Ancient Aliens

Narrator: Ancient monuments

deep under water...

A once-thriving metropolis now

half a mile under the sea...

Lost cities submerged for

thousands of years...

David Childress: All over the

world, there are sunken cities.

There's more than 200 known

sunken cities in the

Mediterranean alone.

Graham Hancock: What we're

looking at are the remains of

cities at a time when mainstream

archeology tells us there were

no cities, uh, anywhere in the

world.

Narrator: Are underwater

monuments examples of mankind's

earliest civilizations?

Or is there evidence of skills

far beyond that of primitive

man?

And if so, where did it

come from?

Giorgio Tsoulakos: The native

legends are very clear... that

something or someone landed,

and then, knowledge, all of a

sudden, spread.

Jorge Luis Delgado Mamani:

There is many, many legends

with lights coming from under

the water.

Childress: You start to get

the idea that there's some kind

of ancient alien underwater

base...

Narrator: 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?

If so, what evidence lies deep

underwater?

Narrator: Covering more than

71% of the planet, the Earth's

oceans are a vast and largely

unexplored mystery.

For most of recorded history,

man could only guess at what

lay beneath the ocean's surface.

But new technologies are

reaching new depths.

Researchers around the world

are finding the unexpected...

underwater complexes and

sophisticated monuments that

defy the conventional

historical record.

Michael Cremo: There are

remains of urban civilizations

on parts of the Earth that were

exposed on land 10,000 and

more years ago.

Possible.

Narrator: Scientific theory

suggests that during Earth's

last Ice Age, ocean levels were

once much lower than they are

today.

Hancock: You have to envisage

a world in which there are two

mile-deep ice caps sitting on

top of northern Europe and

North America, in which are

accumulated enormous quantities

of water.

And we know that this water

began to melt about 21,000 years

ago, and finished melting about

10,000 years ago.

Narrator: As a result, rich

coastal lands were slowly

submerged by rising sea levels.

Hancock: Ten million square

miles of land was flooded all

around the world.

That's roughly the size of

Europe and China added

together... were just rubbed

from the record.

They just disappear from

the story.

And in my opinion, archeology

is not doing enough work to

investigate those lost and

submerged lands.

Narrator: While much of the

ocean's floor remains

unexplored, for thousands of

years, philosophers and

scientists have been drawn to

one of the greatest mysteries

of the sea, the legend of the

lost city of Atlantis.

Childress: It's been said

that more books have been

written about Atlantis than any

other subject.

But most of what we know comes

from the Greek philosopher

Plato, who wrote two books about

Atlantis, the Timaeus and the

Critias.

>> Narrator: Written in 360 BC,

Plato described Atlantis as a

highly advanced city, ringed by

concentric walls, which

flourished 9,000 years before

his own time.

>> Cremo: There are descriptions

of huge palaces for kings.

It's stated that Atlantis had

huge naval forces, which it

used to conquer other parts of

the world.

It was an urban civilization.

According to the ancient Greek

texts, Atlantis was connected

with extraterrestrials from the

beginning.

It was founded by the Greek god

Poseidon.

Poseidon can be regarded as an

extraterrestrial in the sense

of not being of this Earth.

>> Erich Von Daniken: Poseidon,

one of the extraterrestrial,

found a pretty, wonderful, young

woman-girl on Earth.

And he took this woman-girl,

made her pregnant.

And to protect his new family,

he founded Atlantis.

>> Narrator: According to the

legend, after a failed attempt

to invade Athens, disaster

struck the island.

>> Childress: According to

Plato, Atlantis was destroyed in

a day and a night...

...a cataclysmic destruction

that sank the entire island and

its capital city.

Some researchers believe that

the Atlantians somehow

destroyed themselves.

>> Narrator: According to Plato,

Atlantis was located in front

of the Pillars of Hercules, a

location beyond what some

scholars attribute to modern

Gibraltar.

>> Childress: And to the

ancients, as they left the

Mediterranean Sea to go into the

larger Atlantic Ocean, this was

where they went beyond the

Pillars of Hercules between

Spain and Morocco.

>> Narrator: Across the

Atlantic lies the island chain

of the Bahamas, just southeast

of Florida.

Here in 1968, archaeologist

J. Manson Valentine believed he

found part of Atlantis when he

discovered an unusual rock

formation off the coast of

North Bimini Island.

>> John Van Auken: It's only in

about 12 to 18 feet of water, so

you can, uh, view it easily.

At first, scientists thought

this was just beach rock, but

then several other scientists

exploring the Bimini Road

noticed that the beach rock was

on top of other beach rock,

with balancing stones wedged in

between.

And nature doesn't do that; man

does.

And they realized this is a

harbor, a breakwater for a

harbor.

From the shallow edges of