ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS - TALL TALES OF GODS OF SUMERIA

Imagine traveling millions of lightyears just to leave clues for humans that can only be deciphered by conspiracy theorists on Youtube.

Back in late 70s my brother passed me the book 'Chariots Of The Gods' (1968) by Erik von Daniken. It was a book of provocative claims about ancient civilisations and their probable interactions with extraterrestials. The photos presented of archaeological artifacts, structures and artistic depictions to support his theory that alien beings visited Earth in ancient times, were quite compelling in pre-internet days. I saw the Nazca Lines (Peru), ancient astronaut-like statues and figurines (Dogu figures of Japan), petroglyphs that show figures in helmets with antenna protrusions, little metallic toy that looked like an aeroplane (Quimbaya airplanes, Columbia), huge structures that ancient people could not possibly have the technology to construct nor transportl (pyramids of Ginza, Egypt, Maoi statutes of Easter Island), etc. I learnt about the Vinmanas (from Indian texts of Mahabharata and Rayamana) that von Daniken proposed 

were alien spacecrafts observed by ancient 

civilisations. That gave him his title 'Chariots' - the ancient folks had no words for spacecraft so they used flying chariots. With no means of fact checking nor easy access to expert opinions in pre-internet days, 'Chariots' created massive international interest in the subject matter.

The book was an instant hit, but von Daniken had little financial gains. He faced legal and debt issues from misuse of employer's funds to finance his research and travels to write the book. He was managing a hotel at the time and had dipped his pen in company ink. Nevertheless, von Daniken contributed massively to public interest in ETs. He is a legend amongst enthusiasts.

UFOs entered public consciousness around the 1940s. In 1947 pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing flying saucers near Mount Rainer. That same year the Roswell Incident happened. An UFO crashed in Area 51. This has been factually established and is now a cult event. The Space Race of the 50s-60s fueled fascination with advanced technology and possibility of extraterrestrial life. Public interest amplified with a new science fiction genre with productions like 'The Day The Earth Stood Still' (1951), '2001 -A Space Odyssey' (1968), 'Close Encounters Of The Third Kind' (1977), 'ET' (1982), etc and TV series like 'In Search Of ...' and 'X-Files' etc. The idea of ancient astronauts took hold. Aliens, or ETs, visited Earth in the distant past and ancient civilisation took them for gods. 

In 1976 Zachariah Sitchin (1920-2010) published 'The 12th Planet'. By profession Sitchin was an economist. He claimed to have self-taught the ancient Sumerian language. He was thus able to understand archaeological discoveries written on clay tablets in cuneiform. Sitchin claimed his translation presents a real explanation not told by mainstream academia. If written today, he probably would have titled the book with a click bait conspiracy theory trope like "What They Don't Want You To Know About The Sumerians'. 

Sumeria was the first known civilisation in history. It was a community of city states of which Unruk was prominent. They shared common cultures during the period 4,000 to 2,000 BC in Southern Mesopotamia which is roughly the land mass between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It is not known if Sumerians were indigenous or where they came from. Sumerian is known as a language-isolate, which means it existed on its own. It shares no similarity of structure with any other language groups. Sargon of Akkad from the Northern Mesopotamia area later dominated the region to create history's first empire known as Akkadian Empire. Their lingua franca was Akkadian which is a Semitic language that shares similarities with Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew, Phonecian, Thamudic, Moabite, etc. Akkadians and Sumerians co-existed in a bi-lingual society. Eventually Sumerians got assimilated and Akkadian became the dominant language with Sumerian being used in some official and religious functions. Akkadians absorbed Sumerian cultures. In their rich literary works, some Sumerian works were later written in Akkadian. 

Much rich Sumerian and Akkadian literary works written in cuneiform on clay tablets have been discovered in the library in Nineveh. This included poems, epics and myths such as Eridu Genesis, Epic of Gilgamesh, Death of Gilgamesh, Enmerkar, Lord of Aratta, Atrahasis, narratives depicting the gods Enki, Enlil, etc. These archaeological finds allowed historians to put together a good idea of Sumerian culture and religion. The Sumerians believed in pantheons of gods of which Anunnaki is one. An is the god associated with stars in Equatorial sky, Enki the god of wisdom, is associated with stars of the Southern sky, and Enlil, god of the elements, is with the Northern stars. Nimhursag is the Mother goddess. The Igigi are a lower group of dieties whose tasks were to perform mean labour on Earth for the Anunnaki. 

Sitchin's '12th Planet is the genre of literary work best described as Alternative History. He took a mish-mash of known ancient cultures and literary works of Sumeria and re-interpreted them into a seductive narration of interactions between humans and advanced extraterrestrial race called Anunnaki. 

The gist of  '12th Planet' :

Anunnaki ETs came from a mysterious planet Sitchin calls Nibiru, the 12th Planet. According to Sitchin, it is an elongated planet and has an eliptical orbit passing near Earth every 3,600 years. The Anunnaki visited Earth 450,000 years ago in search of gold which they needed to repair their planet's atmosphere. They had a social structure with a class the Igigi, working in the mines. This was tough labour and the Igigi revolted. 

Enki, the scientist in charge of medical matters, proposed to create a slave specie to work in the mines by genetically engineering early humans. This was done by combining Anunnaki DNA with that of homo erectus. Enki was assisted by fellow scientist Ninhursag in their laboratory. Sitchin did not elaborate how the humans were birthed, whether they had artificial wombs, or using Ninhursag's own body as surrogate. The first human Sitchin said was named Adamu. The first humans were obedient but lacked intelligence. Enki had to educate and provide them knowledge and procreation. Soon the humans grew in numbers and worked in the mines as slaves. The Anunnaki taught the humans agriculture, writing and astronomy and helped establish the first human civilisation.

Over time the human population expanded and they were a noisy and boisterous, quarrelsome lot that annoyed Enlil, the leader of the Anunnaki and brother of Enki. He decided managing and governing the big human population had become a problem. The Anunnaki came to see humans as a problem rather than a solution. 

The Anunnaki foresaw a huge flood coming. The gravitational effects of Nibiru passing near Earth will melt the polar caps and cause a massive flood on Earth. The Anunnaki decided to let the flood depopulate Earth of humans and so no warning of the coming natural catastrophe was issued. As the creator of humans, Enki felt moral responsibility to save the specie. He instructed the human Ziusudra to build a vessel and to load it with various animal species to survive the deluge. Enki's disobedience of Enlil's order was seen as a betrayal of their collective decision and it caused conflict amongst the Anunnaki. However, after the flood, the Anunnaki realised the importance of having humans and the re-established human civilisation and restructured their role on Earth. 

Sitchin seems to rely heavily on the Sumerian 'Atrahasis Epic' and the Akkadian 'Epic of Gilgamesh'. He made several changes to build into the ancient astronaut narrative as a pseudohistorical fact san evidence. The Sumerian pantheon of Anunnaki mythological gods became ETs,  in the creation narrative, Sitchin diverted from 'Attahasis' where instead of clay and blood of Igigi, he had it done in a laboratory in some genetic engineering procedure mixing the DNA of the gods with that of homo erectus. It is of course an anachronistic application of technology. It's something the ancient Sumerian scribes did not know how to interpret, right? He goes one step further to suggest Adamu as the name of the first born, just to get you tripped into the 'Adam & Eve ' mindframe. And he leads readers on further with Enki, the god of wisdom, giving knowledge to Adamu and humans. There is no serpent to be seen, but he tickles readers' imagination. 

In the flood story, both 'Atrahasis' and 'Gilgamesh' epics had the gods bringing on the floods because they cannot tolerate the disobedience, the population explosion, and the noise of humans. Sitchin used the same reasons but added the politics of the difficulties of governing an explosive human population. Sitchin has to dismiss the myths of gods divine act of causing the flood and replace it with a scientific explanation. The flood is a natural phenomenon caused by the gravitational pull of the 12th planet Nibiru as it passes close to Earth. 

Sitchin also suggested the Ark could have also carried genetic materials, not just live animals. It wouldn't do if he doesn't thrown some science in to transform Sumerian myths. But of course he didn't explain how Enki refrigerated the Ark to maintain the genetic materials in stable condition, and how the refrigeration was powered. Sitchin postulated that during the flood the Anunnakin could have gone to their orbiting Motherships in outerspace, or retreated to mountain tops where the flood do not reach. Ah see, that's how the motif of gods dwelling on mountains pervade in many traditions. Mt Olympus for the Grecian Olympians, Mt Slieve Donard for Celtic gods of Tuatha De Danann, Haleakala for the Hawaiian gods like Maui, Mt Shasta (California) which native Wintu Indians believe the Great Spirit deells, Kun Lun mountains where the gods of Taoism live, the Mount Zion of Judaism, for Hindus and Jains, Lord Shiva lives on the Kailash Mountain, in Gilgash epic, it is Mount Mashu, etc. It's tying up in knots here. If there were motherships, why not bring the genetic materials with them since it obviously could be kept in a few boxes. If they had transportation to mountain tops, why not ferry Diusudra and the animals there instead of bothering with the ark.

For the Biblical Noah, Sitchin uses the human Diusudra, clearly adopting the 'Atrahasis' storyline. Both Diusudra in the Sumerian 'Atrahasis' and Utnapistim in the Akkadian 'Gilgamesh' epic were righteous humans selected by the gods who were saved. After the flood, the goods rewarded the two humans with humanity. Sitchin's Diusudra did not achieve immortality. But of course, Sitchin was writing history, not mythology, so no immortality for Sitchin's Diusudra. Sitchin, 'Atrahasis' and 'Gilgamesh' never revealed the number of humans in the Ark, unlike the Bible. 

We live on planet Earth, in the Solar System of the Milky Way Galaxy. There are millions of galaxies in the Universe. Nibiru is Sitchin's 12th planet in our Solar System. 12th because he considered the Moon, Sun and 9 planets. Actually there are now just 8 planets. Don't worry the 9th planet didn't disappear or explode. Pluto has been reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union, bet you didn't know that. Dwarf planets are planets that do not dominate their own orbit. They have not gotten rid of the debris in their orbital path. Besides Pluto, there are several other dwarf planets in our Solar System - Eris (almost same size as Pluto), Haumea, Makemake, and Ceres. Except for Ceres which is in the Asteroid Belt (between Mars and Jupiter), the others are in the Kuiper Belt (beyond Jupiter).

Planets are spherical in shape due to two reasons. (1) It has the mass for its own gravity to pull inward uniformly thus taking on a spherical shape, and (2) it has hydrostatic equivalence, which means its gravity is strong enough to overcome whatever material strength of the composition of its mass, to shape the body into a sphere. If its speed is too fast (like Saturn and Jupiter) the shape might become oblated, ie flattened at the poles. This is a minor elongation, its shape remains spherical. A sphere presents the lease gravitational potential energy (GPE) thus making it the mose stable shape. 

According to Sitchin, Nibiru is an elongated planet. This shape is problematic at many levels. It has very high GPE thus making it unstable. GPE increases the kinetic energy of an object when it moves or fall thus making it very unstable in its rotation and orbit that leads to its destruction over a long time. A celestial mass gets its elongated shape in two ways.  (1) Due to the gravitational pull of other big celestial mass nearby, which eventually leads to its destruction.  (2) Due to its rigid composition. Such dense mass of material would have made life impossible. Elongated shapes are only seen in smaller objects like asteroids or comets. The only reason why Sitchin says Nibiru has an elongated shape is either he misinterpreted ancient texts or it is simply sexy to have an unusual shaped planet to appeal to the Unknown. 

Sitchin claims Nibiru has a 3,600 year orbit. This is also problematic and easily shows up '12th Planet' is hogwash. We can use Kepler's Third Law to estimate Nibiru's aphelion, its furthest distance from the sun in its orbital path. This distance is measured in AU (Astronomical Unit) taking Earth as reference with 1AU. Earth's aphelion is 149,597,870 km. Nibiru's aphelion works out to 443 AU. By comparison Neptune is 30 AU and Jupiter is 39 AU. Whilst Nibiru orbit would still be within the Solar System, the Sun's heliosphere (the region of the Sun's influence) extends only to 100-200 AU. That means for much of its orbit, Nibiru lies in the region known as the Oort Cloud which is an extremely icy part. Life is impossible. The only reason Sitchin gives Nibiru the 3,600 year orbit is to make it so far away you cannot see it. Sitchin couldn't see the development of Hubble and James Webb telescopes. Astrologers with today's technology can see way beyond the Milky Way Galaxy, and they see no signs of Nibiru. 

Actually there is no need for any astronomical refutation for the 3,600 year orbit. Just using common sense will do. The 3,600 time frame means between the Sumerian era and our present day, there should have been a Nibiru passing near Earth bringing cataclysmic events. Nothing of the sort happened or we won't be standing here. 

A large planet such as Nibiru orbiting round the Sun would have considerable gravitational impact on the other 8 planets. Although unseen, scientists would have detected the gravitational disturbance. Nothing of this sort has been detected. 

According to Sitchin, Nibiru's passing close to Earth cased the ice cap to melt which caused the great flood. Actually the huge gravitational disturbance of a large planet would most likely cause a cataclysmic event of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, huge tidal waves causing massive floods. But after Nibiru's passing through, the debris and cosmic dust that it brought in its tail, together with the volcanic dust, would have blocked out the sun for years, causing an ice age on Earth. 

As Sitchin would have it, ET settled in the Mesopotamia region on their quest to find gold. That region is not known to have gold deposits. The countries with high gold deposits are China, Russia, US, Canada, South Africa and Australia. Seems ET had poor technology detecting gold deposits. 

Sitchin claimed to have self-taught himself the Sumerian language thus he was able to interpret the ancient texts. Let's examine this. The cuneiform tablets were in both Sumerian and Akkadian. Sumerian is a language isolate and Akkadian is Semitic.The two are entirely different and Sitchin never mentioned if he knew Akkadian. Which means he never understood a good deal of the ancient Akkadian literature. Technically it is possible for one to self-taught any language today. But for an ancient language no longer in use, particularly a language isolate, it is extremely rare. The fact Sitchin had no background in Assyriology, linguistics, Near East history, and archaeology, makes it almost impossible. To make it really impossible, in the 20th century there was no data bases, there was no resource for him to refer to. All resources were in universities available only to specialist alumni. In short, Sitchin had no tools. As an analogy, because someone created the html codes, I have the tool to write some simple programmes. I would not know how to create the codes myself. Since Sumerian is a language isolate, it is even more difficult. Linguists took 30 years to understand Akkadian building their knowledge from archaeological records from places like Iran, Syria and Iraq. Fortunately, because Akkadian culture assimilated Sumerian, there were a lot of cross-over references. Akkadian is just like the Rosetta Stone which had triple inscriptions - Egyptian hieroglyphics, Demotic script (Eqyptians use this for official admin purposes) and Greek. This helped linguists to finally decipher hieroglyphics. In the same way, Akkadian helped in the deciphering of Sumerian, a task that took decades. There is no way Sitchin can just dive into Sumerian text and taught himself.  In any case learning ancient languages is a very restrictive and corroborative field. Sitchin was never in that kind of community. 

No scholar, archaeologist, historian, astrologer or linguist take Sitchin's works seriously. Critics argue Sitchin's theory is based on misinterpretation, pseudoscience and speculative story telling rather than factual evidence. They pointed out :

* There are numerous inaccuracies in his translation of ancient texts, often deviated wildly from accepted scholarly readings.

* Sitchin refers to Nibiru as an elongated planet. In Mesopotamian astrology, Nibiru is a term refering to celestial bodies, often Jupiter or Mercury, not as the name of a planet.

* There are no archaeological evidence whatsoever of Sitchin's claim of advanced technology, ET visitations, or a 12 planet system. 

* Anunnaki is a pantheon of mythological gods prevalent in Sumerian and Akkadian literature. Pantheon of gods are to be found in various other traditions. 

* There is no archaeological findings or ancient records to support his theory.

* The astronomical inaccuracies in his theory do not stand up to scrutiny.

* Genetic engineering by combining DNA of 2 species is pure pseudoscience.

* His work lacks peer review and do not conform to the methodologies used by historians, archaeologists or linguists. 

* He assumed Sumerian myths as facts and re-interpreted them through a sci-fi technology lens.

'12th Planet' was a huge commercial success in a world hungry for ET revelations. Sitchin understood he had hit the motherlode in a goldmine and went on to write further 11 books in his Earth's Chronicles series, with each book a blockbuster once it hit the shelves. Then of course followed the paid primetime TV interviews and talk circuits. He developed a cult following of sorts. There are probably more people who have read his books than the Bible. 

The Sumerian texts and poems are myths emphasising humanity's dependence on divine will, the fragility of life, and the cyclical nature of existence. These are themes that pervade cultures all over the world. Sitchin re-interprets the narrative into historical events in the distant past of alien intervention, presenting humans as part of a broader cosmic drama involving advanced beings. 

In the face of vast numbers of ancient structures all over the world that seem to point to the impossibility of civilisations past to have the technology, tools nor capability to construct them, ancient astronauts is a quick fix solution. It may well be we have not yet found the real answers to how the ancient folks completed the tasks. I am leaving the question open. But as to Zacharia Sitchin's theory, seems to me a case of pseudo-history sensationalised for book sales. 

Of course sensationalisation is always a rich bandwagon of queers including the contactee Nancy Lieder who claimed she received a message from ET in the Zeta Recticuli Star system who warned her of doomsday on May 2003 when a Planet X will pass Earth. When it didn't happen she flipped to 21 December 2012 the end of a 5,126 year cycle of the Mayan Long Calendar. Mayan's have long epoch changing calendars but they never talk of doomsday. Then there is David Icke who propagated the shape-shifting Reptilian ETs who are sitting in the corridors of power. Some suggest this is a trope for anti-Semiticism of a secretive cabal controlling the world. Then abductees (people who claimed they were abducted by ET) Betty and Barney Hill (1961) started the 'Grays' craze - the gray skins, large heads, slanted eyes, small bodies. I am sure you too have seen them - in some movies. And not to forget George Adamski the earliest contactee who in 1952 met in the California desert, the friendly Orthon, a humanoid ET from Venus.  In 1955 Adamski boarded spaceships of friendly ETs from Venus. He took photos with his modified telescopes which were later called out as hoax. 

Lieber's Planet X and Sitchin's Nibiru are now in public consciousness. Each time a significant comet is projected to be in the vicinity, Planet X and Nibiru get frontpage coverage, despite the fact astrologers for years have been saying there is no Planet X or Nibiru.

I cover Zachariah Sitchin here FIRSTLY as a personal release from the many times I have seen atheists and humanists pushing the 'science', and SECONDLY as a precursor to my next blog on Sumerian flood stories which are explosive to those who hear for the first time. It may cause some crisis of faith in Christians. I believe in addressing such inconvenient issues face on. I present the facts, suggest apologetic explanations, and show how faith may be strengthened under such circumstances. Follow me if you like to find out more. 

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