Ancient Aliens

Reports of UFO sightings

come from all corners ofthe globe.

I was taken onboard a 200-foot-diameter spacecraft

in the Mojave Desert and given...

I saw two great big, real bright lights

hanging up in the air.

Most believe these alien encounters

are a modern phenomenon,

but the fact is, they have been reported for thousands ofyears.

Practically every human civilization

have been in touch with extraterrestrial beings.

In India, Israel.

The Mayans and the Aztecs.

The idea that there was one or more non-human groups

inspiring us is the truth.

Millions of people around the world

believe we have been visited in the past

by extraterrestrial beings.

But what if it were true?

Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history?

And if so, where did they come from?

And just who were the visitors?

Roswell, New Mexico.

This sleepy town in America's Southwest

was once best known for its large military air base.

But that changed in 1947...

when a local rancher reported that a spaceship

crashed on his property.

Several weeks later, the U.S. Army issued a press release

confirming the existence of an alien craft.

The next day, the military changed its story

and announced that what they had found was a weather balloon.

These conflicting reports sent shock waves around the world,

and the name "Roswell" became a pop culture code word

that forever links extraterrestrial visitation

with enduring mystery.

Speculation about why the Roswell crash

would be covered up is difficult to pin down.

Some people talk about this in terms of information

that would be shattering to ourworldview.

Almost everyone's heard about

the so-called Roswell event.

And one ofthe real implications of disclosure is that

some of our most cherished myths

about the origins of the human race and our history

and archaeology would fall apart.

Something happened at Roswell, New Mexico

a long time ago.

People want the truth.

I think there's something in the human being itself

that is striving, that is hungry for this knowledge,

in order to answer questions about our own existence.

Today, public opinion polls indicate

more than halfthe world's population believes

aliens have either come here in the past or are coming here now.

But what is it exactly

that makes so many people believe?

I do think looking upward makes sense.

The universe is large.

There are things out there we do not understand.

There is probably intelligent life somewhere.

People tend to forget that we're on a planet

that's four and a half billion years old.

The presence of our civilization in that vast scale oftime...

I mean, if I click my finger, it wouldn't even be fast enough

to say this is the time of our civilization.

And to think that we're the only ones

in this vast period oftime, to me, is absurd.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way,

has over 100 billion stars.

And in our universe,

we think there are more than 100 billion galaxies.

So if every star had a planet with intelligent life,

how many alien civilizations would we have?

Ifyou take us as the crown of creation,

or the top of evolution, we look at ourself

as the greatest, the biggest.

We say, how incredible, uh,

unique we are in the whole universe.

We forgot to learn modesty.

Each step that we take makes us

a little bit less special.

We used to think that we were the center ofthe universe,

as humans, and then we realized,

oh, all right, well, that's not true.

And... But we're the center ofthe galaxy, and, like,

well, all right, so we're, like,

two-thirds ofthe way out in a spiral arm.

And then, well, at least our sun, you know, with this... No.

The sun is actually in the middle,

and the Earth goes around it.

So Earth isn't even the center ofthat system, and...

So, the more that we learn, we sort of, you know...

It's a very humbling science.

When man first landed on the moon,

our perspective on the universe changed forever.

: Houston, uh, the Eagle has landed.

We aliens...

who happened to...

go down the ladder on July 20, 1969--

we aliens...

were certainly part of a magnificent race.

I just don't think people have a grasp for what energy it takes

to go from one star to another.

This historic event raised the question:

if humans can successfully navigate in space

and explore other worlds, why couldn't beings

from other parts ofthe universe have done the same?

And might they have already come to Earth

hundreds, or perhaps, thousands ofyears ago?

I think human past is more fantastic

than we all believe.

I have come to the idea that maybe extraterrestrials

were on this planet.

Cahuachi, Peru.

2,000 years ago, this ancient settlement served as

the religious and cultural capital ofthe Nazca people.

But sometime around 500 AD,

the Nazca mysteriously disappeared,

leaving Cahuachi to fall into disarray.

1,400 years later, in 1910,

anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka came to Cahuachi

to study the ancient Nazca civilization.

During a dig, he unearthed some ofthe most surprising

and shocking artifacts he had ever seen.

They were skulls...

with enormous, elongated craniums.

Where did they come from?

How did they get there?

And were they human?

In Peru, we find these weird, elongated skulls.

And they're bizarre-looking.

I mean, and-and these people look like aliens.

One may say, okay, aliens.

But another aspect that we have to consider

is that skull and cranial deformation,

forming elongated heads is a practice that's known

throughout much of the ancient world.

In 1870, the process of skull deformation

was well chronicled by a German botanist and explorer

named Georg Schweinfurth.

While exploring the African Congo,

he came in contact with a tribe called the Mangbetu.

They routinely performed a ritual of cranial binding

that allowed them to physically alter the shape of human skulls.

They took infants' skulls

and compressed them and bound them.

And they forced the cranium out and elongate it.

And in many cases, they doubled the size.

And a big question is

why was this being done?

It may have been a way to distinguish the elite, perhaps,

from the everyday people.

May have been a social stratification type of issue.

Something that also appeals to me is, that may have been

a way to express physically

and maybe try to achieve physically

greater levels of consciousness

or higher levels of mental ability.

In my opinion, they did this

in order to mimic the gods.

And those gods were physical beings,

because ifthey were just a figment

of our ancestors' imagination, I don't think

that's a compelling enough reason to expose your children

to such a ritual to achieve that type of look.

And in my opinion, these people were misinterpreted

flesh-and-blood space travelers.

Some people have suggested aliens had

elongated skulls, and apparently,

ancient peoples are mimicking those skulls.

The old saying is that

imitation is the sincerest form offlattery.

Although there have been many images

that attempt to depict what aliens might actually look like,

one in particular has come to dominate the public perception.

It, too, features an elongated cranium,

and is associated with an extraterrestrial race

that many refer to as the grays.

In terms of entities,

one very common description are the so-called grays--

three and a half, four feet tall, essentially humanoid,

but, uh, very spindlywith disproportionately large heads

and huge, black almond-shaped eyes.

But would someone in a primitive society

reallywant to replicate this look and deform their skull?

Some archeologists have a different perspective.

They point to artistic self-expression

as an explanation ofthese customs.

There are all kinds of people

that either worship the body or use the body as art,

be it a tattoo or a piercing of some sort, or tribes that,

that put things in their ears or on their lips to try to,

to try to grow parts oftheir body.

Some societies, we know, practiced binding

parts ofthe body-- feet or heads--

and tried to make certain shapes,

and this was done for whatever reason.

We know today that this isn't usually

the most healthy thing to do,