Ancient Aliens

Meteors...

bombarding the Earth

from space.

Material from other bodies in our solar system

is continually raining down on the planet Earth.

And with that are billions

of microscopic alien life-forms.

800 million viruses

are falling from the skies

every single day.

Is our planet properly prepared

for an extraterrestrial invasion... of disease?

What if the terrible plagues

that ravaged the Earth were the result

of alien viruses

that are constantly bombarding the planet?

But are these alien viruses

meant to harm us... or change us

in ways we can hardly imagine?

Sometimes, viruses help

human evolution.

It is a deliberate

artificial change of our DNA.

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.

A Stanford University study

published in the journal eLife,

reveals a remarkable finding that dramatically changes

our understanding of human evolution.

The study reports that since modern humans first emerged

from earlier primates, roughly one third

of their evolutionary adaptations have been caused

not by means of natural selection, but by viruses.

We have genes in our own genome

that were derived from a retrovirus

at some point in our history.

And some actually have important functions

for our development as humans.

This suggests that there has been some kind

of symbiotic relationship with viruses

since the beginning of life itself.

Sometimes, viruses help human evolution.

According to another study,

one important human adaptation that resulted from a virus

is a special layer of the human placenta

that prevents the fetus from being rejected

by the mother’s body.

The genes that create this tissue are called syncytins

and they were not originally found in human ancestors.

They were acquired at

a couple different points in our history,

about 25 and 40 million years ago.

And they’re important for the connection

between the mother and the fetus.

Some scientists now believe

that viral genes like this were as important

for human evolution as natural selection.

I think that horizontal gene transfer

being carried out by viruses or phages

was probably the primary mechanism whereby changes

in species and major changes within a species occurred.

Was it by pure chance

that viruses helped to create a species

as sophisticated as humans?

Or might this viral evolution have been intelligently

directed by beings from outer space?

Anthropologists are telling us that humans evolved Anthropologists are telling us that humans evolved

over time out of Africa and that we had certain,

uh, genetic leaps...

uh, became greater and so these genetic leaps

throughout evolutionary history might have just been

a natural thing, but they could have been engineered as well.

There is no doubt in my mind

that viruses that have originated from space

somehow had to do with our development here on Earth.

However, it is very clear

that the ancient astronaut theory proposes

that the one reason why we became humans

as we are today is not due to an accident

by some natural virus from outer space,

but a deliberate, artificial change of our DNA.

Could humans be the subject

of a bioengineering project by extraterrestrials

who use viruses from space to alter our evolution?

And if so, could those viruses

have been delivered to Earth in comets?

Ancient astronaut theorists point to a curious event

in our evolutionary history:

the moment humans almost went extinct.

Around 75,000 years ago, there was a bottleneck

in human evolution.

It’s suggested that the human population

actually went down from millions

down to just a few thousand.

This is certainly something that genetics backs up.

And we have to ask ourselves what was going on at this time.

Originally, geologists believed that

that bottleneck of humanity was caused

by the supervolcano in, uh, Sumatra exploding.

Now, recent finds have indicated that’s not the case

and they’re leaning more towards

a virus, a plague, that was genetically

programmed for early humans.

Wiped them out.

One controversial theory

is that the cause of this bottleneck event

was not just a virus, but a virus

that was brought to Earth on a comet.

According to this theory, a comet slammed into the planet

with such devastating force, that it created

a nuclear winter...

killing almost all human life on Earth.

Almost. Because those that could survive

both the nuclear winter and the alien virus

emerged as a profoundly altered and improved species.

It was immediately following this event

that humans first began to leave evidence

of symbolic thinking, art, music and advanced language.

Somehow, human beings

reached another stage of evolution.

It was the transformation of the human brain.

Could it be, and we believe it did happen,

that alien viruses infected Planet Earth

at this inflection point

of the extinction of the human species.

They implanted viruses in the human species

that changed the brain.

But could viruses really survive

in the frozen vacuum of space?

And if so, could they have come here

not by accident, but as some kind

of extraterrestrial invasion?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes and suggest

further clues might be found by examining a controversial

theory that comets, far from being lifeless,

are brimming with alien microbes

and they are headed our way.

Boston, Massachusetts.

August 27, 1918.

Two sailors visit the sick bay at a seaside pier

with frightening symptoms.

Their bodies are literally covered with dark splotches,

they suffer from severe bleeding

and they are foaming at the mouth.

The next day, eight more arrive with the same symptoms.

And, in just a few weeks, thousands die,

as Boston falls into the grip of one of the deadliest

viral outbreaks of all time, the Spanish flu.

The 1918 Spanish flu epidemic

is probably the worst epidemic in recorded human history.

Medical historians estimate

that up to 20 million

people, uh, died during that epidemic.

It didn’t just focus

on one group of people.

People from the very top echelon of society

all the way to the working poor

were struck down by the Spanish flu.

Half a world away, the same

influenza epidemic ravages populations across India.

Its starting point is traced back to the city of Bombay.

And there’s a strange connection between these two outbreaks:

they began on the same day.

One of the things that’s not often discussed

is that the great flu epidemic began

on the same day in two different places:

in Boston and on the other side of the world in Bombay.

Now, those are two spots on the Earth

that are virtually on opposite ends

and you have to wonder how that is possible because

you can’t travel, within a day, by ship from Boston to India.

And air travel, at the time, didn’t exist.

How does an outbreak occur

of the same virus on places

so spread apart

in 1918 in less than 24 hours?

The answer is that the virus probably fell from space.

Perhaps the Earth was grazed by the tail of a comet...

...and so that’s why we had the outbreak of the epidemic

on two sides of the planet.

Until recently,

it was believed that radiation, extreme temperatures

and the vacuum of space...

that is to say, the absence of any oxygen...

would kill any life-form.

Pressurization, go Atlas. Go Centaur.

But ever since humans first ventured into space,

scientists have been finding evidence to the contrary.

NASA’s unmanned Surveyor 3 lander

touches down on the Moon

and begins its mission collecting soil

from the lunar surface.

Two years later,