So there's an underground city in Turkey, that people carved out of soft volcanic rock. After a gratuitous image of a pyramid, we get to see inside this city. Apparently, although things that are obscured from space by trees are always in unbelievably straight lines that are perfectly lined up with constellations, aliens couldn't care less about things that are underground.
Then, they first of all suggest that this has to do with a Zoroastrian myth telling of a culture hiding underground to escape a global winter, and abruptly change tack to suggest that the people were actually hiding from a giant space battle that included at least one faction dedicated to wiping out humans. We're treated to an cheesy CGI sequence of spaceships firing on each other.
Now, we're in the American Southwest, discussing how a lot of the various tribes that live there have similar creation myths. They talk about some Hopi legends that indicate that people went underground for protection from "storms of fire and ice," and "cataclysms," and then go into a complete non sequitur about developing large eyes from living underground and cave paintings with large eyes, and then something about legends involving some kind of "lizard people" and "ant people", as the narrators described them. Then, they ask "If so, could some of them still be living beneath the surface of the Southwestern desert?" The next shot we have involves a van driving through the desert, implying that these people are actually going out alien-hunting in the desert. This is gonna be good!
They're out at the Jicarilla reservation, home to an Apache tribe. They talk briefly with a Native person about the legend, and about stories relating to the nearby Archuleta mesa. Then, it gets better: They show a still photo of the mesa, complete with photoshopped moving sparkly rays!
Now, because it's the US Southwest and aliens alone aren't enough for a good conspiracy in that area, they talk about eyewitness accounts that "are not only true but evidence of a secret collaboration between underground aliens and the US military." Wait, what? The whole "The government experimented on aliens in secret laboratories in the Southwest" thing is a classic conspiracy theory, but "The government and aliens experimented on humans in secret laboratories in the Southwest," is a whole new twist on it!
Incidentally, the first commercial in the break is for a show called "The Vikings." From the commercial, I can't tell whether or not this is supposed to be a part of Ancient Aliens until the title screen and the "On the History Channel" bit comes up.
Now, we're in the Andes, discussing an indigenous tribe that lived there, and an Italian Catholic missionary who was given gifts that were "elaborately carved" and contained symbols that he didn't recognize. Apparently, the evidence that aliens were around hinges around the idea that in the 16th or 17th centuries, the Incas were still stuck in the very early part of the Stone Age or something. So, in the 1970's, there's a video of him... wait a second, there were Catholic priests going out to convert indigenous peoples in South America in the 20th century? And this hinges around the idea that, by the 20th century, it's unlikely that the Native tribes could've either made or found intricately carved things?
So, then, someone who's fascinated with these things decided to find out more. There was a guy who had claimed to have been in the cave in '46, and seen lots of things like metal books with strange writing, and things that looked - to him, at least - like some kind of mathematical formula. Someone else went searching for this cave in the 70's, dragged along Neil Armstrong, used an entrance found by the Ecuadorian army, and it appeared that large areas had been excavated. The biggest thing that they seemed to find in the cave was a stone ring. Hasn't anyone here read enough Tolkien to know of the dangers of finding rings in caves?
As of recently, though, they think they got the wrong cave, because they didn't find what they expected. They're very frustrated that they can't find the cave that has what they expect in it, because the local indigenous tribes are keeping all their caves' locations a secret.
Then, the Yucatan peninsula is next up. After following records from 17th century priests, they found a cave with entrances submerged underwater. Once inside, they found an underground temple, complete with a pyramid and bones. They point out that it's consistent with Mayan legends of the entrance to the underworld, with things involving bats, jaguar bones, and other things that could represent various pieces of the myth. But, here's where the circular reasoning comes in: Some archaeologists suggest that this place was intentionally modeled after their legends about the entrance to the underworld. But, our narrator suggests that the Mayan holy book was actually written about this cave! Because, of course, the Mayan underworld deities were aliens, come down from the sky, and were bloodthirsty.
Now, we're at the North Pole, which contains no indigenous human inhabitants, and probably not any caves, either. So the narrators tell us what, "according to mainstream geology," the earth is like! Aside from the fact that someone said "mainstream geology" completely deadpan, it gives an accurate and brief overview of the crust, mantle, outer core, and inner core, and mentions that scientists figured this out by measuring gravity, magnetism, and seismic waves.
But, this is not a show to let any mainstream science get in their way, because they say "But no one has ever seen these areas."
"Could the frozen surface of the pole be hiding a gateway to a world within our surface world?" They ask, and promptly answer themselves by saying, "There are those who believe that the answer is yes, and what they believe is known as the 'Hollow Earth Theory.'"
Yes, they're actually supporting the Hollow Earth Theory on this show. It's almost unbelievable, except for the fact that I've already seen some similarly preposterous things on this show, like that time that they suggested that destructive hurricanes happened because people had stopped worshiping Poseidon, or something like that.
Anyways, they try to give this theory credence by citing that Edmund Halley proposed this theory in 1691. I'd like to point out that, whatever else Halley may have figured out about astronomy, the time that he proposed that the earth consists of a matroishka-like series of spheres around an "inner sun", it was a mere sixty years after the Inquisition accused Galileo of heresy for suggesting that the earth revolved around the sun, not vice versa.
Moving on, the show says that someone proposed that there were "massive openings at each pole", and reference the Jules Verne novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, and suggest that the interior might contain extinct creatures, or advanced civilizations. Further things they mention are "ray guns," "special weapons," and "flying saucers." This all seems quite implausible, so they ask, "Is there any evidence that such fantastic theories might actually be true, and has anyone actually be inside our earth?"
Of course, since this is Ancient Aliens, the answer is always "Yes, of course!" Aside from anything you might be wondering about Brendan Fraser, the person that they claim has been inside the earth is the explorer Richard Byrd. They claim that "Hollow earth theorists" - my next favorite phrase after "ancient alien theorists" - believe that on February 19th, 1947, Byrd flew inside the earth where the inhabitants used a tractor beam to land his plane, and then told him that they disapproved of humanity's use of nuclear weapons! Of course, since there's no evidence of this, the narrators' rational explanation is that the government covered it up, yet at the same time "staged" a naval operation supposedly involving him near the South Pole so he could "slip away to the other end of the planet, unnoticed by the media."
So, the episode ends with a bad pun, saying "Perhaps we've only just scratched the surface of our planet's underground mysteries."
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