NARRATOR: Man dreamed of one day making the ultimate journey--
flight, the journey to the heavens.
Early pioneers from China and Renaissance Europe
developed extraordinary flying machines.
But according to history, flight itself
remained only a distant fantasy until the Wright brothers
in 1903.
Now new evidence is threatening to completely rewrite the story
of how mankind learned to fly.
[music playing]
All across South America, from the desert plains of Peru
to the jungle kingdoms of the Amazon,
the native South Americans have depicted nature for centuries.
We discover the secrets of their culture
through stunning murals, pottery, and artifacts.
In 1965, deep in the dense Colombian rainforest,
a team of explorers made an intriguing discovery.
Almost a thousand years ago, an ancient people
known as the Quimbayan forged these beautiful brooches
from gold and copper alloy.
At first glance, they appear to be the models
of small, winged insects.
But a second look reveals that there is something highly
unusual about these objects.
Their design carries anomalies found
in no air-breathing creatures in the natural world.
Normally, you'll find it only with fishes,
but no animal anywhere has vertical fins.
They actually have wings but, of course, not on the lower edge.
All these models have, on the low edge, these wings.
All birds have, of course, the wings on the upper sides,
and we have it here on the arms or something like that.
NARRATOR: As we investigate further,
we discover new, unexplained puzzles in the model's design.
While all insects have their wings located
on the top of their body, this ancient brooch
has them at the bottom, a feature found
only in modern jet aeroplanes.
But there's more.
Just like these jets, the brooches
have delta-shaped wings.
There is a rudder clearly shown and, quite
astonishingly, ailerons.
All of these features are found on modern aircraft,
like the space shuttle.
This golden model has thus left a fascinating mystery.
Could this be a model of an aircraft that actually existed?
Did the ancient Quimbayans understand
how to fly over one thousand years before the first
recorded flight?
In the Temple of Osiris in Egypt,
a stunning-- some say chilling-- discovery
was made that has ignited controversy
in the scientific world.
Inside the temple, the walls are encoded with hieroglyphics
over 2,000 years old.
Cut with incredible precision into the ancient rock,
these images record the secrets of how generations of pharaohs
lived and died.
While Egyptologist Dr. Ruth Hover
was photographing one of the wall panels,
she made a startling discovery.
RUTH HOVER: There was a lot of rubble at my feet,
and it looked to me like it had fallen off.
And incised in the stone itself of this oldest
temple along the Nile were these figures.
I think the images are of ancient technology.
They appear to duplicate technology that we now have.
NARRATOR: At the bottom appears to be
a depiction of an aircraft with a clearly defined rudder.
At the top is a shape clearly identified
as a modern-day helicopter.
To the right of this is a streamlined water
vessel, below which is what appears to be a submarine.
These simple images have ignited a fierce debate
among Egyptologists and researchers, a debate
that challenges all we thought we knew
about the ancient Egyptians.
[non-english speech]
INTERPRETER: There is something unexplainable
and mysterious in this place.
Some of the theories say that people came from space
to teach the ancient Egyptians.
Especially, they say these shapes look like a helicopter.
NARRATOR: Yet, could we just be projecting
onto these ancient symbols images
that are familiar to our own civilization?
RUTH HOVER: I research the anomalous, things
that other people aren't willing to look at because they
can't figure them out.
I'm more than happy to look at them.
NARRATOR: But there's more.
Piecing together other clues from the walls
of this sacred tomb, Dr. Ruth Hover
believes that she has deciphered an ancient code containing
a message left 2,000 years ago, a message that the Egyptians
planned to stay hidden until the day our society was
ready to unravel it.
RUTH HOVER: Down in the corner of that famous picture,
there are a series of symbols.
And the numbers are nine.
They come out to nine, and nine is also
the number of the planet Mars.
Did we come from Mars?
Or was Mars a stopping place?
Or was this a symbol that we were just arriving
at the ability to get to Mars?
We're still uncovering the mysteries of Egypt.
It's very exciting.
NARRATOR: Yet, there is a further twist
to the riddle of the ancient Egyptians and flight.
100 years ago, in the oldest-known pyramid
in all of Egypt, explorers uncovered a cache of artifacts
in an ancient tomb.
Their findings were left ignored and forgotten
in the vaults of the Cairo Museum for decades.
Among them, this small, wooden carving.
LUCIA GAHLIN: It looks like a bird.
It's got a beak marked on.
It's got an eye marked on.
It's got markings on the tail.
It probably was painted with further detail.
NARRATOR: At first glance, this 2,000-year-old
model may seem insignificant.
Yet, the more the Saqqara Bird is studied,
the deeper the mystery surrounding it becomes.
Maybe it's was a toy.
Maybe it was a weather vane.
Maybe it's a model of something that actually flew.
We don't know.
NARRATOR: Found in a vast burial site near Egypt's oldest
step pyramid, this simple carving
is known as the Saqqara Bird.
It is believed to hold the key to an incredible enigma.
What is surprising about the Saqqara Bird
is its aerodynamic precision.
The shape of the wing and the fuselage
seem to have similarities to modern-day aircraft
engineering.
Could the ancient Egyptians really
have possessed the technology of flight over 2,000 years ago?
Man's always seen the birds and he's wanted to fly himself.
And I think the Egyptians thought that flying
was a god-like property.
And maybe this was their transcending to become gods.
One of the ways they would do it would be through flight.
NARRATOR: Simon Sanderson is an aerodynamics expert
who has long been fascinated by the Saqqara Bird.
He plans to use the latest scientific techniques
to unravel whether the ancient Egyptians developed a model
for a full-size flying machine.
Using cutting-edge technology developed by the University
of Liverpool in England, he will conduct
the ultimate flying test.
SIMON SANDERSON: We're actually going
to make a model of the Saqqara Bird, which is five times
bigger than the original was.
The original was very small.
The Saqqara Bird is definitely the first step
on the way to the understanding of aerodynamics.
We're running the glider at a constant speed,
slowly increasing the angle of attack,
and then measuring the forces which it's producing.
That way, we can learn about its flight characteristics.
NARRATOR: The results are promising.
Simon's findings suggest that over 2,000 years ago,
the Saqqara Bird may have soared high above the Egyptian desert.
Yet, there remains one potentially fatal flaw--
stability.
When an aircraft is flying along,
if it's disturbed by the wind or if you're controlling it
in any way, you need the tail to keep
it on the straight and level.
I mean, if you pitch up, and there's
nothing to stop you or bring you back down,
you're just going to keep going up and up and up and stall.
Without a tailplane, it makes it very, very
difficult for aircraft to fly.
NARRATOR: But what if the Saqqara Bird did,
in fact, have a tailplane at the time of the ancient Egyptians?
At the rear of the carving, a segment
has broken away at precisely the point
that a tail plane might have been fitted.
Simon and his engineers make the crucial adjustments
to the model.
With the tailplane added, the revamped
Saqqara Bird produces a completely
new set of aerodynamic data.
But no one knows if the modifications
will be enough to save the Saqqara Bird
from crashing down to Earth.
Feeding this new data into the flight simulator,
Simon will carry out the final test
flight of the Saqqara Bird.
These last few minutes will determine whether his mission
ends in success or in failure.
As the pilot takes the controls, the model begins
to climb towards the heavens.
The Saqqara Bird glides effortlessly
high above the Egyptian plateau, riding
the airstreams like an eagle.
Over 2,000 years after the ancient Egyptians carved
this mysterious bird, modern technology
has proved beyond doubt that it could have flown.
SIMON SANDERSON: It was incredible,
and the Egyptians had very sophisticated
knowledge in other areas.
So why not in aerodynamics, as well?
NARRATOR: Yet, there remains an unanswered question.
Could the Egyptians have stumbled unwittingly
into a brilliant design, never realizing
its incredible aerodynamic properties?
SIMON SANDERSON: If the ancient Egyptians had this model
and held it out in the wind, which is probably
their equivalent of a modern-day wind tunnel,
they would have felt that it had lift.
And they'd have definitely looked
as to why it produced lift.
They probably wouldn't have come up
with the modern understanding of lift,
but they would have definitely understood something
about the properties of the wing.
NARRATOR: Our discoveries of the ancient world's secrets
have forever transformed our understanding
of how planes, trains, and automobiles first
came into being.
Do we take too much credit for pushing
the boundaries of engineering?
Or are we merely reinventing the work of the ancients?
If we are just at the tip of the iceberg of how
the ancient world really worked, what
new inventions remain hidden, ready to rewrite
the history books?