♪ (music) ♪ (Sergio) It doesn't look
very impressive, does it. (Rhoda) No, just heaps
and heaps of rocks, really. (Sergio) No wonder this place went
unnoticed for generations and generations just anybody passing this by would just think:
"That's just a heap of rocks." (Rhoda) Yeah, I agree, and it's not the heap
that you think something was here, it's just really like regular,
formless rocks, you know what I mean? (Sergio) Yeah. So, it looks like until somebody,
not that long ago, flew above this place
and saw something very unique. Let's take a look, shall we. (music intensifies) (Sergio) <i>Today we're visiting
the Stonehenge of the Middle East.</i> <i>It is the largest
monolithic structure in this region.</i> <i>Five concentric circles
built of 42,000 rocks.</i> <i>And an ancient chamber
in the middle of it all.</i> Wow! How did they get this rock here? <i>And a window
with a mysterious cosmic purpose.</i> ♪ (music) ♪ (Sergio) <i>The terrain here is so rocky
that we can barely pass with our SUV.</i> (Sergio) Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Look at those rocks! Yo! (Sergio) <i>So, how in the world
did they transfer 42,000 rocks</i> <i>with a limited technology
they had 5,000 years ago?</i> And even the more interesting, you can't see this place
from a human height. <i>There are no hills around,
no mountains, so, whoever built it,</i> <i>they couldn't see the circles.</i> <i>So, how did they construct them
in such a perfect radius,</i> and who did they do it for,
what was the purpose of this place? <i>In this episode,
we go on a quest to find the answers</i> <i>to one of the greatest archaeological
mysteries of the Middle East.</i> (suspenseful music) (Sergio) It's about a kilometer
and a half from the main road, but all of it is on a rocky,
bumpy ground like this one, and there are some big holes in it. So, if you come in a small vehicle,
it's possible, but extremely challenging. (Rhoda) This is nerve-wrecking.
This car was not made for this. (Sergio) Whoa, whoa, whoa. We actually wanted to come here
for quite a while now, but we couldn't, because this place is located
in the military training zone in the Golan Heights. So you can't just come here at any time. Entrance is allowed only on the weekends. And even then,
if you want to fly your drone here so you could see those beautiful
circles from above, you can't. You need to have an Israeli drone license, operator's permit, you need to have permission
from the military. So, luckily for us today,
we joined the Israeli Drone Association <i>which collaborated with the idea
to close the airspace</i> <i>so that the few of us
can fly our drones here.</i> (people speaking indistinctly) (Rhoda) <i>So, this place is called
"Rujum Al-Hiri" in Arabic,</i> <i>which means the stone heaps
of the wild cats.</i> <i>Nobody really knows
why it was called this way</i> but that's how it appears
on the ancient Syrian maps. (Sergio) <i>The Hebrew name
of this site, "Gilgal Rephaim",</i> <i>literally means the wheel of giants,</i> <i>and it brought
a lot of attention to this place</i> <i>because "Rephaim"
is mentioned in the Bible</i> <i>in relation to the race
of a very tall people, the Giants.</i> <i>It is very important to understand</i> <i>that this name was given
recently to this site,</i> <i>so it cannot be used
as evidence to prove anything,</i> <i>because I've seen
a lot of videos out there online</i> which take the name for this place, and that's how they connect this place
to biblical accounts about Rephaim. But that cannot be used as evidence. We need to rely on archeological
and and historical evidence to find out the truth. <i>This place is a subject
to much dispute and opinion.</i> <i>There is only about one thing
that scientists agree on:</i> <i>it was built around the year 3,000 BC.</i> <i>This ancient structure is built
of five concentric circles.</i> <i>The outer circle has a diameter
of 156 meters, roughly 500 feet.</i> <i>That makes it the largest
megalithic structure in the Middle East.</i> <i>It is estimated to have
about 42,000 rocks,</i> <i>weighing up to 40,000 tons.</i> <i>Here is a really cool thing
about this place.</i> In the center of all the circles,
there is a large heap of stones about 13 feet high. <i>From the side,
it doesn't look very impressive.</i> <i>But once you climb on top of it,</i> <i>you realize
that's not just a heap of stones.</i> <i>It is some type of a building
with a chamber inside.</i> <i>It has a window</i> <i>and it has steps leading towards
some type of an entrance,</i> so we can actually go inside of it. ♪ (tense music) ♪ (exhales) Wow! (Rhoda) Put your hand there. Oh, my gosh! Oh, this is not a place I want to be in. <i>This place looks like
it has a lot of spiders.</i> I do not like spiders. (Sergio) Wow! This is... Wow! (Rhoda) Look, there is candles. I think people did here
some sort of ceremonies and I see a star. (Sergio) So you see, this is the window from where the ray of the sun
comes in always once a year. Any other time of year, it's like this. See, the sun is up there, and this is when you have sun here,
but not inside the chamber. But only once a year,
the sun goes through. <i>In the center chamber
of the Gilgal Rephaim,</i> <i>archaeologists found a window
which has a very unique purpose.</i> <i>It only allows the sun rays to enter
on the longest day in the year;</i> <i>the summer solstice.</i> <i>And here is how it works.</i> <i>The window is built
in a very specific angle</i> <i>with very thick walls,</i> <i>so that the sun rays are blocked
from entering the chamber</i> <i>on all days of the year except just one;
the solstice day,</i> <i>in which the Earth achieves
its maximum axial tilt</i> <i>and thus, lets the sun shine through
the window and into the chamber.</i> That's incredible they had the knowledge. I don't have the knowledge
how to do that, actually. If I wanted to, I want to know
where to put the window at what day of the year,
and how to build this. No way in my lifetime
I'll be able to figure out by myself how did they know this. <i>We gave it a farther thought.</i> <i>To build this window,</i> <i>one would need to know
which day of the year is the longest</i> <i>and since a clock that would measure
the hours and minutes of the day</i> <i>was not invented yet for another millenia,</i> <i>they would have to use
something different,</i> <i>yet very precise.</i> So, imagine this is our plateau, this is the ground and the mountain. The easiest way to find
the longest day in the year would be to take a pole,
stick it in the ground, and then, when the sun rises, it would cast a shadow. When the sun reaches its midday, you'll just trace the shadow
until it's the shortest in that day, and you mark it on the ground,
so let's say the shadow gets up to here. The next day, the sun is going to go
a little bit farther into the horizon as the Earth tilts, and now, the shadow goes over here,
so, now, we've got another line, a little farther during the new day. And in continuously doing so, so you can measure throughout
the entire year your shadows, and you can find when the shadow
is the longest and the shortest, and that would be an indication
what is the longest day and the shortest day in that year. This is actually how the Egyptian people have their first
kind of a time measuring device where they would
divide the day into two sections before the noon and afternoon noon. This actually takes quite
some intelligence to figure out, another proof that the people
that lived there 5,000 years ago were not as primitive as one would assume. <i>Here is the greatest mystery
about this place.</i> <i>It is built on a very large plateau.</i> <i>There are no hills or mountains
anywhere close.</i> It's not like you can go up
on some hill and look down and say: "Oh! Look how pretty this thing looks." Whoever built it knew that the regular human
cannot see the formation from the ground. <i>It is hard to speculate,</i> <i>but there are two main theories
explaining the purpose of the circles.</i> <i>One interesting theory suggests</i> <i>the circles were built
for the purpose of idol worship,</i> <i>like the Tammuz and Ishtar,
the gods of fertility,</i> <i>believing that the gods could see
the circles from above.</i> <i>The other theory that is very interesting</i> <i>suggests that this structure was built
with the help of a very tall people</i> <i>who could see the circles much better
than an average person.</i> In the book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 3, the Bible tells us about Og,
king of Bashan, being a very tall person. The text says that his bed was
thirteen and a half feet long. That's four meters. Now, Bashan, the area,
is actually today's Golan Heights. So, he lived here. And then the text goes on saying that
he was the last descendant of the Rephaim. The Rephaim is the race
of exceptionally tall people. So, if Og, king of Bashan was to stand
next to these circles, would he be able to see them all
from his height? <i>We decided to conduct a test.</i> <i>We raised a drone to my height,
6 feet and 3 inches, roughly 1.9 meters.</i> <i>At this height, you can't see any circles,
just a heap of stones.</i> <i>Next, let's raise the drone
to the altitude of 13 feet,</i> <i>that's 4 meters in elevation,</i> <i>and see how it would look like
from the eyes of Og.</i> This is really, really cool because we can actually
start seeing the circles from this height and imagine if cut down the weeds, you'll be able to see them
even in a better way. <i>One could argue that Og lived
2,000 years after the structure was built,</i> but that's actually good for this theory because it is very plausible that Og's
great, great, great, great-grandpa was a little taller than him, and he would even be able
to see this place better. <i>And there's also another biblical text
in the Book of Numbers</i> <i>that says that the Israelites
seem to themselves as grasshoppers</i> <i>in front of these giants.</i> That's how I feel next to you,
always needing to look up like that. It gives me neck cramps sometimes. I'm not that tall. Mm-hmm. (laughs) Cute. (Sergio) <i>Today, we're left
with more questions than answers.</i> <i>This place has so many mysteries,
like the small hatch in the mount</i> <i>that points to a specific coordinates
on Mount Hermon,</i> <i>a place that we are yet to explore.</i> <i>In the end of the day,
we're leaving here with one conclusion,</i> <i>that we must return,</i> <i>for we have only scratched the surface
behind the mysteries of Gilgal Rephaim.</i> I can't believe you don't like spiders. Spiders are actually nice,
they live in king's palaces. I read this today. - What are you reading?
- [inaudible]. - Oh, it's true.
- Spiders live in king's palaces. Because nobody can get
up there with a broom. (laughs)
