"Evidence of a cataclysmic event..." "You can see it here, that this event took place." "Written accounts describing lost cities..." "Atlantis had a great advanced civilization." "And mythic tales of gods punishing humanity..." "They decided that they would destroy all these civilizations." "In ancient cultures throughout the world, there are numerous stories of mankind nearly being destroyed by a great flood." "But could such an event have actually taken place?" "And might it have been caused by an otherworldly force?" "One has to ask the question: "What if Noah was one of the extraterrestrials?"" "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, might we find evidence in the stories of "The Great Flood"?" "It is one of the best-known stories of the Bible, and variations of this ancient tale can be found in cultures throughout the world." "From ancient Hindu teachings and" "Mesopotamian legends to Mesoamerican myths, it is written that the gods sent a powerful flood to wipe out all of humanity..." "God is angry at human beings, because human beings have not been behaving properly; they have been violating God's laws." "KATHLEEN McGOWAN COPPENS:" "Certainly the most famous of these is the legend of Noah." "In Genesis, God becomes so disgusted with the behavior of His creation that He says He" ""repenteth of making them..." ...and He brings forth the deluge." "In stories much older than the story of Noah, in the story of" "Gilgamesh, the Sumerian legend, the council of gods brought the flood." "In Plato's writing," "Zeus brought the flood." "In" "Hinduism, God had instructed that, one day, the whole Earth will be flooded." "When that happens, you build a boat and you gather the people, some animals, and then I will save you." "The story of the" "Great Flood is often considered to be mythological." "But similar stories of a cataclysmic flood can be found in approximately 1,200 different cultures around the world, and many anthropologists say that because these stories are so numerous and date back thousands of years, it is unlikely that they originated from a single source." "When we find similar myths all over the world, like the myth of the flood, then we have to ask ourselves are these things that human beings came up with independently, because let's say there was a great flood in" "ancient history, that has been memorialized in people's mythologies, because it was such a cataclysmic event that people looked for a religious explanation for it." "The fact that there are ancient stories that speak of the same flood, it almost leads into that direction that, at some point, some cataclysm happened that not just affected one geographic area of the world, but the" "entire planet." "If a cataclysmic flood really did occur, killing most life on the planet, what could have caused it?" "And is there any physical evidence to suggest that it actually happened?" "Scientists say answers to both questions may be buried deep beneath the sea." "The Indian Ocean." "According to the five scientists who make up the Holocene Impact" "Working Group, this area-- 900 miles southeast of" "Madagascar-is where an enormous asteroid struck the" "Earth, thousands of years ago." "This impact may have been so large that it triggered enormous tsunamis that flooded inland areas across the region-- an event the local inhabitants would have perceived as a great flood." "Since so many ancient cultures have a flood story or a flood mythology, this is probably based in some sort of real event..." "and an asteroid landing in the ocean, in the right place, triggering a tsunami, would then lead to one of these major floods." "The Holocene Group says evidence for a catastrophic asteroid strike lies in what they believe is an" "18-mile-wide crater on the floor of the Indian Ocean, just west of the island of Madagascar." "Holocene Group scientists believe further evidence supporting their theory also lies in what are called" ""chevrons"-ancient deposits of sediment and fossils in both" "Madagascar and Australia." "What was so out of place and unusual about the chevrons was that they weren't land-based debris." "But, rather, it was the kind of debris you get from an ocean sea bottom, things like marine animals, marine fossils." "They've also found what's really the smoking gun of any asteroid or comet impact, and that's micro-beads." "The only way they are formed is by the extreme heat of an impact melting the rock, the rock being thrown into the air, or water, and cooling into these nice little spheres." "Similar marine fossils have also been found on the other side of the world, at the ancient temple complex of Puma Punku, in modern-day Bolivia." "If the Holocene Group's initial findings prove true, they could be definitive evidence that a cosmic strike caused large-scale flooding thousands of years ago." "But if an asteroid really was responsible for a worldwide flood, scientists say it would have to have been as large as the one that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, which measured eight miles wide and struck the Earth with a force five billion times more" "powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima." "There are many ancient texts that tell us that there wasn't just a flood, but there was also a conflagration, a period of fire, when the Earth was bombarded with firestorms, the gods bringing them down, and that" "this period was then followed by a flood." "And it would seem that fragments of this comet vaporized the ice sheets that had been covering large parts of the northern hemisphere for tens of thousands of years, sending all of the water up into the atmosphere, which then rained down." "Perhaps even for 40 days, 40 nights, like the Bible tells us." "According to those scientists who subscribe to this theory, the fires that might have occurred just before the flood would have left behind an ash layer in the Earth, all over the world." "This distinctive ash layer-- which scientists call the Usselo Horizon-could be the ultimate proof that the Great Flood really occurred." "And researchers believe they may have discovered it." "Just outside the small Belgian town of Lommel, author and researcher Andrew Collins follows local archeologist" "Ferdi Geerts to the site of a mysterious black layer of soil excavated by a mining company." "I can already see a black layer, um, in the soil here." "It's about just under a-a meter down, um, three to four feet, um, and, um, are we looking here at the Usselo Horizon?" "Yes." "Is this, is this it?" "At the end of the ditch we see, uh, a peat layer." "Yeah." "At the top of the peat layer, there is, uh, some charcoal." "Right." "So, can-can we go down and look at this?" "Yes." "Collins and Geerts get a closer look, which allows them to determine that this dark layer of soil seems to date to the end of the last ice age, about the same time the Usselo Horizon is supposed to have" "formed." "If we come down from the, from the-the surface here, which is obviously the modern day, there is this accumulation of sand over a period of around" "13,000 years, that takes us back to this point here." "The black is a layer, eh?" "Yeah." "And the-the white is sand." "We call that a soil horizon." "Yeah." "Okay." "According to" "Geerts, this black layer dates back to the time period when a global flood may have devastated Earth." "But what is it made of?" "Collins and Geerts dig into the soil and discover that it is, indeed, charcoal." "This is the Usselo Horizon, and to Collins, it's confirmation that the catastrophe described in the Bible was real." "This is physical evidence of that flood, of that conflagration." "This is your absolute evidence that this event took place." "This is the evidence of the cataclysm." "Could the Usselo" "Horizon, a possible impact crater in the Indian Ocean and sea fossils at Puma Punku all be proof that the ancient story of a great flood is not a myth, but that it is based on actual events?" "And if so, could the rest of the story, in which God sent a flood to annihilate the human race, be true as well?" "This suggests that a great flood did, in fact, happen; that it was real." "But then it also presents us with an intriguing possibility." "It is entirely possible that there is an extraterrestrial origin to this terrible flood." "Could it be that the Great Flood described in so many ancient texts really did occur at the end of the last Ice Age?" "And if so, could it have been brought on by extraterrestrial beings?" "Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and claim that evidence of this can be found at the top of one of the world's most sacred mountains." "Laurel, Maryland." "October 2014." "At Johns Hopkins University, top scientists from all over the world gather for the first International Asteroid Impact" "Deflection Assessment Workshop." "The focus of this event is to demonstrate the latest technology designed for diverting the course of asteroids headed for a collision with Earth." "The proposed method involves launching a spacecraft to collide with the asteroid at a velocity nine times faster than the speed of a bullet fired from an AK-47." "If we look at the dinosaurs, for example, 65 million years ago-they were wiped out due to the impact of a giant rock that wiped out everything on planet Earth at the time." "And so, right now, scientists around the globe are working tirelessly to redirect asteroids from possible collisions with Earth." "In addition to using direct impact to knock an asteroid off course, scientists have also looked into the possibility of creating a gravity tractor that could actually manipulate the trajectory of the object." "But if we are close to developing this kind of technology today, is it possible that extraterrestrials who visited Earth in the distant past already possessed the ability to redirect asteroids?" "And if so, might they have used this technology not to deflect an asteroid away from Earth..." "but towards it?" "We are talking about technology that equals ours today, or as some have said, that it actually surpasses whatever it is that we've achieved so far in our modern age." "And so, if we can control the trajectories of asteroids, to direct them away from Earth, then it's certainly possible that highly advanced extraterrestrials could have had the technology to direct an asteroid towards Earth." "It's interesting how the legends described how the flood came." "It is stated that a great meteor or comet or something was to swing around from behind the sun, and as such, rip the oceans out of their bodies." "The flood was clearly contrived." "It was sent by higher powers to correct things here on Earth." "They had an intent and a purpose for Experiment Earth, which they believe had become corrupted, and therefore the flood was sent as an attack, an assault upon humanity." "If the Great Flood was a real, historical event, could it have been deliberately caused by otherworldly beings as ancient astronaut theorists suggest?" "But if so, why?" "What might they have been trying to destroy?" "Mount Hermon, Lebanon." "1869." "Exploring the top of this historic mountain range, British archeologist General Sir Charles" "Warren discovers the sacred temple of Qasr Antar-believed to be the highest place of worship in the biblical world." "Sir Charles Warren hiked up to the top of" "Mount Hermon." "The ruins of this temple are there." "And there he found an ancient stele and he broke this stele into two pieces and brought it back to the British Museum." "When scholars translated the Greek text, it read: "According to the command of the greatest and holy God, those who take an oath proceed from here." The inscription's significance was lost on archeologists for more than a century, until" "biblical scholar George Nicklesburg connected it to an oath mentioned in the ancient Book of Enoch." "According to Enoch, Mount Hermon is where a band of renegade angels known as the Watchers descended from the heavens in the distant past and took an oath before meeting with humans." "In the time before time, the sons of God came down to Earth." "They were the shining ones, the" "Enohim, or fallen angels." "And they found the women very attractive and they married the women or bonded with the women." "The offspring of these unnatural unions between angels and humans were said to produce giant hybrid beings called the Nephilim, and God was so disgusted by their existence that he decided to send a great flood to cleanse the Earth of" "them." "But how is it that human women were able to be impregnated by angels?" "Could it be, as ancient astronaut theorists suggest, that the Book of Enoch is not actually describing angels, but rather a different kind of otherworldly being?" "You've got to wonder what was really going on here?" "Are extraterrestrials coming and now breeding with humans, which was somehow forbidden and wrong, but they did it anyway?" "So the other extraterrestrials decided, "This is a big mistake." "Now we've got to destroy all these people."" "Could the story of the Great Flood actually be describing extraterrestrials coming to Earth long ago, and interbreeding with human women to create a mutant race of giants?" "Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and claim further evidence can be found by examining ruins that are believed to date back thousands of years before our earliest known civilizations." "The Gulf of Khambhat, India. 2001." "Scientists working some 25 miles from shore, and 125 feet below the surface, stumble across something extraordinary: what appears to be the signs of an ancient civilization." "Recently, the marine archeologists of India have discovered two cities in the Bay of Khambhat." "They are still working on it, uh, you know, going down there and archiving it and taking photographs and videos." "They think that these cities were destroyed in a geological change that happened many thousands of years ago." "But you have to wonder, yourself, if there are not more sunken cities all around India." "Their own legends and myths say exactly that." "The ruins found beneath the ocean in the Gulf of Khambhat are thought to date back at least 9,000 years, to the time when some researchers believe a comet struck the Earth and caused a global deluge." "Could these submerged cities not only be evidence that the Great" "Flood really did occur, but also that it wiped out an advanced society that existed long before the earliest known human civilization?" "Scientists say further evidence can be found in archeological sites around the world that date back to end of the last ice age." "In southeastern Turkey lies" "Gobekli Tepe, an extraordinary series of circular stone structures with intricately carved pillars weighing as much as 50 tons." "Radiocarbon dating indicates parts of the complex were built about 10,000 BC, and at least one archeologist believes there are signs it may have been destroyed by a flood." "We have evidence there of catastrophic destruction; of pillars being knocked over at the end of the last ice age; that things were very severe, people were trying to rebuild it at the time." "Eventually, they effectively gave up and covered over the entire site, maybe to come back later to uncover it, maybe to simply bury it for posterity." "In the rain forests of Indonesia is a series of terraces, walls and steps on a hill that the locals call Gunung Padang." "When scientists drilled into the Earth to determine its age, they discovered the site dates back to at least 9700 BC." "Very interestingly, one of the layers of Gunung" "Padang that's been exposed seismically shows that there was an entrance to a cave at about 9700 or so BC that was subsequently covered over." "Again, I think this ties in with the events at the end of the last ice age." "People were going into caves, they had to escape, and then things were covered over after that." "Are these ruins that are found across the world evidence of an advanced civilization that existed before a global deluge?" "And if so, might we find mention of it in ancient myths?" "If we go back to ancient Greece, one of the myths, one of the sacred narratives that Plato preserves is the narrative that there used to be a great continent, which he calls Atlantis." "And Atlantis had a great, advanced civilization." "Atlantis was one of the continents that was destroyed by the Great Flood." "When does he date" "Atlantis?" "To 9600 BC, which is very close to the modern date of the end of the last ice age." "So all this, I believe, ties together that we had an earlier cycle of civilization." "It was devastated at the end of the last ice age by natural catastrophes." "Humanity was driven into a dark age that lasted thousands and thousands of years, until civilization reemerged about" "5,000 years ago." "Is it possible that the story of Atlantis is really describing a civilization that existed before 10,000 BC, when the Great Flood and the end of the ice age are said to have happened?" "Did Atlantis suffer the same fate as Gobekli Tepe, Gunung" "Padang and many other ancient structures that appear to have been hit by some catastrophic event?" "Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest that the most compelling evidence can be found not with what was destroyed, but with what survived." "Qumran, Palestine." "1946." "In the desert, ten miles east of" "Jerusalem, a Bedouin shepherd leaves his flock of sheep and goats to look for a stray." "Walking along the cliffs, the shepherd spots a cave in the distance." "He threw a stone into a cave and he heard the crack of breaking pottery... so he went in to investigate, and found jars that contained ancient manuscripts." "McGOWAN COPPENS:" "The Bedouin shepherd's find led to a discovery of 11 caves that contained the most extraordinary cache of literature, arguably, in human history-the Dead Sea Scrolls." "There are 800 pieces of literature found in these 11 caves and it tells us so much about the ancient world." "One of the amazing revelations is the story about Noah that we don't see in the Old Testament, and the story is that when Noah is born, he's an extraordinary baby with a strange complexion and the ability to light up the room with his eyes." "What's interesting is that you actually have Noah's father, Lamech, questioning whether or not Noah is his son." "And this is due to the fact that we have this story about these fallen angels that came down and had sex with women." "Lamech confronts his wife," "Batenosh, "Is it my son or is it, is it one of theirs?"" "Noah's exterior is described as very foreign." "His eyes are described to be glowing like sunbeams; his skin is glowing, as well." "Now that's a very bizarre description, and so, one has to ask the question: "What if" "Noah was one of the extraterrestrials?"" "Could it be, as ancient astronaut theorists suggest, that the Biblical figure of Noah was, in fact, an alien being?" "Is this the reason he is described as having a strange complexion and glowing eyes?" "The key thing that's going on with Noah is that he is pure in God's sight, and so is his family." "And this purity seems to be genetic, as much as what you might call spiritual." "And so, when God makes plans to wipe out the rest of humanity, what he's wiping out is the extraterrestrial dimension of humanity that has come about through the pollution of human genetics." "Could extraterrestrials have sent the Great Flood to cleanse the Earth of genetic mistakes, and make Noah the father of a new version of humankind?" "According to ancient stories, the world that Noah's descendants were born into was very different from the one that existed in pre-flood times, when gods, giants, fairies, and other creatures were said to share the planet with humans." "The flood does seem to serve as a demarcation point." "In the Bible, we read about how, before the flood, people had longer lives, but then, after the flood, shorter lives." "We see the same thing in Mesopotamian tradition, with the Sumerian King List, where, before the flood, we have kings that ruled in Mesopotamia, with extraordinarily long lives." "After the flood, the lengths of reigns of these kings becomes much shorter." "The other thing that happened before this Great Demarcation is that the gods were present among us." "There was a close interaction between the human and the sacred." "The gods would guide us and they would be tempted." "There would be interaction, the god might marry a mortal and then there would be descendants of the gods." "Now the gods seem so far away." "So, there are these theories that this was the big shifting point in human history." "It is really interesting to note that the interaction with these higher beings seems to only be located in the past." "All these depictions of "there were giants upon the Earth." Or a time when man interacted with the gods." "Where are the gods today?" "We only seem to have subtle interactions." "It's curious to think why that might have been." "What was it about this Great Flood, this dividing line in history, that caused the separation of god and man?" "It could be that our evolution depended upon a natural upbringing, an upbringing that was not contaminated by this notion that we're not alone in the universe." "It could be a necessary part of the human development." "Uzengili, Turkey." "1997." "More than 7,000 feet up, near the country's eastern border, an American explorer searching for Noah's Ark, named" "David Allen Deal, stumbles upon the ruins of an ancient settlement." "McGOWAN COPPENS:" "There is an extraordinary archaeological site in the Anatolian plateau, in Turkey, called Naxuan, and Naxuan comes from an ancient word that means "Noah's Zion," the city of God that Noah built." "Mount Ararat, which is the legendary resting place of" "Noah's Ark, is very close by, so it makes a lot of sense that this could have been the landing site of the ark and then this city would have been built by Noah." "The ancient Armenian historian Moses of" "Choren called Naxuan, "the place of first descent where Noah and his family emerged from the ark and built the first city or town after the flood."" "Could this be the first settlement in the post-flood world, the place where Noah lived and died?" "Today, this remote area is largely uninhabited, but according to explorer David Deal, a recent archeological dig reportedly uncovered something remarkable:" "the region may contain as many as a million graves." "McGOWAN COPPENS:" "There is evidence that people came from all over the world to bury their dead here, for 10,000 years." "The idea is that if you are brought here to be buried in the site of this extraordinary prophet, this man who was chosen by God to be the survivor of the deluge, that you, too, would be resurrected because you were in" "such holy company." "According to some researchers, if this is indeed the place where Noah began the repopulation of the Earth, then the Ark must be nearby as well." "In the Book of" "Genesis, we read about how God commanded Noah to build an ark." "And the measurements of this ark are quite large." "The dimensions usually given are about 450 feet long by 75 feet wide by about 45 feet high." "Such a boat of these dimensions was never seen in the ancient world, and in fact, not until the 19th century was there ever a boat of this size." "In 2009, a Dutchman named Johan Huibers started building a full-size version of Noah's ark using the instructions laid out in the Bible." "It took him three years and more than a million dollars to complete the project." "But while the ship seems perfectly designed to ride out a torrential storm, many say it's still far too small to literally hold two of every animal species on the planet." "It would seem pretty clear that Noah did not scoop up every form of life on Earth and put it into the Ark." "And so as a means of saving all life-forms on Earth, uh, this is not possible, not believable." "But ancient astronaut theorists suggest there might be another way in which the ark was able to preserve two of every creature on Earth, as stated in the" "Bible." "Let's look at it from a technological perspective." "The only way that you can create an ark like Noah created, according to what we can read in the Old Testament, is if you collect DNA samples." "So, what if the ark was a metaphor or a symbol for some type of a DNA bank?" "Did the ark described in the story of Noah really exist?" "And if so, might it have been not a vessel to carry two of every animal species, but a DNA bank, built to hold the genetic information of all life on our planet?" "What one might read into this is that some kind of special DNA bank was to be created; that animal DNA, plant DNA, and human DNA for that matter, were all to be preserved somehow in an ark that" "was to float through the flood and this catastrophe." "Is it possible that all of humanity is descended from Noah's genetic lineage-a new species that replaced the indigenous people who once existed on Earth?" "And all that remains of this once great society are the giant slabs of rock that were too big to be washed away by the flood?" "And if so, might we be destined to suffer the same fate?" "Perhaps further clues can be found by looking at our own modern-day version of Noah's Ark." "Spitsbergen, Norway." "On this remote archipelago, not far from the Arctic Ocean, lies the Svalbard Global Seed Vault." "Known as the "doomsday vault,"" "this repository for the DNA of plants, animals, and humans can withstand nearly any cataclysm, including a flood, an earthquake, or a nuclear blast." "The Svalbard" "Seed Bank is a structure or a facility that's sunk into the permafrost." "It's essentially an international effort to deposit as many seeds, and particularly seeds of crop plant varieties, to help to preserve genetic diversity." "With the doomsday vault, are we creating our own modern-day ark... one that, instead of housing two of every living creature on" "Earth, will house the seeds of every kind of plant life?" "The Svalbard Seed Vault has been designed with some sort of cataclysm in mind." "The idea is that in the event of some catastrophic event, it would still stay cold and preserve seeds for thousands of years." "It's sort of this last hope." "The Svalbard is just one of several biological storehouses located around the world." "England's Millennium Seed Bank is even larger, while the U.S. federal government has built a similar facility in Fort Collins, Colorado." "Scientists say one reason for these repositories is that another large asteroid-similar to the one that is believed to have caused the Great Flood-- will eventually strike Earth." "It's just a matter of time." "You always have the risk, and of course we've seen it here on Earth, of having large asteroids or comets hit the planet and cause tremendous ecological damage." "Right now, all our genetic eggs are in one basket." "Whether it's a comet or asteroid hitting us, we are in jeopardy." "In February of 2013, an asteroid large enough to take out all of New York City came within 18,000 miles of Earth." "Another has been predicted to strike the Earth sometime in the next 20 years." "But if a great flood or some other global catastrophe were to occur today, are we prepared to survive it?" "And if there really are extraterrestrial beings watching over the Earth, are they likely to be the cause of such a cataclysm?" "Or will they simply be observers, sitting quietly by and letting nature take its course?" "If extraterrestrial gods are there watching us and, either aware of future catastrophes or are capable of making them themselves, then perhaps we need to be prepared for that." "We live in a precarious point where, at any time, we could go through another catastrophe." "And you have to ask yourself if the extraterrestrials themselves may not create that." "One of the explanations for why extraterrestrials might seek to destroy humankind is because they treat us as their property." "They treat us as their offspring." "And they're able to make decisions about humanity based on their needs." "So perhaps their needs were satisfied and they decided they didn't want humankind around anymore, so it's just as easy to wipe them out as it is to continue to perpetuate their existence." "The evolution of humans on this planet has been completely and totally an experiment on the part of extraterrestrials." "If survival is the bottom line, they are trying to get us over some kind of a finish line when we're still alive." "Our survival was ensured by extraterrestrials, way back in the remote past, because we are their direct offspring." "We are their product." "They, in fact, have a vested interest in our survival." "Are we the descendants of an extraterrestrial ancestor named" "Noah, who was sent to repopulate the Earth after the Great" "Flood?" "And if so, are there extraterrestrials watching over us, even to this day?" "Not to destroy us, but simply to see if we can prevail over the Earth's next great cataclysm?" "It is a question we may not have much time to think about except to consider how much or how many will survive." "Captioningsponsoredby  AE TELEVISION NETWORKS" "Captioned by MediaAccessGroupatWGBH  access.wgbh.org"