Ancient Aliens

Seven stone giants standing guard

over a Pacific island.

But what are they protecting, and from whom?

According to the people of the island,

they face the actual homeland of their ancestors.

Could the answer be found some 2,000 miles away?

We are baffled by what it's all about.

Ancient astronaut theorists,

Giorgio Tsoukalos and David Childress

embark on an incredible journey...

This is the famous Hiva.

...to a land of bizarre figures...

Look at all these heads with the big goggle-shaped eyes.

...and forbidden places...

If you step on the site,

something bad is going to happen to you.

...in search of what could be

the ultimate evidence of mankind's

extraterrestrial origins.

If we can crack the mysteries of Easter Island,

we're going to be able to open up once and for all

the true mysteries of the ancient world.

Easter Sunday,

April 5, 1722.

Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen

is 2,300 miles off the coast of Chile,

leading a fleet of three ships on an expedition to establish

a western trade route to the Spice Islands.

In the early afternoon, he is alerted by his crew

that they have spotted a small island,

and that there is smoke rising from it in several places,

suggesting that it is inhabited.

When they reach the shore, they are surprised

by the appearance of some of the natives.

When Roggeveen and his crew

discovered Easter Island in 1722,

accounts were written down

that not only did they stumble across

normal Polynesian-looking people, but as well,

people of giant proportions,

who were light skinned, had red hair,

and even blonde hair.

As recorded in the ship's log,

they also made another, even more unexpected discovery.

"We noticed certain

"remarkably tall stone figures.

"These stone figures caused us to be filled with wonder,

"for we could not understand how it was possible to erect them.

"Some of these statues were a good 30 feet in height

and broad in proportion."

Roggeveen named this remote land "Easter Island,"

after the day on which it was discovered.

But today, nearly 300 years later,

Roggeveen's questions concerning the strange appearance

of the natives, as well as the origins and purpose

of the gigantic stone statues, known as moai,

have yet to be answered.

One can imagine that the moai,

being set up all around the island with their backs

to the outside world looking inwards,

were a kind of protective barrier

that the ancestors would look after them,

and protect their little world.

The thing about these moai

is that they have these very strange faces, very elongated.

They don't look quite human.

They're humanoid,

but they're somehow different than ordinary humans.

They look almost alien in appearance.

And you have to wonder, what do they ultimately represent?

Carved from volcanic rock,

the nearly 900 moai each weigh up to 90 tons,

and the tallest of them tower above the landscape

at heights of more than 30 feet.

There have been many theories over the years

as to how they were moved.

The first theory is thought

that they must have been dragged horizontally

on sledges or rollers or something of that kind.

It was tried again recently for a TV film,

and again they moved it a few meters

but it really doesn't, uh, prove anything.

The idea

that the trees were cut down at some point,

and they were all used for rollers, wooden logs,

falls by the wayside, because wooden rollers

would not be able to support

the weight of some of these statues.

You're talking about several hundred statues,

and it would depend on the size and weight of the statue,

the number of people you had available to help,

the distance you were going to go, the kind of terrain.

So, basically, we don't really know.

For ancient astronaut theorists,

the answers to just how the moai were transported

and positioned in the island

can be found in the legends told by the native people,

legends that suggested a type of energy,

known as "mana," was used to literally levitate

the giant sculptures into place.

According with, uh, oral tradition and the legends...

The king was given the gift of mana

from the great creator god, Makemake.

Legend holds that the king commanded

that these great stone statues walk.

And one has to wonder,

well, either they all

were off their rockers describing these things,

or they witnessed something.

And I'm leaning more in the direction

that they witnessed something

because there had to have been a spark of inspiration.

And so, in my opinion,

mana was some type of extraterrestrial technology

that allowed these stones

to be levitated into place.

When the statues had pupils,

they came to life,

imbued with mana to have supernatural powers.

According to the Easter Island myth,

this power came out of the eyes of the statues,

and was this mystical power.

It's like it was creating some kind

of force field of energy

that surrounded the island and protected it.

So you have to wonder if there's something real here,

and was it some kind of extraterrestrial technology?

Of all the many mysteries of Easter Island,

perhaps the most puzzling involves

not only the construction of the moai,

but their positioning on the island.

880 of the 887 moai face inland,

but on the west edge of the island,

seven of the moai are positioned on a platform

known as Ahu Akivi,

and face outwardly, towards the sea.

Moais face in, it's believed,

because they're protecting the village that they oversee.

Ahu Akivi is the one exception.

The moais there look out to sea.

Not only that, they're identical.

But why would these seven identical moai face out

to sea, when all of the other moai on the island face inland?

Could it be that they were meant to point to a specific location

somewhere farther out?

Perhaps the answer can be found by drawing a straight line

from the line of sight of the seven moai.

Following it on a northwesterly route,

the first landmass in its path is the Marquesas Islands,

roughly 2,300 miles from Easter Island.

The Marquesas are an extremely remote island group,

which is part of French Polynesia.

It's a three-and-a-half-hour flight northeast of Tahiti.

And it's a part of what's known as the Polynesian triangle,

which is bound by Hawaii in the north,

Easter Island in the east,

and New Zealand in the west.

It was the last place on Earth that was discovered.

And there's probably more mystery shrouded in the Pacific

than any other place in the world.

To follow up on the incredible theory

that Easter Island's origins might be found

on one of the remote Marquesas Islands,

in June, 2018, ancient astronaut theorists

Giorgio Tsoukalos and David Childress

set out to explore the islands for themselves.

This is gonna be a great exploration

to see what connection there is

between Easter Island and right here.

Should be quite the adventure.

- Hello. - Hello.

I'm Giorgio. Pleasure to meet you.

- I'm Aniata. - Hi, I'm David.

Arriving on one of the Marquesas Islands,

ancient astronaut theorists Giorgio Tsoukalos

and David Childress meet

with local guide Aniata Kimitete.

Let's go explore.

- Great. - All right.

She has brought them to an area known as Kamuihei,

a sacred place believed to be rich

in what the natives call "mana" or spiritual power.

Here, they hope to find the answer as to why seven

of the nearly 900 giant statues on Easter Island

are all facing in the direction of this remote island chain

in the South Pacific.

So we are arriving

at this spot where I really wanted

to show you about this site.

Oh, look at this.

What we see here is what we call petroglyphs.

Yeah.

So you have three turtles.

So one, two, three here.

And also, on the rock, you can see a canoe.

- Okay. - So you have the head

of the canoe here that looks a little bit like a bird.

Their canoes had a bird head at the front.

Do you see the beak?

- Yeah, that looks like a bird head. - Yeah.