Ancient Aliens

A vision that changed our understanding of the universe.

The periodic table itself came to Mendeleev in a dream.

A mysterious voice behind the world's first code of laws.

The Code of Hammurabi comes from a very advanced point of origin.

And an inspiration that strikes two inventors at the same time.

It has been suggested that maybe it is somehow physically in the air.

Throughout history...

many of the world's greatest thinkers have credited their genius to otherworldly sources.

But could there really be an unseen force...

behind these incredible minds-

a force with extraterrestrial origins?

These people are being influenced by higher beings...

who are guiding humankind.

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 they be the inspiring force...

behind the world's greatest geniuses?

Tacoma, Washington, 2002.

As he walks out of a karaoke bar...

thirty-one-year-old Jason Padgett is brutally mugged by two men...

and knocked unconscious.

When he finally wakes up, doctors tell him he's lucky to have escaped the beating...

with just a bruised kidney and a concussion.

But in the coming days, Jason starts to see the world in a whole new way.

Jason Padgett was not a professional mathematician.

He had studied math a little bit when he was younger, like most of us did.

And he never really had a great interest in math.

But after he was beaten...

he would see mathematical equations everywhere he looked...

and he would really find it beautiful.

He had developed something called synesthesia...

where he sort of saw the world in these fractal images...

and then became really interested in that phenomena...

and then started discovering mathematics.

He would see the Pythagorean theorem in objects that most of us don't notice...

or don't ever see those things.

And he found them so beautiful...

that he decided to capture them in some sort of visual representation...

and he started drawing all of these things.

Jason becomes the only person in the world with the extraordinary ability...

to hand-draw complex fractal shapes.

Scientists say that what may have happened...

is that the traumatic brain injury he suffered randomly re-wired Jason's neural network...

Bringing out genius-like abilities in some areas.

When a person has traumatic brain injury, it's going to be a shock to the brain-

to the way that it's wired.

Presumably in the incidence of a traumatic brain injury...

your brain is, uh, repairing itself to a certain extent...

or sort of compensating for damage by potentially sort of re-routing neural circuits.

Jason Padgett's story, while incredible, is not entirely unique.

In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Derek Amato hit his head in a pool...

and I! Transformed him into a talented pianist...

even though he'd never played in his life.

In Massachusetts, 35-year-old Jon Sarkin suffered a stroke after surgery...

and became a world famous artist.

And after epileptic seizures...

Daniel Tammet became a mathematical and linguistic genius...

able to see the results of complex calculations...

and even learn a foreign language in a matter of days.

But if traumatic head injuries can endow a normal person with genius-like abilities...

what might that tell us about the nature of genius?

Genius is by definition a very rare, rare event.

There are very few geniuses in every generation...

that have fundamentally changed the way that we operate in this world.

And we'll never get a full, complete understanding of genius...

just by looking at the brain.

Is it possible that a blow to the head can unlock something in the brain...

that makes it more receptive to ideas, concepts...

and an actual architecture of the universe that is normally reserved for geniuses?

And if so, might this provide insight...

into why a handful of great thinkers In every generation-

with names like Einstein...

Shakespeare...

da Vinci...

Confucius...

and Plato...

seem to be responsible for so many of the visionary ideas...

that have formed the fabric of our society for thousands of years?

Modern science is still grasping for answers...

as freak occurrences such as Jason Padgett's contradict the traditional view...

that brilliance is the result of good genes and hard work.

There is an inherited aspect to genius...

and-and-and we-we know that from-

we can name lots of, um, people who have come from famous families.

Like the Bacon family, you know, had a lot of famous scientists...

the Darwin family.

So there are a lot of geniuses where it's inherited.

All across history, you see some very similar characteristics...

among the people we tend to call geniuses.

One-geniuses tend to persevere against lots of odds.

Lots of them have had lots of handicaps when they were younger...

maybe that even fueled them to want to achieve higher heights of creativity.

But they have this great ability to bounce back and continue persevering along their goals.

The 20th century's quintessential genius, Albert Einstein...

is said to have perfectly embodied these characteristics.

His motivation and boundless curiosity were legendary...

but his physical brain also had some extraordinary qualities...

that may have allowed for a more profound level of thinking.

Albert Einstein's brain, when he died in 1955...

was actually kept in formaldehyde for about 50 years...

and wasn't really deeply analyzed until more recently.

One of the things that they found was that he has a thicker corpus callosum...

and that's the band of fibers that connects the left and the right hemisphere.

Scientists believe the corpus callosum...

helps different parts of the brain communicate...

and aids in both creativity and higher thinking.

But are the physical characteristics of the brain...

the only factor in determining a person's intelligence?

Ancient astronaut theorists believe...

there may be an even more profound reason.

When we look at the human brain...

we wonder if we really have the neurological brain power...

to-to really be such geniuses...

and-and think of all of these amazing inventions...

and-and, in some cases, just envision them in-in their totality all at once.

So, some scientists have speculated...

that what these geniuses are doing...

is tapping into ideas that are coming from outside of them.

Do geniuses have an access...

to another level of consciousness...

where some of their ideas are being sent to them...

or they have the capability of downloading it during their dreams?

These are the great questions of humankind, of the universe.

Is it possible that there is something much more important going on...

with consciousness than the physical brain?

It's a compelling possibility that reveals deeper truths...

about the nature of what it means to be human and whether, in fact...

there is some greater organized effort being made...

to steer human knowledge towards a desired outcome.

Is it possible that genius comes not entirely from within the brain...

but also from some force outside the body?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes...

and suggest the evidence for this...

can be found by examining the world's earliest geniuses...

and what they claimed was the true source of their inspiration.

The Louvre. Paris, France.

This historic museum houses perhaps the most significant legal text...

in the ancient world.

This stele features the Babylonian god Shamash talking to King Hammurabi...

and below them, carved in cuneiform text, are the laws they gave to their people.

It is called the Code of Hammurabi.

Hammurabi, without a doubt, was one of the great geniuses of the ancient world...

and, of course, he's famous not just for being the ruler of ancient Babylonia...

but for coming up with what is called the Code of Hammurabi...

which was the first written legal record.

it's a primitive document, compared to what we have now...

but he had a whole system of order and how taxes were collected...

and various civil principles and the rather famous punishment an eye for an eye...

which has been modified over the years, but that he had a system.

The Code of Hammurabi begins with a prologue...

in which the king boasts of his great deeds...

but he also writes that the code itself was dictated to him...

by the Babylonian god Shamash.

The great King Hammurabi went into a trance...

and God began dictating this incredible document...

and channeling it through the great King Hammurabi...

who was speaking it in a voice very unlike his own, language unlike his own.

It's all coming from God.

And when Hammurabi wakes up from his trance, the scribes read it back to him...

and he has no memory of dictating it.

It all came from God, and it is brilliant.

An important part is that Hammurabi did not claim authorship.

He knew this was not of his making, of his intelligence.

The system of law that comes through the Code of Hammurabi...

is so intrinsic to the basic moral understandings of how to run a society...

that much of it is still preserved in some form in our modern day legal system.

This suggests that the Code of Hammurabi comes from a very advanced point of origin.

The story behind the Code of Hammurabi is not unique.

In the ancient world, moments of genius...

including basic religious beliefs and scientific principles...

from Greece and Rome to India and China...

were often said to have been inspired by divine voices.

Think about it-Moses, Abraham, Noah, the prophets, Jesus-

a lot of the laws, the rules, the customs, the traditions that we have...

are based upon individuals claiming to have been told something by a deity.

And it's not just the Judeo-Christian tradition.

I would argue that in every culture, you've got a lot of laws...

that are essentially traced back to people claiming to have been told something...

by a being who's not of this world.

Is it possible that the course of human civilization...

has been determined not by history's most profound thinkers...

but by some external force that was guiding them?

The ancients were convinced they knew the answer.

In fact, the Latin word “genius”...

is where the term “genii,” or supernatural creature, comes from.

In the ancient world, the idea of genius had much more autonomy than our modern view.

The genii, which had a life of its own, a kind of spiritual daimon, entered you.

You had a relationship with the genii, and it was really the source of the brilliance.

You were a channel, you were a host, you were involved...

but it was not as personal, and the ownership wasn't as great.

The Greeks believed that they were inspired by the muses.

So what caused a musician to come up with a new tune?

What caused a writer to come up with a new story?

It was the spirit of a muse that went inside the person...

and caused that person to become creative...

and we see that in the word “inspire,” in spirit.

When we are inspired, we are filled with spirit...

and we create those things.