GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS:
An ancient figurine of a modern-day airplane,
a primitive statue of a man in a spacesuit,
mysterious crystal skulls whose origins are entirely unknown. For more than a decade
on "Ancient Aliens," we've traveled the globe and
investigated strange objects found on every
continent on Earth, artifacts that, in
my opinion, provide strong evidence that
in the distant past, extraterrestrials
walked among us. NARRATOR: Transylvania,
Romania, 1970. Workers digging a trench along
the banks of the Mures River unearth two giant
bones, and with them a mysterious metal object buried
35 feet beneath the surface. This strange object, known
today as the Wedge of Aiud, is an aluminum alloy that
appears to have been made thousands of years before
humans were able to smelt or fabricate metal. It was 10 meters in depth,
associated with some bones, which they later identified
as woolly mammoth bones. They were extinct
40,000 years ago, so they must be older than that. The wedge was analyzed three
times, to my knowledge. The main metal in its
composition is aluminum. MICHAEL DENNIN:
Humans didn't really start working with aluminum
until well into the 1800s. So when you look at this
wedge and you analyze it, it really has most of
the modern properties we would associate
with aluminum. NARRATOR: For
decades, government officials refused to reveal
where the Wedge of Aiud was being held. But its location has
recently come to light. On January 18, 2017, at
the National History Museum of Transylvania, ancient
astronaut theorists Giorgio Tsoukalos
and Erich von Daniken were offered a rare opportunity
to get a firsthand look at the Wedge of Aiud. Museum curator Ana Gruia has
taken it out of a storage locker, where it has
been deliberately hidden from the public
since the early 1970s. OK, I'm just going
to put my gloves on. GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS:
This is great. ANA GRUIA: So this is it. GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: Oh. ERICH VON DANIKEN: OK. GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS:
This is strange. And here, this is where
they took the sample out, and here, to make the analysis. And here, you see two pieces
that are broken off, sort of. So maybe it was
attached or something. But very strange. So what does the museum
have to say about this? This is a very strange piece. It is a strange
piece for us as well. As historians, we do not
consider it a historical object that we're used to. We don't know what
it was used for. And we acknowledge these
uncertainties about its dating and its composition as well. ERICH VON DANIKEN: So we
have a real mystery here. But you see this patina
over this whole object, and this creates
another problem. GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS:
Yes, because you cannot fake a patina. It's impossible to
artificially create a patina. NARRATOR: The patina is a
thin coating of various metal compounds that
forms on the surface of the metal during exposure
to atmospheric elements. The older the
object, the thicker the patina layer will be. It takes hundreds
if not thousands of years for a thick
layer of patina, as this apparently
is, for it to develop. ERICH VON DANIKEN: So we
still have a mystery here. GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: In
all of your adventures, how does this compare to
some of the other things that are inexplicable? I am helpless. I have no idea. That says it all right there. Very bizarre. Bizarre. [music playing] NARRATOR: Palenque,
Mexico, 1952. Archaeologist Alberto
Ruiz Lhuillier discovers the
pyramid tomb of King Pakal, who ruled over
the ancient Mayan city from 615 to 683 AD. This is the famous Temple
of the Inscriptions behind me, perhaps the most famous pyramid
in all of the Mayan world. The French-Mexican archaeologist
Alberto Lhuillier began his excavations at the top. It took him four years to
slowly excavate step by step down the pyramid,
until he finally came to the tomb of Lord Pakal
and the giant sarcophagus and lid that the pyramid
were built around. NARRATOR: Arguably the most
remarkable Mayan artifact ever found, the
stone sarcophagus lid of King Pakal has produced
considerable controversy. Mainstream scholars
believe the depiction is of King Pakal on a journey to
Xibalba, the Land of the Dead. [music playing] But ancient astronaut
theorists believe the king is portrayed seated at
the controls of a spacecraft. You see a man
bending forward, almost like a racing motorcyclist. He has his nose on some
kind of oxygen mask. He uses his upper hand
to manipulate the knob. You see his lower hand. He manipulates some controls. He's sitting on a kind of
chair in a sort of capsule. Now, what's amazing about this
is that through modern eyes, we can readily identify that it
appears as if Pakal is riding in some kind of a spaceship. NARRATOR: In 2011, the strange
carving on King Pakal's sarcophagus lid was
translated into a 3D replica by model maker Paul Francis. When I saw this, I
instantly said, there's a guy in a space capsule. You know, it doesn't need
to be spelled out for me. I don't have to find anything. It was already there. GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: I
think this is absolutely extraordinary because
for the longest time, we have said that what
is on this Pakal lid is not something symbolic. It was something that the
artist saw or was told about, and then he or she tried
to recreate this on a slab. I also love the detail that you
have underneath his right foot, where his foot is
resting on a pedestal. And that is exactly what we
can see on the Palenque slab. And how his hands
are manipulating some controls, and also, this kind
of breathing apparatus that's going on in front of his nose. PAUL FRANCIS: The
breathing apparatus is actually a very neat piece. It's called the "giver of life." The soul transfers through this. And a giver of life
to me would be air. I mean, we breathe air. This is a guy who needs
this mask to survive. GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS:
Because where is he? PAUL FRANCIS: Outer space. NARRATOR: New York
City, February 2017. At New York University, Giorgio
Tsoukalos meets with art collector Jared Collins,
who is in possession of a 2,000-year-old
elongated skull. Oh, wow. That is fantastic. NARRATOR: The skull is
incredibly well-preserved. And Jared is having it tested
at the university to find out if it might possibly contain
abnormalities that indicate it is something other than human. GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS:
So this skull was found in the Paracas region of Peru. That's right. But no real modern testing
has ever been done on this. Oh, this is amazing. NARRATOR: Hundreds of
strange misshapen skulls have been found on the
southern coast of Peru from excavations
dating back to 1927. It was at this time that
archaeologist Julio Tello first excavated a massive burial
complex thought to have been built by the Paracas people who
lived in the region from 800 BC to 100 BC. Mainstream archaeologists
say the elongation is most likely the result of
head binding, which involves wrapping the heads of infants
while their skulls are still soft in order
to change the shape. But some of the Paracas skulls
display abnormalities that head binding cannot explain. So let's go, right? OK. OK. NARRATOR: NYU Professor of
Anthropology Dr. Todd Disotell agreed to conduct a
forensic evaluation of the elongated skull. I've seen casts. I've never seen one in person. OK. Wow. That is freaky. I mean, I just can't come
up with another term. I love that your first
reaction is that it's freaky, because I agree with you.
- Well, I mean, look at it. That's-- GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS:
It's quite bizarre. NARRATOR: In addition
to being elongated, the Paracas skull
possesses an abnormally large jaw and eye sockets. Let me just move it over
to the sterile bench surface. Mm-hmm. Wow. So what's very fascinating,
besides the shape, the sagittal suture looks
like it has completely fused. I'm looking at it, and it's just
been completely obliterated. NARRATOR: The sagittal
suture is the seam where the two parietal bones
of the skull come together. Although the markings may be
faint to diffusing over time, all human skulls
are expected to have some evidence of this feature. So it is curious that
this skull does not. OK, let's move on to
extracting some tooth and bone powder to get DNA out of that. - OK.
- OK. Excellent. NARRATOR: The analysis
of the material will determine the
sex, ancestral lineage of both the father
and the mother, and any DNA anomalies
when compared with the current human genetic database. It looks pretty good. So we will pack this
up and send it off. And in four to six weeks,
they should have the result. GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS:
Four to six weeks, OK. Thank you very much. Really appreciate
your input on this. TODD DISOTELL: Take care.
- Thanks a lot. You got it. NARRATOR: Two months later,
in April 2017, Giorgio contacted Dr. Disotell to find
out the results of his testing. All right, Todd,
you got the results? Yeah, and they're
very, very interesting. They did get a good
clean DNA profile from the maternally inherited DNA. So this particular
specimen is actually not found in the New World, not
found amongst Native Americans. And it's typically
found amongst Europeans and Middle Easterners. In fact, the 100% match was
to a Scottish individual. This makes no sense whatsoever. Really? In a South American skull? This is all very strange. That could mean that
people from Europe got to South America, you know,
1,500 years earlier than we currently understand that. That's amazing. Unfortunately, the
condition of the sample did not yield any Y chromosome. Unfortunately,
we're missing that. Right. Do you think that a case
can be made at all-- and, again, this is complete
speculation-- that perhaps it is not necessarily human? Is that a possibility? TODD DISOTELL:
Well, it's possible. But still, we actually
don't know what this is. Since we didn't get
any definitive result, obviously a scientist always
wants to try to do that. This is extraordinary. It's worthy of
study or opening up a new area of inquiry
and some new hypotheses.
