They came from the skies. They walked among us. They took our women. They shared forbidden knowledge. And their offspring forever changed the course of human history.

For centuries, the ancient accounts of beings called the Watchers and their giant offspring, the Nephilim, were dismissed as myths, allegories, or religious parables. But what if these ancient texts were attempting to describe actual events using the only language and concepts available to people of that time?

The oldest written account appears in Genesis 6, where we find a cryptic passage about “sons of God” who descended to Earth, took human wives, and produced offspring called the Nephilim. These children grew to become “mighty men of old, men of renown.” The text is frustratingly brief, as if intentionally obscuring details of an event too strange or terrifying for full disclosure.

Other ancient texts fill in these gaps. The Book of Enoch, discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls, provides a far more detailed account. It names the leaders of these Watchers, describes their oath to carry out their plan together, and recounts how they taught humans advanced knowledge that transformed civilization.

According to these texts, the Watchers were led by Shemihazah and numbered two hundred. They descended specifically to Mount Hermon, a location that to this day is associated with strange phenomena and unexplained lights in the sky. They took human wives and produced hybrid offspring of enormous size and strength.

But who were these Watchers? The texts describe them as angelic beings, yet their behavior seems decidedly physical. They ate, drank, lusted, reproduced, and taught tangible skills. They shared knowledge of metallurgy, cosmetics, astronomy, medicine, and other advanced sciences. In other words, they behaved less like spiritual entities and more like flesh-and-blood beings with advanced knowledge.

The Watchers taught humans to make swords, knives, shields, and breastplates. They revealed medical knowledge through roots and plants. They instructed in astronomy—the observation of stars, knowledge of clouds, signs of earth, courses of sun and moon. They revealed transformative arts: metallurgy, mirror-crafting, cosmetics, ornaments, dyes, and alchemy.

Does this sound like supernatural beings? Or does it more closely resemble contact between an advanced civilization and a more primitive one?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that the Watchers may have been extraterrestrial visitors, misunderstood by ancient humans as divine beings. Their advanced technology, seemingly miraculous to ancient eyes, earned them the designation of “angels” or “sons of God.” Their spacecraft, capable of traversing the skies, would have appeared as nothing short of divine transport to ancient observers.