NARRATOR: Ancient stories
that describe civilizations long before our own.
FELICIA BEARDSLEY: Oral histories
always talk about the "before the before."
When gods and people walked the land.
NARRATOR: New discoveries
that challenge conventional history.
MARK CARLOTTO: These Meso‐American sites
actually extends the time frame for archeology
from 10,000 years to... tens of thousands of years.
NARRATOR: And monumental structures
that suggest that everything we think we know
about our planet is wrong.
DAVID CHILDRESS: This pyramid city is so deep in the ocean,
it must be 50,000 years old.
GEORGE NOORY: There's no question in my mind
that preexisting civilizations
on this planet had high technology.
They had help from the extraterrestrials.
NARRATOR: But if human civilizations existed on Earth
tens of thousands of years ago,
what happened to them?
And could it be only a matter of time before their fate...
becomes our own?
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.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: April 2018.
A groundbreaking paper is published
by NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt
and astrophysicist Adam Frank
that tackles an intriguing question.
Might advanced civilizations have existed on Earth
in the remote past that have been completely lost to history?
MICHAEL DENNIN: This paper asked a very interesting question,
which is: can we detect ancient civilizations
that are tens of thousands of years old?
And the intriguing answer is really no.
Because all evidence of these civilizations and remnants
of them would've been destroyed in that time frame.
CHILDRESS: The evidence for them would be
hard to find, they were saying.
Cataclysms and Earth changes in the past
would have erased the evidence for these civilizations.
DENNIN: You know, we're only a couple hundred years
into a technological civilization.
That's not a very long time frame in the fossil record.
So, if our civilization got wiped out,
we would possibly disappear from that record
in the future.
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: Once humankind is gone,
all those skyscrapers,
all the results of human civilization
will be gone after a thousand years.
So, who knows what will
be left after 100,000 years,
or in some cases, hundreds of thousands of years.
NARRATOR: According to mainstream archeology,
the Earth's earliest civilization emerged
in the area of modern‐day Iraq around 3000 BC.
But the surviving histories of many ancient peoples
tell of an earlier age,
one where mortals and beings known as "gods"
lived side by side.
Oral histories have been around generations
upon generations upon generations.
And they always talk about the "before the before,"
when gods and people walked the land.
BETTANY HUGHES: Hesiod was a‐a Greek author who wrote
that there were Five Ages of Man:
the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age,
the Age of Heroes and the Age of Iron.
In the Golden Age, basically, people were
living beautiful lives along with the gods.
And he thought this was real, he didn't think this was a myth.
BEARDSLEY: The Aztecs have other ages of man.
Other cultures have similar ways of breaking up time
and going back into deep time.
It's their understanding of their origins.
When we look into the historical records
of the Greeks and the Aztecs,
they're often talking about ages.
Often, ages that span many thousands of years.
And it opens up the possibility that humanity, in fact, has gone
through intermittent periods of dark and light
for many, many thousands of years, for millennia.
And it's just part of our experience here on Earth.
NARRATOR: Stories of an age before modern humans
can even be found in early Judaic texts,
which describe a race of humans that existed on the Earth
long before the biblical Adam.
ARIEL BAR TZADOK: The pre‐Adamic civilizations
are hinted to in the Bible.
There is a curious genealogy, which is portrayed
in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 36,
which states these are the kings
who reigned in the land of EDOM,
prior to there being a king in Israel.
There was intelligent, technologically advanced
civilizations of a humanoid nature
here on Earth prior to Adam.
According to Enochian literature,
we have a record of it being technologically advanced,
even to the point of having nuclear technology.
♪ ♪
CARLOTTO: I think there's extensive knowledge
from many cultures, many traditions
that something existed
before our modern human civilization developed.
There might have been, uh, other, uh,
civilizations on Earth, um, that predated us
that were not the only technological civilization
on the planet, but just the latest one.
That there had been previous ones that existed
that were destroyed and that
had become forgotten over time.
NARRATOR: Could it be that these ancient stories
are more than just fanciful tales,
and that our planet has witnessed the rise and fall
of more than one so‐called "advanced civilization"?
TSOUKALOS: We have stories of the Golden Era,
when the so‐called "gods" still mingled among men.
So, you have to wonder, what gods,
and what time, and who were they?
According to mainstream archeology, the gods were
nothing but a figment of our ancestors' imagination.
And I wholeheartedly disagree with this,
because our ancestors were very clear
in distinguishing gods of nature,
and gods who actually descended from the sky
physically and taught mankind in various disciplines.
So, if there's a prehistoric civilization, what I'm saying is
that that knowledge did come from the extraterrestrials.
NARRATOR: A central idea behind what is known
as "ancient astronaut theory" is the notion
that extraterrestrials came to Earth in the distant past
and altered the course of humanity.
If the various stories of ancient civilizations
are true, including those concerning
gods living among mortals,
could it mean that alien visitations
may have happened more than once?
Ancient astronaut theorists believe
that not only is such a profound notion possible,
but that evidence can be found
by examining the stories of the Sumerian civilization
that emerged 5,000 years ago...
and the beings they called the Anunnaki.
TSOUKALOS: The term "Anunnaki" means
"those who from the heavens came."
And our ancestors thought they were being visited
by these divine magical beings.
CHILDRESS: In the ancient Sumerian texts,
they were described as
bringing knowledge and science.
They were often depicted as bird‐type people.
NARRATOR: Curiously, a similar figure
to the bird‐headed Anunnaki
exists in cave art discovered in Lascaux, France,
which dates back to roughly 16,000 BC.
In the Lascaux cave, is a deep shaft
with an incredible pictorial story on the wall.
It shows a huge bull‐like creature,
next to which is a birdman,
a figure with a bird's beak.
HENRY: The Birdman of Lascaux
was considered to be a‐a shamanistic figure.
But we have to ask the question: could this be something more?
Could this be an otherworldly being,
an extraterrestrial being, who interacted
with this prehistoric culture in France?
NARRATOR: In 2019,
archeologists in Indonesia announced
that they had discovered rock art in a cave
on the island of Sulawesi
that they believe was created
at least 44,000 years ago.
If true, it is the oldest pictorial record
of storytelling ever found.
And curiously, among the images painted on the cave walls
is a depiction of a humanlike figure with a bird's head.
The paintings depict a group of eight humanoid hunters
approaching a group of animals.
And one of them appears
to have a very large bird beak.
44,000 years ago,
we have these birdmen in Indonesia.
18,000 years ago, they're in France.
So, what are the chances of these birdmen figures
being just, uh, coincidently created
in these different areas?
We have to ask ourselves: are these birdmen
actually representatives of the Anunnaki
who are extraterrestrials, who came
all over the world in prehistory?
NARRATOR: But if,
as ancient astronaut theorists insist,
the Earth played host to numerous advanced civilizations
long before our own, what happened to them?
And why is there no hard evidence to prove they existed?
For many, the answer can be found hiding in plain sight,
and the hard evidence exists in the form of objects
made using the only substance that can stand the test of time,
stone.
NARRATOR: Aerospace engineer
and satellite imaging expert Dr. Mark Carlotto
has spent the past three years investigating
some of the world's most impressive archeological sites.
After closely examining
each site's precise geographical orientation,
he has come to the incredible conclusion
that many ancient structures provide evidence
of being far older than has been suggested
by mainstream archeology
and were likely built tens of thousands of years ago.
CARLOTTO: If you look at many monuments,
uh, today, um,
they're often built with respect,
uh, to the cardinal directions.
So, knowledge of the Earth, of astronomy,
of the heavens was very important in alignments.
NARRATOR: Because most of the world's megalithic structures
were built so that they would be in precise alignment
with the Earth's cardinal directions of north,
south, east and west,
Dr. Carlotto's investigation had a breakthrough
after he noticed that Teotihuacán,
the ancient complex north of Mexico City,
didn't properly line up.
An extraordinary possibility then occurred to him:
perhaps the structure was built
tens of thousands of years earlier,
when the Earth's poles were not in their current locations.
It was an idea that was not as farfetched as it seems.
In the 1950s,
Harvard‐educated scientist Charles Hapgood
proposed a theory known as crustal displacement,
whereby, at certain moments in history,
the Earth's crust suddenly and rapidly shifts positions
and, in the process, changes the positions
of the North and South Poles.
DENNIN: Plate tectonics have plates moving slowly
as individual separate plates.
Um, Charles had a theory
that, basically, instead of a slow, steady movement,
he was really interested in sudden, quick movements
of the crust as a whole.
CHILDRESS: What Hapgood was saying
was that the thin crust of the Earth
can slip forward on the mantle.
And, therefore, the North Pole and South Pole
can shift somewhat,
and this causes huge, cataclysmic changes.
CARLOTTO: Hapgood's analysis was based
on climate data... looking at patterns of climate change,
uh, changes in glacial patterns,
uh, ice ages
and then correlating those patterns
with what he believed was the cause,
which was a shift of the poles.
Hapgood believed that,
over the last 100,000 years or so,
that there were three previous locations of the North Pole.
And when I looked at the imagery
of these Mesoamerican sites
and realized that these pyramids and temples
were not aligned to north, I thought perhaps
they were aligned to former North Poles
that Hapgood had discovered.
Hapgood actually sent this theory to Albert Einstein,
who endorsed it.
And when Einstein died,
he actually had Hapgood's book open on his desk.
NARRATOR: Dr. Carlotto believes
that some of the world's most impressive ancient structures
not only confirm Hapgood's theory
but radically alters our understanding
of intelligent life on planet Earth.
CARLOTTO: So, my process
for analyzing these images starts
with a geographically registered image,
where north is up.
So, for example, uh, here we have Teotihuacán.
And this is where my search, uh, began.
And let me just highlight the four sides
so we can define a direction towards the north.
As you can see in this image,
the pyramid is not oriented to the cardinal directions...
north, south, east and west.
NARRATOR: To test his theory,
Dr. Carlotto was curious to find out
if other ancient structures
shared Teotihuacán's same geographic anomaly.
What I ended up doing was developing an algorithm
as the basis for analyzing their alignment.
So now, as we'll see when we zoom out,
we'll find that Teotihuacán is aligned to other sites,
uh, nearby.
And I'll show you that by zooming out here.
And this shows a number of other sites in the Valley of Mexico
that are aligned in the same g‐general direction.
All of these, uh, lines are meridians
that lead to a point east of Hudson Bay.
NARRATOR: Incredibly, these sites align with a location
that Hapgood proposed was once the North Pole.
CARLOTTO: Hapgood believed the Hudson Bay pole existed
12,000 to 18,000 years ago.
So these sites, by virtue of their alignment
to this particular pole, could be that old.
NARRATOR: If Dr. Carlotto's analysis is correct,
it would date the construction of Teotihuacán
to at least 10,000 BC,
which is 10,000 years older
than mainstream archeologists propose.
And he contends
that other ancient sites were built even earlier.
CARLOTTO: One of the most enigmatic sites on Earth is Baalbek,
the Temple of Jupiter, in Lebanon.
As you can see, this site
is oriented to a point in Northern Greenland
that Hapgood believed
was a former location of the North Pole.
NARRATOR: Based on Hapgood's theory,
Baalbek's alignment to Northern Greenland
would date it to a staggering 50,000 years ago.
CARLOTTO: Another site nearby,
the Western Wall in the city of Jerusalem,
is aligned in the direction of the Greenland pole.
And let's take a look at a third site,
the Parthenon in Athens.
We believe that the original structures at these sites...
in other words, the original sites themselves...
were established as long ago as 50,000 years.
NARRATOR: According to Dr. Carlotto,
these are still not the oldest structures that exist on Earth.
Based on Hapgood's theory,
the North Pole was located in the Bering Sea
more than 100,000 years ago.
So, this is the Temple of the Six Monoliths
at Ollantaytambo,
and it's the Sun Temple.
Normally, sun temples are aligned
to the cardinal directions. They have
an eastern side that faces the rising sun on the equinox.
Here, the Sun Temple is tilted approximately 45 degrees.
An alignment to the current pole doesn't make any sense.
But if we now change our reference
and look at an earlier pole,
this, uh, pole thought to have existed in the Bering Sea,
then the orientation of the Sun Temple makes perfect sense.
So what's significant about this analysis
is that it actually extends the time frame
for archeology from 10,000 years
to tens of thousands of years
to perhaps 100,000 years or more.
So it's my contention that the five ages of the Aztecs,
the five ages of the Greeks
and the previous and current locations of the pole
are all correlated.
They all tell the same story.
CHILDRESS: The idea that cataclysmic pole shifts
actually occurred, uh, is startling.
These structures can be much older than archeologists admit.
And, ultimately, hundreds, thousands of years later,
people found them again and‐and started reusing them.
It's a fascinating thought.
NARRATOR: Are the remnants of long‐lost civilizations
still standing today?
Civilizations that existed on Earth
as much as 100,000 years ago,
but misinterpreted by scholars as being much more recent?
Perhaps the proof can be found by examining
physical evidence of ancient writing
dating back more than 10,000 years.
NARRATOR: Geologist Dr. Robert Schoch
and his colleague Dr. Manu Seyfzadeh
announce a discovery that has the potential to radically alter
the currently accepted timeline of human history.
They believe they have found hieroglyphic writing
at the 12,000‐year‐old archeological site
of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey.
If true, it would predate the earliest known writing
by thousands of years.
SCHOCH: At Gobekli Tepe, I'm convinced now
that we have evidence of actual...
what we can only call writing,
symbolic notation,
writing on some of the pillars.
We're still trying to interpret them.
But if this analysis is correct,
they had writing.
And according to standard conventional thinking
up until now,
writing and literacy did not exist anywhere on Earth
until 6,000 or 7,000 years after Gobekli Tepe.
And what we see at Gobekli Tepe,
I don't believe that's the beginning.
NARRATOR: Could the strange symbols found on the stone pillars
at Gobekli Tepe represent a writing system
that was developed by a long‐lost civilization,
one that thrived more than 12,000 years ago?
As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,
physical evidence of lost civilizations has been found
that they believe to be much, much older.
Canadian explorer Paulina Zelitsky and her team
are conducting an oceanic survey off the coast
when they detect curious formations
more than 2,000 feet underwater.
HUGH NEWMAN: They found
when they were taking images, some kind
of pyramidical structure and other structures.
There were circular areas.
There was what appeared to be
some kind of city built down there.
It was about two square kilometers in size.
And so, this is something quite astonishing
if this is, you know, a reality.
CHILDRESS: This pyramid city is so deep in the ocean
that geologists and archeologists are saying
that it must be 50,000 years old
for sea levels to‐to be that low.
NARRATOR: 50,000 years old?
Might the formations found off the coast of Cuba
corroborate the findings of Dr. Mark Carlotto,
who suggests that the alignments of Baalbek,
the Greek Parthenon
and numerous other ancient structures
date back some 50,000 years?
We've got ruins all over the world
that are underwater.
Ruins have been found underwater in Lake Titicaca.
The formation of Yonaguni
off the southern Japanese island of Yonaguni.
We have underwater cities around India,
such as Dwarka, which is the famous home of Krishna.
And Indian archeologists for years
thought it was just a mythical city
until they started finding
these underwater ruins off of Gujarat.
There's over 200 known sunken cities
in the Mediterranean.
So, much of the evidence
for early civilizations on planet Earth
would be underwater today.
So, they were obviously built at a time
when the ocean levels and the seas and the continents
were quite different than they are today.
HUGHES: All of this evidence tells us
that there were extraordinary civilizations and cultures
that have been lost to the story of the world until now.
NARRATOR: Although many of the world's
known underwater ruins still await excavation
due to the difficulty of reaching them
and retrieving artifacts, it is hoped
that divers will someday be able to examine these structures
and find symbols carved into them that match
those found at Gobekli Tepe.
But as far as Dr. Robert Schoch is concerned,
the wait may already be over.
In 1991, he ignited a firestorm of controversy
when he suggested the Great Sphinx of Giza
was built long before the age of the pharaohs.
SCHOCH: At that time,
all the Egyptologists agreed
that the Sphinx had been carved in 2500 BC,
that it was carved from scratch from the limestone bedrock.
I'm a geologist.
I went there.
I looked at the Sphinx.
Within the first couple of minutes,
I knew there was something amiss.
What we did is we looked at subsurface weathering,
mineralogical changes
to figure out when the rock was carved.
I came to the conclusion
that the Sphinx goes back not just a few thousand years
but to the end of the last ice age,
so to about 10,000 BC or so.
NARRATOR: Key to Dr. Schoch's analysis
was the type of erosion he observed
in the base of the Sphinx.
SCHOCH: You look at the body of the Sphinx itself.
I, as a geologist,
noticed immediately that the core body is eroded
not by wind and sand as you expect
for the Sahara Desert,
but it is water precipitation.
NARRATOR: Water erosion?
In the Sahara Desert?
If this analysis is correct, what could have caused it?
SCHOCH: There's a huge increase
in global temperatures at 9700 BC.
This correlates
with the melting of the glaciers,
rising of sea levels.
But when you have all this water being put into the atmosphere,
the atmosphere can only hold so much water.
It comes down as precipitation.
It comes down as torrential rains.
NARRATOR: But if,
as ancient astronaut theorists believe,
the great Egyptian megalithic structures
were built more than 10,000 years ago,
what happened to the advanced civilization
that created them?
Perhaps the answer
is closer than we think
and can be found embedded in the pages
of the Holy Bible.
NARRATOR: Dr. Irving Finkel,
one of the world's foremost experts
on cuneiform writing
and a curator at the British Museum,
publishes a book titled The Ark Before Noah.
In it, Finkel translates a Sumerian tablet
that dates back 3,700 years
and rewrites the biblical story
of Noah and the Great Flood.
The book sparks a global sensation.
IRVING FINKEL: When this tablet
came across the desk to me and I realized
clearly how important it was,
it was one of those heart‐stopping moments.
Everybody in the world is interested in Noah's Flood
and where it might've come from, so it's a really big thing.
In the Bible, God decided,
because human race was so sinful and wicked,
to destroy everything
and at the last minute, relented enough to inform Noah
that he has to build a boat really fast
and put all the animals in it and shut the doors.
Then afterwards, life could continue
when the waters went down.
But the tablet is at least a thousand years older
than the story in the Bible.
So, of course, this means that the question
of where the story came from
has a whole different explanation.
JONATHAN YOUNG: There's a similar story in India.
King Manu was warned by a fish
that there would be a great flood.
The king built a great boat and survived.
In an Aztec version, a sacred couple
hide in a hollow tree with a little corn
and somehow manage to survive the deluge.
Other versions come from Irish legend,
Norse lore, also from China.
This is a terribly important motif.
We're used to history being something
that's written down in books,
but for most of the human experience,
history was told in stories, shared around campfires.
It doesn't mean that it's all made up,
and I think it's one of those moments
where the myths are telling us about the truth of the past.
NARRATOR: Dutch archeologist
Cornelis Hijszeler is excavating a sandpit
when he notices something strange:
a thin layer of ash buried 50 feet deep in the soil.
NEWMAN: It's like a layer of black ash.
Now, this suggests
there was a great conflagration that took place,
and it dates to between 11,000 and 13,000 years ago.
NARRATOR: Over the next few years,
the ash layer, dubbed Usselo horizon,
is found all over the world.
CHILDRESS: The Usselo horizon is found, actually,
in ten countries on four continents.
In Australia, in South Africa,
in other parts of Europe and India.
And this deposit of ash around the world
is evidence of a worldwide cataclysm.
NARRATOR: Could this layer of ash
really be evidence of a devastating global event,
like the one known as the Great Flood, for instance?
Geologist Dr. Robert Schoch
believes the cataclysmic event
and the resulting layer of ash
was created by a devastating solar flare,
a sudden flash of increased brightness
on the Sun.
SCHOCH: Based on my analysis of the evidence,
there was a major, major solar outburst.
This caused, in a flash,
the glaciers to melt
virtually instantaneously.
It caused evaporation of water.
We have physical evidence of this
in the geological record.
NARRATOR: To many,
the Usselo horizon
is the strongest evidence yet discovered
that supports stories of the Great Flood.
For ancient astronaut theorists, proof of a global flood
could offer some of the most compelling evidence
that extraterrestrial intervention
occurred on Earth in the distant past.
In the Babylonian poem
the Epic of Gilgamesh,
the hero, Utnapishtim,
is told of a coming flood by the god Enki.
In Vedic texts,
King Manu is alerted by Lord Vishnu,
who appeared in the form of a fish.
And in the biblical tale, Noah is warned by God.
The common denominator
in the flood myths around the world
is that there was an otherworldly being,
an extraterrestrial being who is providing knowledge
to certain humans of what is to come.
This tells us that there was definitely
an extraterrestrial connection.
NARRATOR: If advanced civilizations
existed on Earth that were lost to history,
could the story of the Flood explain what happened?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and suggest that further evidence can be found
within the Dead Sea Scrolls,
discovered in a cave in Jerusalem in 1947.
♪ ♪
COLLINS: Some Bedouin shepherds
came across these jars,
and inside these were ancient texts.
Very quickly, archeologists and linguists
started to realize that these contained
Jewish religious literature that were
of incredible importance,
not just to the Jewish people
but to the world as a whole.
NARRATOR: Among the texts is a story
that describes the birth of Noah
that doesn't appear in the Old Testament.
TSOUKALOS: Noah is described
of having skin that is whiter than snow,
of having hair that is
whiter than the whitest of wool,
and Noah's eyes were brighter than the Sun.
Now, when Noah was born,
the father, Lamech, went to his father, Methuselah,
and says, "This is not my son.
What happened here?"
And Methuselah then says
he may have come from a different place
where man has met the angels.
Now, we need to first figure out
what is the kernel of truth.
And in my opinion, it certainly was not a giant ship
made out of wood.
And you combine that with Noah,
who looks very otherworldly...
well, there's your answer.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Could a worldwide flood explain the disappearance
of an advanced civilization that preceded our own?
And if so, were there survivors
that kept the memory of this pre‐Flood world alive
through oral traditions?
Ancient astronaut theorists believe
that not only did an advanced civilization exist
for many centuries before the Great Flood,
but that remnants of its lost technology
can be found...
all over the world.
NARRATOR: Researchers with the Israel Antiquities Authority
studying the Dead Sea Scrolls
make a major discovery.
Using state‐of‐the‐art imaging technology,
they uncover a passage of ancient text
previously unseen by the naked eye.
These researchers have discovered a new passage
in the Dead Sea Scrolls that indicates that Noah's Ark
wasn't in the shape of a ship at all,
but was in the shape of a pyramid.
NARRATOR: Curiously, this is not the first time
that Noah's Ark has been depicted as a pyramid.
In the 15th century, Italian artist Lorenzo Ghiberti
created his masterpiece...
...a series of ten panels that depict scenes
from the Old Testament.
HENRY: The Italian sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti was selected
to create the doors going into the new Florence cathedral,
the Il Doumo.
These doors are called the "Gates of Paradise."
And something that is very extraordinary about them
is that in one instance he shows Noah's Ark as a pyramid
that resembles the Great Pyramid of Giza.
CHILDRESS: Was it possible that Lorenzo,
while he was working for the Church...
learned about the true nature of Noah's Ark
and then depicted it in his sculpture?
NARRATOR: According to historians,
the Pyramid of Djoser, constructed in 2600 BC,
was the first pyramid ever built in Egypt,
and the Great Pyramid was built 100 years later.
But the dating of the Great Pyramid,
and the two smaller pyramids that stand next to it,
is a point of major contention,
with many researchers suggesting they were built much earlier.
The step pyramid of Djoser is considered
the world's first pyramid.
It's a six‐tiered pyramid
built very near the Giza plateau.
CHILDRESS: Egyptologists often assume
that the older pyramids are...
less well created and smaller,
such as Djoser's pyramid, and that ultimately,
their building got better and better,
until they finally built the Great Pyramid
as their, uh, final construction masterpiece.
But it may be completely reversed of that,
and that the Great Pyramid,
which is by far the best of all the pyramids,
is actually the oldest of the pyramids.
ERICH VON DANIKEN: Two and a half thousand BC,
according to archeology, humans made the Great Pyramid.
Now, in old writings, especially in the Book of Enoch,
and in the so‐called Hitat,
which is a book from Arabian writer,
they say the Great Pyramid was constructed
before the Great Flood.
HENRY: What if the Great Pyramid existed,
perhaps even for millennia, before the Djoser Pyramid?
Then the Egyptians come along, discover it,
decide, "Hey, maybe we can make one of those, too,"
and that's when they build the Djoser Pyramid?
CARLOTTO: Perhaps the... the most similar common motif,
or style, is the pyramidal,
uh, shape that seems to exist throughout the world...
in Egypt, in Mesoamerica,
in China... giant earthen mounds in the shape of pyramids.
Why pyramids?
NARRATOR: Is it possible that pyramids were built
by cultures all around the world because they were trying
to recreate much older structures
that survived a great flood?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes.
And some researchers have even suggested
that those pyramids that were built by pre‐Flood civilizations
represent a form of lost technology.
In his 1998 book, The Giza Power Plant,
noted machinist and engineer Christopher Dunn
proposed that the shape, positions of chambers
and proximity to underground rivers
indicate the Great Pyramids of Giza functioned as power plants.
♪ ♪
CHILDRESS: I personally think that the pyramids
were some kind of energy generators.
And here we have the strange idea
that the ark itself wasn't a boat‐type‐shaped thing
but was actually a pyramid.
So was it possible that whoever built the pyramids of Egypt
was doing so to try to preserve
their technology?
NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists,
the possibility that the Great Pyramid served
a technological purpose presents an intriguing question:
If a lost civilization was able to build massive power plants,
perhaps with the assistance of extraterrestrials,
could they also have had the means to escape
a world‐ending cataclysm by leaving the Earth?
NARRATOR: Geneticist Erich Jarvis
and data management company DNAnexus
announce plans to create a biological database
of every vertebrate species on Earth.
The development of this new genetic DNA database
is essentially a modern‐day version
of Noah's Ark...
where all of these animals,
their DNA is selected and kept
in these special databases.
And in the future, we could resurrect
any of these animals if we had to,
if there had been some mass extinction on the planet.
NARRATOR: But many researchers are hopeful
that by the time a global cataclysm strikes,
humanity will have developed
the means to transport this modern‐day ark into space
and seek out a new home planet.
We don't have...
forever on this planet.
Let's say our resources are running out.
Let's say something else happens.
Or let's even say... we know and we can calculate this...
that 252 years from now, we will be met
by a giant collision with an asteroid.
Well, we better do something about that.
So we better start working on that today.
NARRATOR: In 2018, a company named Axiom Space
revealed plans to put a hotel in Earth's orbit.
Meanwhile, NASA is preparing to send astronauts to Mars.
Considering humanity's current efforts to venture into space,
if advanced civilizations existed in Earth's distant past,
might they have done the same?
Cultures all around the world
talk about humans deciding on their own
to leave the planet.
They call this "ascension."
In many of the flood myths,
the common theme is that it had been prophesied,
and people knew it was coming.
Maybe their answer was to migrate into space.
CHILDRESS: There are a number of craters on the Moon that have
what look like pyramids
right in the middle of the crater.
Mars apparently has similar pyramid structures on it.
Maybe they were created by this super civilization of the past,
just like, uh, we're going to do in the near future.
NARRATOR: Could it be that pyramids and other structures
were built on the Moon and Mars
not by beings who were coming to planet Earth,
but by those who were fleeing it?
Did Earth's refugees build these structures to sustain them
while they sought out a new home?
As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,
this notion presents another,
perhaps even more profound possibility.
CHILDRESS: With modern UFO activity,
you have to ask yourself, are these UFOs
from this ancient civilization that left before the cataclysm
and now they've come back?
NARRATOR: Is it possible that civilizations
that inhabited the Earth tens of thousands of years ago
did not die off,
but survived on another world?
And if so, might they be capable
of returning to their home planet as alien visitors?
Perhaps as we venture deeper into space,
we will make contact, not with extraterrestrials,
but with mankind's ancient ancestors.