[music playing]
NARRATOR: As far as ancient astronaut theorists
are concerned, evidence that there is other intelligent life
in the universe has already been found
on every corner of the globe.
They believe Earth has been visited by intelligent beings
for thousands of years, and that it
most likely began during the time
of the ancient Sumerian kings.
Khorsabad, Iraq, March 23, 1843.
While excavating for archeological treasures,
a group of men, led by French scientist Paul- mile Botta,
came upon the remains of a huge Assyrian palace,
and within it, an abundance of Sumerian
cuneiform inscriptions.
When translated, the inscriptions
told of what archaeologists believed to be the world's
oldest civilization and a group of powerful beings
called the Anunnaki.
ANDREW COLLINS: The Anunnaki was a term of the gods used
by the ancient Sumerians, but the original form of it,
it simply meant "the sky people."
It meant those that were connected with the stars.
The Anunnaki were seen to be the givers of civilization
to mortalkind.
And they are described as having the shining eyes,
and having a radiance, and an otherworldly feeling
about them.
NARRATOR: Based on 30 years of studying the Sumerian cuneiform
tablets, in 1976, author and researcher Zecharia Sitchin
published a book called "The 12th Planet," in which he
proposed that the Sumerian gods were, in fact,
refugees from another world.
According to Sitchin's interpretation of the tablets,
these alien visitors, the Anunnaki, created humankind.
JASON MARTELL: It appears to be that gods
came down and literally started a colonization project here
on Earth, creating us in their image and after their likeness.
It also might stand to reason, then, that they've infused us
with the desire to spread this colonization
project beyond Earth.
GEORGE NOORY: I think if you look at what we've been doing
in our space program, it's a blueprint
for what may have happened here a long time
ago with extraterrestrials.
But I think we're on the same path.
We're beginning to understand that the Anunnaki gods, that
were actually ETs, could be still
out throughout the universe, that we could now, as we are
starting to head out into space, be encountering
the prime intelligence that originally
had civilizations on Earth and were working
throughout this solar system.