[MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: In the 21st
century, tattoos and body
modifications are no
longer fringe and no
longer merely decorative.
Technology implanted
within the flesh
can facilitate
superhuman abilities.
But of greatest interest to
ancient-astronaut theorists
is the role that smart
tattoos could potentially
play in space travel.
 The next generation
of spacesuits
are going to be embedded
with a lot more technologies,
and it's possible to
make tattoos that can
interact with the spacesuit.
You can imagine even a spacesuit
that would be able to read out
information that those
tattoos are providing
and send them back
to mission control.
NARRATOR: Scientists
are even beginning
to develop technology that
could make spacesuits obsolete.
 We can use nanotechnology
to engineer tattoo particles
so that they have
special properties
covering your entire body.
 Super skin, eSkin, iSkin
is skin that is enhanced
or laced with technology.
Since 2002, the US
military has been
very interested in creating
a new skin for the military.
This augmentation will
transform us from humans
into the next
level of evolution,
augmenting the body to make us
smarter, to make us stronger.
 We're going to keep
improving the technologies,
and we're going to keep
embedding them more and more
intimately with our bodies to
improve our abilities as humans
and ultimately
give us more power.
NARRATOR: But if the first
humans to apply tattoos
to their flesh and perform
other body modifications,
such as head binding,
were attempting
to imitate
extraterrestrials, are
the technological
enhancements we're
making to our bodies
today part of our destiny?
And if so, where does it lead?
WILLIAM HENRY: Through
nanotechnology, you
can augment the skin to make
it more adaptable to living
in space, to make us
smarter, to make us stronger,
to make us more resilient.
We're able to
become like the gods
through the implantation
of this technology.
 When you take it
right back to its roots,
tattooing is very transformative
and has a lot of roots
in what we would call magic.
And our ancient ancestors
were very much in tune
with the cosmos.
And what we're doing
right now, we're
bringing this back to the
magical modality that it is.
This adornment
now, is this making
us more extraterrestrial like?
 Any advanced alien
species that makes it across
the galaxy is going
to have learned how
to self-direct their evolution.
We're augmenting our
bodies and moving
forward with our evolution.
NARRATOR: Is there a message
about humanity's future
encoded in our very flesh
and our attempts to alter it?
Could it be that tattoos,
piercings, and body
modifications are inspired
by extraterrestrial visitors
from the past?
Perhaps we are just now
arriving at a destiny that
has been foretold through
human hieroglyphs, one in which
we will become the equals
of our alien ancestors.
