The ancient astronaut theory has been around for over 45 years
in popular culture, and it asks the question whether or not
flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials visited Earth in the remote past.
I'm in the mountains of Switzerland near Interlaken
at Erich von Daniken's Mystery Park,
and everywhere you look you can see incredible recreations
of stupas, pyramids, ancient monoliths, Mayan temples, strange carvings
and other examples of physical evidence that suggests
that not only are we humans not alone in the universe,
but that extraterrestrials have been part of mankind's history
for thousands and thousands of years.
But what does it all mean'?
What are they trying to tell us'?
I'm curious to know if there really might be
some kind of alien code.
My name is Giorgio Tsoukalos.
I explore the world that exists
between reality and speculation,
the known and the unknown.
What we've been taught by mainstream scholars
is not the whole picture.
But I'm convinced that every day
we are one step closer to the truth.
From the time when I was a kid in Switzerland,
I have dedicated my life to searching for evidence that extraterrestrials
visited Earth in the remote past.
I've traveled to every corner of the world, investigating mysterious sites and artifacts,
looking for evidence of extraterrestrial contact.
And what I've found at nearly every ancient site...
And even he modern ones, like Roswell...
Is that they all involve stories
of someone or something coming down from the sky.
Now, although I'm convinced that extraterrestrial visitors
really did come here in the ancient past,
I still can't figure out why so many people continue to deny it.
They claim that there is no evidence.
No concrete proof.
But to them, I say: look around you.
Because while the proof may not be in concrete,
it may very well be found in bone.
When I was in Malta recently,
investigating the legend of the Cyclops, I made a visit
to the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta.
There, I encountered compelling evidence of extraterrestrials
coming to Earth thousands of years ago.
Here, hidden away from the public,
are mysterious elongated skulls that were discovered
in an underground temple known as the Hypogeum of Hal-Saflieni.
The skulls hadn't been on display for more than 100 years,
so I was incredibly honored to get the chance to examine them up close.
I mean, this is wild.
So, these belong to the Temple period,
so we're speaking about 5,000 years ago.
They were found 100 years ago.
Looking at the difference of this skull
and these here, it seems as if it's, like, an elongated shape.
As you can see, even from the inside there's no sign of the middle suture.
Completely fused.
That's very interesting.
The bones of the human skull are joined together
by what are called "sutures."
The sagittal suture connects to the sides and roof of the cranium
and is open when a person is born and closes around the age of 35.
But the skull I'm looking at does not appear to have a sagittal suture at all.
This is incredible!
This one in particular, especially, seems to be longer, which is quite unusual.
I know there is quite a lot of mystery about them.
In fact, we've been accused many times of keeping them secret
'cause they're the remains,
they're the evidence.
Yeah, why-why are these not on display?
Unfortunately, they haven't been studied yet.
They were discovered about 100...
But this is the first thing you should study, right here!
That missing suture is really bizarre... and even more bizarre
is that I found this same anomaly when I was in Peru with David Childress.
David and I were invited to examine some elongated skulls
at the Paracas History Museum by curator Juan Navarro,
and they were some of the strangest skulls I've ever laid my eyes on.
Wow, that's weird.
You can see some sutures in the back here,
but there's none in the front.
It doesn't have the-the side plates fusing together, it's...
This is strange.
I've heard from a doctor.
He said that over the years, if a person gets older,
they fuse.
But there's not even a remnant of a suture.
I mean, there is nothing here, if you look.
Unlike the elongated skulls in Malta, the skulls here have undergone
at least some DNA testing... Although it was only one hair sample
that was analyzed, and not the bone itself.
The results showed it to be of Northern European origin,
which I thought was quite strange.
I mean, how did Northern Europeans make their way to South America
thousands of years before mainstream historians
believed that such a thing was even possible?
And why did they have elongated skulls?
What if, David, we are looking at extraterrestrials here?
Seriously.
It's the first time that I've actually come in close contact
with so many.
This is very, very bizarre.
It's really hard to ignore the possibility that these skulls
may prove aliens" or perhaps alien-human hybrids" existed in the past.
But why has it taken us so long
to notice these things, such as the absence of the sagittal suture'?
And why have we not wondered why similar elongated skulls
have been found in Germany, Egypt, Russia, Mexico and even the United States?
I believe I received a clue to the answer during my recent visit to a small museum
in Southern Portugal.
While looking for evidence of the lost city of Atlantis
in the town of Silves, author Peter Daughtrey took me
to the Lagos Museum.
He wanted to show me a huge stone egg that had been found
on the side of a road near Silves.
There it is.
Wow.
This is it.
The first thing I noticed was the serpentine symbol on top,
because it instantly reminded me of what's known as a "cosmic egg"
or "creation egg," a motif that can be found in ancient cultures
throughout the world.
How old do you presume this one is'?
We're talking of something that's... that's incredibly old.
And this thing up the middle here, well, they resemble the rod,
which throughout history has been a symbol of power and of creation.
Moses had a rod.
And in Mesopotamia, the rod was regarded as the symbol
of the power of the gods.
Interestingly, the idea of human life emerging from a cosmic egg can be found
in many ancient cultures.
In China, for example, Pangu was considered to be the first living being
and the creator of all.
He was said to have been born
from a silver egg that crashed and broke in half to create
the sky and the Earth.
The Dogon of Western Africa say that creator spirits named Nommo
hatched from cosmic eggs.
When they descended from the sky, they made such a deafening noise
that it made the ground tremble.
And in the ancient Greek Orphic tradition, it was said that
a golden-winged primordial being
named Phanes was hatched from a shining cosmic egg
that was the source of the universe.
It reminds me of what might be a double helix symbol.
Which is very interesting,
because that's basically what the ancient astronaut theory suggests,
that a long time ago,
advanced extraterrestrials saw that there was potential
for intelligent life and with a target mutation
of our genes and theirs, essentially we became who we are today.
I'm beginning to wonder if somehow the so-called "gods" of our ancestors
knew we would not be able to identify them as flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials
until we first began to study bones, including human skulls,
and discover that there is such a thing as DNA.
Perhaps what we have here is
yet another clue to cracking the alien code.
This is great.
The egg that I saw in Portugal
got me thinking about other stones that have been found
around the world with strange markings anthem,
and perhaps none have raised more questions
about our history than the Ica stones.
Eighty miles northwest of the famous Nazca Lines
lies the small city of Ica, Peru.
It was here, in 1961, that a collection of andesite stones
were unearthed in the desert...
stones etched with mysterious depictions of humans interacting
with what seem to be prehistoric animals,
people looking through telescopes,
and even ancient surgeries.
Now, while it is true that some of the stones
have been exposed as forgeries,
approximately 15,000 of them have been found
across the region, and some researchers estimate
that they could be more than 2,000 years old.
Approximately 700 miles southeast of where the first Ica stones were found,
in the Precious Metals Museum in La Paz, Bolivia,
is the Fuente Magma bowl.
Thought to be over 5,000 years old,
the Fuente Magna bowl was discovered near Lake Titicaca
by a local farmer in the 1950s.
It features hundreds of triangular carvings that are strangely similar
to the cuneiform text used by the ancient Sumerians.
But what is a bowl featuring Sumerian text doing
more than 8,000 miles from Sumeria... or, as we know it today, Iraq'?
My good friend and fellow ancient astronaut theorist
David Childress has conducted extensive research on the Fuente Magna bowl,
so when I met with him recently in Peru,
I asked him what he thought about this artifact.
That bowl has two forms of Sumerian writing on it:
Sumerian hieroglyphs and Sumerian cuneiform.
It's been authenticated by Bolivian archaeologists,
and all that mainstream archaeologists can do at this point is ignore it.
It's not something they could ever address,
because it would completely blow all of their theories out of the water.
But here's the thing that...
you just said that this was authenticated by Bolivian archaeologists.
What makes a Bolivian archaeologist less mainstream
than all the other mainstream archaeologists?
In my opinion, nothing.
So why aren't they confirmed by the rest of archaeology?
It would change history.
The Fuente Magna bowl is basically proof
that the Sumerian Anunnaki were coming to South America.
The idea of Sumerian writings being discovered near Lake Titicaca
would relate to the theories of author Zecharia Sitchin
and his proposal that the Sumerians were interacting
with a highly advanced extraterrestrial race known as the Anunnaki.
History has to be rewritten.
Eventually, they'll have to address these things.
It's incredible that a bowl was found in Bolivia
that has Sumerian writing, known as cuneiform, carved into it.
I mean, this is some of the strongest evidence there is
for the ancient astronaut theory.
And what's even more incredible is where it was found:
on the shores of Lake Titicaca, just a few short miles
from the mysterious megalithic site known as Puma Punku.
Today, most archaeologists believe that Puma Punku was part
of an ancient temple complex,
but they are baffled by the uniformly shaped and sharp-edged stone blocks
found all over the site.
They are also puzzled by an even bigger mystery:
what type of structure did these blocks actually form'?
So check it out.
Here are the awesome, awesome H-blocks.
Whenever I see them, and this is just this-this feeling
that you get at Puma Punku...
I'm at a loss for words, because this, here, is something
that can't be found anywhere else in the world.
Mainstream archaeologists believe that these H-blocks
were created by hand, with primitive stone and metal tools.
Because the one thing that we have to remind ourselves...
With this particular construction style, no mortar, no binding agent
was ever used.
These pieces are so perfect that they fit together interlockingly
in such a way that you don't need anything with which to bind together
the two or three or hundreds of pieces.
But what's so very interesting
is that they seem as if they are part of a larger picture.
That if you put them together,
they form a solid wall, which is very incredible.
If another block was placed on top, or this was placed on top
of another rock, these are features that make these two blocks
fit together seamlessly.
But what is really incredible is that even to this day,
no one really knows what these stones were meant to form.
Was it really a temple, as most archaeologists believe'?
Or is it possible that it was some sort of an extraterrestrial base camp'?
These look like technical components, part of a larger,
almost industrial, construction.
I've got a little paper clip,
ordinary paper clip that I've just unfurled.
To see how deep they go...
And they actually go equidistant all the way down.
Unfortunately, the H-blocks remain scattered across the dry Bolivian landscape.
They taunt us, demanding to be figured out, like a giant puzzle
that needs to be pieced together
by us.
When I take into account these precision-cut stones of Puma Punku
and the Fuente Magna bowl,
it is clear to me that something extraordinary happened here.
But are these incredible stones
and carvings simply meant to be proof that extraterrestrials
were here guiding us and assisting our progress?
Or are they all part of some incredible puzzle,
a code that mankind has been given thousands of years to figure out'?
I think further answers may be found by exploring other megalithic structures.
When I was in Greece, investigating the legend of Atlantis,
I climbed to the highest peak of Santorini to visit Ancient Thera
and examined a mysterious, giant stone wall.
Mainstream archaeologists have already proven that these walls
are part of the ruins of an ancient city
that was constructed by King Theras in the ninth century BC.
And while I don't disagree with that, lam convinced
that the condition of the rocks reveals much more.
When King Theras arrived here,
these things already existed and they were built
by an unknown culture of megalithic builders
who, at some point, were given engineering knowledge from up there.
Incredibly, the enormous stones seem precisely placed.
Some are even positioned in very sophisticated polygonal patterns.
It reminds me of a type of construction style attributed to the legendary giant
known as the Cyclops.
Now, I'm not really so sure we're talking about giants here...
but could the wall in Ancient Thera have actually been built by giant machines?
Machines that may have appeared
to be giants to the early humans
who inhabited these regions?
During a trip to Malta, I met with Dr. Anthony Bonanno,
a professor of archaeology and classical literature.
He took me to the Temple of Mnajdra, a massive megalithic structure that aligns
with the sun.
Do you think this structure was built with anything astronomical in mind'?
With observing of the constellations?
I mean, this is incredible.
More and more, even mainstream scholars and archaeologists
are discovering evidence that early humans deliberately built
ancient structures in careful consideration of the movements
of the Earth and stars.
But why?
In Malta, I also met with Professor Hubert Zeitlmair,
who has a replica of the Tal-Qadi stone that I had seen firsthand
at the National Museum of Archaeology.
He believes that this tablet contains pre-Sanskrit writing
and proves that the numerous megalithic structures here date back
much further than what mainstream archaeology suggests...
To a time when extraterrestrials lived alongside humans.
You see these symbols... or petroglyphs, or whatever it's called.
Sure.
But it is an old script.
And the meaning, the language of this script is a...
a pre-Sanskrit language.
And in my opinion, all the people in the world had spoken
one language and did use one script.
It is discovered around the world.
Even in the United States.
But the same script,
the same language, can be deciphered
and has been deciphered by a German linguist,
Kurt Schildmann, in the year 1997.
And from this time, we can read
the old texts from this ancient civilization.
And it is mentioned here our solar system must have one more member.
Planet X.
That's correct.
So... but this Planet X is mentioned here
as the most high planet.
One of the earliest proponents of the ancient astronaut theory,
Zecharia Sitchin, proposed that extraterrestrials came to Earth
from an as of yet undiscovered planet called Nibiru...
also known as Planet X.
According to his theory, a previously existing planet
in our solar system suffered a calamitous collision with Planet X
that led to its destruction and formed the asteroid belt
that now exists between Mars and Jupiter.
And on this island,
these sites we call nowadays temples
were not temples at all,
but observatories... laboratories.
And they had a roof, all stony.
And they were quite big.
Laboratories for what,
in your opinion?
There is some evidence on stone tablets, that they make genetic experiments.
Biogenetics.
So we are the result of genetic manipulations by extraterrestrials.
I mean, that is the basic idea of the ancient astronaut theory.
It was fascinating to hear Professor Zeitlmair
suggest that the megalithic structures on Malta could have been
laboratories for genetic experimentation.
I mean, this is right up my alley.
I'm convinced that these large megalithic stone blocks
were used because they would last...
right up to the present day.
And why?
Because our visitors knew that one day we would be able
to look down from the sky.
And once that day came, we would be given further clues
to solving the alien code.
Some of the most compelling evidence
for the ancient astronaut theory can be found in Nazca, Peru,
where there are hundreds of ancient geoglyphs carved into the desert floor.
Archaeologists believe that the Nazca Lines were created sometime between 500 BC
and 500 AD, but for some reason
the ancient people made these geoglyphs on such a large scale
that they can only be appreciated from above.
I recently flew over the Nazca Lines
with fellow ancient astronaut theorist David Childress,
and I'm still blown away by this picture book
that's laid out in this remote and desolate location.
What's interesting about the Nazca Lines is that the designs do not seem random.
Instead, it's like a catalogue
of what can be found here on Earth: birds, fish, plants and,
oddly, even an animal that can't be found in this part of the world.
But even more surprising than coming across a monkey
among these glyphs is seeing what looks like a man in a spacesuit.
So I keep wondering really if this isn't a signal,
uh, to the Anunnaki.
Right.
And this is a big signal for them.
It's like a beacon.
This strange figure appears to be pointing to the sky,
or perhaps waving to visitors from above and inviting them to land here.
But why would people living thousands of years ago
create these glyphs that can only truly be seen
from high above the Earth'?
Curiously, there are a number of sites throughout the ancient world
that were designed to be seen from the sky.
There is the Serpent Mound in Ohio,
the Kofun tombs in Japan,
the Atacama Giant in Chile,
and numerous others.
Now, in my opinion, I think that not only were ancient people
inspired to do this by extraterrestrial visitors,
but that those visitors intended for future generations of humans
to discover these sites.
And possibly, by looking at them all together,
we will uncover some message about both our past and our future.
But what is it that we're supposed to uncover?
And could extraterrestrials still be leaving clues for us today...
in the form of crop circles?
Now, some crop circles have clearly been exposed as man-made hoaxes,
but others are so precise and appeared so suddenly
that they continue to defy explanation.
There's one in particular that has caught my attention
more than all the rest, and it was discovered in England in 1996.
Incredibly, the exact same design appears on a rock
that was found in New Mexico eight years later.
So, this is the trail that I was on.
In 2004, while tracking deer in the desert
just 11 miles from the famous Roswell crash site,
Robert Ridge discovered what has become known as the Roswell Rock.
This small, triangular-shaped object is completely uniform in color
and has a circular design
on top of it that isn't etched
into the rock, but actually protrudes from it.
Investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe was one of the first
to study this mysterious object, so I visited her at her home
in Albuquerque to see what she had discovered.
At first I thought, could it really be identical?
And we can do a comparison here
on, um, my Earthfiles site, so that you can see how they compare.
Now, on the left is the rock,
the actual rock and its pattern.
And on the right is the crop formation in wheat, 120 feet long.
And when you take each item, you can measure it across...
they're exactly identical.
Wow.
So you clearly think that the crop circle wasn't man-made'?
In this one particular case,
they had a pilot and a passenger
who said that they had flown over the field and there was nothing there.
And they flew back over... Couldn't have been more than a half hour...
And here was this pattern.
Now, the fact that we have equal but opposite images
of what appears to be the sun and the moon
brings to mind a concept from the ancient Hindu texts
known as the Vedas, and that is: "as above, so below."
In other words, what happens here on Earth is connected directly
to what happens up there in the sky.
Just who or what created the crop circle that suddenly appeared in England in 1996'?
And why is the same design found on the Roswell Rock'?
Now, although the Roswell Rock
was discovered eight years after the crop circle,
lam convinced that it is much older,
because for the design to protrude like it does means
that the rock around it had to be carved away.
And if it was recently carved,
it would be perfectly smooth without any bumps or fissures.
Could the crop circle in England
that matches the design on the Roswell Rock
be a sign that not only is there an alien code,
but that whoever is behind this code
is leaving further clues to help us solve it'?
In my opinion, this goes far beyond coincidence,
and when I look at all the evidence as a whole,
I have to say, I think I'm starting to see a very specific pattern emerging.
Over the course of my investigations,
I found that not only do many ancient cultures
have similar stories of celestial beings visiting Earth...
Like the Anunnaki in Sumeria,
the Olympian gods in Greece,
and the South American creator god Viracocha...
But I also noticed that there are often strange, unexplained designs
etched into the landscape and artifacts at some of these ancient locations.
After studying many of these designs,
as well as the layout of the megalithic structures,
I was struck by how often I saw the shape of a circle recurring,
over and over.
Stone circles have been discovered in England, Ireland,
France, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
And above Saksaywaman, in the sacred valley of the Inca,
lies a ceremonial site in the shape of concentric circles.
But how come circles and circular motifs are so prominent
in geoglyphs and petroglyphs
found all over the globe?
Is it possible that these designs were messages,
or perhaps even signals to the sky gods?
Although I can't say for sure yet,
this has me thinking of the lost continent of Atlantis,
which was described by the Greek philosopher Plato
as a highly advanced civilization set on an island made up
of concentric circles.
When I was on the Greek island of Santorini,
investigating the legend of Atlantis, writer and researcher Jonathan Bright
shared another interesting connection with me.
Mount Hermon is in the Golan Heights between Israel and Lebanon.
And according to the Book of Enoch, a group of so-called "watchers"
descended here and mated with local women.
This is exactly the same story
Plato writes about concerning Atlantis, where Poseidon sired an entire race.
That's very interesting, and you know,
the legends that are corresponding with this place up here are very interesting.
That something significant,
something "sacred" happened up here a very long time ago.
And they weren't angels in the sense as we think of angels today.
It was fascinating to me to discover that at Mount Hermon,
where the watchers are said to have come down to Earth,
there is a 5,000-year-old monument that seems to be a perfect match
for the description of Atlantis.
And this specific pattern of concentric circles appears over and over
throughout the ancient world.
You see it, for example, at Stonehenge in England,
at Goseck Circle in Germany,
at Big Horn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming
and even the Aztec calendar.
But what does it all mean'?
What are the ancients trying to tell us'?
When I was in Nazca with fellow ancient astronaut theorist David Childress,
we encountered another circular design that I am convinced was meant to send us
a message: the Sun-Star and Cross glyph.
I was intrigued by David's suggestion that the Sun-Star and Cross glyph
depicts a mandala.
A mandala is the spiritual symbol for the universe
in both Hinduism and Buddhism.
It is also said to represent the home of the gods.
But what is a symbol that's common to India and Asia
doing here in Peru'?
Today, for the first time, I saw perfect circles
inside some of the lines, which I had never seen before.
It's this giant geometry etching on the desert
that just... that's baffling.
You know, you can't figure out what it's about.
If you've been to India and Southeast Asia,
you can instantly recognize that as a mandala, and a yantra.
The similarity between this geoglyph at Nazca
and the mandala symbol is really incredible.
Maybe if I can decipher the true meaning
of the Sun-Star and Cross glyph, I will begin to crack the alien code.
I'm really starting to think that the Sun-Star and Cross glyph at Nazca
could hold the key to understanding all these circular-shaped structures
and symbols that appear all over the world.
Now, to me, the Sun-Star and Cross glyph definitely looks like
some kind of mandala... A symbol used to represent
"the realm of the gods."
And I want to compare notes with my good friend and mentor Erich von Daniken.
What do you say about this thing right here?
Because there are some that have suggested
that "the realm of the gods" was something physical
and not something spiritual or ethereal.
It was real.
We have so many descriptions in...
in the Vedas, for example.
The so-called cities in the sky.
Or we have things like heaven.
Abraham, for example, was taken into heaven.
Or Arjuna, in the Indian mythology, was taken to heaven.
Enoch was taken to heaven.
Change the word of "heaven," put in "space" instead of "heaven,"
and you change the complete meaning of the text.
In this case of the so-called mandala, definitely extraterrestrials told to the humans
make this in the ground.
They knew, in the future, we start to ask questions.
You know, it almost seems as if there is this hidden message
that we are now, slowly but surely, uncovering...
That our past is completely different from what the textbooks are saying.
That there is some type of an alien code.
I am absolutely sure these extraterrestrials
did not just left the planet with nothing...
just disappeared with, "Hey, good-bye!"
They left something, some kind of proof.
And this is the future of our science: to find out this.
In addition to the mandala, I found another interesting association
to be made with the Sun-Star and Cross glyph.
In 1972, British writer John Michell set out to diagram New Jerusalem...
A vision of a city described in both the Book of Ezekiel and the Book of Revelation.
By carefully examining the physical description of New Jerusalem in Revelation 21,
Michell created a diagram that features a series of concentric circles,
and at the center, a square and two overlapping stars.
This design, like the mandala,
bears an intriguing similarity to the Sun-Star and Cross glyph.
I refuse to accept that this is all coincidence.
There must be a message here.
But what is it'?
In Geneva, Switzerland,
scientists have built the largest and most complex machine
ever created: the Large Hadron Collider.
It is designed to smash tiny protons together at speeds
of nearly 670 million miles per hour...
and thus duplicate what many scientists believe were the conditions
that caused the universe to form.
Once again, the Large Hadron Collider bears an interesting similarity
to many of the circular patterns and designs
seen throughout the world.
Is it possible that with the creation of the Large Hadron Collider,
we are fulfilling a destiny that extraterrestrials
set out for us long ago'?
I'm more and more convinced that the questions we're asking
and the clues we're finding were intentionally planted here
centuries ago.
And they were meant to be found and figured out...
not by early man, but by us, today, at the point in our evolution
when we can begin to ask these questions.
We needed to study biology to know that there is such a thing as DNA.
We needed to understand principles of advanced physics
and structural engineering.
We needed to understand the movements of the stars
and develop the means of seeing our planet from the sky...
and from up in space.
I'm convinced that someday we will reconnect
with our extraterrestrial ancestors.
But before that happens, there are still many more pieces
of the puzzle I need to find.
Only then will we be able to crack what I call the "alien code."
So it's time for me to once again grab my gear
and head out in search of aliens.