[music playing] NARRATOR: Russia.
Spanning a staggering 6.6 million square miles,
it is the largest country on Earth.
Its massive territory is also the most geographically
diverse, consisting of some of the most
extreme terrain on the planet--
including dense forests, frozen tundra, remote mountains,
and barren deserts.
Despite its physical size, as much as 50% of Russia
remains uninhabited and largely unexplored by mankind.
Russia is almost twice the size of the United States.
Just to compare, the United States
expands over four time zones, while Russia
expands over 11 time zones.
The size of Russia, its harsh climate, especially
in the northern parts of Russia, makes
it very difficult to explore.
NARRATOR: One of Russia's most mysterious areas
is a valley just north of Kazakhstan,
where in 1987 archaeologists from the University
of Chelyabinsk discovered the remains
of an ancient settlement which they were able to date
back to between the 17th and 20th centuries BC.
Much of the original structures of this megalithic site known
as Arkaim no longer exist, but scientists have mapped
out its original design, which includes massive circular walls
similar to Stonehenge.
So Arkaim has been described as Russia's Stonehenge.
Now, this is quite intriguing because it's a very
similar latitude to Stonehenge.
So it's been suggested that it could
have been put there for astronomical and surveying
purposes.
It seems that Arkaim at some point
was some type of observatory, which I think
is incredibly fascinating.
Because it means that worldwide, our ancestors
witnessed other things that would
explain this long-held fascination with the stars.
The way the city was built, it was a circular structure.
It had a very interesting central square.
Basically, it was an interior circle surrounded
by a circle, which to many means the mandala
principle of Buddhism--
or a depiction of the universe in a very miniaturized way.
NARRATOR: Incredibly, archaeologists have found
that Arkaim was built with features aligned to measure
as many as 18 astronomical events,
such as the solstices and equinoxes.
And discovered among the ruins was an ancient statue
of a man looking up to the sky.
Adding to the mystery are reports of strange anomalies
in the region that continue to this day, which include
magnetic inconsistencies, strange lights,
and curious fog formations.
When you consider the strange lights, the weird fog,
the magnetic anomalies, the unusual hallucinations
and things that have happened to people there,
it appears that this is some sort of energy node or vortex
point on the Earth that was actually
utilized by extraterrestrials when this was constructed.
If you actually look at the shape of Arkaim,
it could have been the platform for a spacecraft like a rocket
to launch off from.