Ancient Aliens

Human corpses preserved for thousands of years.

The ancient Egyptians were convinced...

that the dead could and would reawaken one day.

Strange relics placed on the bodies of the dead.

One of them had images of winged beings.

And monks buried while still alive.

These funerary rites would be all about humans becoming...

not just like the gods, but gods themselves.

Mysterious burial rituals and elaborate mummification processes...

have been found on every continent on the planet.

But Why?

Were the ancients simply trying to cheat death?

Or could there be another more otherworldly explanation?

it is possible the mummies were being preserved...

so that they may be reunited with the gods...

that actually started their culture.

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 the ultimate proof be hidden...

in the secrets of the mummies?

Vatican City.

April 2, 2005.

Pope John Paul II dies...

bringing his historic 26-year papacy to a close.

His corpse is chemically preserved...

and transported to Saint Peter's Basilica for public viewing.

In a funeral service watched by millions...

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger speaks of the beloved pontiffs soul...

being guided to the eternal glory of Heaven.

His body is then interred in a large, underground tomb beneath the church.

We can see that a great deal of care was taken to preserve Pope John Paul's body.

And the idea is that death, in fact, is just the beginning of this journey.

Many modern funerals, those that take place in Europe and the Americas...

many of the initial ideas actually have their roots in ancient Egypt.

In ancient Egypt, bodies were mummified...

and put into sarcophagi that resemble human beings.

And this is still done today in many religious traditions...

including the Roman Catholic Church.

Mummification is any process...

used to prevent the decaying of the body...

that naturally occurs after death.

The preserved body of Pope John Paul II is, essentially, a mummy.

And, in fact, modern-day mummies can be found all over the world.

When Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin died in 1924...

Russian scientists preserved his body by removing the organs...

and replacing them with a secret system to simulate the movement of bodily fluids.

The process has kept him looking astonishingly lifelike to this day...

and was also used to preserve the bodies of Joseph Stalin and Ho Chi Minh.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il...

President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines...

and Chinese emperor Mao Zedong...

also remain preserved in remarkable condition.

But it is not just world leaders who are being mummified.

Any body that is embalmed at a funeral home is, in effect...

undergoing a type of mummification.

But why do so many people...

go to such great lengths to preserve the body after death?

Our ancestors believed in an afterlife...

and that the proper ceremonial rites at time of death...

allowed the departed to travel to the reward, to the next life...

which was often imagined to be in the heavens, the stars...

and that this travel allowed the person to come into their full reward.

You have, all over the world, people continue to preserve bodies...

And it's because there is this idea of living forever...

that death is not the end- it's a beginning, it's a transitory state.

For some reason, everyone has this idea that we need the body to live forever.

If people truly believed there was a spiritual essence that infused the body...

that left at the moment of death, they can't justify mummification.

What can explain the fact that, for thousands of years...

in cultures throughout the world...

people have held a belief...

that the preservation of the body is necessary to transition into the afterlife?

Ancient astronaut theorists believe clues can be found...

hidden beneath the desert sands of Upper Egypt.

The Valley of the Kings.

Located on the western bank of the Nile River...

lies one of the most expansive burial grounds in all of Egypt.

The tombs were constructed between 1539 and 1075 BC...

for pharaohs and other nobility.

To date, 63 tombs have been discovered in the Valley of the Kings.

One of the best preserved is that of Pharaoh Ramses VI...

who ruled from approximately 1145 to 1137 BC.

More than 4,000 years ago...

King Ramses would have started digging this to become his tomb.

Or, as he called it, his “House of Eternity.”

For ancient Egyptians, a tomb wasn't just a place where they would end up dead.

A tomb was a place where they would start their eternal life.

The Egyptians believed that, in death...

the soul would split into several parts...

and begin the journey to the afterlife.

But to make this transition...

it was essential to reunite the soul with the physical body.

And while the Egyptians were not the first to mummify their dead...

no other ancient culture went to such great lengths to preserve the body...

and ensure entrance into the next life.

Ancient Egyptians would put a body that needed to be mummified...

in a dry room.

They would first take out the internal organs...

and they'd pack that body with natron salt to start the drying process.

And then they would remove the brain.

Then they would rinse the body with sweet-smelling oils...

and they cover the entire body in natron salt...

and it would stay that way for about 35 to 70 days.

Once the body was all dried out, they would wrap the entire body...

putting amulets and other special jeweled objects in the linen...

and then once it was completely wrapped and be done.

The Egyptians understood the most important factor in mummification-

the removal of fluids...

which ensures that bacteria cannot survive and the body will not decay.

Although archaeologists have discovered much about how these mummies were prepared...

the Egyptians left behind no texts or instructions on mummification.

Just how the Egyptians came to create this comp/ex practice remains a mystery.

But they did leave behind extensive records...

regarding their thoughts on the afterlife.

This right here is a very good depiction...

of the journey of the afterlife with King Ramses.

You see him here on a solar barge...

being protected by all the different gods behind him-

goddess Isis and god Osiris.

This right here is god Anubis...

and god Anubis is the god of the mummification.

The most important story in Egyptian mythology is the god Osiris...

how his brother, Seth, coveted his brother's power and killed him.

Then his wife, Isis, in grief, got help from Anubis...

who then helped Isis breathe life back into him...

to survive into the next life with the help of Anubis...

the inventor of embalming and mummification.

The mummification process in Egypt has often been related to, uh, the star Sirius...

which we call the Dog Star.

And the mummification rights were overseen by the Egyptian god Anubis...

who was a jackal-headed god.

And so you have to wonder if Anubis...

wasn't some real, physical, extraterrestrial god.

The ancient Egyptian temple walls are covered with images of transformation.

And what it reveals is that their core sacred science...

was about human transformation or ascension into celestial beings.

So you wonder is it possible...

it's because those who originally taught us the concept came from the stars?

Could it be that the ancient Egyptians' beliefs about the afterlife...

were influenced by extraterrestrial visitors?

Was it from these visitors that they learned the process of mummification?

And if so, what was their ultimate agenda?

Perhaps the answers can be found in ancient mummies...

that predate the Egyptians by thousands of years.

Arica, Chile. 1983.

Workers digging a trench in this coastal city...

just seven miles from the Peruvian border make a remarkable discovery.

They unearth a cemetery containing 96 mummies...

from the prehistoric Chinchorro culture.

Scientists determine that some of the remains date back over 7,000 years...

making these the oldest known mummies in the world.

The Chinchorro were fishermen...

Who lived along the ocean in Chile and Peru.

And in fact, 4,000 years before the ancient Egyptians started doing it...

the Chinchorro were mummifying their dead in South America.

The Chinchorros would open up the cavity of the body.

They would take out all the organs.

They would put sand and grass and other things inside the body.

They would carefully cover it with mud...

and then they'd make mud masks over their face.

It was a very elaborate system, embalming these things.

The Chinchorro method of mummification...

is strikingly similar to the process used by the Egyptians thousands of years later.

But why was this strange burial ritual continued...

not just in Egypt, but in civilizations across the ancient world?

El Castillo de Huarmey, Peru. January 2013.

Researchers announce that they've discovered an archaeological rarity-

an untouched, 7, 300-year-old royal tomb from the Wan' Empire.

A predecessor to the Inca...

the Wari civilization thrived in central Peru...

between 600 and 1100 AD...

before mysteriously disappearing.

Inside the tomb was a treasure trove of gold, textiles, artifacts...

and 63 mummified women, including three Wari queens.

From the three royaled women...

one of them had earrings that had images of winged beings.

These winged, anthropomorphic birds that we see in religious art...

happen from the very earliest art we know of in South America.

And that's something also that you see, uh, at Tiahuanaco...

where winged beings are running towards Viracocha...

in the center of the famous Door of the Sun.

So why are these winged beings, then, on jewelry with the Wari people?

And we find that with Egyptians too.

The Egyptian god Thoth is depicted in Egyptian iconography...

as a half-bird, half-man deity.

And it was Thoth who gave the knowledge of mummification to Isis.

What's interesting is that there are other cultures around the world...

that also have half-bird, half-human beings...

that are treated as gods.

This suggests that there was some global culture...

of extraterrestrial visitors here...

who were teaching this mummification as a technology.

Is it possible that the Wari images of winged gods...

really represent extraterrestrials who came down from the sky?

Did they visit not just Peru...

but ancient cultures across the world?

And does the fact that these images are found on Wari mummies...

suggest that this was a science brought to planet Earth by otherworldly beings?