Product Description

Could natural disasters really be the work of extraterrestrial forces? in 2011, after a 30-foot tsunami ravaged Tohoku, Japan, the local media reported more than 1, 000 UFO sightings over the inundated shoreline. Did otherworldly beings that descended from the sky have anything to do with the abrupt disappearance of the Mayans? Does the Mayan Long Count Calendar, in which the world ends on December 21, 2012, give credence to the Doomsday Prophecies? Are Grey Aliens real? Many have claimed to have been visited and even abducted by them. Is NASA sharing all that it knows about the universe? Or are they protecting US from the truth? ANCIENT ALIENS: SEASON 4 DVD SET continues to examine 25 thousand years of the most credible alien evidence here on earth.

Amazon.com

This History Channel series, which moved to H2 for season four, revolves around the idea that earlier civilizations developed their most advanced ideas by means of extraterrestrial influence. A range of speakers, from respected scholars to more conspiracy-minded thinkers ("ancient alien theorists"), sift through the evidence, while a dramatic score juices each revelation. The most famous participant, Erich von Däniken, whose 1968 bestseller Chariots of the Gods encouraged this mode of thinking, figures prominently. Viewers who've watched previous seasons will be familiar with the basic format, as well as the primary theories about alien-inspired architecture and the like, since there's significant repetition from year to year ("Alien Devastations" from season two, for instance, prefigures this set's "Aliens and Mega-Disasters").

Shock-haired, dandily dressed editor and consultant Giorgio A. Tsoukalos presents some of the more colorful, if questionable hypotheses (to Tsoukalos, a close-fitting cap on a Mayan figurine represents a flight helmet). As he exclaims in "The Doomsday Prophecies," an examination of the Mayan Long Count calendar, "Knowledge is the currency of the universe!" He also believes that aliens built Bolivia's geometrically precise Puma Punku. The most science fiction-like episode, "The Greys," revisits abductions through the ages, including the testimony of a woman who claims medical experimentation by tiny bug-eyed men, while the farthest-reaching episodes involve Bigfoot and Leonardo da Vinci (some suggest he was a time traveler). As with Tsoukalos, author David Childress (Technology of the Gods) seems convinced that aliens have been mucking about in human history, even natural phenomena like tsunamis. Reenactments and computer-generated reproductions show how some of these scenarios might have played out. In drawing from archeological artifacts and historical data, there's educational value here, but if you're skeptical going in--you'll probably leave the same way. --Kathleen C. Fennessy