Producer of Ancient Aliens, and publisher of Legendary Times magazine, Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, joined George Knapp to ponder the idea that extraterrestrials have been visiting us since the dawn of man and how they continue to visit us. The new season of Ancient Aliens just kicked off with an episode tied in with the movie Cowboys & Aliens. Native American lore refers to such things as ant people, and flying shields-- this might have been how they would describe aliens and their craft without having a technological frame of reference, he explained. The Kachinas were said to descend from the sky and give knowledge to Native American ancestors, and some carvings they made of them look like modern day astronauts, with helmets, antennae, and tubes, he continued.

Tsoukalos talked about a newspaper report of a UFO incident that took place in 1865 in Montana. A trapper saw a fiery object crash, and tracked it down. He found what looked like a great big rock that had chambers with hieroglyphs in it. Some Native Americans described Thunderbirds as having skins like metal, impenetrable to arrows-- rather than birds, these might have been alien craft. He believes that in cases where ancient people referred to gods, they were actually talking about ET visitors who would seem like gods, because they didn't understand their technology.

Written in the Egyptian text, al-khitat, "the pyramids were built by the Egyptians with the assistance of the guardians in the sky, or the watchers from heaven," Tsoukalos detailed. He estimated that the pyramids at Giza were erected 12,500 years ago, during a "golden age," when the structures lined up with what was then the position of Orion's belt in the sky. He also spoke about the Nazca lines in Peru, which he suggested may have originally been part of an ET mining operation that left tracks, and the locals expanded on the lines in order to get the "gods" to come back.

Check out a free excerpt from the 7/27/11 Coast Insider Chat with George Knapp, in which he gives his take on the animal mutilation mystery.