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Since the beginning of recorded time, mankind has seen unidentified flying objects in the

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sky.

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Have extraterrestrials influenced the course of human events?

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Confront the specter that has haunted our collective imagination throughout history.

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For thousands of years, we have gazed in awe at the night sky.

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In watching their slow yet relentless movement across the heavens, people discover that the

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changing pattern of the stars precisely matched the ebb and flow of seasons.

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This allowed for the development of the calendar and the rise of agriculture.

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But some objects in the sky followed neither pattern nor orderly path, seeming to defy

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the natural laws that bind all things.

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Since unidentified flying objects or UFOs challenged human understanding, provoking

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a quest that continues to this day.

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You'd have to say that UFO evidence goes back as far as man has left any records at all,

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because even in ancient cave art 20,000 years ago or so in France and Spain, there are objects,

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drawings that look like modern flying saucers.

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So you'd have to go back that far if you wanted to start some point in time when the first

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UFO report was recorded.

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Forever frozen in silence and in stone, these provocative drawings raise questions which

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are debated to this day.

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For some, these shapes represent gods or ancestral spirits.

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But for others, they are ancient depictions of spacecraft, ancient aliens.

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Text from the world's earliest civilizations, including Sumeria some 5,000 years ago, mentioned

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strange aerial phenomena and the beings who controlled them.

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There are ancient records in which people describe different kinds of flying objects,

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which they have seen.

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In some cases, the people were describing what they understood to be flying vehicles

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piloted by various categories of living beings.

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There are written accounts which describe this in great detail.

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The images are provocative and controversial.

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A lot relates to how you interpret the signs that we see.

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Is a sketch on the wall, an alien, and a space helmet?

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Is it a diving helmet?

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Or is it just the decorative piece of work from a science fiction writer of several

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thousand years ago?

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So the further back you go, the harder it is to interpret.

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Despite increasing public support for the notion that UFOs may have been visiting the

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earth since the dawn of history, the scientific community is overwhelmingly skeptical about

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the subject.

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Some people saw weird things in the sky and they were convinced that these were symbols

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of God's intentions.

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Their lives were controlled by the gods.

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And in every case that I am aware of, there is an alternate explanation.

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It could have been a meteor which they didn't understand.

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It could have been some ball lightning.

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It could have been any kind of thing that was just totally unknown to primitive man.

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And so they always interpret these things in terms of supernatural.

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Despite scientific skepticism, the annals of human affairs contain many curious examples

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of strange objects seen in the sky.

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One of the earliest written records of an encounter with a UFO comes from Egypt more

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than 3500 years ago.

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There's a story about two, most three Egyptian pharaohs who saw circles of fire in the sky

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and started off with one.

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And then the report says that there were a few days later, there were many of them in

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the sky.

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And it was so impressed that this was recorded on a papyrus and considered very momentous.

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In the year 22 of the third month of the winter, a circle of fire appeared in the sky.

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After some days, it became more numerous and shone with the brightness of the sun extending

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to the very limits of the heavens.

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The records of Pharaoh Tethmosis, 1480 BCE.

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Days later, during his invasion of Asia, the mighty Greek leader Alexander the Great

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is chronicled as having witnessed UFOs.

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While crossing a river in 329 BC, Alexander and his men observe what are described as

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gleaming silver shields in the sky.

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The objects repeatedly swoop down on the column of soldiers, scattering men and horses

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in panic.

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Seven years later, while attacking the Phoenician city of Tyre in the eastern Mediterranean,

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Alexander again encounters UFOs.

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Recorded by observers on both sides of the conflict, one of the objects suddenly shoots

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a beam of light at the city wall, which crumbles into dust, allowing Alexander and his troops

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to easily breach the defenses and take the city.

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The passage of centuries leaves us with little proof of whether the events really took place,

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or were merely the products of fertile and imaginative minds.

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Remember the working hypothesis for historians, for hundreds of years, has always been that

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mankind is alone, that there are no intruders from outer space, that there were no advanced

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civilizations, that our civilization, in each generation thinks is at the peak.

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We're it.

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Well, unless you throw out those assumptions, there's no way you're going to get at the

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truth of these old accounts.

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Many of the accounts are mystifying indeed.

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Medieval Europe was the scene of a mysterious incident in 1463, when a strange slab-like

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object reportedly appeared in the sky.

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Surrounded by flames and a bright light, it glided eerily above the landscape.

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This drawing was made by Hermann Shaden, a witness to the event.

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A century later, another witness recorded this unearthly occurrence above the skies

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of Nuremberg, Germany.

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On the morning of April 14th, 1561, huge round cylinders were said to have appeared above

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the city.

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Smaller circular objects emerged from them, appearing to engage in battle with one another.

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Five years later, a similar display was reported above Basel, Switzerland.

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This time, many of the objects attacked one another, were consumed by fire, and then vanished

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without trace.

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Once again, the encounter was documented by a local witness.

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By the early 19th century, the world seemed to be resonating to the mysterious presence

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of unidentified flying objects.

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These mysterious theories were proposed as to what they were and where they came from.

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A lot of the ancient stories about UFOs are really stories about angels and leprechauns

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and things of that sort, which existed in the mythology of the time.

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They're I think a product of the very powerful fantasy ability of the mind.

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After all, everyone dreams.

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The subject of UFOs is a sensitive one, with supporters on opposing sides of an ongoing

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debate.

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We have today an enormous body of evidence of people seeing consistently reported beings

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in terms of their shape, their size, little details that indicate a phenomena is going

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on where those beings are associated with spacecraft, flying saucers, call them what

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you want.

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So I think as an explanation, oh, people are just seeing these same leprechauns that they

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saw before.

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It's a foolish explanation.

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Maybe the people back then were seeing the same little gray guys that are coming here

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now.

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For centuries, scholars have grappled with the question of what UFOs may be, the possible

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identity of their occupants, and where they may have come from.

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Unfortunately, answers are hard to find.

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When we return, we look to an unlikely source for the answers.

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Some of the earliest accounts of UFOs ever recorded may be contained within the pages

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of the Holy Bible.

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The saga of events that once played out against the landscape of the Middle East is enshrined

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in the Western World's most revered book, The Holy Bible.

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In recent years, the Bible has been increasingly touted by some investigators as a collection

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of stories describing encounters with aliens and UFOs.

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But the topic is controversial.

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Can the sacred nature of the biblical texts be challenged?

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With the decline of religion that has been experienced by a great many people, I think

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people are looking for an alternative that is more scientific.

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And so the possibility of life is one that has been suggested by scientists.

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So the next best thing to having a supernatural intervention in our world is to have UFOs visiting

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us from another civilization.

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So I think there's a certain would-be religious urge that has moved in the direction of supporting

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UFOs.

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The search for humanity's first possible contact with alien beings in prehistoric times

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leads to an unlikely place.

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To the Bible's earliest chapters, to the book of Genesis.

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Genesis describes conditions in the world at the dawn of time.

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There were giants in the earth in those days.

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And also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they

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were children to them.

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Genesis 6.4.

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Exactly who were the giants in the earth and the sons of God mentioned in the text?

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While most English Bibles use the word giants, the original Hebrew word is nephilim.

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One translation of the word nephilim is the men who came down, or those who came down,

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meaning those who came down from the sky.

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So it may not mean necessarily that they're physical giants.

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They could just be something like great heroes that came down from the sky and produced a

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hybrid race.

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For many investigators hoping to unlock the mystery of UFOs in the ancient world, the

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Bible contains other intriguing clues.

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The Bible is full of UFO references that can be interpreted as such, and they were very

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well recorded.

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One of the best examples of classic UFO story is the story of Moses.

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3,500 years ago, an epic period in biblical history begins when Israelite slaves are finally

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released from bondage in Egypt.

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Under the leadership of Moses, they begin a 40-year trek through the wilderness en route

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to the promised land.

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But according to the Bible, something very mysterious guides the multitude through the

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barren desert.

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The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in

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a pillar of fire to give them light.

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Exodus 1421.

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Some believe the biblical passage contains another dimension to the meaning long cherished

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by most Christians and Jews.

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Some people interpret the pillar of smoke and the pillar of fire that Moses followed through

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the wilderness as being similar to a cigar-shaped UFO.

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It expresses a theme of an extraterrestrial intelligence, some sort of advanced form of

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life and intelligence that's guiding man, something that's higher than man.

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Some of the most intriguing biblical passages concern Mount Sinai and the handing down of

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the Ten Commandments.

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Mount Sinai was covered in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire and the smoke

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ascended as the smoke in a furnace and the whole mountain quaked loudly.

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And when the voice of the trumpet sounded and waxed louder, Moses spake and God answered.

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Exodus 1918.

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When Moses returns with the Ten Commandments after his encounter with God or Jehovah on

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Mount Sinai, his skin mysteriously shines with an unearthly glow.

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His hair has turned snow white.

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The story of Moses has been tied in with an extraterrestrial encounter.

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His hair was turned white, which some have linked with the possibility of radiation,

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exposure and so forth.

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It's easy to see how this could be regarded as a classic UFO encounter.

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The notion that the Israelites may have been led to the Promised Land by some form of

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extraterrestrial entity has attracted many adherents in the last few decades.

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But understandably, scientists and religious leaders fiercely challenge the idea.

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We're dealing very much with an interpretation and we're dealing with an issue that I think

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has potential for being highly controversial because after all, if you say that Jehovah

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is an ET, then that changes the basis of Judaism and Christianity in a very fundamental way.

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But it is a question of interpretation.

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It's so easy to speculate.

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You can look at almost any story and find something that could have been signs of an

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extraterrestrial.

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But what you have to do, if you want to have such an incredible explanation, you have to

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have very strong proof.

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Otherwise, you're just gullible.

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Hinset possible biblical connections with extraterrestrials or UFOs are not confined to the

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book of Exodus.

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In the second book of Kings, there is the intriguing story of the prophet Elijah, who lived

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around 900 years before the time of Jesus.

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While Elijah crosses the river Jordan with his son, Elisha, a strange airborne craft appears.

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And it came to pass as they went on and talked that,

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behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire and parted them both as

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thunder.

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And Elijah went up by a whirlwind onto heaven, and Elisha saw it and cried and saw his father

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no more.

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Second Kings 2.11

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In all ancient cultures, you will have descriptions of flying chariots of different kinds.

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For example, a chariot drawn by horses that flies through the sky and so on.

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In many cases, people today will interpret these as UFOs, that is, some kind of vehicle

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that flies under its own power.

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Just over three centuries after Elijah's ascent into heaven in a chariot of fire,

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another strange incident occurs.

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This time it concerns the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel.

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He is believed by some to have encountered alien spaceships on at least four separate

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occasions.

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In one account, he describes a clearly mechanical device under the control of human-like figures.

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Ezekiel.10.8

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I saw four wheels, one wheel beside each cherub.

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In appearance, they were like sparkling topaz, and all four were alike, like a wheel within

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a wheel.

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They moved in any four directions, never swerving from their course.

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Ezekiel.10.8

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Based on the biblical description of the strange flying device, in the 1960s, NASA engineer

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Joseph Blumrich constructed this model.

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Is this what Ezekiel saw?

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I don't know what Ezekiel saw, if he saw anything.

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One possibility is he was dreaming, another possibility he had some hallucinogenic mushroom

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or something of that sort.

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Another possibility is that he met another tribe that might have had torches and masks

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that were very frightening to him, and he just saw something otherworldly that he couldn't

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explain, and so he made up this story that explained it as best as he could with the

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terms that he understood in his time.

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Despite the ambiguity of biblical accounts, other records from prehistory have intensified

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the debate.

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Some could be interpreted to suggest that UFOs and extraterrestrials have influenced

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pivotal events in human history.

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When we come back, possible evidence of alien encounters at the dawn of civilization.

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Artifacts discovered throughout the Near East speak of a time when humanity's ancestors

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came to Earth from the heavens.

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Hundreds of clay tablets and cylinder seals depict human-like beings with wings, linking

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them with the sky, and always conspicuous, the stars.

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If you look at the ancient history of the Near East and consider the Sumerians and Babylonians,

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you'll find that these peoples believed that their civilization was given to them by beings

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who came down from the heavens.

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There's nothing in the historical record that is really conclusive.

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There are some intriguing stories in the records of Babylon, for example, but the human mind

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is so easily able to invent myths and fantasies that we have to take these ancient stories

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with a grain of salt.

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Yet archaeologists have often pondered on the exact process which led to civilization

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as we know it, for it was with the suddenness of a sunrise that human ingenuity and engineering

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skills arose from the Stone Age and burst forth onto the landscape of history.

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The Sphinx and the Great Pyramid at Giza are two of the greatest enigmas of all time.

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The exact dates of their construction are still cause for debate.

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How these ancient people developed the technology to build the Great Pyramid with a discipline

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and precision still unmatched today is unknown.

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The Great Pyramid of Egypt stands more than 450 feet tall.

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It weighs more than 6 million tons and it has a footprint in excess of 13 acres.

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It's perfectly aligned to true north, south, east and west.

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To achieve that precision of alignment with a monument on this scale is an extraordinary technological feat

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and one that is continuously overlooked by our scholars today.

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Suddenly out of nowhere this extraordinary monument, a high-tech achievement by any standards,

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just appears on the desert.

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This is a great mystery, totally unexplained by conventional history

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and one that requires us to use our minds and our imagination and intelligence

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to try to work out what on earth is going on here

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and what it says about the origins of human civilization, of the origins of our society

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and our view of the past and where we came from.

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My sense is that we're missing a huge part of the human story.

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I think it's possible, indeed probable, that we are a species with amnesia,

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that we've lost the record of our story going back thousands of years before so-called history began.

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And I think if we could go back into that dark epoch,

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we would discover many astounding things about ourselves.

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Egypt and the Near East are not the only regions where ancient ruins

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taunt the mind with the riddle of how they came into being.

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There are many such places.

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This is one of them, the great ceremonial center known as Tiahuannako in Bolivia.

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Not as old or as imposing as the pyramids of Egypt,

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what makes this site so unusual is its unique location.

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Some believe that it too could not have been built without intervention from a superior source.

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The biggest blocks at Giza weigh 200 tons. The biggest blocks at Tiahuannako weigh 400 tons.

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400 ton blocks of stone used to create enormous constructions,

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12,500 feet above sea level, in an area where it's almost not possible to grow any food today.

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The altitude is so high that the crops come out of the ground stunted.

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And yet again we're asked to believe that this was done with massive labor forces

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hauling on ropes, pulling these blocks along.

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It defies belief to imagine that this was how it was done.

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You could not support ever a large labor force at that altitude.

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Whether we like it or not, we're looking at the evidence of a technology

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and one that we don't understand.

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Like the Giza site, the site of Tiahuannako also incorporates extremely precise astronomical alignments.

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Perhaps the most perplexing site of all in South America are the Nazca lines in Peru.

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Covering more than 200 square miles, a bewildering pattern of gigantic artwork

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litters the Nazca Plateau.

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In addition to figures of birds, spiders and animals,

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arrow straight lines stretch out to every point of the compass.

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Believed to have been laid down here more than 2,000 years ago,

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they are observable only from a great height.

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Is this a canvas of signs and symbols etched in the sand to honor pagan gods?

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Or as some people believe, do they contain hidden messages aimed at ancient travelers from the stars?

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These are very remarkable sculptures made by essentially moving pebbles

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so as to change the color tone of the desert surface.

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It appears that many of these patterns of lines seem as though they're oriented towards the heavens in some way.

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We really don't know what they were for or how they were interpreted by the people who made them.

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I think that this may be one explanation that the Nazcans were projecting these into the sky

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and using them for religious and ceremonial purposes.

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But the Nazca lines really do constitute a mystery.

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No one really knows what they were for.

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Like so much of the ancient world, Nazca brood silently, its secrets lost in time.

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When we return, thousands of miles away on the other side of the planet,

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evidence that UFOs may have visited Asia in a far-gone era.

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The Nazca line is a very long line.

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Asia, ageless land of a thousand legends.

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It is also a continent of intriguing riddles.

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During the 1920s, while exploring northern China,

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famous Russian artist Nicholas Rerek wrote of a remarkable incident in the Himalayas.

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On August 5th, during our camp, and at about half past nine,

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some of our caravans noticed a huge shining oval shape flying high overhead.

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It came from the north at great speed, crossing our camp before disappearing into the clear blue sky.

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It had a bright, luminous surface, brilliant in the sun.

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Nicholas Rerek, Travel Diary 1926.

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In the long history of this vast and beautiful continent,

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it seems that the UFO phenomenon has shaped many myths and stories handed down from generation to generation.

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A brief glance at the texts of ancient India is revealing,

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for here too we find the haunting presence of strange phenomena observed in the sky.

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Gurkha, flying a swift and powerful Vimana, hurled a single projectile,

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charged with all the power of the universe,

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an incandescent column of smoke and flame,

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as bright as ten thousand suns rose with all its splendor.

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The Mahabharata.

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Compiled some two to three thousand years ago,

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the Mahabharata is a Hindu poem written in Sanskrit.

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Ten times longer than Homer's Iliad and Odyssey combined,

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it is a saga of conflict on a cosmic scale.

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The plot of the Mahabharata, which is the great epic of ancient India,

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has to do with an invasion of the earth by negative extraterrestrial forces.

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Basically the idea was that governments of the earth were taken over by beings coming from other planets,

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who had the desire to control and exploit the situation for their own personal benefit.

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The story goes on to describe how godly forces intervened,

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and finally there was a great battle here on the earth in which the issue was resolved,

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and the negative forces were repelled.

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Another epic poem, the Ramayana, was written more than two thousand years ago.

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It too tells of conflict and conflagration in India's distant past.

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The Vimana was a weapon so powerful that it could destroy the earth in an instant.

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It made a great soaring sound in smoke and flames,

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and on it sits death, the Ramayana.

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Prominently featured in all these stories are strange flying devices referred to as Vimanas.

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Could they have been UFOs?

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The Vimana is described in some detail, and its flight pattern is also described.

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It's quite interesting because it is very similar to the pattern of flight,

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which is described in the context of modern UFO sightings.

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For example, the Vimana would move in a very abrupt zigzag fashion.

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It would sometimes disappear from sight.

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The earth shook, scorched by the terrible violent heat of this weapon.

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Elephants burst into flame and ran to and fro in frenzy.

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Over a vast area, other animals crumpled to the ground and died.

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From all directions, the arrows of flame reigned continuously and fiercely from the Vimanas.

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Vimanas.

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They were described as flying fortresses that were used for aerial battles.

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They also attacked people on the ground.

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They sent out missiles according to these translations and interpretations.

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Sort of like a modern UFO report, except the war was taking place.

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Could great aerial battles have been possible more than 2,000 years ago?

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Compelling though the stories may be, the debate continues over whether they were fact or fantasy.

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I think the ancient Hindu descriptions of flying machines are probably fantasies

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sort of like the Buck Rogers myths of flying rocket ships long before they really existed.

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The easy way out, it's mythology. Old science fiction, if you will.

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The realistic way is to say that those people were describing things that they didn't understand, but that were real.

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What we need is an open-minded effort to look at these things from the viewpoint of modern technology,

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possibly admitting that even we can't do some of the things that are described.

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Asia would not be the last place where UFO phenomenon occurred.

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When we return, a spate of sightings appears throughout the four corners of the modern world and causes a sensation.

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While many believe that the Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials in their spacecraft, could this indeed be possible?

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Reports of strange, unidentified flying objects have continued to trickle in throughout the centuries,

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echoing incidents in ancient times.

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By the 1940s, the term flying saucer had entered the vocabulary of a fascinated world.

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Suddenly, seemingly everywhere, the skies were filled with UFOs of every description.

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In the ensuing decades, UFOs were witnessed by people from all levels of society.

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Even astronauts saw them.

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I personally believe in UFOs, and I believed in UFOs before I got into the space program.

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I just personally believe that there are other civilizations somewhere out there that people are traveling from.

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This was in the early 1950s when I was flying fighters in Germany.

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And these objects were coming over our base that appeared to be the same kind of formations that we fly in our fighters.

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On occasion, their movements were more erratic than ours, which meant they could really accelerate laterally and accelerate four and a half more readily than we do.

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But we felt that they looked very much like high-flying fighters, except they had no wings.

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They were certainly higher and faster than any airplanes we know of here on Earth at that ticker time,

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and they certainly appeared to be saucer-shaped and metallic.

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Why are UFOs so seemingly secretive and elusive?

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If extraterrestrials are visiting the Earth, some believe that this question only can be answered by direct face-to-face contact with them.

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In 1977, NASA sent two robotic Voyager spacecraft on an ambitious exploratory tour to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the four giant outer planets.

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Their epic journey took 12 years to complete, but they acquired more scientific data about our solar system than had been learned in the previous five centuries.

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Could this be the UFO's mission to planet Earth? To explore our world on behalf of another technologically advanced civilization somewhere in the far-flung reaches of the cosmos.

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While we now know that the chances of finding intelligent life in our solar system are extremely unlikely,

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our Sun is but one of billions in our galaxy, and the galaxy itself is but one of countless galaxies spread throughout the universe.

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With these odds, can we be alone?

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In August 1996, scientists announced that life might have once existed on Mars.

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Just a few months earlier, the first planet orbiting another Sun was confirmed.

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Though eight light-years or a staggering 50 trillion miles from Earth, on the cosmic scale that is literally just down the road from our own backyard.

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Today, we know a lot about the universe, and we know there really is a possibility that there could be life out there,

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but most of what you hear about it is nonsense, because people accept the most bizarre stories without proof.

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And there are many stories from all over the world of people seeing strange lights in the sky.

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Some of them are true, there are strange lights in the sky, but they usually have an explanation.

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There are all kinds of things going on around us, and the average person doesn't know about this, and they see something weird, and they say,

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wow, it must be extraterrestrial. So there's a tremendous amount of gullibility all over the world.

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We live on a planet revolving around a star in the middle of an unknown infinity of space.

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Isn't it arrogant and stupid to imagine that we are the only life in this enormous universe?

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If you take our ancient texts seriously, they all tell us that the universe was created as a home for life, that the universe is full of life.

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I think it's obvious that there are many other intelligent life forms in the universe, and I don't dismiss for a moment the possibility that they have visited Earth,

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perhaps in the past, perhaps even now.

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Despite the vast distances and technical difficulties involved in space travel, it is possible that an advanced civilization has visited our small blue planet sometime in its forgotten past.

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It is also possible that they brought with them a message from the stars that still lies buried beneath these ruins.

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This summer, best friends became enemies.

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He hung up on me. That's how mad he laughed at me like it was a joke.

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Now, will the truckers all in the same room, are Rick and Hugh gonna have it out?

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It's a clash of the truckers, and it won't be pretty.

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Ice Road Truckers on the Edge concludes Sunday at 9 only on the History Channel.