NARRATOR: Sindh Province, Pakistan, 1922.
An officer of the Archaeological Survey of India
is led by a Buddhist monk to an area believed to have
been a religious monument.
But under the mounds of dirt, archaeologists
find instead an ancient Indus Valley
city dating back to 2000 BC.
It is called Monhenjo-daro, or Mound of the Dead,
and it is one of the oldest civilizations
discovered in the world.
The city of Monhenjo-daro rivaled
the ancient civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Archaeologists believe that over 35,000
people once occupied the city.
However, only 43 skeletons have been discovered at the site.
There are many theories surrounding
the mysterious disappearance of the Indus people
from Monhenjo-daro.
In 1977, British researcher David Davenport
discovered that part of the archaeological site
showed evidence of having been destroyed by an extremely
powerful explosion.
NARRATOR: In 2014, mineralogist Dr. Sam Iyengar
was able to obtain a piece of fused pottery
from Monhenjo-daro and put it through a series of tests.
When I did the elemental analysis,
it showed me that the Monhenjo-daro rock
contained mostly silicon, aluminum, with
some calcium and potassium.
So my thought was maybe it could be some type of a clay--
until I did the X-ray diffraction.
NARRATOR: X-ray diffraction is able to determine exactly
how a material was formed.
This is the pattern I got, and you
can see some crystalline peaks here
along with an amorphous hump, which
usually results from a glassy phase in the rock.
The composition is very similar to volcanic rock.
The only way the clay can be converted into something which
we saw is subjecting the clays to a very,
very high temperature.
I'm talking 4,000 to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
That is not something an early civilization
can do intentionally.
It has to be something supernatural.
NARRATOR: Could this pottery sample,
which shows irrefutable evidence of having been subjected
to extreme heat, be definitive evidence that Monhenjo-daro
really was the site of some type of powerful explosion
in the ancient past?
David Davenport and other researchers
of India's ancient Vedic texts have suggested
that this is the case, and that Monhenjo-daro may in fact be
the kingdom of Lanka, a city whose destruction
is detailed in the Indian epic known as the Ramayana.
In the Ramayana, it is described that the god Vishnu decides
the leader of Lanka, a mortal named Ravana,
has grown too powerful.
Vishnu takes the human form of Rama
and does battle with Ravana, who has become like the gods
himself.
It was described as the sun turning
into 50 even more brighter suns with this incredible blast.
So some people have suggested that perhaps
at Monhenjo-daro, some type of a nuclear blast occurred.
Not only do we have a textual reference
to a possible nuclear blast, but we
also find physical evidence that show vitrification of stone.
And the only way that stone can be vitrified
is if it's exposed to extreme heat.
I happen to believe that mankind possessed
incredible technology, incredible knowledge,
and that they did things that we're doing right now.
And then something happened, and they had to literally
start all over again.
Whoever got involved said, uh-uh,
that's not going to happen.
Let's let them have knowledge, but not too much knowledge.
And I think that's probably what's happening here.
These extraterrestrials wouldn't want us to have access
to these advanced technologies and essentially become like
gods, but they may have a keen interest in, A,
following some sort of prime directive--
so they don't openly interfere with us so that
everybody knows they exist--
but B, also making sure that we don't destroy the planet.