"Narrator: "Ancient Aliens" is an American television series which premiered on April" "20th, 2010 on the History Channel." "The program presents the so-called" ""ancient astronaut" theory which is the idea that extraterrestrials visited the Earth in the ancient past and that historical texts, archaeological" "records, and various legends contain evidence of this contact." "I used to believe that the ancient astronaut theory" "was true." "I spent years learning about it from the popular authors, from video presentations and radio shows." "I was an enthusiastic promoter of this idea to my friends and family." "Although I no longer feel that way, I want you to know that I have no personal reasons to reject this theory." "My current worldview could easily accommodate the existence of extraterrestrials." "I hope you will come away from this film, even if you disagree with it, saying that I fairly reviewed the claims of "Ancient Aliens" without bias and with respect." "I hope to show you that this is not a matter of "Ancient Aliens"" "getting a few details wrong here and there, and their main premise remaining true." "That is not an option in my opinion." "I hope to demonstrate to you, that they are wrong not on some, but on every single point where they assert an ancient astronaut theory to explain evidence and that often, they are using deceptive means to do this and sometimes even fabricating" "evidence to make their points, as we will see." "I would also like the viewer to know that unlike many skeptics of the ancient astronaut theory, I actually concede that something out of the ordinary could have occurred in the ancient past, and that there are certain consistent themes in" "ancient mythologies and the like that require good explanations, but I think that you will quickly see that the ancient astronaut theories do not explain this evidence." "You will notice a number that appears periodically on the bottom right- hand corner of the screen throughout this film." "This number will appear when I am making a claim that requires a reference in order to back it up, and it will correspond to a number on the companion film is divided into three main sections, and each topic can be viewed independently" "at the website, if you choose." "I will occasionally be joined by commentary from" "Dr. Michael Heiser, one of the few actual scholars who has been willing to interact with the ancient astronaut theory." "Dr." "Heiser has been one of the most articulate proponents of the skeptical viewpoint of this theory, and has written papers and books, as well as almost a dozen websites on the issues we will be covering in this film." "We are happy to have him as part of this film, and we are happy to have you, the viewer, here as well." "I encourage you to have an open mind, and enjoy the film." "Brien Foerster:" "Pumapunku is so unique, in the way that it was constructed and shaped and positioned, that it is the most intriguing ancient site on the planet." "Giorgio Tsoukalos:" "While the pyramids at" "Giza are incredible feat of achievement, compared to Pumapunku, the pyramids are childplay." "In my opinion, the most significant piece of evidence that we have in this entire ancient astronaut puzzle, is Pumapunku in the highland of Bolivia." "Narrator:" "Well, if Pumapunku is considered such good evidence for the ancient astronaut theory, we should probably start off by looking at it." "After all, it's the one that they say was built directly by extraterrestrials." "Tsoukalos:" "Pumapunku is the only site on planet Earth that, in my opinion, was built directly by extraterrestrials." "Narrator: "Ancient Aliens" starts off with the false dilemma, by making people think that it was absolutely impossible for ancient people to construct Pumapunku, even to the point of making outright false claims." "Tsoukalos:" "One of the most intriguing things there is that the stones that were used there aren't sandstone." "They are granite and diorite." "The only stone that's harder than diorite is diamond so the only way that this could have been achieved is if the tools were tipped with diamonds." "Narrator:" "This is funny because it's totally wrong." "The stones are not granite or diorite at Pumapunku." "They are red sandstone and andesite." "But this is also funny because of the way that he says it." "Tsoukalos:" "The stones that were used there aren't sandstone." "They are granite and diorite." "Narrator:" "Well, actually it is sandstone." "You can't blame him, though." "It becomes obvious that throughout the series, he often just repeats things he's heard in" "Erich von Däniken's books." "Von Däniken's books are what the Ancient Aliens series is based on." "Later, we see Erich von" "Däniken himself make the exact same totally wrong claim." "Erich von Däniken:" "Of course made of stones found on Earth because you don't transport granite or diorite from another solar system." "Narrator:" "Von Däniken continues building up this false dilemma." "Däniken:" "One of these platforms is 800 tons." "Narrator:" "This is very incorrect." "The heaviest block at Pumapunku is 130 tons and most of the stones are much smaller than that so he's off by a whopping 670 tons!" "Unfortunately, we will come to expect this kind of thing from von Däniken as we progress. "Ancient Aliens" spends quite a lot of time pointing out the various features in the stonemasonry at" "Pumapunku and then declaring it impossible to do without power tools." "David Hatcher Childress:" "Each of these small drill holes are basically evenly spaced along this routered groove." "To me it's clear power tools have been used on this unusual block of stone here." "Foerster:" "Well exactly." "This surface is as smooth as a table top, like in your kitchen." "There's no wave to it or anything." "This was machined." "Narrator:" "The sandstone and andesite stones at Pumapunku would have been easily worked with the most basis stoneworking tools." "The idea that diamond-tipped power saws were needed is ridiculous." "The red sandstone was relatively soft and easy to work with and even though andesite is pretty hard, because of the way it cooled, it could easily be flaked-off using stones as soft as 5.5 on the Mohs scale." "Such pounding stones where found all over the andesite quarries in the area." "Contrary to" ""Ancient Aliens" claims that archaeologists are baffled by Pumapunku, archaeologists know the basics about how" "Pumapunku's stones were cut and shaped." "This is partly because there is evidence for this all over the site itself." "They actually used a method that almost all ancient stoneworkers used." "They used hard pounding stones to pound-out troughs-like depressions." "Later on, they used flat stones and sand to grind the stone to make a polished surface." "We will see later on that this also how the Egyptians thousands of years before this made their flat surfaced granite monuments like obelisks." "Sand, as we will see later when we look at" "Egypt, has extremely hard particles in it and if placed between a hard surface and a rock, can polish even the hardest stones known to man." "In fact, the harder the stone is, the better it can be polished using sand." "We will also see how sand can turn a piece of copper into a very efficient granite saw or granite drill, a method which the Egyptians utilized quite well." "Some stones as Pumapunku that" ""Ancient Aliens" would never show the cameras are the ones that are in the middle of this process." "They show that at same time a stone was being pounded with stone hammers, which created these trough- like depressions, the grinding and polishing was taking place on the other end of the stone." "Unfinished stones like this one clearly show how they were shaped and it wasn't with lasers." "There is also unmistakable evidence of stone hammers having been used in places that were never meant to be visible, like where certain stones would be connected with one another" "And because of that, it's hard for me to believe Erich von Däniken in this next clip because it would mean that the alien toolbox had a laser gun right next to a stone hammer." "Däniken:" "Extraterrestrials arrive, the spaceship stands in orbit." "Only a smaller space vehicle comes down like a space shuttle." "So, just to protect the instruments, they make overnight, with their technology, what we call a "base camp." Of course made out of stones found on Earth, because you don't transport granite or diorite from another solar" "system." "And then they disappeared, but the wall of their base camp is still there." "Narrator:" "It is true that stone tools would not be enough to construct Pumapunku especially for some of the finer points." "For that, they would need metal chisels and the equivalent of a carpenter's square" "Entire studies have been done detailing how these cuts were made, and nothing spectacular is required except some metal tools like chisels." "The arguments against this are usually either that a particular culture did not yet know how to cast metals, or that copper chisels would have been too weak." "On the first point, we know that the pre-Incan Andean culture was very skilled at fashioning metals and creating metal alloys." "In fact, the people who built Pumapunku were even pouring copper alloys into molds right on site, showing that they had more than enough capability to form all kinds of metal tools." "But the question is, what about the tools' strength?" "Well, even if they were pouring pure copper into a mold, it would still work, but it would need sharpening often." "But because archaeologists actually found a few of these metal cramps used by them on site, we now know they were using a very strong copper-arsenic-nickel alloy, which made a much stronger final product." "Arsenic acts as a deoxidant, preventing the metal from becoming too brittle, and nickel was used in copper alloys, specifically to make strong chisels." "Once you understand that they had the ability to make strong metal tools in a huge variety of shapes, there is no part of Pumapunku's stonework that would have been too difficult for them." "Well, what about these 90 degree right angles that" ""Ancient Aliens" makes so much about?" "Childress:" "One of the amazing things here at Pumapunku is the precision of the blocks." "You can see with this block of granite, that it's really been cut at very accurate right angles." "Narrator:" "To make flat surfaces with right angles, you don't need alien technology." "You only need a square or a simple equivalent." "It's important to keep in mind that Pumapunku would have been built thousands of years after the Egyptians, who had all kinds of squares and plumb-bobs and levels and so on." "It's a pretty basic stoneworking tool." "That being said, despite what "Ancient Aliens" says," "Pumapunku is not all perfect right angles." "You can even see this, ironically enough, as the "Ancient Aliens" crew goes around with carpenter's squares." "You can see that some of them are simply not square." "Also, they make claims like "all the H-blocks are the same dimensions," which they say suggests that they were made by a big machine." "But not only would that not be the only conclusion if it were true." "It's not even true." "The dimensions of the" "H-blocks are not all the same, though they are close." "It's probably the case that they were made using the same plans." "Speaking of plans," "Tsoukalos:" "Mainstream archaeologists say that Pumapunku was built by the Aymara" "Indians, and we would all have to agree that in order to build something like" "Pumapunku, you need writing, you need planning, and you need some sort of a idea where which piece goes and how it ultimately all fits together." "But there is one thing that all the mainstream archaeologists agree upon, that the Aymara didn't have any writing." "So how is it possible that they built all of this without plans?" "Narrator:" "The builders of Pumapunku may not have had an alphabet, but they did use the common iconography or artwork of their culture called "Yaya-Mama." All the icons on the site are Yaya-Mama, not secret alien code, and this is but one of the" "many indications of the culture and time that it was built." "But my point is, that like many cultures, they used pictures instead of an alphabet and most building plans are done through pictures like blueprints, for example." "So saying that no alphabet means no planning is pretty ridiculous in my opinion." "Well, what about moving the stones and lifting them into place?" "Surely that would have required levitation." "Childress:" "How these massive blocks of granite were moved from their quarries and brought here to Pumapunku would have required some kind of super technology:" "levitation and anti-gravity, huge lifting vehicles, something that ancient aliens would have had." "Narrator:" "If they did know how to levitate these stones, then they put far too much effort into creating places in the stones to attach ropes to." "Many stones at" "Pumapunku have grooves several centimeters in width and depth on two adjacent faces for holding ropes." "They even had special places cut into the stones that Pumapunku scholars call" ""hoisting grips," all very strange things to do if they could simply levitate these blocks." "And to make matters worse for the ancient astronaut theory here, according to archaeologist Jean-Pierre Protzen, who is an expert on Pumapunku, there is almost no stone at the Pumapunku site that does not have what he calls "drag marks" on" "one of its faces where it has been, well, dragged to the site. "Ancient Aliens"" "throws up another false dilemma here." "Tsoukalos:" "What nobody talks about here is the irrefutable fact that we are at an altitude of 12,800 feet which means we are above the natural tree line." "No trees ever grew in that area, meaning no trees were cut down in order to use wooden rollers." "The wooden roller theory falls by the wayside." "Narrator:" "This is like saying that there is not way the Egyptians used wood because trees didn't grow in Egypt, which is true." "The difference is is that while the" "Egyptians had to import wood from places like Lebanon, it would have been far easier for those at Pumapunku to solve this problem." "All they would have had to do is simply walk down the hill a little bit." "OK, well what about this claim:" "Tsoukalos:" "Logic does not exist at" "Pumapunku because there, we have megalithic structures which just lie about this entire site as if ripped apart by some sort of a great force." "Narrator:" "I propose that logic still exists at Pumapunku and that the scattered state of the complex can easily be explained." "Quoting from archaeologist" "Alexei Vranich "the high quality of the stones made it attractive building material for houses, churches, plazas, bridges, even railways." In other words, the stones were pulled down and hauled off by locals for building material." "In fact, we have the 400 year old writings of a visitor to Pumapunku who said that the looting was in full swing even back then." "He wrote that if the site was closer to town, he didn't think that there would have been any stones left at all." ""Ancient Aliens" says that Pumapunku is 17,000 years old." "This is what Vranich said of this claim: "The idea that" "Tiwanaku is 14,000 years old is based on a rather faulty study done in 1926." "Since then, there has been a huge quantity of work both on the archaeology and geology of the area and all data indicates that" "Tiwanaku existed from around A.D. 300 to 500." For more information on the faulty study he is referring to here, I will quote at length from Jason Colavito, who has been debunking ancient astronaut theories for years in his books and blogs." "He said the following about this claim:" ""Tiwanaku is not 17,000 years old." "This date derives from the work of Arthur" "Posnansky, who tried to apply archaeolastronomy to the site but did so in ways that modern scholars do not recognize as legitimate." "Posnansky proposed a date of 15,000 B.P. (before present, i.e. 13,000 BCE), which the geniuses on "Ancient Aliens" misread as" "15,000 BCE, adding an extra 2,000 years onto Posnansky's already flawed dates." "Here's what he did wrong." "Posnansky assumed that the Kalasasaya temple at" "Tiwanaku was laid out with perfect accuracy to align to the equinoxes and solstices that he felt (but could not prove) were important to the Tiwanaku people." "Thus, on a certain day the sun was supposed to rise above one rock at the temple and set behind another. (Ah, but which rock should we choose?" ") Since the current ruins do not align with these celestial events accurately, he concluded that the ruins must have been built at a time when they would have aligned with that event." "Since the sun and sky change positions at a predictable rate due to the gradual changes in the angle of the" "Earth's axis, he concluded that the" "Kalasasaya temple was built in 13,000 BCE as a solar observatory, despite no other evidence of solar astronomy at the site." "The long and the short of it is that" "Posnansky assumed celestial alignments and assumed flawless construction and then used his assumptions to "prove" that his assumptions were correct." Colavito also has this picture of the site with the caption, "Pick a rock, any rock." "One of them must align with something." This site has been dated using a huge variety of methods, things like carbon dating, the type of metals they used, the debris found in certain places, the type of" "iconography they used." "Literally every kind of dating method applied comes to the same conclusion." "It was constructed in the early Middle Ages." "Before we conclude this section on Pumapunku, there are two other claims I wanted to address." "Däniken:" "The Spanish conqueror asked the" "Inca, the people living there, including the king of the Inca, 'What is this" "Pumapunku?" "' And they all said 'It's not us." "Its not our forefather who make this." "This were made by the gods in one single night.' Usually a king is proud about what his people did, about the precision and so on." "In that case, the chief of the people said 'No, it was not us." "It was the gods who made it.'" "Narrator:" "If you understand a little about the Incan imperial system and religion, you will understand why the Incans didn't claim the site, and even why they claimed that it had a supernatural origin." "Part of the Incan state religion was that the" "Incan empire was the first civilization and it was created by God Himself." "It was a very convenient idea for bolstering the" "Incan case for the right to rule everyone else." "When the Incans arrived at" "Pumapunku, the site had already been abandoned for at least a hundred years." "Admitting that there was a pre-Incan culture at all, let alone one with more skill than them, would have been detrimental to the whole scheme." "So they slightly modified their already existing mythology to include Pumapunku." "So instead of Viracocha creating the Incan capital, he also created Pumapunku." "And just like that, the Incans were still the oldest and greatest civilization, even though everyone probably knew it wasn't true." "And finally, "Ancient Aliens" says the following about what the ancient local people believed regarding who constructed" "Pumapunku:" ""Ancient Aliens" Narrator:" "Local legends suggest that Tiwanaku was built as a site of religious pilgrimage to celebrate the arrival of sky gods." "Narrator:" "But this is a total lie." "Viracocha came from the sea,not from the sky." "This is a very sneaky move by" ""Ancient Aliens" in my opinion." "So in conclusion, the stones are not made of granite and diorite, the stones were easily workable with the tools available to the Andean culture, tools which we know included high-quality metal alloy chisels." "These tools would have been more than sufficient to make the angles seen at" "Pumapunku." "The faces of the rocks have been finished using a polishing technique after being rough cut using stone hammers evidenced by the unfinished stones and hidden areas of the finished stones." "The moving of the stones was not as difficult as "Ancient Aliens" makes it seem, especially when you take into account that they are telling people that the stones weigh 600 tons more that they actually do." "The stones have telltale drag marks and hoisting holes for ropes, all showing that they were not levitated as "Ancient Aliens would have us believe." "We know the culture which built this monument and all the iconography and sculptures are consistent with that culture." "And the various methods of dating that scientists use all point to the same time period." "The idea that" "Pumapunku was from Atlantean times we now know is based on a very transparently flawed presupposition." "AA Narrator:" "Perhaps the most familiar and most mysterious megalithic structure in all the world is the Great Pyramid of" "Giza." "The enormous size and weight of the stones, multiplied by the sheer number of them, makes one thing certain: the construction of the Great Pyramid remains one of the greatest marvels and mysteries of architectural engineering." "Narrator:" "The Pyramids at Giza are marvels of engineering, and there are many" "theories about how they were constructed,"