Ancient african  culture and their alien connections  

The kingdom of Congo, 1482. Portuguese explorer Diogo

Cao is the first European to sail up the Congo

River into the heart of this ancient African nation. Despite the dense rainforest

on both sides of the river,

 Cao spends months

exploring this unknown land and meeting its inhabitants. [music playing] After he reports his discoveries

back home, the king of Portugal dispatches waves of

missionaries to the region. The goal is to convert tribesmen

from their ancient religion of Vodun to Catholicism. [music playing] TOK THOMPSON: You have

to remember this isn't too long after the crusades.

 So Europe had

already sort of went from right from the

crusades into colonialism. And one of the big projects was

not just to get land and money and slaves, although that was

it, but also to gain souls, converts for the

Catholic Church. [music playing] NARRATOR: Over the next

century, European missionaries have great success turning

the kingdom of Congo into a Catholic land. Their belief that

a sky god created the Earth and its inhabitants is

changed to the Catholic origin story. But the locals hold on

to some of their beliefs, including the

concept, which is also held by the ancient Egyptians,

that people have more than one soul. TOK THOMPSON: We have

what's called a big soul and a little soul. And one of them is responsible

for what we normally think of us our

personality-- what makes you, you; what makes me, me. But the other one is more

of a basic sort of soul that animates us. It gets the flesh moving. They speak of us as

each having lesser angel and a greater angel. At the time of death, the lesser

angel stays with the body. It doesn't know what to

do, but the greater angel leaves the body. [music playing] NARRATOR: As missionaries

convert much of the population to Christianity, traditional

bocors or witch doctors are forced to perform some

Vodun ceremonies in secret. European missionaries

hear astounding stories that these witch doctors

use ancient rituals and traditional knowledge

to raise the dead, creating automatons that

are later dubbed zombies. TOK THOMPSON: The

idea of the zombies is that they actually have

only one of these two souls. They've passed on;

they've died; and they've been resurrected, but only

with the soul that animates us. So they're lacking

in that personality and in that personal

feelings and things. DAVID CHILDRESS: With

zombieism, it is then only the physical body is

resurrected in a sense. And the personalities,

that part of the soul, has completely disappeared. [music playing] NARRATOR: Could these

stories have been true? And if so, might this be

proof that both the Egyptians and the tribes of the Congo

were correct in their belief that our consciousness is

divided into separate parts? But how could witch doctors

who lived hundreds of years ago with no access to

modern technology have been able to breathe

life into the dead, reviving just the part of the

soul responsible for animating the flesh? [music playing] Ancient astronaut theorists

point out that African myths suggest voodoo magic

originated with the sky gods and their emissaries to Earth,

known as a Orishas or Loas. GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS:

The topic of the Orishas is very interesting to me

because they are looked upon as these divine messengers,

messengers of knowledge. And the stories are very

clear that the Orishas arrived from the sky. And what I find

interesting is that in many of the old carvings that we

can find in wood, for example, they are depicted in sitting

in these weird craft that look like craft. And that they all seem to

feature these elongated skulls. NARRATOR: Is it possible that

these African sky gods were actually extraterrestrials that

not only taught the natives the secrets of the soul,

but also showed them how to resurrect the dead? And could this be the origin

of our modern day stories of zombies? WILLIAM HENRY: Perhaps,

through the centuries, these original teachings

of these celestial beings were lost. Sorcerers and magicians

in Africa and elsewhere began mimicking-- we're trying

to copy what the originals had done and had a limited

degree of success. They were able to

create zombies. But the source is clear,

these teachings originally came from celestial beings. The Sahara Desert stretching

across northern Africa and covering nearly 3 and

1/2 million square miles, it is one of the hottest

and most formidable places on Earth. With an average rainfall of

only half an inch per year, humans have fought

a relentless battle to adapt to the harsh

environment or die. DAVID CHILDRESS: Historians

have often looked at the Sahara desert and wondered what it is

that created this particularly inhospitable desolate

area of the planet. But in the Algerian Sahara

in the region up to Tassili N'ajjer, numerous

cave paintings, some estimated to date back

as far as 8,000 BC depict a time when the land was

lush and teeming with life. But if so, what happened? The scenes that you

see at Tassili N'ajjer are totally bizarre. They're showing a Sahara that

was once fertile with giraffes and antelope and other animals

we find only in Central Africa really. And combined with them

are these bizarre pictures of what even the

archaeologists have called the martians and the spaceman. They have strange

helmets on and suits. They look exactly like

extraterrestrials. GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS:

The petroglyphs that we find there

are incredible. They look like

modern day astronauts with suits, with

helmets, with visors. And according to the legends

of the Tassili region, the natives were visited at a

time when a climate change was about to happen. So is it possible

that the reason why we have these depictions

of these ancient aliens is because they assisted the

Native population at the time of climate change to move

into a new area of habitation? NARRATOR: Did alien beings

visit this region thousands of years ago? And if so, might they have

warned the local population of an enormous climate

change, one that would trigger a vast migration. Ancient astronaut theorists

believe the answer is yes. And for evidence, they

point to the ancient legends of a West African tribal

people known as the Dogon. DAVID CHILDRESS: According

to the Dogon themselves, they were guided by their

alien fish gods, the Nomo, to this area near the Niger

River where there's a lot more water. So they had to transit across

the inhospitable Sahara to find their homeland. And their own explanation

is that alien gods led them to this fertile area

where they could establish their civilization. JASON MARTELL: The Nomos

describe coming down in some type of flying craft. The Dogon tribe gave some very

interesting details which sound like a UFO, a

large spinning disk that made a lot of sound and

wind as it descended to Earth. And the Nomo was up here. So this is a very

interesting story which was replicated by many

different cultures of seeing beings descending from

the heavens to Earth. Were they gods, or were

they extraterrestrials? Even today, the

Dogon believe they are the children of the Nomo-- strange gods who came here

from the Sirius star system. GEORGE NOORY: The Dogon tribe

look up at the star system of Sirius, and they are

convinced that they were visited here, and they

were told about a star system, a binary system

that we didn't know about for years later. How did these people know this? PHILIP COPPENS: The

Dogons have always been focused upon in the sense

that they have this story, this information

about their ancestors who somehow had this

contact with this nonhuman intelligence. And the question is how

did they obtain this? That really might come

from the Sahara desert from specifically culture

pockets like the Tassili N'ajjer, and that the Dogon are

descendants from these people. [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: South Africa. 25 miles northwest of Johannesburg lie the Malapa Caves. Here, in August of 2008, paleoanthropologist Lee Berger and his nine-year-old son Mathew discover several fossilized skeletal remains of two-million-year-old early humans, including a female adult and male child, perhaps a mother and son. The size and shape of the bones indicate that the individuals walked upright and had modern hands. Over the past several decades, scientists have unearthed the remains of nearly two dozen different types of early human ancestors, all known as hominids. >> IAN TATTERSALL: We have an extremely good fossil record of ancient hominids, and I think the picture emerging from it is pretty clear that in earlier days, before Homo sapiens came along, there were typically many different kinds of hominids coexisting in the world. >> CRAIG STANFORD: We have a hard time getting our minds around this now because, of course, there's just one kind of human on Earth today and there's seven billion of us, but at one time, within the last few hundred-thousand years, you could find two or even three species of hominid living in the same area at the same time. >> NARRATOR: Most mainstream scholars tell us hominids evolved from an ape ancestor nearly six million years ago through what is referred to as natural selection. This theory of evolution was first popularized by English anthropologist Charles Darwin in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. >> TATTERSALL: Darwin's mechanism of evolution was natural selection. That is to say a long-term process whereby better-adapted individuals reproduce more successfully. >> FIORELLA TERENZI: Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection explain that organism with certain traits, such as mutation, turn out to be actually beneficial, turn out to be of advantage in the struggle for reproduction. So mutation allow organism to survive and to pass on to the next generation these mutation. >> NARRATOR: Darwin speculated that over time, hominids walking on two feet used their hands to make tools. This, in turn, made them smarter. Then, approximately 200,000 years ago, hominids evolved into Homo sapiens... or modern man. But many scholars dispute Darwin's findings. >> REDFERN: We don't see dolphins building cars. We don't see elephants building houses. That might sound trite, but it's a fact that these animals just simply haven't progressed and advanced in the way we have. And the big question is, why is that? Why should that happen? Why should we be so unique? >> STANFORD: Tool use doesn't really come into play for several million years after the first earliest humans began to walk upright. And then brain size doesn't really begin to expand and really mushroom in size until the last several hundred thousand years. So, actually six million years of human evolution, there are millions of years separating each of those major features: upright posture, tool use, brain expansion. So Darwin was wrong because he couldn't possibly have known the chronology in his day. >> NARRATOR: In 1967, British zoologist Desmond Morris argued against Darwin's theories on evolution in his book The Naked Ape. In it, Morris wrote that there was no reason why man stood alone from other species in terms of his nudity. >> TATTERSALL: Well, of course, as Homo sapiens we still continue to have a coating of hair, but that hair is very much reduced over most of our bodies, and that reduction probably goes back way beyond Homo sapiens in time. It probably goes back to the time when the very first early bipedal hominids came out of the forests in Africa into the savannahs where they had more sun and more thermal radiation to cope with. >> STANFORD: In places like Europe, Northern Europe, why we lost body hair is the chicken and egg question. Did we lose our body hair because we began to wear clothing to keep us warm or was there some other factor at work that caused us to lose our body hair? Perhaps women didn't find body hair on men attractive, and so it was lost because they didn't choose those men as mates. There's no way to ever answer that question. >> TSOUKALOS: If we were to subscribe 100% to the idea of survival of the fittest, isn't it illogical to think that all of a sudden we're completely naked and we're losing all of our fur? I mean, that makes absolutely no sense because right after we shed our fur, we had to wear furs to keep warm. Had we not worn any furs, we would have frozen to death, we would have died. So the whole idea that we shed all of our hair in order to survive because we were stronger, logically makes no sense.