Ancient Civilizations

>> In 1997, Holley Moyes an archeologist at the University

of California, led an expedition to survey a large cave system

in Belize, known as Actun Tunichil Muknal.

As they followed a bizarre complex of chambers

three miles into the Earth, they discovered thousands

of offerings to ancient gods, including the skeletal remains

of thousands of human sacrifices,

and tools and ceramics made from the semiprecious stone,

obsidian.

What made this find even more unusual

was that, as Holley and her team followed the trail

deeper and deeper into the cave, it appeared to have no end.

Where would it ultimately lead to?

Descriptions of the caves in the Popol Vuh,

an ancient Maya creation myth, has

led many to believe these archeologists had uncovered

an opening to the ancient underworld known

as Xibalba, a much-feared threshold to the afterlife.

>> The Maya have an interesting and related legend about

an underworld called Xibalba.

Xibalba is basically their version of hell.

And these lords of the underworld in the Mayan story

cycle are basically reptilian-headed humanoids.

You have one guy who's got crocodile head, another

who's got an iguana head.

Chaac, the rain god, has a bird head,

which is somewhat reptilian.

And this is the theme, again, that we find

throughout underworld lore.

Stories about beings that rule these nether regions are often

reptilian yet humanoid.

>> Reptilian yet humanoid is not a new myth in the ancient

worlds.

But are these Mayan myths of an underground simply folklore,

or could there be some scientific evidence

that habitable places below the Earth could exist?

Hollow Earth theory has been around for several years,

and this is something that has now begun

to fascinate people again.

You know, the original theory goes back maybe 500 years,

and various very well-known historical figures

have talked about this.

Sir Isaac Newton was a proponent for the hollow Earth.

The Earth is not solid, by a long shot.

The Earth is-- there's always a lot of movement and motion

going on down deep inside the Earth.

So the idea that there could be large spaces inside the crust

of the Earth, even down as far as the crust mantle

boundary, that might be conducive to habitation

is not that impossible.

>> There's a lot of scientists today, planetary scientists,

credible planetary scientists, that will tell you that when

a planet evolves, when it comes into being,

it has to do so in such a way that the center is hollow.

And in fact, they dropped a bomb on the moon not too long ago

and a geologist, NASA geologist, wanted

to record the vibrations coming out

of it so they could tell something

about the inner structure.

And it rang for eight hours like a bell, like an empty bell.

And that kind of gives you a glimpse.

Now whether or not the Earth itself

is completely hollowed out inside or whether

or not they are just vast inner caverns that

might be the size of whole continents, I'm not sure.

But what I can tell you is that in ancient civilizations

all over the globe, they have these hollow Earth stories.

>> In my research I have discovered maps that show a lot

of these deep underground bases, also known as domes.

These bases are in locations where

there appear to have been other openings deep under the earth.

And how do I know this?

Well anybody can figure it out because we have access

to the ground penetrating radar data.

This data shows specific types of caverns and openings

deep, deep beneath the earth, sometimes a mile deep.

And what it appears when you look

at some of these overlaying military tunnels,

it seems as if they knew where they were at so they actually

tunneled to these actual locations,

these ancient locations, and kind of made them

into their path as they created their own grid.

>> When we look at the creation stories of our past,

as different as they are from one another,

there are common themes that weave them all together.

One of the most obvious of these common threads

is the theme of another world beneath this one.

A world, subterranean world, from which

our ancestors emerged.

The Mayan calendar, for example.

It's a circular calendar and it shows four boxes

with unique glyphs representing the four worlds of the past.

And the Maya say there have been four previous worlds.

We live in the fifth world that is represented

by the circle and the image that is staring right at us

from that circle.

Each of those four previous worlds was destroyed.

One was destroyed by wind, one was destroyed by fire,

one was destroyed by ice.

And when the ice melted, a great flood

destroyed the fourth world, and that flood story

is one of the common themes that we

find throughout these indigenous traditions.

So the question is, is that just mythology

or are there any physical links that

can help us relate to these in the real world?

>> Maybe the links in the physical world are

to our genetic existence, and how humans were able to survive

cataclysm after cataclysm.

>> All species tend to transcend into something else sooner

or later.

This is the process of evolution and natural selection, which

some people find very annoying.

But I see no mileage in saying evolution doesn't happen.

You need species to have the ability

to bounce back from assaults.

You know, for example, if you have a giant asteroid or comet

hit the Earth and make life on Earth

extremely fragile and tenuous, you

need to be able to bounce back from that.

In other words, you need to be able to duck and dive

and evolve to adapt to the new situations

and keep the project of life going.

The whole process of evolution is a process of unfolding.

Could we become very different from what we are now?

Yes, given enough time.

Given enough new situations to adapt to and develop with.

>> Could these new situations have included taking refuge

within the inner Earth?

>> We have the Biblical texts about this notion of giants

in the old days.

And certainly after the great floods

and the great cataclysmic events that may have sunk Atlantis,

we can only speculate to say that there

could be a breakaway civilization that

went underground at the end of the last cataclysm.

And these beings, some of whom could

be giants, others could look just

like us or some similar human to us,

could be living inside the Earth.

>> You get the Mayans who kind of disappeared.

There's speculation they may have ascended,

they maybe have gone to a deeper plane of existence

that we originally came out of.

And same with the Tuatha de Danann in Ireland.

Like they're said to be gods or fairies or ancestral spirits,

but they were originally people.

I also see a lot of legends where people coming out

of the sea and coming out of the Earth may explain,

may tie end of the Atlantis myth,

where we've come from deeper plains of ontology.

Because a lot of time the underworld

does represent a deeper plane of existence.

>> Anton Parks' research indicates that the underworld

can also be linked to creation.

>> In ancient texts, in Gnostic, Sumerian,

even Egyptian texts, the abyss is always linked to the process

of creation.

So we find this recurrent theme of the abyss,

and through the research that I have done,

I found out that Enki is the master of the abyss,

of the great deep, which also in some ways

corresponds to the underworld.

>> If you go back to the Mesopotamian creation stories,

they talked about gods from the sky basically bioengineering

a form of humanity that was already here,

creating a more modern form.

But they don't necessarily say that the engineering

was done in the sky.

For example, Enki was also the god of the underwater realms.

So there was a possibility that maybe there

was some realm under water or underground

where some of this activity was being conducted.

And so you have this possibility,

at least within the lore.

You don't necessarily exclude sky borne gods

from gods that lived underground because people had both ideas.

That the gods had realms underground,

underwater, and in the sky, and they

interacted with all of them.

>> Indeed, the further back you go in history,

the more you are faced with Giants,

just like prehistoric animals on Earth.

For example, the dinosaurs.

Roughly, I would say that if Enki is about six feet

five inches, closer to human.

An and the other Sumerian gods and goddesses,

by the way they were portrayed, I would say

are about 11 feet five inches.

Between 10 feet and 11 feet five inches.

Maybe even up to 14 feet.

>> If some of the Sumerian gods were suggested to be giant

in size, how would this relate to myths of an underworld

in South America?

Sonja Grace uses her alternative research

to connect the dots on the underground mythology

in Mesopotamia.

>> When I first spirit travelled to the Ziggurat of Ur,

I was really amazed because there was a very small

structure, like a temple, made out of stone.