1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,000 Amazing inventions. 2 00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:06,000 Centuries ahead of their time. 3 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:12,000 The helicopter, the airplane, the submarine, 4 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:15,000 all of these were Leonardo da Vinci's concepts. 5 00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:20,000 Paintings said to contain hidden messages. 6 00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:24,000 It is only a portrait, and yet it seems to have dimensions 7 00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:28,000 and mysteries that have yet to be explained. 8 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:34,000 And sophisticated robots designed more than five centuries ago. 9 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:37,000 People would never have seen something like this 10 00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:40,000 that was able to move on its own. 11 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:44,000 Leonardo da Vinci is considered one of the most brilliant minds 12 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:47,000 the world has ever known. 13 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:51,000 But what was the source of his profound intellect? 14 00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:54,000 He was absolutely immersed in finding out, 15 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:58,000 maybe even proving that we were not alone. 16 00:00:58,000 --> 00:01:01,000 Millions of people around the world believe 17 00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:06,000 we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings. 18 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:09,000 What if it were true? 19 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:14,000 Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history? 20 00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:20,000 And if so, might there have been a secret extraterrestrial connection 21 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:25,000 to Leonardo da Vinci and other artists of his time? 22 00:01:50,000 --> 00:02:03,000 February 24th, 2011. 23 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:06,000 Embarking on its final voyage, 24 00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:10,000 Space Shuttle Discovery docks with the International Space Station, 25 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:16,000 its mission to deliver the most advanced model in robotic engineering to date. 26 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:20,000 Robonaut 2. 27 00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:24,000 But believe it or not, this masterpiece of modern technology 28 00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:28,000 is the latest in a line of humanoid robots 29 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:35,000 whose design is based on illustrations created more than 500 years ago 30 00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:40,000 by Leonardo da Vinci. 31 00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:45,000 When you look at Robonaut 2, you can trace his lineage back to Leonardo da Vinci. 32 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:51,000 The basic design and structure and ideas you can see in what Leonardo was working on. 33 00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:54,000 They're like three-dimensional blueprints. 34 00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:56,000 You could virtually create a human being from these, 35 00:02:56,000 --> 00:03:01,000 which is essentially what the NASA engineers did. 36 00:03:01,000 --> 00:03:07,000 Leonardo holds the position as the greatest human genius that we know of. 37 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:14,000 He had very high intellectual ability, extraordinary creative range, 38 00:03:14,000 --> 00:03:21,000 and used them to accomplish quite a bit. 39 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:26,000 Leonardo is somebody who is able to operate across all these various fields, 40 00:03:26,000 --> 00:03:29,000 which is very unusual. He's trained as a painter, a sculptor, 41 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:37,000 but he manages to move into geometry, optics, mechanical design, anatomy, geology, and so on. 42 00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:40,000 And in each of these, he has extraordinary insight. 43 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:45,000 If you're wanting to talk about a universal genius, which is a very Renaissance idea, 44 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:50,000 then Leonardo is the definition of that. 45 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:55,000 Leonardo da Vinci's work, covering a staggering range of disciplines, 46 00:03:55,000 --> 00:04:02,000 is still influencing science, technology, medicine, art, and numerous other fields, 47 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:06,000 nearly half a millennium after his death. 48 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:09,000 But just who was Leonardo da Vinci? 49 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:13,000 Was he simply a man of profound intellect and imagination? 50 00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:19,000 Or is there perhaps something more to his genius? 51 00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:30,000 Leonardo da Serpiero da Vinci was born just outside Florence in Vinci, Italy, 52 00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:34,000 on April 15, 1452. 53 00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:37,000 He lived during the height of the Italian Renaissance, 54 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:42,000 an era marked by great artistic and scientific achievement, 55 00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:46,000 and a universal quest for knowledge. 56 00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:55,000 Renaissance is French for rebirth, and it sought self as giving birth again 57 00:04:55,000 --> 00:05:00,000 to the values that they somewhat romantically attributed to the classical past 58 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:03,000 to ancient Greece and ancient Rome. 59 00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:09,000 And they see the thousand years that have passed between Rome and the rise of the Renaissance 60 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:16,000 as a dark age, and they want to bring the light of humanism back to the world 61 00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:20,000 with intellectual and artistic innovation. 62 00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:27,000 Florence was larger than London, larger than Paris, and larger than Rome. 63 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:35,000 At the time Leonardo lived there, all these bright people had gathered. 64 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:44,000 But while the Renaissance is considered an age of enlightenment, 65 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:51,000 it was also a time fiercely dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. 66 00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:55,000 When we come to the Renaissance, the Church is pretty much running everything, 67 00:05:55,000 --> 00:05:58,000 so every artist, pretty much anybody who can read or write, 68 00:05:58,000 --> 00:06:01,000 is either in the monastic system of the Church, 69 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:07,000 and of course the Church is the main patron for all the different artists in the Renaissance. 70 00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:12,000 At a time when everything was subject to the scrutiny of the Church, 71 00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:18,000 a young Leonardo da Vinci accepted one of his earliest artistic assignments, 72 00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:25,000 the illustration of a wooden shield with a likeness of the mythical Greek monster Medusa, 73 00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:31,000 a gorgon whose head was literally covered with live snakes. 74 00:06:31,000 --> 00:06:39,000 Leonardo drew the Medusa so frightening that his father believed that he was actually looking at live snakes. 75 00:06:42,000 --> 00:06:49,000 But why, when most prominent artists of his day were painting images from the Judeo-Christian Bible, 76 00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:54,000 would Leonardo have chosen to depict a mythical Greek monster? 77 00:06:54,000 --> 00:07:04,000 One that many ancient astronaut theorists believe may have been based on an extraterrestrial creature. 78 00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:10,000 When we compare them to modern geniuses, we know for example that these beings were absolutely interested 79 00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:18,000 in the idea that we were not alone in the universe, that somehow we had been contacted by extraterrestrial beings. 80 00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:25,000 Leonardo da Vinci is a person who believed in the existence of extraterrestrial beings. 81 00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:33,000 While still a teenager, Leonardo earned an apprenticeship with one of the most renowned artists of the time, 82 00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:44,000 Andrea del Verrocchio, and it is widely considered that their most notable collaboration during this period was the Annunciation. 83 00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:53,000 A scene depicting the moment when the Virgin Mary is informed that she will soon be made pregnant with God's child. 84 00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:59,000 Verrocchio seems to have begun the picture and began in his traditional medium of egg tempera, 85 00:07:59,000 --> 00:08:10,000 which is an egg binder for the pigments, and at some point Leonardo intervened and finished the picture, and he painted an angel. 86 00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:24,000 In 1989, experts in Florence performed an extensive examination of the Annunciation to verify if the angel in the painting was truly the work of Leonardo. 87 00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:37,000 After close expert and scientific inspection, it was concluded that it was undoubtedly the artist's work, but they also discovered something strange and unexpected. 88 00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:43,000 When subjected to X-rays, Leonardo's angel became invisible. 89 00:08:43,000 --> 00:08:49,000 Verrocchio used a lead-based paint for at least parts of his Virgin Mary. 90 00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:54,000 Leonardo, on the other hand, seems to have used rather different pigments. 91 00:08:54,000 --> 00:09:06,000 Leonardo completed it using a non-lead-based paint, which is why when looked at with certain X-ray technology, Leonardo's angel disappears. 92 00:09:06,000 --> 00:09:15,000 Now why would Leonardo, being the apprentice, finish his mentor's work with a different type of paint? 93 00:09:15,000 --> 00:09:28,000 And one possibility is that he was leaving some type of message because he was notorious for hiding things inside his own paintings. 94 00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:40,000 Might Leonardo da Vinci really have painted the angel, knowing he would be creating a secret message that wouldn't be discovered for 500 years. 95 00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:44,000 And if so, why? 96 00:09:44,000 --> 00:09:52,000 Some believe the answer may be found by examining the next phase of the legendary artist's life. 97 00:09:52,000 --> 00:09:59,000 From the years of 1476 to 1478, there is a gap in his life. 98 00:09:59,000 --> 00:10:05,000 We don't really know where he was or what he was doing in those years. 99 00:10:05,000 --> 00:10:09,000 There are years in which he disappears from the historical account. 100 00:10:09,000 --> 00:10:18,000 There is a hiatus, and we don't know even what town he was living in, much less with whom he was working or what he was doing. 101 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:26,000 What could account for a man of Leonardo da Vinci's stature literally disappearing from all known historical records? 102 00:10:26,000 --> 00:10:33,000 Especially when it was precisely during this period when he was just beginning to come into prominence. 103 00:10:35,000 --> 00:10:47,000 One possible scenario here is that during those years, Leonardo da Vinci was in a sense tutored by some special individuals. 104 00:10:47,000 --> 00:10:55,000 People who were showing him things that a normal person wouldn't necessarily have seen. 105 00:10:55,000 --> 00:11:02,000 Perhaps like the biblical prophet Enoch, he was even taken aboard a spaceship. 106 00:11:02,000 --> 00:11:16,000 And the aliens showed him Earth from above and gave him a concept of the cosmos and machines and inventions and of Earth that no one before him had ever had. 107 00:11:17,000 --> 00:11:28,000 Is it really possible that Leonardo da Vinci had received guidance from extraterrestrial beings as many ancient astronaut theorists contend? 108 00:11:28,000 --> 00:11:44,000 One fact is certain that after Leonardo's return to Florence in 1478, his creative output reached a whole new level, going beyond art and extending to numerous other disciplines. 109 00:11:44,000 --> 00:11:49,000 He would produce aerial maps of Italian cities with incredible accuracy. 110 00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:54,000 He would design and build the world's first self-propelled vehicle. 111 00:11:54,000 --> 00:12:00,000 And he would invent machines, years, and even centuries ahead of their time. 112 00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:08,000 There are some people that think that maybe there's an extraterrestrial influence to what he knew because you have people throughout history 113 00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:17,000 who would magically and mysteriously come along every few hundred years or so that then contribute to the fantastic advancements to the human race and the human species. 114 00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:26,000 What was the secret behind Leonardo da Vinci's incredible burst of creativity? 115 00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:37,000 And why, during the age which gave rise to the likes of Copernicus, Michelangelo, and Shakespeare, did da Vinci tower above his contemporaries? 116 00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:51,000 Ancient astronaut theorists believe answers may be found by examining Leonardo's paintings and the many secret messages that can be found hidden within his famous works of art. 117 00:12:54,000 --> 00:12:56,000 The Vatican. 118 00:12:56,000 --> 00:13:03,000 Set within the fortified walls of a 110-acre plot of land and surrounded by the city of Rome, 119 00:13:03,000 --> 00:13:07,000 it is the smallest independent nation state in the world. 120 00:13:07,000 --> 00:13:21,000 And it was here, from 1513 to 1516, that Leonardo da Vinci began performing an act that during the time was a crime punishable by death. 121 00:13:21,000 --> 00:13:24,000 The dissection of human corpses. 122 00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:31,000 Leonardo was brought from Milan to the Vatican to paint. 123 00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:47,000 But because the Vatican had these great catacomic depths, they were very cool places and so you could dissect a body without losing it to decomposition. 124 00:13:49,000 --> 00:13:59,000 A number of autopsies we know were performed in the Vatican under the nose of the Pope, whose policies Catholic Church was to forbid that. 125 00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:07,000 The Vinci stops at nothing to find out about the human body. 126 00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:14,000 He buys dead bodies, even though there is a penalty of death on doing the things he is doing. 127 00:14:14,000 --> 00:14:18,000 It's like he cannot stop himself. He needs to know. 128 00:14:18,000 --> 00:14:26,000 The Vinci has this extraordinary drive to know and understand despite the fact that it might kill him. 129 00:14:27,000 --> 00:14:35,000 In his 36 months at the Vatican, Leonardo da Vinci documented dozens of dissections with incredible detail. 130 00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:45,000 But to keep his work secret, his notes on human anatomy were recorded in code, using a device known as mirror writing. 131 00:14:46,000 --> 00:14:54,000 We know from early in his life Leonardo adopted mirror writing. 132 00:14:54,000 --> 00:14:58,000 At a later point in his career, it also served as purposes. 133 00:14:58,000 --> 00:15:03,000 Mirror writing is writing backwards. Why did Leonardo do it? 134 00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:08,000 He wrote backwards so crying eyes couldn't see what he was writing. 135 00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:20,000 He realized that the things that he was working on, including various inventions and even anatomy, were something that the church would not approve of. 136 00:15:20,000 --> 00:15:26,000 So he had to do these things in secret and he knew that it was dangerous. 137 00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:35,000 Da Vinci implemented mirror writing in all of his creations and he most certainly was not playing games when he did this. 138 00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:44,000 It was in order to preserve the knowledge that he had gained from the uneducated masses. 139 00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:51,000 But why was Da Vinci so obsessed with the workings of the human body? 140 00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:56,000 What secret and forbidden knowledge was he trying to uncover or reveal? 141 00:15:58,000 --> 00:16:01,000 Florence, Italy, 1503. 142 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:08,000 Leonardo Da Vinci begins work on a portrait commissioned by a wealthy silk merchant for his wife. 143 00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:18,000 But it is a painting he will never part with, obsessing over every detail for what would be the last 16 years of his life. 144 00:16:18,000 --> 00:16:20,000 The Mona Lisa. 145 00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:29,000 It is only a portrait and yet it seems to have dimensions and mysteries that have yet to be explained. 146 00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:39,000 The Mona Lisa's smile is not the kind of smile that we tend to see in portraits. 147 00:16:39,000 --> 00:16:42,000 She seems to know something that we don't. 148 00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:50,000 What starts as a portrait, a representation of a woman, turns into something quite different. 149 00:16:50,000 --> 00:16:56,000 It turns into a kind of philosophical meditation on all his intellectual concerns. 150 00:16:57,000 --> 00:17:04,000 What was it about the Mona Lisa that would so consume the final years of Leonardo Da Vinci's life? 151 00:17:04,000 --> 00:17:11,000 And why would he dedicate so much of his time to a single 20 by 30 inch portrait? 152 00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:17,000 There are a lot of theories that Leonardo has secret symbols and secret messages in his paintings. 153 00:17:17,000 --> 00:17:25,000 Everything he's doing, he's rethinking even traditional subjects in the very beginning and really imagining them in new and creative ways. 154 00:17:27,000 --> 00:17:33,000 All his life, Leonardo Da Vinci incorporated a technique called mirror writing. 155 00:17:33,000 --> 00:17:38,000 Is it possible that he also used a similar technique in his artwork, 156 00:17:38,000 --> 00:17:44,000 leaving hidden messages that can only be revealed with the use of mirrors? 157 00:17:44,000 --> 00:17:47,000 The mirror writing is something which defines him. 158 00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:53,000 And so the possibility that he was also using the mirror as an unknown dimension, 159 00:17:53,000 --> 00:17:58,000 whereby he needs to have the mirror to see certain things within his paintings, 160 00:17:58,000 --> 00:18:01,000 is definitely something which I think we need to explore. 161 00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:09,000 At Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, graphic designer Terrence Mason 162 00:18:09,000 --> 00:18:15,000 uses computer technology to search for hidden messages in Leonardo's masterworks. 163 00:18:16,000 --> 00:18:22,000 We know that he was insatiably curious about reflections and refractions and optics 164 00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:28,000 and the human anatomy of the eye and how that mirrored reflections of conical shaped mirrors. 165 00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:37,000 Is it possible that Leonardo applied his mirror technique to hide secret messages in the Mona Lisa? 166 00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:41,000 But if so, why? 167 00:18:42,000 --> 00:18:49,000 To our classic Mona Lisa, Leonardo's portraiture always had very dramatic hand positioning. 168 00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:57,000 His hand position was a clue to the access points of rotation of these mirrored angles. 169 00:18:57,000 --> 00:19:00,000 So if we try this, what do we see? 170 00:19:05,000 --> 00:19:10,000 Is this helmet shaped creature simply the product of a parlor trick? 171 00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:18,000 If so, then why can a similar creature be seen in another famous painting by Da Vinci? 172 00:19:18,000 --> 00:19:21,000 Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. 173 00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:28,000 Well this painting, Virgin of the Rocks, we always notice the dramatic hand poses of Leonardo 174 00:19:28,000 --> 00:19:32,000 is that giving us a hint about where to put the reflective plane. 175 00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:37,000 So we're in a 3D environment here, we can do anything we want, we just make a little duplicate. 176 00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:44,000 Come in a little closer. 177 00:19:47,000 --> 00:19:49,000 That's a little spooky. 178 00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:55,000 So interesting similarity to what we did with the Mona Lisa, right? 179 00:19:55,000 --> 00:20:01,000 We've got something close to modern understanding of alien heads. 180 00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:09,000 Could there really be hidden messages in Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings? 181 00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:14,000 Messages that reveal the artist's connection to other worldly beings. 182 00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:19,000 And why was the artist so obsessed with dissecting the human form? 183 00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:22,000 Was it for purposes of his art? 184 00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:27,000 Or was there another, more extraterrestrial reason? 185 00:20:28,000 --> 00:20:35,000 Perhaps the answer can be found by examining the work of other artists during the Renaissance. 186 00:20:40,000 --> 00:20:43,000 London, England. 187 00:20:44,000 --> 00:20:50,000 Housed here in the British Library is Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Arendelle. 188 00:20:51,000 --> 00:21:05,000 A collection of 283 papers containing drawings, inventions, thoughts, and writings covering numerous scientific and creative disciplines. 189 00:21:06,000 --> 00:21:11,000 Leonardo is quite well documented compared with most artists of the time. 190 00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:18,000 We've got thousands and thousands of pages of writing which tell us a lot about what he's thinking about. 191 00:21:18,000 --> 00:21:21,000 But there's almost no personal record, interestingly. 192 00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:25,000 Leonardo is quite a private figure in that respect. 193 00:21:26,000 --> 00:21:30,000 Found among Leonardo's papers were a few personal anecdotes. 194 00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:37,000 Composed just after his two-year disappearance between 1476 and 1478. 195 00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:47,000 In one account, the artist details his youthful adventure encountering a vast, mysterious cave. 196 00:21:47,000 --> 00:21:59,000 He describes being on the edge of this dark cave and saying that he felt terrified by the darkness of that cave and what might be within it. 197 00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:06,000 On the other hand, he felt a certain desire to try to understand what was in there. 198 00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:18,000 Some have speculated that this incident occurred around the same time in his childhood as when he fashioned his famous shield with the head of the monstrous Medusa on it. 199 00:22:21,000 --> 00:22:26,000 So the question is, what exactly did Leonardo find in this cave? 200 00:22:27,000 --> 00:22:42,000 We can assume that this was a very significant event in his life because it made a strong enough impression on him to write it down as one of the few autobiographical notes he ever made. 201 00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:55,000 Why did Leonardo da Vinci, a man who wrote almost nothing of his personal life, choose to write about this cave as one of the first entries in his journal? 202 00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:02,000 And why was his experience with the cave so important to him? 203 00:23:06,000 --> 00:23:18,000 Some ancient astronaut theorists believe that several of the artist's paintings and drawings provide evidence that da Vinci may have had an extraterrestrial encounter. 204 00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:33,000 One of the things that we see in the Grotesque heads is a fairly marked departure from the natural appearance of the human body, the human face, even in its most extreme manifestation. 205 00:23:34,000 --> 00:23:41,000 Visually, the works are so compelling. They're often slightly creepy. They've got a very strange presence to them. 206 00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:47,000 They're misshapen faces, elongated skulls, flattened faces. 207 00:23:50,000 --> 00:23:53,000 Very eerie, troubling, monstrous images. 208 00:23:55,000 --> 00:24:07,000 Now this is an artist known for careful, realistic depiction of what he was looking at, which raises the question, what in the world was he looking at? 209 00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:14,000 Did he actually encounter creatures that looked like this? They're very, very strange. 210 00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:23,000 Are Leonardo's Grotesque heads simply products of the artist's creative imagination? 211 00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:29,000 Or might they be evidence of da Vinci's encounters with other worldly beings? 212 00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:44,000 According to historical records, there were, during the Renaissance, a large number of unexplained phenomena seen in the skies over parts of Europe and Asia. 213 00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:57,000 During the siege of Constantinople in 1453, soldiers reported that a fire descended upon them from the sky. 214 00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:05,000 In 1458, a giant moon-like disk was seen soaring above the landscape in Japan. 215 00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:17,000 And in 1492, during Christopher Columbus' epic journey across the Atlantic, weird lights were seen floating above the ocean. 216 00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:28,000 Just before Christopher Columbus reaches the New World, he sees anomalous lights in the sky and he reports them. 217 00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:36,000 People see them from his ship. These lights cannot be explained. 218 00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:46,000 Some ancient UFO was seemingly guiding Columbus' ships to the New World. 219 00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:57,000 So here we may well have ancient aliens making sure that Columbus would do something so important as discovering the New World. 220 00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:04,000 Might Leonardo da Vinci have been aware of these early UFO sightings. 221 00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:10,000 Ancient astronaut theorists believe the answer is a profound yes. 222 00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:19,000 And point to even greater evidence that can be found by studying the works of other Renaissance artists. 223 00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:33,000 In the Renaissance period, what we see is this extraordinary explosion of paintings which show anomalies in the background, anomalies which today we identify as UFOs. 224 00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:41,000 There are paintings that depict something very odd in the sky. 225 00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:56,000 Depictions of UFOs, of strange orbs, or rays coming out of the sky, or falling stars with people sitting inside of them. 226 00:26:56,000 --> 00:27:05,000 Why would 15th century artists depict mysterious objects in paintings of biblical scenes? 227 00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:11,000 Were they trying to communicate something about the origin of Christianity? 228 00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:21,000 Or could these otherworldly images be linked to the numerous sightings of bizarre flying objects in the sky? 229 00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:34,000 At Northeastern University, researcher Terence Mason examines the strange images found in Renaissance paintings. 230 00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:42,000 One specific example, the baptism of Christ by Gelder, is just bizarre. 231 00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:49,000 So many other examples can be explained by different iconography, graphic representations of angels and clouds and lights. 232 00:27:50,000 --> 00:27:58,000 But if you look at this painting, it's just a solid shiny disc with four laser beams shining down on the Christ child. 233 00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:06,000 A specific example is the Madonna with Saint Giovavino. 234 00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:14,000 You look at this and it's not one of those that is easily explained away as being a literal interpretation of an angel in a cloud, for instance. 235 00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:19,000 So the striking piece of this is what is that exactly in the sky? 236 00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:24,000 Let's see if we can get one close and zoom in. 237 00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:32,000 And we can see it's clearly something, it's not a mistake, it's not a blemish. 238 00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:40,000 It was obviously painted there, you can see the brushstrokes, even more so than at the composition of the painting shows our shepherd. 239 00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:50,000 Shielding his eyes, it's definitely not an angel or a cloud. Something's flying and it's unidentified, so when pressed we have a 16th century painting of a UFO. 240 00:28:51,000 --> 00:29:01,000 It's as if the painter is trying to depict some divine messenger and those depictions apparently are of UFOs. 241 00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:12,000 And here we have the Renaissance painters basically bringing us Jesus and a UFO together in the same painting. 242 00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:20,000 During the Renaissance, people like Da Vinci may well have had knowledge of extraterrestrials. 243 00:29:22,000 --> 00:29:34,000 Might the mysterious images in Renaissance paintings be evidence that Leonardo and his contemporaries had encounters with extraterrestrial beings during the 15th century? 244 00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:45,000 For the answer, ancient astronaut theorists turned not to Da Vinci's artwork, but to his incredible inventions. 245 00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:53,000 The Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopter. 246 00:29:53,000 --> 00:30:05,000 This four-blade twin-engine attack aircraft has a top speed of 192 miles per hour and can reach heights of 21,000 feet. 247 00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:12,000 It is also able to fly just a few feet above the ground in an effort to avoid radar detection. 248 00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:30,000 But even more amazing than this modern-day aerial marvel is the fact that its construction may have never been possible without the designs for vertical flight first drawn up by Leonardo Da Vinci nearly 500 years ago. 249 00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:46,000 The helicopter, the airplane, the submarine, all of these were Leonardo Da Vinci's concepts. He invented all of the modern weapons that we're actually using today. 250 00:30:47,000 --> 00:31:00,000 If we had developed the various ideas, concepts, and scientific discoveries of Leonardo Da Vinci, there is an argument to be made that we possibly could have landed somebody on the moon in about the 1800s. 251 00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:13,000 He was 500 years before his time and many of his devices could not have been constructed during this time. They didn't have the technology. 252 00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:26,000 One design of Leonardo's that the inventor was actually able to realize during his lifetime was this one, the world's first fully functional robot. 253 00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:42,000 In 1517 at the famous Chateau de Clue in Amboise, France, 65-year-old Leonardo Da Vinci presented King Francis I with a gift in the form of a full-sized mechanical lion. 254 00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:54,000 Like the replica that exists today in the Chateau Museum, the mechanical lion could move independently and was able to display amazing dexterity. 255 00:31:55,000 --> 00:32:02,000 From the accounts that we have of Leonardo's lion, we know that it moved across the floor on its own power. 256 00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:19,000 The vast majority of people who were watching this presentation to the King would probably have encountered the mechanical lion with fear because in their experience they would never have seen something like this that was able to move on its own. 257 00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:31,000 But how did Da Vinci even conceive of such an elaborate and sophisticated device, one that wouldn't be duplicated for another 300 years? 258 00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:44,000 He was challenged by the engineering. How do I get a robot to walk? Even if it's a lion robot and even if he didn't use the word robot, he did create a functioning robot. 259 00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:53,000 For Leonardo to take his ideas at his drawings and literally be able to project their use in the future is just remarkable. 260 00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:57,000 He's given credit for all mechanical and robot ideas that we know today. 261 00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:16,000 Here at the Leonardo Da Vinci Machines exhibition in St. Louis, Missouri, Italian artists and engineers have painstakingly recreated over 60 of Leonardo's inventions. 262 00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:24,000 This is the first tank we know of. Leonardo Da Vinci had the idea for the 360 degree fire power. 263 00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:34,000 It was originally designed for horses, but the horses became spooked so easily that he quickly designed it to the human being. 264 00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:40,000 At the time when it was presented, the tank was a bit impractical and was not built till centuries later. 265 00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:46,000 This is Leonardo Da Vinci's underwater breathing apparatus. 266 00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:53,000 Leonardo theorized that you did not want to exhale into the air that you were inhaling. 267 00:33:54,000 --> 00:34:02,000 He had the idea for carbon dioxide and he brought down another tube that you could exhale into that tube, only receiving fresh air from the surface. 268 00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:15,000 He invented the air compressor. Somebody on shore or on a boat could press down and force the air through the tube to the helmet, allow the person to breathe. 269 00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:21,000 When the British replicated the Leonardo design, it worked. 270 00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:34,000 But of all Leonardo Da Vinci's incredible inventions, perhaps the most impressive are those involving aircraft technology. 271 00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:46,000 Nearly 400 years before the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the 15th century inventor had designed numerous flying machines, 272 00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:53,000 including a hang glider and an aircraft that operated like a modern-day helicopter. 273 00:34:54,000 --> 00:34:59,000 This is Leonardo Da Vinci's famous air screw and this is the first attempt that we know of for vertical flight. 274 00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:06,000 This was designed to have four human beings run around in a circle providing power, literally screwing it up into the air. 275 00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:09,000 The air screw resembles our modern-day helicopters. 276 00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:20,000 Leonardo needed to know answers to some of the big questions, which the ancient alien question has as well, the question of flight. 277 00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:33,000 There is no question in my mind that a person like Leonardo Da Vinci most certainly asked himself the question, 278 00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:41,000 are we alone in the universe? And his conclusion even at that time was, no. 279 00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:48,000 What was the source of Leonardo Da Vinci's incredible and prophetic inventions? 280 00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:52,000 Were they the product of his immense genius? 281 00:35:53,000 --> 00:36:02,000 Or is it possible, as ancient astronaut theorists believe, that Leonardo had been influenced by an otherworldly intelligence? 282 00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:12,000 An intelligence he encountered in the past or one that he possessed from within? 283 00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:19,000 The North Apenines, Italy 284 00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:32,000 Here, in the mountains just outside Florence, a young Leonardo Da Vinci spent much of his time examining the mysteries of nature. 285 00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:42,000 Because his parents were not married, he was excluded from the prestigious academies attended by many of his contemporaries. 286 00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:51,000 In Florence, the Platonic Academy is reformed and this Institute of Learning comes about. 287 00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:57,000 Now we know that Leonardo Da Vinci is not allowed to enter this academy. 288 00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:10,000 This is a young man who's pretty much left on his own in some ways for up to 19 years traveling around the countryside. 289 00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:17,000 He was looking at rocks, he was studying birds, he was looking at the flow of water, he was studying mountains. 290 00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:21,000 He was literally immersed in nature. 291 00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:29,000 No other artist in the Renaissance really showed that much interest in the natural world and the surrounding world. 292 00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:39,000 He strives for knowledge, he strives for information. 293 00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:50,000 He is able to create a body of knowledge which is on par with the body of information which the Platonic Academy as a group of beings is able to put out. 294 00:37:50,000 --> 00:38:01,000 It was also in the North Apennine Mountains that Leonardo is believed to have discovered the cave that he wrote about in his journal. 295 00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:16,000 The story of the cave, it's very likely that it happened around 1480 since it appears that that's the moment at which this is written in the Codex. 296 00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:29,000 The fact that Leonardo chooses to record this encounter with the cave I think indicates that it had a significant impact on the artist psychologically. 297 00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:37,000 But although the exact location of the cave and the date Leonardo discovered it remains unknown. 298 00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:50,000 There are many who believe that it may provide the key to understanding the source of the artist's incredible genius and the answer to the mystery of what happened to him during his missing two years. 299 00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:56,000 He goes inside the cave then he disappears. 300 00:38:57,000 --> 00:39:08,000 And it suggests to me time travel portals. He's opening portals or stargates and beaming to either the past or the future and then returning to the present time. 301 00:39:10,000 --> 00:39:20,000 In history you have certain people like Leonardo da Vinci whose genius is just so incredible and the visions that they have. 302 00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:24,000 In many ways it's like they're able to see the future. 303 00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:30,000 And they're not going to just influence the world then. 304 00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:36,000 But what they're going to do is going to dramatically change the world forever. 305 00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:41,000 You have to wonder where people get this kind of inspiration. 306 00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:47,000 And in the case of Leonardo he was able to see things and invent them in a sense. 307 00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:51,000 Things that we weren't going to have for hundreds of years. 308 00:39:52,000 --> 00:40:04,000 Is it really possible that Leonardo da Vinci may have obtained his incredible creative and scientific knowledge as the direct result of an extra terrestrial encounter. 309 00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:12,000 Or might Leonardo have fallen through a time portal one which allowed him to actually visit the future. 310 00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:21,000 A future where robots helicopters military weapons and other amazing machines actually existed. 311 00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:26,000 And which the artist would later try to duplicate. 312 00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:39,000 Some ancient astronaut theorists believe the answer can be traced back to work he did on the enunciation. 313 00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:43,000 And the significance of his so-called disappearing angel. 314 00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:55,000 Leonardo and Verrocchio's enunciation portrays the moment at which the angel Gabriel has arrived and is telling the Virgin Mary that she's pregnant with the Son of God. 315 00:40:57,000 --> 00:41:05,000 What some scholars have speculated is that by painting the angel in the enunciation so that it disappears under X-ray. 316 00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:10,000 He is telling us that like Gabriel he is the messenger. 317 00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:17,000 And then with his next painting we're told that this great gift to mankind has arrived. 318 00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:25,000 And Leonardo da Vinci's contributions to mankind are truly a gift to the world. 319 00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:40,000 You have to wonder if Leonardo wasn't doing this because he was being encouraged in secret by some kind of extra terrestrial masters who were somehow behind him. 320 00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:54,000 Might Leonardo da Vinci the man many have called the greatest genius who ever lived have been chosen by extra terrestrial beings to accelerate the advancement of the human race. 321 00:41:55,000 --> 00:42:01,000 Or was he merely trying to communicate the incredible future inventions he had witnessed firsthand. 322 00:42:02,000 --> 00:42:11,000 Without doubt the most influential personality of the first millennium was Jesus. 323 00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:27,000 Now you go to the second millennium and I believe Leonardo is the most important dominant personality made the most contributions in the most areas during those thousand years. 324 00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:37,000 Wherever we look in ancient times we find that the genius was always identified with superhero divine qualities. 325 00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:42,000 Even today we put geniuses on a separate pedestal and almost worship them. 326 00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:46,000 And this is really something throughout mankind's history. 327 00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:49,000 So the question is where does this come from? 328 00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:57,000 And whenever you look into mythology you will also find that the geniuses were the ones who were created by the gods. 329 00:42:57,000 --> 00:43:00,000 Genius and divine go hand in hand. 330 00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:10,000 Leonardo da Vinci the man who created some of the most famous artwork in the world. 331 00:43:11,000 --> 00:43:19,000 Design machines 500 years ahead of their time and laid the groundwork for today's advanced robotics. 332 00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:29,000 Was he a time traveler, a man who by accident was provided a glimpse into the future? 333 00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:33,000 Or was he chosen to serve an unknown agenda? 334 00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:40,000 A human messenger who conspired to keep a secret pact with extraterrestrial beings. 335 00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:56,000 Perhaps the answer lies not in space but right before our eyes, hidden in plain sight within the smile of a 500 year old portrait.