[music playing] NARRATOR: Gods
descending to Earth, converging on the
same hallowed ground, a holy shrine built to mark
the landing of a meteorite, and sacred caves whose
walls are lined with images of strange half-human beings. Are holy sites around the world
the product of man's reverence for God or are they the result
of contact with ancient space travelers? GEORGE NOORY:
There's no question that these monuments
might have had some kind of ET intervention. They're just too immense,
too perfect to be constructed by ancient mankind. GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: Yes,
it was human beings who built this place,
but with the technology given by extraterrestrials. NARRATOR: Millions of
people around the world believe we have been
visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings. What if it were true? Did ancient aliens really
help to shape our history, and if so, how did they
influence the creation of mankind's sacred places? [music playing] It is perhaps the
most sacred site in all of humanity, the place
where three of the world's most prominent religions,
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, all converge. It is the heart and soul of
what is called the Holy Land. Temple Mount, Old City,
Jerusalem, and this 35 acre plateau surrounded
by ancient walls has been considered sacred
for thousands of years. The Temple Mount is sacred
to Jews and Christians because it's at this
spot that Abraham bound Issac and prepared to
sacrifice him in Genesis 22. [music playing] For Muslims, this site
is sacred because it's from the rock, where the Dome
of the Rock today stands, that Muhammad
ascended into Heaven. PHILIP COPPENS: What we have
on the Temple Mount really is a mixture of three
religions, and each one of them has got an aspect to it which
makes the place even more important. But in origin,
really what we have is a place where God touched
down on planet Earth. And ever after,
this is the place where communications with the
afterlife or the divine realm is to be made. NARRATOR: Each year,
millions of pilgrims come to temple
mount to worship god and celebrate holy occasions. But why? [music playing] In the 10th century BC, King
David and the Israelites chose this rocky high ground
to build a great temple. This was the site that David,
the great King of Israel, had conquered. And so, it had already had a
kind of a blessing about it because this was where
the people of Israel were destined to center their
lives in this sacred kind of place. MICHAEL COOGAN:
According to the Bible, King David, who had just
made Jerusalem his capital, wanted to build in it
a house for the Lord, but for reasons that
aren't entirely clear, he didn't do so. And it was his son, Solomon, who
built the first Jewish temple. [music playing] NARRATOR: Completed in 957 BC
by David's son, King Solomon, the temple was said to house
the Ark of the Covenant. [music playing] The sacred chest believed
to have contained the stone tablets on which the Ten
Commandments were written. But according to many
ancient astronaut theorists, the Ark also may have
contained a power source of extraterrestrial origin. In the Bible, you read
about the Ark of the Covenant. Moses was ordered to go
to the Holy Mountain, and the Lord gave
Moses instruction to construct the
Ark of the Covenant. As we know later, the
Ark of the Covenant was something very,
very dangerous. [music playing] Solomon installed
it in the temple, and it served as the
focal point of the temple in its innermost room,
the Holy of Holies, into which only the chief
priest, the high priest could go. [music playing] It's in his innermost
sanctum, the Holy of Holies, where God was
viewed as resident. So in a sense, the
Ark of the Covenant was God's throne in
the Holy of Holies and the place where god
reigned from Jerusalem. NARRATOR: According to
the Talmud, a central text of Judaism, King
Solomon possessed a magic ring with
a special symbol called the Seal of
Solomon, today known as the Star of David. MARVIN MEYER: This special ring
would allow him to accomplish things beyond what mortals
could usually accomplish, and part of what he could do
with that ring with a seal on it was control the demons. And that gave him
a kind of power and an ability in the
construction of that temple that others would
never have had. [music playing] NARRATOR: According
to Islamic text, King Solomon also had a
magic carpet of green silk, sufficient for his throne and
all his forces to stand on. Now, magic carpets,
do they exist? Of course not. So what was it that
our ancestors tried to describe in those stories? So where was he getting
these strange powers? Was he really in contact
with extraterrestrials who had literally given him a-- a spacecraft to fly around in? [music playing] NARRATOR: After studying the
intricate geometry and design of Solomon's Temple,
even sir Isaac Newton questioned if the king built the
temple with secret knowledge. It was very highly advanced
architecturally, catching certain kinds of light,
being very precise in its astronomical alignment. And the question for modern
scholars and architects is, what was the level of
technology available to King Solomon that allowed him to
design and lay out the temple according to these principles? MARVIN MEYER: There's a
text, as a matter of fact, called the Testament of Solomon
that suggests that Solomon didn't only use mortal
builders and architects, but he brought in demons. He forced them to do
some of the labor, because demons are
especially strong. NARRATOR: Might an advanced
energy source within the Ark of the Covenant have allowed
King Solomon to wield immense power? And might that power have had
an extraterrestrial origin? After King Solomon's temple was
destroyed in the 6th century BC by the Babylonians,
a second temple was built on the same site
in the first century BC by King Herod the Great. According to the New Testament,
it was this second temple that played a significant
role in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, because it was
here that Jesus chased out the moneylenders, an event
which led to his crucifixion and death at the hands of
both the Jews and the Romans. And it was also nearby
on the Mount of Olives that Jesus reportedly rose from
the dead and ascended bodily into heaven. BARRY DOWNING: When we
get to the story of Jesus, we find that his disciples
believed that he ascended into heaven, and then,
someday, he would return. So that this idea of the
extraterrestrial reality of which Jesus is
part is something that the biblical tradition
says, yes, you can-- you can buy that. NARRATOR: But might
Jesus, like King Solomon before him, really
have been connected to an otherworldly reality,
as ancient astronaut theorists suggest? The topic of
ascension when dealing with extraterrestrial contacts
is a common one, because we have Jesus ascending
in the New Testament. These stories give
credence to the fact that there is some type of
technology that is lifting up human beings into a craft,
into a waiting ship. NARRATOR: Nearly six centuries
after the second Hebrew temple was destroyed by
the Romans in 70 AD, Persian invaders built
yet another holy shrine on the site, the
Dome of the Rock, known to Muslims as
the Noble Sanctuary. This magnificent seventh
century architectural monument of Islam was built over a
huge outcrop of bedrock which, according to Muslim
tradition, was the site from which
Muhammad had been taken up until heaven by God. In fact, there is a
hole in the rock showing the exact route that Muhammad
took when he ascended into heaven to Allah to
have a vision of the divine, and to return back once
again to this very site. So for Muslims, the
Dome of the Rock is a very significant
and a very sacred place. NARRATOR: According
to the Islamic Quran, the rock from which
Muhammad ascended is called The Foundation Stone. This rock is believed
by religious scholars to have also been the
very stone beneath the Ark of the Covenant, and the Holy
of Holies in Solomon's temple. PHILIP COPPENS: This is
where God came down to Earth, and where certain
people actually are said to have made contact with God. So this is a piece
of rock, which is of such importance
because of the fact that something of the divine
manifested itself there. GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: That stone
signifies the coming together of the kingdoms of
heaven and Earth. The problem is, we've forgotten
that whoever visited us in the past wasn't God, but
it was extraterrestrials. NARRATOR: Some ancient
astronaut theorists believe that Temple Mount
was one of the earliest intergalactic gateways. But could space travelers
really have landed here tens of thousands of years ago? It seems that their reverence
for the site of Jerusalem may stem from it, early on,
being some kind of a spaceport, a gigantic landing pad
for extraterrestrials. And that's why King Solomon
built his temple there, and then, later, the Muslims
built the Dome of the Rock. NARRATOR: Might
Temple Mount really be the place where ancient
aliens first made contact with early humans? And might its
spiritual significance help provide proof of its
unique extraterrestrial history? Perhaps further evidence may
be found only a few miles away in the heart of
the Muslim world. [music playing] Saudi Arabia, the heart
of the Middle East. In a narrow valley 50 miles
inland from the Red Sea lies Islam's
holiest city, Mecca. Here, in the year 570,
Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was born, considered by
Muslims to be a prophet and the messenger of God. At that time, Mecca was a
prosperous commercial center, a port from which goods
brought from India and farther away in Asia were
transported overland north to Damascus, and
by sea, to Egypt. It was in this commercial
center that the prophet Muhammad received his first revelation. [music playing] MARVIN MEYER: If you wanted
to encounter Muhammad, if you want, in a way,
to meet with his ideas, one of the greatest places
to go is to go to Mecca. BILL BIRNES: Muslims pray in the
direction of Mecca five times a day. So certainly, as
a holy shrine, it is the center of the Earth, a
heaven's gate where the opening of heaven takes place. And that's why it is so revered. [music playing] NARRATOR: In the center of
Mecca lies the Grand Mosque, the largest and holiest
place of worship for Muslims. And at the heart
of the Grand Mosque is the Kaaba, a cube-shaped
granite structure measuring 43 feet high by 36 feet wide. According to Islamic
tradition, the Kaaba was built approximately
in 2000 BC by Abraham, a figure who serves
as patriarch to both Muslims and Jews. In the Bible, it is
said that Abraham head a couple of children, and
his first son was Ishmael, and his second son was Isaac. And it is said in Islam that
Abraham and Ishmael were, in fact, the two that
came to build the Kaaba. NARRATOR: Covered by black
silk and embroidered in gold, the Kaaba is the most
sacred structure in Islam. Nearly three million
Muslims make a pilgrimage to the Kaaba every year, a
journey known as the Hajj. [music playing] MARVIN MEYER: Every
Muslim, if he or she can do so, some
time in a lifetime is obliged to go on a pilgrimage
or the Hajj to Mecca, in a way, to walk in the
footsteps of Abraham and of Ishmael, to walk in
the footsteps of Muhammad. The main ritual
performed at the Kaaba is for pilgrims to
enter into the enclosure where the Kaaba is,
that cubicle structure, and circumnavigate
the Kaaba seven times in a
counterclockwise direction. MARVIN MEYER: In one
part of that building, there is a black
stone that is embedded in the side of the building, and
nobody knows exactly where it came from. But the legend is that it
came down from the sky, was brought down by an
angel, and found its way into this particular
location of the shrine. MICHAEL COOGAN: There's
another tradition that suggests that this rock had
been worshipped long before Muhammad's
time, and that it is, in fact, an ancient meteorite. Which, for ancient
peoples, would have been a sign from a god or gods. ROBERT MULLINS: During the
time that they're encircling the Kaaba seven times,
if they are able, they should try to kiss
the meteorite stone. But because of the
numbers of people, especially in recent
times, that's impossible. So the practice
is that if you're unable to kiss the stone, you
should point towards the stone. That shows your respect for
the stone and your veneration of it. GEORGE NOORY: People
believe that, of course, it was a meteorite that
fell from the heavens that they have
been able to keep. Some of it is in
small fragments. It's broken away, but they've
kept it intact with this silver lining structure around it. It is a magnificent artifact. NARRATOR: Might the
black stone really be a meteorite, as many
scientists and scholars believe? If so, what does that say about
the historical and possibly metaphysical origins
of the Islamic faith? It's kind of strange, really,
that the Muslims are all praying towards Mecca and to
this black stone that's there. There are stories that the
Kaaba and Meccas is radiating some kind of energy. It energizes people, it
increases their spirituality and health. Perhaps it's coming from this
meteorite, this black stone of extraterrestrial origin. NARRATOR: Today, because of its
intense spiritual significance in the Islamic world,
any forensic examination of the black stone is
strictly forbidden. As far as Muslims are concerned,
the black stone simply descended from paradise. ERICH VON DANIKEN: Archangel
Michael descended from the sky, and Michael gave Abraham an
information in a written form, and this information
was sealed into a stone, and this stone is today's Kaaba. It is said it is a
stone from heaven. [music playing] GEORGE NOORY: The ancients
possessed an ability to look toward the
heavens in order to get their divine guidance. This could very well be
another one of those cases. NARRATOR: According
to researchers, the position of the
Kaaba is precisely aligned with the rising of
the star, Canopes, the cycles of the Moon, and the summer
and winter solstices. But just how and
where did the ancients obtain such an advanced
knowledge of astronomy? JASON MARTELL: Just as
the planets are revolving around the sun, the knowledge
of traveling around the Kaaba was a symbolic
reference for knowledge of astronomical alignments
taking place at that time. GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: In Islam, we
have stories of winged angels that have descended with lots
of light, and a lot of wind, and the earth trembling. So what was described
there wasn't necessarily a, quote unquote, "divine
encounter," but a flesh and blood extraterrestrial
encounter. NARRATOR: Might the Kaaba's
interplanetary alignment suggest that ancient
Muslims may have possessed secret knowledge? And might their veneration
for the black stone really serve to commemorate
an ancient encounter with extraterrestrial beings? As far as ancient astronaut
theorists are concerned, the answer to both these
questions is a resounding yes. And they point to further proof
in a series of caves located halfway around the world. [music playing] Western India, April 28, 1819. While hunting tigers just
outside the village of Ajanta, British officer John Smith
discovers 29 elaborate cave temples carved into the
side of a rocky cliff overlooking the Waghur River. Believed to have been
constructed in 200 BC, the cave's architecture and
artwork reveal new insights into the origins of India's
mysterious, sacred past. Ajanta is unique in
the sense that these are the most ancient
Buddhist caves of India. Here, they started
the work from 200 BC. And this work continued until
the end of sixth century AD. As you walk into
the Ajanta Caves, you see all kinds of
temples carved out of solid rock, niches and
alcoves, even statues. But it's all been carved out
of one giant block of rock. [music playing] NARRATOR: Visited yearly
by thousands of Buddhist worshippers, the caves
are considered sacred even to this day. Billed as holy shrines and
temples by devoted monks, they contain numerous
places of worship, complete with paintings and
sculptures depicting the life and times of the Supreme
Buddha, often referred to as The Enlightened One. [music playing] There are many different
sculpted subjects at Ajanta. Many of the sculptures
are of the Buddha. In addition to those sculptures,
there are various depictions of other mythological beings. These are called Jatakas. These Jatakas show
these previous lives, and these lives could be
related to, say, the Buddha being born as an animal,
being born as a deity, or being born as a human. NARRATOR: Even today,
modern engineers are baffled as to how the
caves could have been cut from the 70-foot
high granite cliffs more than 2,000 years ago. DAVID EFURD: These caves were
created through the removal of stone, literally tunneling
into the surface of the rock. Rock was removed. It was chiseled away, taken
out, and any interior space that you see at the
caves today were created through this removal of stone. Any architectural
details that one finds at the site,
any sculptures, they're actually carved from
the same piece of stone which is the mountainside itself. [music playing] NARRATOR: According
to researchers, the Ajanta complex
is significant because of the deliberate
positioning of the caves around the cliffs,
an arrangement that reveals an unusually
advanced understanding of celestial activity. DAVID EFURD: The caves are
carved into this horseshoe band and are oriented in
various directions. Some are oriented towards the
west, others to the south, and some are
oriented to the east, so that they are oriented
towards the rising sun. It does seem to be the case
that ancient peoples in India were very much interested in the
universe and the relationship of heavenly bodies. [music playing] NARRATOR: Evidence of the cave
sculptor's precise knowledge of celestial movements can be
found in two particular caves. Each contains large stupas,
or dome-shaped structures featuring Siddhartha
Gautama, the Supreme Buddha and spiritual teacher
who founded Buddhism. [music playing] Cave 19 is oriented
towards the winter solstice, and what this means is that on
the day of the winter solstice, the morning sunlight
would filter through this large window on
the facade, and the sunlight itself would
illuminate the stupa. This is also true of
cave 26 at Ajanta. It's oriented towards
the summer solstice, and so on the day of
the summer solstice, that light would filter and
strike the stupa within. DAVID CHILDRESS: Now, this would
have been very difficult to do itself, because you're
cutting solid rock from inside of a cave. So you would need some pretty
high-tech gear in order to tunnel and build and chip
away inside of solid rock in order to really be perfectly
oriented to the solstice. [music playing] NARRATOR: Might the Ajanta
Caves have been constructed with the aid of advanced
alien technology, as ancient astronaut
theorists believe? If so, might they also
have been considered sacred by the locals because
of their connection to early extraterrestrial
visitors? Many ancient astronaut
theorists look at the stupa and say it's a symbolic
reference for the power of flight. Many times, it's symbolically
shown with a young Buddha placed in there,
and it almost looks like he could be manipulating
some type of controls within the stupa. The stupas were always used
as a-- as a way for Buddha to ascend or descend
into the heavens. And so we do see
stupas in this artwork, very possibly saying that the
Buddha was going into space. There was an obsession
of ancient human beings to depict things that they saw. And I think they did it
with carvings on caves, and depictions, and
sculptures, and monuments, because that's what they saw. They were duplicating
what they saw. DAVID CHILDRESS: But what they
depict are very strange things. They depict gods, and
half-animal, half-god type figures. So you have here
what seems to be some kind of special
subterranean temple that's built for
extraterrestrials or some kind of space gods. What were the
Buddhist monks seeing? Could the Buddhist
monks have been helped by some kind of an
extraterrestrial presence? GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: The
ancient astronaut theory suggests that if we find
paintings or carvings of half-men, half-animals,
that that means that those creatures, at
one point, really existed, because they were genetically
created by extraterrestrials. [music playing] NARRATOR: The sculptures
and wall paintings at Ajanta are some of the
oldest surviving works of art from ancient India. But was their elaborate
construction really the result of early human contact
with space travelers? If so, might there be
additional evidence of stone-carved shrines in other
regions of the world, evidence that might provide the
clues to our own origins? [music playing] Lalibela, Ethiopia. Hidden from view within this
mountainous African landscape lie 11 churches carved entirely
from a single block of stone. If you approach Lalibela,
you don't even see anything. But the moment you get closer,
all of a sudden, the ground opens up, and you have these
huge, magnificent churches that have been cut out
of the bedrock. So really, rather
than building, Lalibela was cut from the rocks
from upstairs to downstairs. So really, what you have is an
amazing engineering feat which literally topples everything we
know about building techniques. NARRATOR: Religious ritual
is central to the life of Lalibela. Each year, nearly 21,000
Christian pilgrims come to worship. Ethiopian Christianity
is much more directly tied to the Old Testament than
the Christianity practiced in the Western world today. Christianity was introduced to
Ethiopia about the same time it was introduced to Western
Europe, to France, for example. Interestingly enough, that
of all the Christian world, Ethiopia is the only
place where they have these monolithic churches. NARRATOR: Mainstream
archeologists believe the churches were carved
as early as the 12th century. But engineers who have studied
the design of the churches have concluded that their
construction is scientifically inexplicable. You see the
churches at Lalibela, you can see that they're
using what would probably have to be power tools. Anytime you're
cutting hard stone, you're looking at specialized
cutting tools, need iron tools. Even today, we would have to use
power saws and grinding wheels and chisels. NARRATOR: But if, as ancient
astronaut theorists believe, the churches of
Lalibela could not have been made without modern
technology, then who, or what, built them? MICHAEL GERVERS: Now, according
to the story, "The Life of King Lalibela," which is written
down in the 15th century, the angel Gabriel
came to King Lalibela and took him off to the
heavenly Jerusalem where he had a conversation with God, and God
said that he wanted him to go back and build his churches. So he came back and
had them constructed. He had them hewn
out of the rock. They took years to
complete the job. It was 24 hours a
day, but Lalibela had the help of the angels. [music playing] So, according to legend,
angels came down from heaven, and at night, did the work
that the human beings could not do because they were sleeping. So there were actually two
shifts of workers at the rocks of Lalibela, one, human
beings working during the day, and the other, extraterrestrial
beings working at night doing the night shift. To me, that is a
very fascinating story, because in my opinion,
angels do not exist. Angels were merely
a misinterpretation of flesh and blood
extraterrestrials who descended from the sky
with means of technology. And that is what these quote
unquote, "angels," used. NARRATOR: If the
churches of Lalibela were constructed with the
help of celestial beings, why? Was it to worship God, or was
it to honor some other mystical or extraterrestrial being? According to the Kabra
Nagast, the ancient holy book of Ethiopian Christians, the
Hebrew Ark of the Covenant, the gold box containing
the Ten Commandments, was transported to
Ethiopia from Jerusalem some time in the 9th century BC. MICHAEL GERVERS: The child of
Solomon and the queen of Sheba was named Menelik I, and
he is attributed with being the first king of Ethiopia. When he was 22 years old, he
said to his mother, the queen of Sheba, that he wanted
to meet his father, and so she arranged for
him to go to Jerusalem to-- to do that. And he spends an
extended period of time there and got to know the
young noble men of his age. And the night before they
left, they went into the temple and they took the
Ark of the Covenant, and together, Menelik,
with these noble boys, made their way off
back to Ethiopia. [music playing] Could the Ark of the Covenant
ever have resided in Lalibela? There is no historical reason
to believe it could have. But in legend, you do
hear that there was a time when it was in Lalibela. Now, interestingly
enough, in Lalibela, there is an altar which is in the
exact dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant. And then the question is really
whether some of the churches in Lalibela at some point
might not have shielded the Ark of the Covenant as well. NARRATOR: According to the
Ethiopian orthodox church, the Ark no longer resides
within the churches at Lalibela, but instead, lies 200 miles
north in the city of Aksum. DAVID CHILDRESS: Even today,
there is a special temple that's guarded by
the Ethiopian priests and no one else is
allowed inside it, and it's said that the
Ark of the Covenant is kept inside of this church. ERICH VON DANIKEN: And
there is one big cathedral. It's called The Cathedral
of the Holy Virgin Mary in the city of Aksum, and
down there is a tunnel, and under this tunnel
are the remains of the Ark of the Covenant. This is known. This is not a secret. I have been there. NARRATOR: Is it really possible
that the Ark of the Covenant might still be hidden deep
within the cathedral at Aksum? If so, why has it been
concealed for so long? According to ancient
astronaut theorists, the extraterrestrial source
of the Ark's legendary power will return one
day to reclaim it. And some believe the return will
happen at the same sacred place where alien beings
first arrived. [music playing] Eastern Lebanon,
the Bekaa Valley. Here, at this
archeological site, stand the ruins of Heliopolis
built in the fourth century BC by Alexander the
Great to honor Zeus. But beneath the Corinthian
columns and remnants of both Greek and
Roman architecture lie the ruins of a site
that is much, much older. According to archeologists, it
dates back nearly 9,000 years, the ancient city of Baalbek,
named after the early Canaanite deity Ba'al. HANAN CHARAF: Ba'al is the god
of life, the god of the sky, the god of the sun. He was the god
that was venerated on the site of Baalbek
during the Canaanite and the Phoenician times. ROBERT MULLINS: And so,
because it was already sacred to the god Ba'al,
then later, the Greeks and the Romans, then,
would build temples on this very same spot. [music playing] NARRATOR: Archeological
surveys have revealed that the enormous
stone foundation that lies at the base of the site
dates back tens of thousands of years. Baalbek, as we know from
the archeological evidence, must have existed during the
Neolithic Period between 6,000 to 8,000 years, or
even 9,000 years BC. NARRATOR: But even
more significant to ancient astronaut
theorists is their belief that the colossal
stone platform may once have served as a landing
pad for space travelers. We don't know why Baalbek was
chosen as this specific site. It may well be some kind
of special power place. [music playing] But what was originally there
before the Roman temple was this spaceport platform
that was apparently used for extraterrestrials
coming and going on planet Earth. NARRATOR: As
evidence, researchers point to the gigantic
megalithic stones incorporated into the foundation. Each weighed between
800 to 1,200 tons and perfectly fitted together. PHILIP COPPENS: This is the
real mystery of Baalbek, how these stones came to be there,
why they were placed there, and specifically, how they
were transported into place, because some of the stones
are of such magnitude that modern machinery is
incapable of putting them there, but somehow, our
ancestors were able to do this. Some have suggested that this
stone alone weighed in excess of 1,200 tons. How was it moved there? Because obviously, it's situated
on top of these stone rows that we can find down here,
which means that this stone had to be lifted and then set on
top of these stones down here. HANAN CHARAF: And because
these stones were gigantic, ancient people assumed that
extraterrestrial or unknown forces brought them
to the site itself. [music playing] BILL BIRNES: It is one of the
oldest, oldest megalithic sites on the planet, and it has
these huge stones laid out in a precise geometrical shape. At a time when the prehistoric
people who would have lived there, who would have gone to
the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon would have no concept of how
to move stones of that nature. NARRATOR: But if the moving,
hoisting, and setting off such massive stones was so
incredibly difficult, then who or what placed them there? And perhaps, more
importantly, why? We know that the ancients
always went to power places, and Baalbek clearly
is one of them. It is a place where the gods
were worshipped, where the gods were said to be present. And so when it comes to
Baalbek, this platform was built there for a reason. For what purpose it
was used is a question we can't answer at
this moment in time. But what we do know is
that whatever was happening there had a great religious
significance to them, and was linked with worshipping
deities, deities which clearly are of an otherworldly origin. NARRATOR: Is it possible, as
ancient astronaut theorists believe, that Baalbek had
been considered a sacred place for tens of thousands of
years because it was where extraterrestrial beings
first arrived on Earth? The answer may have been found
on excavated clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script
written nearly 5,000 years ago by the earliest known human
civilization, the Sumerians of Mesopotamia. JASON MARTELL: What's really
interesting about Baalbek is it's always been known
as the landing place. There's an actual text
from Sumerian times called The Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh actually claims
to have seen rockets descend and ascend from Baalbek,
the landing place. [music playing] NARRATOR: A comparison
between Baalbek, Lebanon and Jerusalem's Temple Mount
reveals a striking resemblance between their massive
stone platforms. Might they have been built
for the same purpose, to support the weight
of space craft? Hopefully, at one
point, archeology will be so open-minded that they
actually want to explore this further. GEORGE NOORY: We may
never get the answer, but at least trying to find
out what happened, I think, is what drives all of us. NARRATOR: Did
otherworldly forces really descend from the heavens at
the world's holiest places? It may be that the
world's faithful already know the truth, or
perhaps the truth will be withheld until
someday in the future. [music playing]
