NARRATOR: An enormous flying
creature born of a raging
inferno...
a vicious three-headed dog
guarding the gates of hell
and mysterious sea serpents
terrorizing mankind.
But are such monsters just
mythical creatures:, a fantasy?
Or did they actually exist in
the ancient past?
GEORGE NOORY: There was some
kind of experimentation
going on.
Let's take this animal and give
him two heads.
Let's take this dragon and give
him wings.
GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: These
creatures are direct products
of extraterrestrial genetic
experimentations in our past.
NARRATOR: Millions of people
around the world believe we have
been visited in the past by
extraterrestrial beings.
What if it were true?
Did ancient aliens really shape
our history?
And if so, might the beasts and
monsters of ancient legend
really have been the product of
an advanced extraterrestrial
intelligence?
NARRATOR: Surf side Beach,
Montauk, New York.
On July 13, 2008, a 26-year-old
woman and three of her friends
discovered the carcass of a
strange looking creature that
had washed onto the shore.
RUEHL: It actually looked
like a hybrid creature that had
the claws of a raccoon and
possibly the beak of a bird and
the body, perhaps, of a dog.
A very unusual creature.
A photograph was taken
and circulated.
It started popping up all over
the Internet.
It went viral.
TSOUKALOS: The people
couldn't identify the animal
because it didn't look like
anything.
It looked like a mixture of
different animals.
REDFERN: And because it
looked so strange, you know,
it provoked a lot of theories.
Is it just an unknown animal?
Could it be some sort of hybrid-
type creature?
Something, you know, that had
been genetically tinkered with
in a lab?
NARRATOR: Some believe the
mysterious creature is a hybrid
beast, perhaps created at a
nearby government testing
facility, the Plum Island Animal
Disease Center.
Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman
labels the creature "The Montauk
Monster."
COLEMAN: This is a replica
of the Montauk Monster.
One of the things that we
noticed about this creature was
the strange features around
its mouth.
It looked like a beak.
It actually looked like we
didn't know what was going
on here.
Was it a griffon, was it a
creature, was it a giant turtle?
But indeed, that was decaying
flesh that had come away from
the skull.
Other features were the
strange looking feet, and the
body, indeed... because the
picture had no scale in it...
we thought looked enormous.
But on the body, these white
objects here really define the
size of flies on the creature,
which then determined a scale.
This creature was very small.
RUEHL: Unfortunately, someone
grabbed the carcass and
supposedly took it to his front
yard, and it ultimately
vanished.
So the only evidence we have of
this creature is the photo.
NARRATOR: But while some
researchers theorized that the
so-called Montauk Monster was
the product of modern science,
ancient astronaut theorists
believe the animal could be part
of a long line of genetically-
modified creatures that have
appeared throughout human
history.
TSOUKALOS: If the Montauk
Monster is in fact a reality,
then that could mean that if
we're able today to create some
very bizarre creatures behind
closed doors in labs all around
the world, it is possible that
our ancestors, especially the
extraterrestrial ancestors, had
the same capability.
Because in ancient texts, we
have numerous references to
monsters, bizarre beings that
have been described
in great detail.
NARRATOR: Ancient Greek
artifacts depict terrifying
beasts such as the gorgon...
the Hydra...
and the ferocious Cerberus.
And in Homer's epic poem
the Iliad, the Greek author
describes a battle in which the
hero, Bellerophon, slays a
monster called the Chimera.
JASON MARTELL: The Chimera
was a dreaded beast that wreaked
havoc and terrorized the people
of Asia Minor.
Homer described the Chimera as
an immortal beast with a
lionlike head, a snake tail
and a third goat head inhe
middle that snorted bright fire.
GLENN: The notion of chimeras
and hybrids is one that has been
part of the human psyche
for millennia.
I mean, when you think about
things such as the Minotaur,
Pegasus, Anubis, this is
something that either we have
imagined or had been created
at one time.
RICHARD RADER: These beings,
these monsters, serve more of,
kind of an ethical purpose in
mythology than they are catalogs
of something literal because
storytelling and fiction are
just a part of what we are as
human beings.
NARRATOR: But did mythic
monsters merely spring from the
imagination of our ancestors?
Or might they have actually
existed?
Ancient alien theorists believe
in their existence and that
evidence can be found in the
relics of the past.
TSOUKALOS: To suggest that
all of these creatures were
nothing else but fantasy, in my
opinion, doesn't really hold
water because our ancestors
weren't stupid.
They depicted what they saw.
We find these mixed hybrid
beings all throughout Egypt as
sphinxes, as griffons, as
bizarre creatures that,
according to the the ancient
Egyptian texts, they did exist.
They were not a fantasy
of our ancestors' imagination.
ERICH VON DANIKEN: Just
imagine there is a mother
spaceship traveling in the
universe for centuries and
centuries.
Then they find a solar system
with a planet with the
possibility of life like the
earth.
And they observe on the Nile a
crocodile, a living creature
which obviously is resistant
to the heat.
They observe a lion with his
power, his muscles.
And now they start to think, "We
could use a mixture of this
creature on another planet."
And now, by genetical design,
they start to create mixed
creatures.
Some of these mid creatures
did exist in the past.
JONATHAN YOUNG: The griffon
was a mythological creature
that had the body of a lion with
the head and wings of an eagle.
Now, the lion is the king of
beasts, the eagle is the king of
birds, so the griffon was the
king of all creatures.
PHILIP COPPENS: The creature
is somehow two creatures put
together in a way that defies
normal sense, defies normal
explanation.
So the question then is:
how does that happen?
NARRATOR: By the mid-19th
century, scientists began to
look at fossil records around
the planet to study how
organisms changed over time.
Naturalist Charles Darwin
theorized that all life-forms
share a common origin and have
evolved over the centuries
through a process called
natural selection.
Might the hybrid monsters of
ancient religion and myth really
have been the result of
evolution?
STANFORD: Darwin's theory of
evolution by natural selection
is a mechanism by which
life-forms can change from one
into another.
It relies on the principle that
organisms that have certain
traits, permutations may be
advantageous in the struggle for
existence and the struggle
for reproduction.
And those traits are the ones
that will be perpetuated over
time, over many, many
generations.
IMBROGNO: Certain different
species can breed if they are
genetically close, like the...
like the donkey and the horse.
Like the wolf and the dog.
However, cats and dogs will not
mate because, first of all, they
don't have the biochemical
signatures to mate with each
other, and plus their genes are
so different that the
chromosomes just won't line up
properly to reproduce.
It's impossible.
NARRATOR: But if Darwin's
theories on evolution and
natural selection cannot explain
the origins of ancient beasts
and monsters, then where might
they have come from?
Perhaps the answer cannot be
found on Earth, but in a place
much father away.
NARRATOR: Southern Pakistan.
In the middle of the Indus River
Valley lie the ruins
of Mohenjo-daro.
This ancient city, whose name
means "mound of the dead," was
one of the largest urban
settlements in the world
in 2600 B.C.
RUEHL: The ancient city of
Mohenjo-daro had what appeared
to be streets that were laid out
parallel and perpendicular to
each other, like a modern city.
The homes actually had their own
toilets and they had a very
sophisticated sewer system.
So it looks like a very
advanced city.
NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut
theorists have long thought this
site was also the epicenter
of a nuclear explosion that
occurred more than 4,000 years
ago.
RUEHL: Skeletons were found
in dead positions as though
there's an instantaneous death,
and some of those skeletons, as
measured by Soviet scientists,
had 50 times the normal
radioactivity.
They found pottery that had been
fused, then walls were heated to
such an extent they became
vitrified or glasslike,
suggesting some sort of ancient
nuclear weapon involved.
NARRATOR: According to the
Mahabharata, the ancient holy
text of the Hindus, white-hot
smoke rose in infinite
brilliance and reduced the city
to ashes.
Horses were burned by the
thousands and corpses were
vaporized by intense heat.
TSOUKALOS: And afterwards, a
big silence came over the entire
land and people start to have
boils on their skin.
Their hair start to fall out
and their nails.
There's only one thing that
causes this, and that is
radiation poisoning.
It's radiation fallout.
COPPENS: So the question then
becomes when events happen in
a place where there is
extreme radiation, what impact
does that have on human life or
on other life present there?
Could this explain, for example,
why creatures were born with
more than one arm or more than
one leg, which then somehow
became deified?
Because even to this day, we
know that in civilizations where
anomalous human beings are born,
somehow the touch of God is seen
to be part of this creation.
NARRATOR: According to the
ancient Hindu texts, after the
carnage at Mohenjo-daro, a
fearsome flying monster appeared
in the sky.
It was called "Garuda."
YOUNG: In the Mahabharata,
the Garuda is a massive birdlike
creature:, it's a red face,
red wings, talon.
It's so huge it would block
out the sun.
There are stories that it would
let a certain god, Vishnu, ride
on him on occasion.
TSOUKALOS: And each and every
time he would show up,
descending from the sky, he
would create hurricane winds.
And upon his descent, the Earth
would shake, dust would fly up
in the air and everyone in the
vicinity would be absolutely
terrified.
Now here we have a carving
of Garuda, and if we look at the
top, yes, they look like
feathers, but at the same time
they could be interpreted as big
gigantic flames.
CHILDRESS: According to Hindu
mythology, Garuda's born out of
this cosmic event, this war and
destruction that happens at the
end of every age.
COPPENS: Could this have been
somehow connected to exposures
or to radiation being borne
within a zone of high radiation?
We cannot know the answer, but
we do know that within India and
within Pakistan there are known
zones of higher radiation than
there are normal.
The logic dictates that somehow,
genetic abominations will have
been born within those places.
NARRATOR: if Mohenjo-daro was
in fact the site of an ancient
nuclear attack, could it be
possible that Garuda was a
mutant beast created as a
by-product of intense
radioactivity?
STANFORD: We tend to have a
science fiction view of what
mutation is.
We think of mutations being
caused by radiation and they
cause outlandish features and
gigantic-sized insects and so
forth, but in fact, mutations
happen all the time.
BUSBY: There's no recorded
evidence of any radiation
causing a mutation which changes
some species into a different
species.
Most of the radiation mutations
are lethal.
NARRATOR: But if, as modern
scientists believe, Garuda was
not likely the result of genetic
mutation, then what could
explain its existence?
TSOUKALOS: The Mahabharata
states that Garuda was born from
this raging inferno.
And what's really intriguing is
the fact that in some text
passages, we can read that the
exterior of Garuda did not
consist of feathers, but of
metal.
Now what kind of a bird
is that?
No bird is made of metal, unless
it's a type of machine.
VON DANIKEN: Garuda was a
flying vehicle, and Garuda was
able to travel to the Moon and
around the Earth with very, very
high speed.
Garuda even was able to shock
mankind with lightning, which
fell from heaven.
TSOUKALOS: Garuda was
considered to be a snake killer.
In fact, Garuda needed to eat
snakes in order to survive.
Now compare an airplane at the
airport today hooked up to a
fuel line.
Isn't that airplane eating
a snake?
If you see modern fighter jets
take off in the middle of the
night, and there's smoke and
fire coming out of the exhaust,
it looks like a dragon.
It looks like some type of a
mythical creature, especially if
you don't know what you're
witnessing is nuts-and-bolts
technology.
So of course you're gonna liken
it to a living creature.
Those ancient aliens knew that
our ancestors would worship them
as gods because they knew that
our ancestors didn't know it
was technology.
They thought it was magic,
spirituality, divine
intervention, which it
never was.
NARRATOR: To the east of
India, near the village of
Wucheng in the Sichuan province
of China, similar tales of
flying beasts have also been
found in ancient texts.
In the fourth century, historian
Chang Qu reported the discovery
of what were then called
"dragon bones."
RUEHL: A question occurs as
to whether dragons might
actually have been actual
dinosaurs that had wings.
I should point out that the
wings would have been lost to
the fossil record.
We're just recently talking
about dinosaurs having feathers
and having evolved into birds.
Well, it's possible that some
dinosaurs actually did have
wings and could be described
as dragons.
NARRATOR: But while most
mainstream scientists believe
the remains found were most
likely dinosaur fossils, like
those of the flying pterosaur,
ancient astronaut theorists
have another, more provocative
explanation.
COPPENS: Now a creature which
somehow was able to spit fire
obviously is not anyplace in the
animal kingdom of today.
So what we have here is either
an invention which did indeed
spit fire, in which case we're
not confronting a creature here,
but somehow a creation.
Something which was either
engineered by mankind or which
was engineered by
extraterrestrials.
NARRATOR: Machines that fly
through the air and spit fire
causing mass destruction,
thousands of casualties and
radioactive fallout.
Could the Garuda, and other
so-called flying dragons, really
have been ancient versions of
today's high-tech bomber planes?
Or perhaps something else?
Something even more out
of this world?
NARRATOR: In March 2010, a
panel of 41 international
experts concluded that the
impact of an asteroid that
smashed into Earth at Mexico's
Yucatan Peninsula 65 million
years ago probably triggered the
global climate change that
resulted in the mass extinction
of the Earth's dinosaurs.
But is there also evidence that
some dinosaur species survived?
And if so, might they also
have evolved?
CHILDRESS: Paleontologists
tell us that, "Oh, these things
have been extinct for 65 million
years," yet they still crop up.
And they appear to be
prehistoric animals, dinosaurs
literally, that have survived
right down to today.
Much like the coelacanth and
alligators and sharks and
turtles also have survived from
those same prehistoric times.
I believe that ancient
prehistoric monsters are still
living in remote areas of the
world, either in oceans and
lakes or jungle areas today.
NARRATOR: In the highlands of
Scotland, the legend of the Loch
Ness monster has long been part
of Celtic and Norse folklore.
Recorded accounts of sightings
can be traced to the year 565,
to the Irish monk St. Columba:,
a powerful leader who founded
monasteries in both Ireland
and Scotland.
In his journals, Columba wrote
of an encounter with people
bearing a man near the shores of
the now-fabled Loch Ness.
MARTELL: They explained to
Father Columba that the man who
had died had been swimming in
the lake and was attacked by the
water beast.
Upon hearing this, Father
Columba sent his own follower
into the lake.
When the beast came after this
man, Father Columba made the
sign of a cross and commanded
the beast not to harm the man.
The beast fled and was never
seen harming another man again.
REDFERN: A lot of people
don't realize how big
Loch Ness is.
It's 23 miles long, a mile wide
and at its deepest point, it's
about 800 feet.
And the water's very, very dark
and dense.
And so it is the prime location
where conceivably, if they
didn't need to surface that
often, they would sort of bypass
detection.
COPPENS: When we're
confronted with the Loch Ness
monster, or any kind of
anomalous creature, the question
really is: where does it come
from?
Is it a remnant of the dinosaur
age or is it something which is
out of this world?
We know that, for example, St.
Columba definitely felt that
lake was sacred and that there
was something present there
which had a religious
connotation, which is why he
went to that place to begin
with.
REDFERN: The intriguing
thing is that there actually
have been a significant number
of UFO sightings over the
Loch itself.
Of strange, brightly lit objects
hovering over the water late at
night, which clearly aren't
helicopters or aircraft or
meteorites or anything like
that at all.
So in other words, Loch Ness is
a weird and spooky place.
NARRATOR: Could the so-called
sea monsters of Loch Ness
possibly be descendants of
ancient dinosaurs?
Or might it be of another,
perhaps, extraterrestrial
origin?
And if so, what might this say
about other mythical sea beasts,
like the seven-headed Sumerian
sea monster the leviathan?
YOUNG: The leviathan is
sometimes described as a serpent
or a crocodile or a dragon, but
it lurks.
It is the gatekeeper to a portal
to hell.
And this gateway to hell is
apparently deep in the ocean,
and the leviathan is there
forever, lurking.
NARRATOR: In Greek myths, the
Hydra was described as an
ancient sea serpent with
many heads.
It was said to be a descendant
of the Earth goddess Gaia.
YOUNG: Hercules was sent to
kill the Hydra, but it was
terribly difficult.
He would slice off the head,
and two heads would form
And he had to ask help from
his nephew.
And his nephew had a brilliant
idea: bring a torch.
Fire might keep the heads
from forming.
So Hercules would bash off
one of the heads, and his nephew
would, essentially, cauterize
the neck so another one
wouldn't form.
And in this way, the Hydra
was finally defeated.
COPPENS: In the case of a
Hydra, we have something which
has several heads which is once
again a category of a creature
which you would expect
not so see.
So we're either confronted here
with something which was
genetically engineered or which
genetically went wrong, but
clearly it was of such
importance that it was adhered
to in mythology where it
attained a status over the
years, over the centuries, up
until this moment in time.
NARRATOR: According to
Scandinavian legend, the kraken
are legendary sea monsters
of gargantuan size and are said
to have roamed the seas off the
coasts of Norway and Iceland.
This fearsome beast was infamous
for its attacks on sailing
ships.
YOUNG: The danger was not
only being attacked by the
kraken, they would come up to
the surface, and were enormous:,
the size of small islands.
So you could have a collision
with a kraken that wasn't even
out to attack you.
Another great danger was that if
it submerged suddenly, it formed
such a great whirlpool that it
could pull a ship under.
NARRATOR: Could such
legendary sea monsters have
actually existed?
Might they have escaped
extinction in the safety of cold
deep waters?
According to ancient astronaut
theorists, there is evidence of
the origin of giant sea
creatures in the sacred texts of
the Hebrew Bible.
YOUNG: A very early account
of an encounter with some
kind of monstrous sea creature
is found in the Bible:
the story of Jonah.
Here Jonah was not fulfilling
his destiny, and his punishment
was to be thrown off a boat into
the ocean.
CHILDRESS: Jonah is swallowed
by this giant fish sent by God.
He spends three days and three
nights inside of this giant
fish, and then is spewed out.
RUEHL: if Jonah, a human
being, had been swallowed, he
first of all would have been
ripped up by the creature's
teeth, then been crushed as it
was swallowed, and perhaps
stomach acids would have
destroyed his skin and
internal organs.
So I propose there's no way
he could have survived being
swallowed by whatever this
entity was, if it was a fish
or whale.
TSOUKALOS: So the question I
have: is this truly a
description of Jonah being
swallowed up by a
biological animal?
Because in some references, we
can read that the ribs of that
whale were made out of gleaming
bronze.
Now, that, to me, is a
description of some type of
technological device that was
made of metal.
Jonah was, in fact, not
swallowed by a whale, but by a
USO: an unidentified submersible
object.
COPPENS: Jonah disappeared
into an object which was clearly
of a manmade or extraterrestrial
origin, and which was of such a
specific interest that he not
only related the story, but that
thousands of years after it
occurred, we're still talking
about it today.
REDFERN: I think we need to
look at stories like this at a
deeper level.
Not to rule them out just as
mythology, but to determine if
the people reporting these
things actually did have real
experiences, but they were just
trying to incorporate it into
the way they understood the
world at that time.
NARRATOR: Could alien beings
really have lurked beneath the
seas in submersible machines?
If so, why were they there?
Might they have come to share
advanced technology with humans?
Or did they come for another,
perhaps more sinister reason?
NARRATOR: Volgograd, State
Medical University, Russia,
1954.
Soviet scientist and organ
transplant pioneer Vladimir
Demikhov surgically produces
a fully functioning
two-headed dog.
GLENN: What he did was he
took the upper torso of a dog
and grafted it onto the neck of
another dog.
And surprisingly, this creature
lived for a few weeks.
Demikhov brought it to medical
shows as evidence that he could
do this, that these sort of
hybrids, that these sort of
things could be done.
NARRATOR: Although, highly
controversial, the transplant
pioneer's audacious experiments
paved the way for the first
human heart transplant in 1967.
But while the image of
Demikhov's dog is disturbing,
ancient astronaut theorists
believe our early ancestors also
left behind evidence of equally
bizarre creatures.
TSOUKALOS: The great thing
about the ancient alien theory
is the fact that we can compare
modern achievements with stories
from our ancient past.
And so if today we're able to
create a two-headed dog with six
legs, is it possible that a
similar creature existed
thousands of years ago?
And I say yes.
NARRATOR: In the Greek epic
poems of Homer's Odyssey and the
Iliad, a vicious three-headed
dog named Cerberus guards the
gates of Hades.
According to the myths, Cerberus
was descended from the Greek
gods Typhon and Echidna.
But might the so-called gods
that created the strange beast
really have been early Earth
visitors misinterpreted as gods,
as ancient alien theorists
believe?
RADER: The humans and gods
were kind of still living among
one another.
All of this interbreeding, this
fertility, like, produces, um,
all of these monsters.
And you do not want to meet
these monsters.
These are not the kind of things
you want to encounter.
And if one guard dog is
ferocious and terrifying, you
can imagine three of them, but
all on one body.
COPPENS: if Cerberus is a
factual creature, then really
what we're talking about here is
somebody with the knowledge and
the technology to create a
multiheaded animal.
And so we are dealing with
extraterrestrial technology.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that
Cerberus and other hybrids, like
the griffon, the Egyptian ammit
or the Greek Chimera, were in
fact created through advanced
alien transplant procedures we
have yet to discover?
COPPENS: Any civilization
which has contacted us in the
past or which is contacting us
today, roughly needs to be at
our level of technological
advancement.
It's probably going to be a bit
beyond that.
And that also means that it's
not just the science of space
travel, but all sciences which
are going to be somewhat more
advanced.
So we know that the
extraterrestrial who comes to
Earth from a distant place will
have this medical knowledge.
NOORY: There was some kind of
experimentation going on.
Novelty, a zoo.
Let's see what we can do.
We'll play with these creatures.
Let's take this animal and give
him two heads.
Let's take this dragon and give
him wings.
Let's let him breathe fire.
Let's have some fun.
Maybe that's what they did.
NARRATOR: Depictions of
monsters that are half beast,
half human can be found dating
as far back as 5000 B.C.
The centaur, the Minotaur and
Medusa are all hybrid creatures
described as being created
by gods.
Researchers point to the origin
stories of these creatures as
further evidence of alien
contact.
YOUNG: In Greek mythology,
the centaur was half human,
half horse.
The torso of the human would be
joined to a horse at the
shoulders, and this would leave
them in perpetual tension
between the raw animal instinct
of the horse and the more
civilized morality of human
consciousness.
COPPENS: And interestingly
enough, when we start looking
towards mythology, we actually
find specifically in the case of
the minotaur, th is said
to have be been done
specifically by the gods.
NARRATOR: In India, the epic
text the Mahabharata details the
ancient account of the naga,
a half human, half snake deity.
MARTELL: The naga was a
serpent god in both Hindu and
Buddhist mythology.
It was known to have human and
serpentlike traits.
It was also known to be
persecutors of all creatures,
very poisonous and with
great strength.
RUEHL: A question arises as
to why ETs might create these
various hybrids.
Well, of course, first of all,
I point out scientific
curiosity.
Once you develop a technology,
you want to see where you can
take it.
We humans would do that.
I think any intelligent beings
would.
But they might have created
these various hybrid creatures
to actually intimidate the
existing human populace so that
they would give them no trouble.
Or perhaps to create these
creatures so they would be
thought of as gods and be
worshipped.
Even though they're advanced
aliens, they might crave
attention from humans.
IMBROGNO: Perhaps they
wanted some type of slave labor
that would not just be a dumb
animal by adding human
intelligence to, let's say, a
bull, they could create a
creature that would be able to
move quite a bit of weight
and work without exhaustion, but
still have the intelligence
to follow rules.
NARRATOR: In 1970, scientists
from Case Western Reserve
University School of Medicine,
lead by Dr. Robert Jay White,
performed a highly controversial
operation: transplanting the
head of one monkey onto the body
of another.
HAROLD F. YOUNG: He was an
excellent surgeon, superior
technician, and had come to
Cleveland from the Mayo ic
where I think he'd learned
really excellent neurosurgical
care in the operating room.
WHITE: When in this room,
there's a large amount of items
from my dad's original
laboratory.
This is a halo:, a brain
transplant halo device.
It would clamp the brain in here
as such.
And then they could actually put
the patient in and complete the
transplant with the body here.
This would hold the brain, the
monkey's brain, and then the
transplant could occur here,
with the spinal connection and
the connection to the neck
right here.
GLENN: They transferred the
head.
It was essentially a brain
transplant by taking the
whole head.
He was able to restore
consciousness to the head of the
monkey who had been
transplanted.
And kept it alive for
approximately three days.
WHITE: The monkey was able to
open his eyes, he was able to
hear, see and smell.
And as a result, they could show
that this procedure could be
done, it could work.
RUEHL: Even at our stage on
Earth, we have the ability to
transplant one head onto
another creature.
Now that certainly argues for
the possibility that various
entities like the minotaur...
the hydra and even the griffon
could be created by advanced
transplantology.
NARRATOR: if
extraterrestrials visited
Earth in ancient times, might
the tales and depictions of
weird hybrid monsters
actually provide evidence
of alien contact?
Or do they provide clues to our
own future?
A future that may be closer
than we think.
NARRATOR: In 2003, Chinese
scientist Hui Zhen Sheng, at the
Shanghai Second Medical
University, successfully fused
human cells with rabbit eggs.
The embryos were the first
human-animal hybrids created
through genetic engineering.
ARMSTRONG: She took rabbit
egg cells and removed all of the
nuclear material from them,
all of the instruction set that
tells them to develop into
a rabbit embryo.
She replaced it with a similar
instruction set, but from
a human cell.
So essentially, the embryo was
human with small elements of
rabbit.
GLENN: Why would researchers
want to combine rabbit DNA and
human DNA?
The first reason is for medical
research purposes, perhaps for
organ transplantation.
The second reason is to create
an enhanced human.
That is, give the human some
sort of quality they might not
have unless spliced with a
rabbit gene.
Although it's hard for me to
imagine... what that would be.
(chuckles)
NARRATOR: A year later, in
2004, researchers at Minnesota's
Mayo Clinic created pigs with
human blood flowing through
their bodies.
REDFERN: One of the animals
that's actually quite close to
us, surprisingly enough, in
terms of genetics, uh, is the
pig.
And one of the ideas that's been
put forward is the idea of
literally having almost, like,
pig factories to grow hearts for
people who need heart
transplants, and literally,
you know, you'd have a pig's
heart inserted into your body.
And, you know, with certain
drugs to prevent the organs
being rejected, you could live a
full and viable life.
COPPENS: At this moment in
time, medical technology is able
to create weird situations...
genetic things which shouldn't
really happen and which do not
happen unless you start to make
genetic modification.
This is evidence of manipulation
of the genetically available
material.
We are creating hybrid monsters
as we speak.
TSOUKALOS: if modern science
today would be able to create a
hybrid being, a mixed being,
then that would in essence
corroborate the ancient alien
theory, because we're merely
saying that what today is being
discovered is a rediscovery of
what already took place
thousands of years ago...
meaning genetic experimentation.
NARRATOR: But is there any
actual evidence of DNA splicing
in the ancient past?
In 1849, in what is now Iraq,
British archaeologist Austen
Henry Layard uncovered numerous
Sumerian clay tablets inscribed
with cuneiform script dating to
4000 B.C.
Based on interpretations of the
tablets, ancient astronaut
theorists believe an advanced
race of intelligent beings
arrived on Earth 450,000 years
ago, during the age of
Neanderthals... and through
genetic engineering, they
created Homo sapiens...
what is commonly referred to as
modern-day human beings.
NOORY: The Sumerians talk
about a civilization that came
here from above, on another
planet called Nabiru, and they
called these creatures the
Annunaki... high-level people
who came here to mine for gold.
And in order to do it, they
needed to genetically alter the
species that happened to be on
the planet at the time.
They created man according to
the Sumerian texts.
ARMSTRONG: it is not
impossible that we exist as the
result of gene manipulation
experiments.
There are so many stars and
galaxies out there in space that
it's impossible for a scientist
such as myself to say that there
are not alien species out there
who could have visited the Earth
at some point in the distant
past.
So it is entirely possible that
someone or something could have
come along and manipulated those
organisms.
TSOUKALOS: So this inherently
means that if extraterrestrials
tampered with our own DNA, they
could have also tampered with
animal DNA.
They could have used all sorts
of DNA from every single animal
on planet Earth.
GLENN: The creation of a
chimeric monster is certainly
something that will probably be
possible within the next 20 to
30 years.
We have the technology now to
create these kinds of chimeras,
something that might be
perceived as a monster, but what
we don't have right now is the
technology to bring such a
creature to term.
But that's only a matter of
time.
NARRATOR: if the mythical
monsters of the ancient past
really did exist, what were
they?
Messengers from alien gods?
Products of genetic
experimentation?
Biomechanical weapons?
And if they did exist, where is
the physical evidence?
Still buried miles beneath our
feet?
Or are they, in fact, still out
there, somewhere, waiting to
return?
Captioning sponsored by
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS
Captioned by
Media Access Group at WGBH
access.wgbh.org