This is two centuries before Egypt is supposed to have had the ability to manipulate iron in this way.
In 2016, new tests were done on this dagger, and it was confirmed that this is not just iron, this is meteoric iron.
This iron came from the stars.
Anybody who has ever worked with meteorites, even today, will tell you it's very difficult to do this because of the high nickel content.
It makes the metal very brittle.
And a technique known as folding, or stacking, has to be done in order to strengthen it, or else it'll crack and fracture.
So the metal has to be heated up to about 2,000 degrees, and then folded and hammered, folded and hammered.
But the dagger doesn't display the telltale signs of folding, which is usually the striations that run through the metal.
So how was this blade made? NARRATOR: According to their texts, the knowledge of how to work with metal was given to the Egyptians by the god Ptah.
HENRY: Ptah was the Egyptian god of smithcraft and alchemy.
He came from the star Sirius.
He had green skin.
Is it possible that this incredible dagger has some sort of an extraterrestrial connection? NARRATOR: Could it be that seemingly commonplace objects, like an ancient dagger and a hammerhead, are extraterrestrial artifacts? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes and suggest that hidden away in a museum storage room is an even more compelling out-of-place artifact that is being purposely kept out of public view.
Transylvania, Romania, 1974.
Workers digging a trench along the bank of the Mures River make an unexpected find 35 feet underground: two massive bones belonging to a woolly mammoth, an animal that went extinct 40,000 years ago.
But even more surprising is that embedded in the hardened sand encasing the bones is a mysterious metal object.
One that would have to be at least as old as the bones themselves.
When the metal is examined, it is found to be an aluminum alloy.
Except it can't be, because humans did not learn to smelt or fabricate aluminum until the middle of the 19th century.
The Wedge of Aiud, as it would become known, is sent to the National Museum of Transylvanian History.
And because it cannot be explained, it is quickly removed from public view.
ANA GRUIA: The Wedge of Aiud was not really on display for a long time because it's a puzzling artifact for us, and that's why we don't really know how to interpret it.
In my view, this object could have just two solutions so far.
One, that it is really not so old, and it's a new object strangely preserved, let's say.
And the second option is, of course, that it's not of terrestrial origin.
TSOUKALOS: How do you explain this? It doesn't deserve to be in an unmarked box.
Just because we don't know how to explain something away doesn't necessarily mean we have to look the other way.
What is it? Let's go figure it out.
NARRATOR: According to ancient astronaut theorists, there is one theory regarding the Wedge of Aiud that provides an intriguing parallel to the Lunar Library that crash-landed on the Moon in 2019.
HENRY: An aeronautical engineer who saw the Aiud Wedge looked at it and said, "That's a piece of a landing gear for a vertical take-off and landing aircraft.
" And this is very interesting in light of what we know about the Lunar Library project, which ultimately crashed into the Moon.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the Wedge of Aiud is part of a spacecraft that crashed on Earth just like the Beresheetlander that crashed on the Moon? As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned, the question is no longer "Do alien artifacts exist?" but "What do they tell us?" Could there be artifacts that were purposely left for someone to find, much like our own Lunar Library? NARRATOR: Mysuru, Karnataka, India.
At the center of this sprawling modern metropolis is the Mysore Oriental Research Institute, home to some of the world's most important ancient writings.
Here, scholars continue to study the earliest known manuscripts of the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and other Sanskrit texts that date back at least 4,000 years and form the basis of Hinduism.
Roughly one billion people still subscribe to the world's oldest surviving religion, which features a pantheon of 333 million gods.
These otherworldly beings are often depicted wielding weapons and traveling in flying craft.
CHILDRESS: Hindu mythology really reads like the wildest science fiction of today.
It is filled with all kinds of magic stones, flying spaceships.
In traditional ancient astronaut theory, we're looking at mythology and legends of these gods coming down, and reinterpreting these legends and myths as possible extraterrestrials who are, in reality, these gods of ancient times.
TSOUKALOUS: In fact, ancient India, their entire pantheon of gods is based exclusively on a cosmic origin that they arrived from deep space.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the foundational texts of Hinduism provide a record of extraterrestrial intervention on Earth thousands of years ago? For the Hindu faithful, these stories are not mythology, but history, and ancient astronaut theorists suggest incredible artifacts exist to support this notion.
In the Mahabharata, it is described that the god Krishna rules over a kingdom called Dwarka that sank into the ocean after being attacked by a flying machine with incredible weapons.
In 1983, 4,000 years after the text was written, incredible artifacts of an ancient city were found beneath the ocean, in the exact location that Dwarka was supposed to have existed.
CHILDRESS: Indian archaeologists, for years, thought it was just a mythical city, until they started finding these underwater ruins off of Gujarat, and realized that they were the ruins of Dwarka.
NARRATOR: Another ancient Sanskrit story tells that a great deluge was sent by the god Indra to destroy what was described as the Seven Pagodas of Mahabalipuram along India's southeast coast.
Today, only one ancient pagoda stands in Mahabalipuram, and just as in the case of Dwarka, most scholars dismissed the story as myth.
17th-century Dutch traders recorded this legend.
And modern archaeologists, modern scientists, have generally dismissed it.
NARRATOR: But then, on December 26, 2004, a massive tsunami caused water levels to temporarily drop, exposing a number of mysterious-looking formations along the shoreline.
Upon closer inspection, they were found to be man-made structures, and quite possibly the ruins of the lost pagodas of Mahabalipuram.
SCHOCH: It ties in with the legends and myths of these ancient temples having been inundated by the ocean, that's number one.
And number two, we now have evidence that there's more than one temple.
We don't have all six yet, but I suspect that the legends may be correct, and there really are six more temples out there to be found.
NARRATOR: Could the discovery of these artifacts provide evidence that the Sanskrit texts really are historical accounts? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest that the most astounding evidence of all corroborates a prominent story of the Ramayana, an epic poem about the god Rama and the courtship of his wife Sita.
According to the text, Sita was kidnapped and taken to an island off the southern tip of India, known today as Sri Lanka.
Rama raised an army to rescue her, but had to overcome a major obstacle.
To get to his wife, Rama and his army must cross 30 miles of open ocean.
DEEPAK SHIMKHADA: Lanka was an island, and there was no way to get there.
There were no boats, there were no ships to go there.
And the challenge is, how do you build a bridge, you know, so long? NARRATOR: According to the Ramayana, magical construction techniques were used to build a bridge to Lanka.
CHILDRESS: Some of the interesting details of the building of Rama's Bridge is that they were writing Rama's name on these stones, and that would magically levitate the stones.
And some of these were very big stones, too.
NARRATOR: As with many of the ancient Sanskrit stories, it reads like science fiction.
But incredibly, modern satellite imagery has revealed a 30-mile-long barrier of rocks and sand that, in fact, connects the southern tip of India to Sri Lanka.
CHILDRESS: For thousands of years, people just thought, "Okay, this is just a story," but with satellite photos, we can see this bridge.
Rama's bridge to Sri Lanka is real.
And you have to ask yourself, was it built artificially, uh, by levitating stones and putting them there? That's what the Ramayana tells us.
SHIMKHADA: According to the mythology, you know, Rama lived around 6,000 years ago.
And the interesting fact that, uh, some geologists carbon-date the rocks on the bottom approximately dating around the same time.
So that kind of corroborates whether or not this story is connected to the mythology, because the age of Rama is around that period.
NARRATOR: While skeptics suggest that Rama's Bridge is simply a natural formation, in 2018, the Indian government voted to protect it by canceling plans to cut a shipping lane through the middle of the structure.
SHIMKHADA: In order to get to Sri Lanka today, ships have to go around, could not be, you know, maneuvered through the rocky area, so they wanted to cut down the hours it takes.
It would cut down the fuel, it will be extremely economical.
But officials from the Indian government and religious groups believe this is something, you know, that was built by god Rama, that that should not be destroyed, that should not be desecrated.
NARRATOR: Do the incredible stories of the Ramayana support the notion that Rama's Bridge is an alien artifact? But if artifacts like the London Hammer, King Tut's dagger, the Wedge of Aiud and Rama's Bridge are of extraterrestrial origin, were they purposely left for future generations of humans to discover? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest there may be far more to these artifacts than meets the eye.
NARRATOR: Sichuan, China, 1986.
Archaeologists unearth relics of a mysterious civilization that flourished 3,000 years ago in southern China.
Until the surprise discovery, this civilization was completely unknown to archaeologists.
DOMINIC STEAVU: Excavation of Sanxingdui revealed a very rich treasure trove of ritual objects at the site, and these were extremely, uh, refined.
And, especially for the time, they revealed very advanced knowledge of metalworking, and engineering as well.
It was unlike anything that has ever been unearthed in China.
NARRATOR: Based on radiocarbon-dating of the artifacts, archaeologists say they were created by a civilization that emerged in China around 1700 BC.
This mysterious culture is believed to have been part of the ancient kingdom of Shu and has been dubbed the "Sanxingdui.
" Further excavation of the site suggests the Sanxingdui thrived for six centuries before suddenly and mysteriously disappearing.
JULIE LEE: One of the things I find most interesting about the Sanxingdui culture is that no one wrote about the Sanxingdui culture, and the Sanxingdui culture didn't leave any writing about themselves for us to find out more about them.
So to me, that they were able to slip under the radar for so long is one of the most incredible stories about the Sanxingdui culture.
NARRATOR: But buried among the marble and jade artifacts, researchers discovered something strange: hundreds of humanoid figurines that have an unusual appearance.
STEAVU: The Sanxingdui humanoid statues have what seems to be a mask on the face, and protruding eyes or beams, almost, shooting out of the eyes.
And as to what exactly these protruding beams emerging from these goggle-like, uh, masks represent or why these humanoid figures would have such really striking features that are unlike anything that has ever been excavated.
TSOUKALOS: Chinese archaeologists admit that whatever or whoever is represented here, it's not the Chinese people.
NARRATOR: Archaeologists believe the masks depict a strange figure named Cancong, the founder of the Shu kingdom.
According to ancient Chinese chronicles, Cancong had protruding eyes and ruled for more than a thousand years.
While scholars consider Cancong mythical, the striking appearance of the masks caused the Chinese government to openly wonder if it had an otherworldly inspiration.
TSOUKALOS: On November 1, 2007, the official press agency of China asked the question whether or not what we're looking at here are ancestors or in fact extraterrestrials.
And my question is, "What if what we have here is both?" I am of the opinion that whatever or whoever is represented in these Sanxingdui statues is a representation of the visitors.
NARRATOR: Curiously, the Sanxingdui are just one of many ancient cultures that created ceremonial masks of strange, perhaps otherworldly beings.
The Aztecs of Central America, the Dogon of West Africa, the Asaro tribe of Papua New Guinea, the Native Hawaiians, and the Selk'nam of the southernmost parts of South America all made masks to honor the sky gods.
CHILDRESS: When we look at these masks, as well as the unusual masks from the Sanxingdui culture in China, we have to wonder, are we looking at the face of an extraterrestrial? NARRATOR: Could these artifacts be commemorating alien visitation throughout the world? While mainstream scholars argue that they are simply imaginative representations of fictional gods, ancient astronaut theorists say other evidence exists to suggest that these were real beings witnessed by our ancestors.
What you can find with many of these depictions of these ancient gods is they're depicted inside flying animals or flying machines.
In Guatemala, we have a giant flying turtle, and you have the helmet, which is the turtle's head.
The entire body is aerodynamically fashioned.
And there's some modern-day fighter pilot glasses or goggles.
There are multiple statues all throughout India that depict Buddha, sitting on top what looks like a flying lotus flower with smoke and fire coming out.
In present-day Mexico, in La Venta, we have this plumed serpent, the snake that appears to be floating in the sky, and it has a helmet for a person as a head, and then down below, you actually see a person sitting inside this weird snake, this flying snake.
The sarcophagus lid that we can find in Palenque, Mexico has a carving that looks as if Pakal is seated in some sort of a rocket vehicle.
That right there is the smoking gun.
NARRATOR: Ancient carvings that resemble flying machines, and strange masks depicting otherworldly beings found all across the globe.
Do these artifacts provide a physical record of extraterrestrial visitation? As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned, these artifacts have deeper secrets still to reveal.
And an important clue as to what really happened here on Earth in the distant past can be found by examining one of the most mysterious objects ever discovered, the Antikythera device.
NARRATOR: The Aegean Sea, April 1900.
Off the coast of the small Greek island of Antikythera, sponge divers discover an ancient shipwreck 150 feet beneath the surface.
Over the next two years, dozens of artifacts are recovered from the wreckage, including the remains of a coral-encrusted wooden and bronze box that looks like a clock.
Archaeologists date it to the second century BC, but are unable to determine what it is or what purpose it served.
RIC RADER: So when the shipwreck is first discovered, nobody made much of this device.
The ship had been full of much more interesting material that was mined out first.
It didn't exert much fascination until people started looking a lot more closely.
NARRATOR: For almost 60 years, the artifact sat in storage at the National Museum of Archaeology in Athens.
But in 1951, physicist Derek John de Solla Price began a careful examination of the box and found something astonishing.
It contains the workings of a highly sophisticated mechanical device.
RADAR: The Antikythera device is what looks to be a complex machine of gears, cranks and levers.
That's the best way to describe what it is.
If you were to look at it, it looks like a box.
Wooden on the outside with a crank.
And what the crank would've done is moved a series of levers and gears around on the inside.
What we can tell from the inscriptions on it, and what we can tell from the way the device works is that it was a very mathematically sophisticated machine for showing, even predicting, where the stars, the Sun, the planets and the Moon were all going to be on a particular date that you were looking for.
Really, for several thousand years ago, this is a remarkably Promethean invention to put together this machine in order to give the user of the box, in a sense, a vision of the future.
It's absolutely astounding.
And you could see how this would be useful if you were making a trip on a ship, or if you were trying to plan your agricultural output.
NARRATOR: It is also believed that the Antikythera device may have had an astrological purpose.
JASON MARTELL: The Antikythera mechanism was a numerological device that would help them know their planet sign, what day and month they were born on, and how this information applied to their life.
Numerological information was passed down as sacred knowledge from various cultures.
To know when to make certain decisions.
NARRATOR: To operate it, a user would enter information into the mechanism using the complex system of gears and levers, and then turn the crank to determine specific astronomical positions.
In June 1959, Price published his findings in the journal Scientific American, and described the Antikythera mechanism as an "ancient Greek computer.
" CHILDRESS: He realized that it was a sophisticated computer that could dial up astronomical configurations.
And, at the time, the American scientists were so shocked at how advanced this device was.
And they actually said that discovering the Antikythera device was like finding a jet plane in the tomb of King Tut.
NARRATOR: Could a 2,000-year-old machine from ancient Greece upend the accepted history of modern astronomy? According to ancient astronaut theorists, this seemingly impossible artifact is yet another example of extraterrestrial visitation.
Clearly this thing existed at a time when computers, as far as we know it, didn't exist.
Am I proposing that that machine itself was created by extraterrestrials? Absolutely not.
However, the knowledge with which this thing was built was given to the Greeks by potential extraterrestrial visitors.
NARRATOR: If the Antikythera device was made based on knowledge gleaned from extraterrestrial visitors, might there be more to it than scientists have yet discovered? Ancient astronaut theorists believe artifacts like this were intended to one day be found, much like the Lunar Library that humans left on the Moon.
And that recent technological advancements will soon reveal that they have much more to tell us than meets the eye.
NARRATOR: Zurich, Switzerland.
December, 2019.
Scientists Yaniv Erlich and Robert Grass announce an incredible technological breakthrough.
One that takes the unassuming form of a small plastic bunny.
This seemingly mundane object hides an incredible secret.
Just like a living creature, the bunny has its own DNA.
But how? By binding negatively charged molecules of biological DNA with positively charged particles or protective silica, Erlich and Grass were able to create the world's first synthetic DNA.
While biological DNA is relatively fragile, this synthetic DNA can last potentially for eons.
In the case of the bunny, the scientists encoded the digital files used to create the 3D-printed object into the plastic.
With even just a tiny snippet, they can decode the information inside, and print a new copy of the bunny, which will carry the same synthetic DNA.
What makes this breakthrough particularly significant is the fact that it has the ability to store massive amounts of data.
Digital computers that you have in your cell phone and everywhere in our world today deals with digital information.
Zeros and ones, zeros and ones.
And that's how it makes calculations.
Now, Mother Nature is more sophisticated.
On a DNA molecule, Mother Nature computes in base four.
A, T, C, G, rather than zero, one, zero, one, zero, one.
And we can actually compute by hijacking this base four mechanism that Mother Nature has created, and putting our programming on A, T, C, G, A, T, C, G.
NARRATOR: Experts say that once this technique is scaled up, massive amounts of data can be stored in any object, retrieved and replicated, presumably forever.
TEITEL: These are great alternatives of storing data because they don't need any energy for storage.
They can just sit on a shelf and not degrade.
SPIVACK: Once you actually encode data into DNA, it's very cheap to replicate.
So you can put petabytes of data into a droplet of DNA, and then make a billion copies of it very inexpensively.
And if you have a redundancy strategy, lots of copies is a good thing.
DNA is also very compact.
The amount of space it takes to store the Wikipedia is just a few drops of liquid, and those could actually just be embedded into fabric or paper and take up almost no space.
NARRATOR: Although DNA data storage is still in its infancy, ancient astronaut theorists believe it presents an intriguing possibility.
Is it possible that many out-of-place artifacts discovered around the world have much more to offer than what meets the eye? Might they contain information within them about whatever civilization left them behind? There are lots of natural materials that conduct and can contain information today: crystals, various types of stones, even living organisms.
So, is it possible that extraterrestrials have embedded ancient, sacred knowledge in some type of material that, if we were able to extract this information, there could be a wealth of information ready, waiting at our fingertips? NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that by examining out-of-place artifacts, we might discover clues as to what information is contained within them and how to access it.
As support for this notion, they point to the artifacts that humanity recently sent to the Moon.
When the Arch Mission Foundation created the Lunar Library, they included analog layers that could be read without a computer.
SPIVACK: The idea of the Lunar Library was to make it something which recipients who find it in millions to billions of years could see that it has data on it.
And the analog layers teach everything you need to know to build a computer and get the digital information off the deeper layers.
By trying to store information for thousands or millions of years, you end up going to the same solutions that the hypothetical ancient aliens may have also figured out how to use.
CHILDRESS: So, we have to ask ourself if these artifacts didn't, perhaps, have a technological purpose that we still do not understand and information could be extracted from them.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that extraterrestrials left artifacts on Earth that are embedded with information, much like scientists today are encoding synthetic DNA into inanimate objects? As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned, the technology of DNA data storage may lead to an even more profound revelation and the discovery of the most incredible alien artifacts of all.
NARRATOR: A mysterious aluminum wedge dated to 40,000 years ago.
A bizarre mask said to depict a king who ruled for centuries.
A highly sophisticated computing device found aboard an ancient Greek shipwreck.
Archaeologists have unearthed so-called "impossible artifacts" all over the world.
But ancient astronaut theorists ask what if the most incredible alien artifact is right before our eyes? TSOUKALOS: We've always suggested that the ultimate proof for the ancient astronaut theory will not happen because we'll discover a buried spaceship somewhere or a ray gun in a tomb but rather that the ultimate proof of this ultimate quest will be found inside of our own DNA.
KAKU: And believe it or not, I have colleagues of mine looking for secret messages in our DNA.
And some of my friends take this to the nth degree and say, "Maybe aliens from outer space have left us a message.
" Maybe there's a message there hidden by an advanced civilization and that says, "Here we are, folks.
"We created you.
"We are your great-great- great-great-great grandparents, "and to prove it, we left a code for you in your DNA.
" [chuckles.]
Well, we can't rule it out.
SPIVACK: What if we're all walking libraries and we don't even know it? What if each of us, somewhere in our genome, contains a huge library from an ancient civilization that we're not aware of today? If there's a way to encode knowledge in DNA, maybe we have it in our own bodies today and don't even know it.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the ultimate alien artifacts are humans? And if extraterrestrials are using DNA to store data, could there be a wealth of information embedded in out-of-place artifacts that exist all over the world, just waiting to be discovered? HENRY: We're in the midst of a biotechnological revolution.
Scientists now have in their hands the very same or similar genetic tools that ancient myths and legends tell us the gods possessed when they fashioned the human body.
We can only speculate on what the impact of this is going to be, but I think deep in our core that something would awaken in our DNA itself.
I think we're preprogrammed to find our origins.
That's what ancient astronaut theory is all about.
We're trying to find where do we come from.
And this is gonna have an effect that I think none of us can even calculate.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that an incredible history of alien intervention on planet Earth has been right in front of us for thousands of years, perhaps even embedded within our own DNA? Were artifacts intentionally left for future humans to discover and ultimately decipher once we developed the technology to do so? Perhaps humanity has finally reached an age where we can begin to recognize the ancient time capsules that exist all around us and possibly even within us.
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JEFF WILLIAMS: The hammer was found in sandstone.
It takes about 140 million years to form.
Who was here 140 million years ago? NARRATOR: Strange figures of unknown origin.
DOMINIC STEAVU: The Sanxingdui humanoid statues have really striking features that are unlike anything that has ever been excavated.
NARRATOR: A sophisticated computing device recovered from a 2,000-year-old shipwreck.
DAVID CHILDRESS: They actually said it was like finding a jet plane in the tomb of King Tut.
NARRATOR: Throughout the world, artifacts have been found that defy explanation.
Is it possible that they were purposely left behind by alien visitors? GIORGIO A.
TSOUKALOS: All these so-called impossible artifacts that have been found worldwide all of a sudden become very possible if you take into consideration the extraterrestrial question.
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.
Cape Canaveral, Florida, February 21, 2019.
SpaceX, a private aerospace company, launches a Falcon 9 rocket carrying an Israeli spacecraft called the Beresheetlander, destined for the Moon.
Within the lander is a digital time capsule called the Arch Lunar Library, containing over 30 million pages of data, including a full copy of the English-language Wikipedia.
The Lunar Library is a multi-billion-year artifact that we designed to send a message of our civilization's history to whoever inhabits our solar system in the deep future.
The Lunar Library contains 30 million pages of human history, culture, knowledge, art, science.
NARRATOR: On April 11th, seven weeks after the launch, the lander reaches its destination.
But as it descends towards the lunar surface, Beresheet's gyroscope fails, and the main engine shuts off, causing the lander to crash on the Moon.
While the lander is likely destroyed, its cargo, the Lunar Library, was built to be nearly indestructible, and is thought to have survived.
SPIVACK: We used quartz crystal.
That is incredibly durable.
It can last 14 billion years.
There are 25 different layers.
The top four layers consist of 60,000 analog images of pages of text, photos.
Below that are 21 layers of digital information.
The analog layers teach important information to get the digital information off the deeper layers.
Storing this record of human history on the Moon means that once If and when our planet is destroyed, something happens and all of our records are wiped out, there is something in a place that has stood the test of time for four billion years.
NARRATOR: In addition to providing a record of humanity that will survive for potentially billions of years, the project has another less conventional motivation.
SPIVACK: We were interested in retracing the steps of potential ancient aliens.
If there were ancient aliens, and they were preserving a message for us to find, what would they have done? NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists, the mission is a milestone event, and one that is long overdue.
As far as they are concerned, what humans have now undertaken with the Lunar Library is exactly what extraterrestrials did on Earth thousands of years ago.
The question is always, well, where is the evidence? Where is the evidence? Well, all you have to do is open your eyes.
It's everywhere! NARRATOR: Throughout the world, countless mysterious artifacts have been discovered that defy any conventional explanation.
And while skeptics may insist that proof of alien visitation could only come in the form of some highly advanced technology, ancient astronaut theorists suggest even the most mundane items can serve as evidence.
In fact, in 1936, a local couple in London, Texas were walking along a creek when they came upon one of the most puzzling ancient artifacts ever found a hammer.
WILLIAMS: It was a prehistoric hammer, if you will, with part of the handle still in place inside some very old rock.
And part of the handle actually is starting to go through a process called "coalification.
" It's where you have inorganic material and organic material changing into coal.
Now, how old is this hammer? The hammer itself was found in the Travis formation.
It's a concretion of sandstone.
And it usually takes about 140 million years for this to form.
Who was here 140 million years ago? TSOUKALOS: Modern-day archaeology suggests that we've only been around for about 10,000 years, so this falls into the category of out-of-place artifacts.
Around the world, there are so-called out-of-place artifacts commonly referred to as "OOPArts.
" And those OOPArts are challenging mainstream archaeology because they do not fit into the accepted chronology of what mainstream science says.
NARRATOR: Could a 140-million-year-old hammer really have been discovered in Texas? Skeptics argue that the couple who came upon this hammer must have been mistaken about where they found it.
But could there be so-called impossible artifacts whose authenticity is beyond question? Egypt, Valley of the Kings.
November, 1922.
British archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discover what will prove to be one of the most important finds in the history of Egyptology: the tomb of King Tutankhamun.
To this day, it is considered the best preserved and most intact tomb ever discovered in the Valley of the Kings.
And within it, a very puzzling artifact was found.
WILLIAM HENRY: While they're unpacking Tut's mummy, they discover these incredible daggers.
One of them had an iron blade with a gold handle and a crystal knob on it.
This is two centuries before Egypt is supposed to have had the ability to manipulate iron in this way.
In 2016, new tests were done on this dagger, and it was confirmed that this is not just iron, this is meteoric iron.
This iron came from the stars.
Anybody who has ever worked with meteorites, even today, will tell you it's very difficult to do this because of the high nickel content.
It makes the metal very brittle.
And a technique known as folding, or stacking, has to be done in order to strengthen it, or else it'll crack and fracture.
So the metal has to be heated up to about 2,000 degrees, and then folded and hammered, folded and hammered.
But the dagger doesn't display the telltale signs of folding, which is usually the striations that run through the metal.
So how was this blade made? NARRATOR: According to their texts, the knowledge of how to work with metal was given to the Egyptians by the god Ptah.
HENRY: Ptah was the Egyptian god of smithcraft and alchemy.
He came from the star Sirius.
He had green skin.
Is it possible that this incredible dagger has some sort of an extraterrestrial connection? NARRATOR: Could it be that seemingly commonplace objects, like an ancient dagger and a hammerhead, are extraterrestrial artifacts? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes and suggest that hidden away in a museum storage room is an even more compelling out-of-place artifact that is being purposely kept out of public view.
Transylvania, Romania, 1974.
Workers digging a trench along the bank of the Mures River make an unexpected find 35 feet underground: two massive bones belonging to a woolly mammoth, an animal that went extinct 40,000 years ago.
But even more surprising is that embedded in the hardened sand encasing the bones is a mysterious metal object.
One that would have to be at least as old as the bones themselves.
When the metal is examined, it is found to be an aluminum alloy.
Except it can't be, because humans did not learn to smelt or fabricate aluminum until the middle of the 19th century.
The Wedge of Aiud, as it would become known, is sent to the National Museum of Transylvanian History.
And because it cannot be explained, it is quickly removed from public view.
ANA GRUIA: The Wedge of Aiud was not really on display for a long time because it's a puzzling artifact for us, and that's why we don't really know how to interpret it.
In my view, this object could have just two solutions so far.
One, that it is really not so old, and it's a new object strangely preserved, let's say.
And the second option is, of course, that it's not of terrestrial origin.
TSOUKALOS: How do you explain this? It doesn't deserve to be in an unmarked box.
Just because we don't know how to explain something away doesn't necessarily mean we have to look the other way.
What is it? Let's go figure it out.
NARRATOR: According to ancient astronaut theorists, there is one theory regarding the Wedge of Aiud that provides an intriguing parallel to the Lunar Library that crash-landed on the Moon in 2019.
HENRY: An aeronautical engineer who saw the Aiud Wedge looked at it and said, "That's a piece of a landing gear for a vertical take-off and landing aircraft.
" And this is very interesting in light of what we know about the Lunar Library project, which ultimately crashed into the Moon.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the Wedge of Aiud is part of a spacecraft that crashed on Earth just like the Beresheetlander that crashed on the Moon? As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned, the question is no longer "Do alien artifacts exist?" but "What do they tell us?" Could there be artifacts that were purposely left for someone to find, much like our own Lunar Library? NARRATOR: Mysuru, Karnataka, India.
At the center of this sprawling modern metropolis is the Mysore Oriental Research Institute, home to some of the world's most important ancient writings.
Here, scholars continue to study the earliest known manuscripts of the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and other Sanskrit texts that date back at least 4,000 years and form the basis of Hinduism.
Roughly one billion people still subscribe to the world's oldest surviving religion, which features a pantheon of 333 million gods.
These otherworldly beings are often depicted wielding weapons and traveling in flying craft.
CHILDRESS: Hindu mythology really reads like the wildest science fiction of today.
It is filled with all kinds of magic stones, flying spaceships.
In traditional ancient astronaut theory, we're looking at mythology and legends of these gods coming down, and reinterpreting these legends and myths as possible extraterrestrials who are, in reality, these gods of ancient times.
TSOUKALOUS: In fact, ancient India, their entire pantheon of gods is based exclusively on a cosmic origin that they arrived from deep space.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the foundational texts of Hinduism provide a record of extraterrestrial intervention on Earth thousands of years ago? For the Hindu faithful, these stories are not mythology, but history, and ancient astronaut theorists suggest incredible artifacts exist to support this notion.
In the Mahabharata, it is described that the god Krishna rules over a kingdom called Dwarka that sank into the ocean after being attacked by a flying machine with incredible weapons.
In 1983, 4,000 years after the text was written, incredible artifacts of an ancient city were found beneath the ocean, in the exact location that Dwarka was supposed to have existed.
CHILDRESS: Indian archaeologists, for years, thought it was just a mythical city, until they started finding these underwater ruins off of Gujarat, and realized that they were the ruins of Dwarka.
NARRATOR: Another ancient Sanskrit story tells that a great deluge was sent by the god Indra to destroy what was described as the Seven Pagodas of Mahabalipuram along India's southeast coast.
Today, only one ancient pagoda stands in Mahabalipuram, and just as in the case of Dwarka, most scholars dismissed the story as myth.
17th-century Dutch traders recorded this legend.
And modern archaeologists, modern scientists, have generally dismissed it.
NARRATOR: But then, on December 26, 2004, a massive tsunami caused water levels to temporarily drop, exposing a number of mysterious-looking formations along the shoreline.
Upon closer inspection, they were found to be man-made structures, and quite possibly the ruins of the lost pagodas of Mahabalipuram.
SCHOCH: It ties in with the legends and myths of these ancient temples having been inundated by the ocean, that's number one.
And number two, we now have evidence that there's more than one temple.
We don't have all six yet, but I suspect that the legends may be correct, and there really are six more temples out there to be found.
NARRATOR: Could the discovery of these artifacts provide evidence that the Sanskrit texts really are historical accounts? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest that the most astounding evidence of all corroborates a prominent story of the Ramayana, an epic poem about the god Rama and the courtship of his wife Sita.
According to the text, Sita was kidnapped and taken to an island off the southern tip of India, known today as Sri Lanka.
Rama raised an army to rescue her, but had to overcome a major obstacle.
To get to his wife, Rama and his army must cross 30 miles of open ocean.
DEEPAK SHIMKHADA: Lanka was an island, and there was no way to get there.
There were no boats, there were no ships to go there.
And the challenge is, how do you build a bridge, you know, so long? NARRATOR: According to the Ramayana, magical construction techniques were used to build a bridge to Lanka.
CHILDRESS: Some of the interesting details of the building of Rama's Bridge is that they were writing Rama's name on these stones, and that would magically levitate the stones.
And some of these were very big stones, too.
NARRATOR: As with many of the ancient Sanskrit stories, it reads like science fiction.
But incredibly, modern satellite imagery has revealed a 30-mile-long barrier of rocks and sand that, in fact, connects the southern tip of India to Sri Lanka.
CHILDRESS: For thousands of years, people just thought, "Okay, this is just a story," but with satellite photos, we can see this bridge.
Rama's bridge to Sri Lanka is real.
And you have to ask yourself, was it built artificially, uh, by levitating stones and putting them there? That's what the Ramayana tells us.
SHIMKHADA: According to the mythology, you know, Rama lived around 6,000 years ago.
And the interesting fact that, uh, some geologists carbon-date the rocks on the bottom approximately dating around the same time.
So that kind of corroborates whether or not this story is connected to the mythology, because the age of Rama is around that period.
NARRATOR: While skeptics suggest that Rama's Bridge is simply a natural formation, in 2018, the Indian government voted to protect it by canceling plans to cut a shipping lane through the middle of the structure.
SHIMKHADA: In order to get to Sri Lanka today, ships have to go around, could not be, you know, maneuvered through the rocky area, so they wanted to cut down the hours it takes.
It would cut down the fuel, it will be extremely economical.
But officials from the Indian government and religious groups believe this is something, you know, that was built by god Rama, that that should not be destroyed, that should not be desecrated.
NARRATOR: Do the incredible stories of the Ramayana support the notion that Rama's Bridge is an alien artifact? But if artifacts like the London Hammer, King Tut's dagger, the Wedge of Aiud and Rama's Bridge are of extraterrestrial origin, were they purposely left for future generations of humans to discover? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest there may be far more to these artifacts than meets the eye.
NARRATOR: Sichuan, China, 1986.
Archaeologists unearth relics of a mysterious civilization that flourished 3,000 years ago in southern China.
Until the surprise discovery, this civilization was completely unknown to archaeologists.
DOMINIC STEAVU: Excavation of Sanxingdui revealed a very rich treasure trove of ritual objects at the site, and these were extremely, uh, refined.
And, especially for the time, they revealed very advanced knowledge of metalworking, and engineering as well.
It was unlike anything that has ever been unearthed in China.
NARRATOR: Based on radiocarbon-dating of the artifacts, archaeologists say they were created by a civilization that emerged in China around 1700 BC.
This mysterious culture is believed to have been part of the ancient kingdom of Shu and has been dubbed the "Sanxingdui.
" Further excavation of the site suggests the Sanxingdui thrived for six centuries before suddenly and mysteriously disappearing.
JULIE LEE: One of the things I find most interesting about the Sanxingdui culture is that no one wrote about the Sanxingdui culture, and the Sanxingdui culture didn't leave any writing about themselves for us to find out more about them.
So to me, that they were able to slip under the radar for so long is one of the most incredible stories about the Sanxingdui culture.
NARRATOR: But buried among the marble and jade artifacts, researchers discovered something strange: hundreds of humanoid figurines that have an unusual appearance.
STEAVU: The Sanxingdui humanoid statues have what seems to be a mask on the face, and protruding eyes or beams, almost, shooting out of the eyes.
And as to what exactly these protruding beams emerging from these goggle-like, uh, masks represent or why these humanoid figures would have such really striking features that are unlike anything that has ever been excavated.
TSOUKALOS: Chinese archaeologists admit that whatever or whoever is represented here, it's not the Chinese people.
NARRATOR: Archaeologists believe the masks depict a strange figure named Cancong, the founder of the Shu kingdom.
According to ancient Chinese chronicles, Cancong had protruding eyes and ruled for more than a thousand years.
While scholars consider Cancong mythical, the striking appearance of the masks caused the Chinese government to openly wonder if it had an otherworldly inspiration.
TSOUKALOS: On November 1, 2007, the official press agency of China asked the question whether or not what we're looking at here are ancestors or in fact extraterrestrials.
And my question is, "What if what we have here is both?" I am of the opinion that whatever or whoever is represented in these Sanxingdui statues is a representation of the visitors.
NARRATOR: Curiously, the Sanxingdui are just one of many ancient cultures that created ceremonial masks of strange, perhaps otherworldly beings.
The Aztecs of Central America, the Dogon of West Africa, the Asaro tribe of Papua New Guinea, the Native Hawaiians, and the Selk'nam of the southernmost parts of South America all made masks to honor the sky gods.
CHILDRESS: When we look at these masks, as well as the unusual masks from the Sanxingdui culture in China, we have to wonder, are we looking at the face of an extraterrestrial? NARRATOR: Could these artifacts be commemorating alien visitation throughout the world? While mainstream scholars argue that they are simply imaginative representations of fictional gods, ancient astronaut theorists say other evidence exists to suggest that these were real beings witnessed by our ancestors.
What you can find with many of these depictions of these ancient gods is they're depicted inside flying animals or flying machines.
In Guatemala, we have a giant flying turtle, and you have the helmet, which is the turtle's head.
The entire body is aerodynamically fashioned.
And there's some modern-day fighter pilot glasses or goggles.
There are multiple statues all throughout India that depict Buddha, sitting on top what looks like a flying lotus flower with smoke and fire coming out.
In present-day Mexico, in La Venta, we have this plumed serpent, the snake that appears to be floating in the sky, and it has a helmet for a person as a head, and then down below, you actually see a person sitting inside this weird snake, this flying snake.
The sarcophagus lid that we can find in Palenque, Mexico has a carving that looks as if Pakal is seated in some sort of a rocket vehicle.
That right there is the smoking gun.
NARRATOR: Ancient carvings that resemble flying machines, and strange masks depicting otherworldly beings found all across the globe.
Do these artifacts provide a physical record of extraterrestrial visitation? As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned, these artifacts have deeper secrets still to reveal.
And an important clue as to what really happened here on Earth in the distant past can be found by examining one of the most mysterious objects ever discovered, the Antikythera device.
NARRATOR: The Aegean Sea, April 1900.
Off the coast of the small Greek island of Antikythera, sponge divers discover an ancient shipwreck 150 feet beneath the surface.
Over the next two years, dozens of artifacts are recovered from the wreckage, including the remains of a coral-encrusted wooden and bronze box that looks like a clock.
Archaeologists date it to the second century BC, but are unable to determine what it is or what purpose it served.
RIC RADER: So when the shipwreck is first discovered, nobody made much of this device.
The ship had been full of much more interesting material that was mined out first.
It didn't exert much fascination until people started looking a lot more closely.
NARRATOR: For almost 60 years, the artifact sat in storage at the National Museum of Archaeology in Athens.
But in 1951, physicist Derek John de Solla Price began a careful examination of the box and found something astonishing.
It contains the workings of a highly sophisticated mechanical device.
RADAR: The Antikythera device is what looks to be a complex machine of gears, cranks and levers.
That's the best way to describe what it is.
If you were to look at it, it looks like a box.
Wooden on the outside with a crank.
And what the crank would've done is moved a series of levers and gears around on the inside.
What we can tell from the inscriptions on it, and what we can tell from the way the device works is that it was a very mathematically sophisticated machine for showing, even predicting, where the stars, the Sun, the planets and the Moon were all going to be on a particular date that you were looking for.
Really, for several thousand years ago, this is a remarkably Promethean invention to put together this machine in order to give the user of the box, in a sense, a vision of the future.
It's absolutely astounding.
And you could see how this would be useful if you were making a trip on a ship, or if you were trying to plan your agricultural output.
NARRATOR: It is also believed that the Antikythera device may have had an astrological purpose.
JASON MARTELL: The Antikythera mechanism was a numerological device that would help them know their planet sign, what day and month they were born on, and how this information applied to their life.
Numerological information was passed down as sacred knowledge from various cultures.
To know when to make certain decisions.
NARRATOR: To operate it, a user would enter information into the mechanism using the complex system of gears and levers, and then turn the crank to determine specific astronomical positions.
In June 1959, Price published his findings in the journal Scientific American, and described the Antikythera mechanism as an "ancient Greek computer.
" CHILDRESS: He realized that it was a sophisticated computer that could dial up astronomical configurations.
And, at the time, the American scientists were so shocked at how advanced this device was.
And they actually said that discovering the Antikythera device was like finding a jet plane in the tomb of King Tut.
NARRATOR: Could a 2,000-year-old machine from ancient Greece upend the accepted history of modern astronomy? According to ancient astronaut theorists, this seemingly impossible artifact is yet another example of extraterrestrial visitation.
Clearly this thing existed at a time when computers, as far as we know it, didn't exist.
Am I proposing that that machine itself was created by extraterrestrials? Absolutely not.
However, the knowledge with which this thing was built was given to the Greeks by potential extraterrestrial visitors.
NARRATOR: If the Antikythera device was made based on knowledge gleaned from extraterrestrial visitors, might there be more to it than scientists have yet discovered? Ancient astronaut theorists believe artifacts like this were intended to one day be found, much like the Lunar Library that humans left on the Moon.
And that recent technological advancements will soon reveal that they have much more to tell us than meets the eye.
NARRATOR: Zurich, Switzerland.
December, 2019.
Scientists Yaniv Erlich and Robert Grass announce an incredible technological breakthrough.
One that takes the unassuming form of a small plastic bunny.
This seemingly mundane object hides an incredible secret.
Just like a living creature, the bunny has its own DNA.
But how? By binding negatively charged molecules of biological DNA with positively charged particles or protective silica, Erlich and Grass were able to create the world's first synthetic DNA.
While biological DNA is relatively fragile, this synthetic DNA can last potentially for eons.
In the case of the bunny, the scientists encoded the digital files used to create the 3D-printed object into the plastic.
With even just a tiny snippet, they can decode the information inside, and print a new copy of the bunny, which will carry the same synthetic DNA.
What makes this breakthrough particularly significant is the fact that it has the ability to store massive amounts of data.
Digital computers that you have in your cell phone and everywhere in our world today deals with digital information.
Zeros and ones, zeros and ones.
And that's how it makes calculations.
Now, Mother Nature is more sophisticated.
On a DNA molecule, Mother Nature computes in base four.
A, T, C, G, rather than zero, one, zero, one, zero, one.
And we can actually compute by hijacking this base four mechanism that Mother Nature has created, and putting our programming on A, T, C, G, A, T, C, G.
NARRATOR: Experts say that once this technique is scaled up, massive amounts of data can be stored in any object, retrieved and replicated, presumably forever.
TEITEL: These are great alternatives of storing data because they don't need any energy for storage.
They can just sit on a shelf and not degrade.
SPIVACK: Once you actually encode data into DNA, it's very cheap to replicate.
So you can put petabytes of data into a droplet of DNA, and then make a billion copies of it very inexpensively.
And if you have a redundancy strategy, lots of copies is a good thing.
DNA is also very compact.
The amount of space it takes to store the Wikipedia is just a few drops of liquid, and those could actually just be embedded into fabric or paper and take up almost no space.
NARRATOR: Although DNA data storage is still in its infancy, ancient astronaut theorists believe it presents an intriguing possibility.
Is it possible that many out-of-place artifacts discovered around the world have much more to offer than what meets the eye? Might they contain information within them about whatever civilization left them behind? There are lots of natural materials that conduct and can contain information today: crystals, various types of stones, even living organisms.
So, is it possible that extraterrestrials have embedded ancient, sacred knowledge in some type of material that, if we were able to extract this information, there could be a wealth of information ready, waiting at our fingertips? NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that by examining out-of-place artifacts, we might discover clues as to what information is contained within them and how to access it.
As support for this notion, they point to the artifacts that humanity recently sent to the Moon.
When the Arch Mission Foundation created the Lunar Library, they included analog layers that could be read without a computer.
SPIVACK: The idea of the Lunar Library was to make it something which recipients who find it in millions to billions of years could see that it has data on it.
And the analog layers teach everything you need to know to build a computer and get the digital information off the deeper layers.
By trying to store information for thousands or millions of years, you end up going to the same solutions that the hypothetical ancient aliens may have also figured out how to use.
CHILDRESS: So, we have to ask ourself if these artifacts didn't, perhaps, have a technological purpose that we still do not understand and information could be extracted from them.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that extraterrestrials left artifacts on Earth that are embedded with information, much like scientists today are encoding synthetic DNA into inanimate objects? As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned, the technology of DNA data storage may lead to an even more profound revelation and the discovery of the most incredible alien artifacts of all.
NARRATOR: A mysterious aluminum wedge dated to 40,000 years ago.
A bizarre mask said to depict a king who ruled for centuries.
A highly sophisticated computing device found aboard an ancient Greek shipwreck.
Archaeologists have unearthed so-called "impossible artifacts" all over the world.
But ancient astronaut theorists ask what if the most incredible alien artifact is right before our eyes? TSOUKALOS: We've always suggested that the ultimate proof for the ancient astronaut theory will not happen because we'll discover a buried spaceship somewhere or a ray gun in a tomb but rather that the ultimate proof of this ultimate quest will be found inside of our own DNA.
KAKU: And believe it or not, I have colleagues of mine looking for secret messages in our DNA.
And some of my friends take this to the nth degree and say, "Maybe aliens from outer space have left us a message.
" Maybe there's a message there hidden by an advanced civilization and that says, "Here we are, folks.
"We created you.
"We are your great-great- great-great-great grandparents, "and to prove it, we left a code for you in your DNA.
" [chuckles.]
Well, we can't rule it out.
SPIVACK: What if we're all walking libraries and we don't even know it? What if each of us, somewhere in our genome, contains a huge library from an ancient civilization that we're not aware of today? If there's a way to encode knowledge in DNA, maybe we have it in our own bodies today and don't even know it.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the ultimate alien artifacts are humans? And if extraterrestrials are using DNA to store data, could there be a wealth of information embedded in out-of-place artifacts that exist all over the world, just waiting to be discovered? HENRY: We're in the midst of a biotechnological revolution.
Scientists now have in their hands the very same or similar genetic tools that ancient myths and legends tell us the gods possessed when they fashioned the human body.
We can only speculate on what the impact of this is going to be, but I think deep in our core that something would awaken in our DNA itself.
I think we're preprogrammed to find our origins.
That's what ancient astronaut theory is all about.
We're trying to find where do we come from.
And this is gonna have an effect that I think none of us can even calculate.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that an incredible history of alien intervention on planet Earth has been right in front of us for thousands of years, perhaps even embedded within our own DNA? Were artifacts intentionally left for future humans to discover and ultimately decipher once we developed the technology to do so? Perhaps humanity has finally reached an age where we can begin to recognize the ancient time capsules that exist all around us and possibly even within us.
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