S02 E01 Ancient Aliens: Mysterious Places

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, what might happen when they return?
MARTELL: Through Einstein’s principles of being able to bend space using a gravitational pull, it’s very possible that extraterrestrial craft could somehow get a higher charge of energy from these locations, like the Bermuda Triangle, which allow them to do a burst of energy, if you will, a warp speed, and harness some type of extra particles or energies from these locations to get them where they’re trying to go.
BARA: What happens is, is that any time you have energy generated at all, especially from a higher plane, a higher dimension, it’s going to come out by spin.
It’s going to be rotation and spin that allows that energy to gate through. So, by definition, such energy emissions are going to be vortexes. So a vortex and a gateway are the same things.
NARRATOR: Since wormholes are theoretically located throughout the universe, could these same types of gateways exist in smaller areas on Earth?
If so, are strange electromagnetic levels the key to discovering them?
QUASAR: Completely unconnected people report the same thing, and it always has something to do with an electromagnetic phenomenon, usually involving an unexplained vapor or cloud.
This phenomenon indicated UFOs materializing or dematerializing in our dimension.
CHILDRESS: It’s quite possible that the Bermuda Triangle is exactly one such interdimensional doorway that’s used by these aliens.
NARRATOR: With reports of UFOs appearing, and ships and planes disappearing, some claim the Bermuda Triangle is a portal that works in both directions.
So if, as ancient astronaut theorists claim, otherworldly visitors have been using them to come here since ancient times, might we someday use this shortcut to visit them?
And if there really is a portal in the open waters of the Bermuda Triangle, might there be others on land?
NARRATOR: 400 miles south of El Paso, Texas, in northern Mexico, stretches a remote and rugged section of high desert.
This area, near the town of Ceballos, is referred to by the locals as the Zona del Silencio, or the Zone of Silence.
It’s an epicenter for some of the strangest phenomena ever experienced on Earth.
GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: Nothing works there. If you go there with your cell phone, the cell phone stops. If you go with a radio, it stops. If you go there with a compass, the needle just keeps spinning.
DAVID CHILDRESS: It’s completely bizarre. There are strange rocks everywhere. You have strange mutated animals living in the desert in this area. You feel a strange tingling when you’re there.
NARRATOR: The Zone of Silence was first identified in the 1930s by Francisco Sarabia, a Mexican pilot, who claimed that his radio had mysteriously failed to function while flying over the area.
RUBEN URIARTE: They call it Mexico’s Bermuda Triangle. It’s located practically on the same parallel– the 28th and 26th parallel– and as a result of that, it goes and connects with the Egyptian pyramids, so, around that whole sector, there seems to be some connection between the Zone and anomalies that occur through these different parts of the world.
SARA SEAGER: As a scientist, you’re trained to be skeptical, or maybe you were born that way. But we really don’t believe anything. You know nothing is proven until you actually have evidence. I can say that Earth’s magnetic field does vary across the surface by up to a few percents.
NARRATOR: One of the strangest cases involving the Zone of Silence took place on July 11, 1970, when the U.S. Air Force launched an Athena missile from its military facility in Green River, Utah. The missile was programmed to land 700 miles away at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
But for some unexplained reason, the Athena missile flew hundreds of miles past the White Sands Range towards the Zone of Silence.
BARA: Not only did it go off course, it way overshot, as if it had been picked up or yanked or dragged or pulled into it. There was a NASA spokesman who even said it was weird. It was like the thing just got pulled into this area. And it ended up crashing there and breaking up into bits.
NARRATOR: But some claim this missile is not the only thing that’s been mysteriously pulled into the Zone of Silence. Ancient alien theorists believe an unusually large number of meteorites have crashed here.
CHILDRESS: The evidence seems to be indicating that the Zone of Silence is some powerful energy vortex area that’s literally sucking meteorites and other space debris right into this small area of northern Mexico.
LOGAN HAWKES: There’s a high level of magnetism in the area. That’s been proven by science. We know there’s a magnetic signature to the entire area. Is it strong enough to attract large objects like meteorites? I think we need more research. But I don’t think that research is being done right now.
NARRATOR: Starting 3,000 years ago, the Anasazi culture inhabited the region to the north, in today’s American Southwest. Anasazi means “ancient ones,” and they paid great attention to the stars. Scientists have determined that, in 1054 AD, a supernova explosion was visible from Earth.
Many believe the first known drawing of this event was found inside an Anasazi cave dwelling. South of the Zone of Silence, other cultures, including the Maya, also reportedly possessed a surprisingly detailed knowledge of similar celestial events.
Is it possible that both of these cultures were somehow exchanging information?
HAWKES: They’re separated by thousands of miles, but both the Anasazi of the north and the Mesoamericans of the south found the Zone of Silence and used it as a meeting place between their two cultures.
You could imagine if you studied the stars at night and plotted the constellations, obviously, one of the things that you’re going to see are these meteorites streaking across the sky.
If your answers come from the sky, you probably would follow those streaking meteorites and find out where they ended up. And the theory is that they may have found what they were looking for in the Zone of Silence.
NARRATOR: But what other connections exist between these cultures? And are they of a celestial origin?
HAWKES: If we look back into the ancient beliefs of the Anasazi and the Mesoamericans to the south, we know that there was a great belief in sky people; visitors from the sky.
If these visitors came from the sky, who were they?
MARTELL: And there’s a similarity to the beings being reported as tall, pale-skinned, white hair, which is not indigenous to the dark-skinned, dark-haired people found in that region, but does match many of the South American descriptions of their gods.
NARRATOR: According to legend, these so-called “Visitors from the Sky” made themselves known to an ancient people. Is it possible that they are still making themselves known today?
URIARTE: There are a number of reports of UFOs in the Zone of Silence.
HAWKES: Probably the most prominent and most popular report came out of the town of Ceballos. It was on a late summer afternoon when a number of townspeople saw an object hovering in the sky on the outskirts of town.
They described it as being about 100 meters wide. It had multicolored lights flashing. It wasn’t doing anything. It was just hovering in the desert. After a while, it simply took off and headed out into the Zone of Silence.
URIARTE: I think, too, that, as what’s going on today– the high activity UFO sightings, the anomalous reports that are still going on today– perhaps there is a connection. Maybe it’s a vortex. Maybe it’s a dimensional port. We can’t explain it, but something unusual is going on in that area.
NARRATOR: Might extraterrestrials be able to detect these magnetic differences? And would they have been of any use to ancient visitors?
TSOUKALOS: If I was an alien coming here 10,000 years ago, obviously, there weren’t any roadmaps at the time. However, I could use the anomalous magnetic spots on planet Earth as signposts of sorts. And so that when I come back, those signposts would be my guides to find my way around planet Earth. There are spots on planet Earth that are highly magnetic.
NARRATOR: But are the magnetic levels the sky-god legends and recent sightings of UFOs proof that a portal exists here? And are there other places that might offer more direct physical evidence?
NARRATOR: 800 miles southeast of Lima, Peru, along with the shores of Lake Titicaca, is a site that has mystified visitors from around the world.

NARRATOR: Shamans still come to perform rituals and offer prayers at the rock wall on this high plateau, as they have done for generation after generation. It is known as Puerta de Hayu Marca, or “Gate of the Gods.”
CHILDRESS: When you see it, it’s quite baffling. Here is this giant doorway carved into solid rock. And it appears to be a gateway, but it doesn’t go anywhere.
TSOUKALOS: It’s literally in the middle of nowhere at Yet that rock, as clear as you can see, has a gigantic rectangle carved out of it; cut out of it. And in the center of that rectangle, at the bottom, there is something that looks like a door.
BARA: The Peruvian natives actually refer to this as the Gate of the Gods. But why would you make a doorway to, basically, rocks that didn’t let you go anywhere? There has to be some way to get through that doorway.
NARRATOR: According to Inca legend, the first priest-king Amaru Muru, is said to have traveled through this portal using a special object to activate the doorway, turning this solid rock into what’s known as a “Stargate.”
TSOUKALOS: According to legend, this star gate was activated by the help of a golden disc. And this golden disc fell from the sky.
BARA: The story goes that the first priest king of the Incas took a golden disk up to this Gate of the Gods, stuck it in a special recessed area, and this interdimensional doorway actually opened up and he passed through it, never to be seen again.
The shaman that were there that watched it, that witnessed the whole thing and reported on it, basically told that that was exactly what happened.
NARRATOR: Archeologists who have examined the Gate of the Gods have discovered a small, circular depression in the center of the doorway. Some people have speculated that this depression was perhaps where the golden disc was placed.
COPPENS: It really is out of the movies. This device is said to have been made of gold and of various sort of precious objects, and whoever had it could come near this site and somehow be able to operate it, and then there would either be contact with the gods, or the gods would come to them.
TSOUKALOS: And we’re all lead to believe, oh, it’s all coincidence, it’s all just fantasy. Rubbish. Something happened, and in the case of the star gate, it is possible that this sun disc had some type of an extraterrestrial connection, and that this was a technological device with which to travel.
DAVID SEREDA: And that may mean physically taking a person and taking them into another hidden dimension and taking them back. Or it may mean traveling between Earth, going through that star gate and going to another place somewhere in the universe.
NARRATOR: According to the local legend, these priest- kings, known as “space brothers,” reportedly came from other worlds. Might they have traveled here through the Gate of the Gods?
JORGE LUIS DELGADO MAMANI: They came from the other constellations, from other planets. In our language, we have a word called Chakana, which is some of the constellations, like the Southern Cross, Orion Belt, or the Pleiades. One of the elders said, “This is the bridge to home. So, in essence, all these manifestations has to do with the space brothers.”
NARRATOR: But could a device to activate this door actually exist? And if so, where would the doorway lead?
According to ancient astronaut theorists, the Gate of the Gods is one end of a wormhole a type of portal that connects either to another part of the universe or another dimension.
THOMAS VALONE: A wormhole is a theoretical construct through General Relativity. The concept is really that there’s a possibility of space-time being connected; various parts of space-time being connected through a small channel. And if such a construct was made, then you’d have a shortcut between very distant parts of the universe.
NARRATOR: Wormholes are an accepted element of theoretical physics. But have they actually existed in some of the world’s most mysterious places?
MARTELL: The idea that there are star gates or that they could have existed in ancient times, we do see many artifacts and representations of someone passing through a doorway or going through some type of energy source, and ancient man did not understand technology, just as we’re trying to understand: Is a wormhole possible?
CHILDRESS: It’s some kind of doorway between our dimension and another. And what I maintain is that these aliens who are coming here are coming here in an interdimensional type of craft. They’re able to jump through hyperspace, come here to our planet in no time at all, but they have to enter through certain doorways and portals, into our planet.
SARA SEAGER: Dimensions aren’t really considered something to travel along. But dimensions are directions, and if you could somehow travel along these other dimensions, it would take you somewhere else entirely.
NARRATOR: What if one end of a portal exists here at Puerta de Hayu Marca? Might that be part of the reason many consider Peru to be a focal point of UFO and extraterrestrial activity?
CHILDRESS: Lake Titicaca has all kinds of strange lights associated with it, and a number of witnesses claim they see UFOs coming out of the lake.
MARTELL: The locals always describe seeing large blue balls of light or glowing discs, and sometimes even beings reported around these sightings. These beings are always reported as tall, pale-skinned, completely non-indigenous to the people that are dark-skinned, dark-haired in these South American regions.
NARRATOR: Another theory to how extraterrestrials may have traveled across the universe involves the scientific concept of teleportation. But is it really possible to have something disappear from one spot and suddenly appear somewhere else?
SEREDA: At the Max Planck Institute, scientists have already dematerialized subatomic particles and made them reappear somewhere else, so science is just on the precipice of being able to do this– to move it from one place to another. So I believe that that is a, is a secret that the ancient stone builders knew.
BARA: Even though the gate might be closed right now, the reality is, you can still access the energy because it’s still flowing around the area. It’s the area itself that seems to hold the energy and put it out and draw people to it.
NARRATOR: But is Puerta de Hayu Marca the only strange site in Peru? Are there other mysterious places here? Some believe there are.
High up in the mountains of Peru, 850 miles north of the Gate of the Gods, is a breathtaking two-mile-long plateau, another area of reported high magnetic energy. For centuries, it has been considered a powerful, sacred place among the Incan people. It’s called Markawasi.
COPPENS: Markawasi is a very beautiful region in Peru. Markawasi is said to have had very bizarre energy. People go there and they experience bizarre energy patterns.
KATHY DOORE: The local people say it is a place of the wizards and gods and genies of old and they treat it with a great deal of veneration. When people go there, they report a special kind of frequency and energy– a euphoria, in fact.
NARRATOR: Most geologists consider the many stone formations on the plateau to be naturally formed, born of millions of years of erosion and other natural processes. But is there more here than first meets the eye? Some consider Markawasi to be a massive sculpture garden filled with carvings left behind by an ancient civilization.
COPPENS: This is a region whereby stones are not just stones. What we have here is almost like a Disneyland of the gods. The question then is: is this a purely natural phenomenon or is this something more?
NARRATOR: Could this be not just a collection of rocks but a sanctuary of stone monuments made by people tens or even hundreds of thousands of years ago? Researcher Daniel Ruzo was the first to make this claim in 1952.
DOORE: Daniel Ruzo was shown stone head, up in the high mountains above Lima, and he made an expedition there just to see the stone head, but he was astonished to find that on this tiny mesa were hundreds of carved stones.
NARRATOR: There are those who believe the rock formations depict animals and people not indigenous to South America. They see in them figures such as an African queen, the Egyptian god of fertility, Taweret, depicted as an upright hippopotamus a camel and many others.
One formation, known as the Monument to Humanity, features what appears to be a Western face on one side and a Middle Eastern one on the other.
Is it really possible that so many formations which appear to depict figures from around the world could coincidentally be found on a single plateau?
Or if they are man-made, who may have carved them?
DOORE: The local legends say that it is a place of the ancient giant gods, that the gods created this. In fact, when the Spanish chroniclers came to Peru and investigated the ancient shamanic religions of Peru, they told a story of Tici Viracocha, the creator god, who arrived in the guise of a man to walk and inspect his lands. And he had given them different orders and there were some rebel nations that were not doing what they were supposed to do and he promptly turned them to stone.
NARRATOR: The name Markawasi provides a clue to its origins and mystery. The word itself predates the Incan Empire. Markawasi scholar and researcher Daniel Ruzo believed the name meant “two-story house” and referred to the strange complex of buildings located on the site.
MARTELL: That really raises the question that scholars and theologians have been trying to figure out for many years: is there an Atlantean or some lost civilization? So Markawasi puts that question back on the map. Could this be possible? Were there transoceanic cultures visiting thousands of years ago, off the books of recorded history?
NARRATOR: According to Daniel Ruzo, the ancient civilization that created Markawasi were a people known as the Masma and supposedly, Peru was not their only home.
ROBERT SCHOCH: The Masma was this very, very ancient advanced civilization, advanced culture, if we want to call it that, that seems to have been global, seems to have traveled worldwide at a very early period, and Ruzo spent much of his time looking around the world for evidence of this advanced civilization, and he thought he found it at Markawasi.
He actually saw Markawasi, in many ways, as being like a huge sculpture garden that the Masma had built there.
NARRATOR: If such a worldwide community existed, what happened to it? Was it, as some believe, wiped out in the great flood described in the Bible?
BARA: It’s very interesting that these carvings are found at 12,000 feet because that kind of implies that civilization started at the top and then worked its way back down as the waters of the flood receded. It’s almost as if the first thing they did when Noah’s Ark descended and landed, maybe landed at Markawasi, was to record all the animals that they had collected if you buy the whole concept of a story of saving what was left of humanity and saving what they could of the animal kingdom.
SCHOCH: If these are real sculptures or even natural formations that were touched up, they are so old geologically that all we can really do is fall back to some of the speculations of people like Daniel Ruzo– that this was some kind of very ancient civilization.
DOORE: Perhaps, indeed, there were ancient gods. Perhaps there was a race of beings of very high-minded nature that came here in the early, early times that helped mankind and that have been overseeing their handiwork.
SCHOCH: I suspect that they were trying to record something about their beliefs, their civilization, something that could be passed on to future generations. They may have realized they were not going to last forever and they wanted to leave some kind of mark, some kind of record, maybe even some kind of warning for future generations.
NARRATOR: If this advanced, globe-traveling race existed in early history, where did they come from? According to author George Hunt Williamson, who first popularized Markawasi with his 1959 book Road in the Sky, Markawasi was a “sacred forest” where extraterrestrial beings met to plan the future. And many UFO researchers believe they’re still returning to this day.
DOORE: The mesa has a plethora of UFO sightings, ultra-dimensional visitors. It’s an extraordinary place.
CHILDRESS: What is probably Peru’s most famous UFO photo was taken near Markawasi in the 1970s by a businessman, who himself was going up the trail to the plateau of Markawasi, when he looked back down the valley, and there was a silvery disc in broad daylight, flying up the valley.
NARRATOR: But are there really special types of energy flowing around Markawasi that we are just beginning to understand? And if so, have they been attracting visitors for thousands of years, as reported at some of the world’s other mysterious places?
BARA: My suspicion is that extraterrestrials would be more inclined to come to these energetic places, not just because it would make their technology work better, but because their bodies are going to vibrate at a frequency that’s more appropriate for the universe or the world that they inhabit.
SCHOCH: As I have looked at studies and studied it myself, I think that maybe something inherent to those spots– maybe electromagnetic, maybe a geomagnetic anomaly– you have, in some cases, different types of rocks, different types of crystalline structures; maybe underground flowing water that will carry electric currents– so I think there are a lot of possibilities. But we really don’t understand exactly what’s going on.
NARRATOR: Is there a reason why these so-called interdimensional space portals allegedly appear at certain spots on our planet?
Could there be, as some suggest, a pattern to their locations?
And what evidence exists that shows our ancient ancestors knew the code? According to ancient astronaut theorists, the mysterious energy-filled sites around the world are not randomly located.
They are connected by what is referred to as the World Grid– a geometric pattern of energy that crisscrosses the globe.
CHILDRESS: Our planet is covered with this network of very subtle invisible energies that are all around us. But at certain places on the planet, these energies come together, and they create a powerful vortex area. And that energy is-is stronger and more useful, in a sense, than some other part of the Earth.
BARA: The World Grid theory is a concept that all of these sacred sites, all around the world, are actually connected in some sort of mathematical, geometric grid that came from a time when we really understood the harmony between nature and geometry and science and mathematics.
CHILDRESS: It’s well known that Australian aboriginals follow these dreaming tracks as they go on their walkabout through the desert. They can see these lines on the ground, they claim. The Chinese also believe that they can see and track these “dragon lines.” And in fact, the very popular Chinese practice of feng shui is to use these energy lines that are coming and going throughout the land.
NARRATOR: The unique relationship between geometric shapes and certain locations on Earth stretches back in history to the Pythagorean school of thought in ancient Greece.
CHILDRESS: One of the famous Pythagorean philosophers of ancient Greece, Plato, talks about the Earth as a geometric dodecahedron. That it’s like a ball sewn in various geometric shapes. And the Pythagorean school is basically saying that geometry, and the various forms of geometry, are what makes up all matter, including the Earth.
NARRATOR: Another strange mystery surrounds the apparent concentration of UFO sightings along the World Grid.
Before his death in 1992, French UFO researcher Aimee Michel mapped every alleged extraterrestrial report since the Roswell incident in 1947.
COPPENS: When he mapped them, he found that they were specific, namely in lines. And he began to map these lines, and he found that these lines were not just random, but were actually linked to degrees of latitudes and that there was really a science behind where UFOs were sighted.
NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut theorists believe that the concentration of energy levels and UFO sitings is not a coincidence.
They claim that otherworldly beings visited our ancestors and told them of the special powers in these locations.
Then they say the ancient people were shown how to build incredible structures to magnify these natural powers. It’s a theory known as geomancy.
CHILDRESS: So, in fact, by building pyramids, and standing stones, obelisks and things like that, we can work with this natural energy field around the Earth, and, in a similar way to acupuncture on a human body, we can do that to the Earth, too. And by putting certain structures, or a needle in a certain place in the Earth, we can accentuate these energies.
VON DANIKEN: In Europe, lines, sometimes thousand kilometers of long, exist from antiquity. In Europe, they are called ley lines. All of the antique places are linked together.
TSOUKALOS: These ley lines extend all the way from England, all the way through France, down across through Italy, and just in a straight line. And the fascinating aspect is that many of those towns that are on that line, the root of the town’s name is represented across 20, 30 town names.
VON DANIKEN: Every point is on one line. It’s an archeological point. And every point has the same core of the word. The word is always “star.” It’s absolutely fascinating, and it’s not a coincidence. Our Stone Age people did not by coincidence just put their holy places in Stone Age in one line. Somebody ordered it, and somebody told them, use the word “star” for your village. For eternity, don’t change it.
BARA: So, the question is: are those guys extraterrestrials?
Or is it possible that we, in fact, are extraterrestrial, that we did not come from here?
And it’s simply an older version of humanity taking care of the younger version that they’re going to leave the planet to?
VON DANIKEN: The idea was that generations in the far future, they must struggle over these artifacts, and over these indications. And they must start to ask questions. That’s the situation we have today.
BARA: The main thing that these mysterious places can tell us about our past is that it’s a lot more complex than they teach us in school.
NARRATOR: Until future scientists solve the strange issues surrounding certain spots on Earth, we’ll be left with lingering questions. Might these locations really be portals or entrances to wormholes?
Did extraterrestrial beings transport themselves to Earth, using special electromagnetic fields in these mysterious places?
And were these secrets known by ancient civilizations now lost to history?
NOTE: This article is an edited version of episode one, season two, of the TV Series Ancient Aliens. Our editors worked hard to correct out any mistakes, and arrange the context so that our readers can enjoy reading through the episodes, without having to watch them. I believe that when you read through these episodes, you can imagine (reconstruct) what the participants of the Series were trying to say in a much more efficient, a much richer way.