Dr. Zecharia Sitchin theory

Zecharia Sitchin (born 1922) is an author of books promoting an ancient astronaut theory of human origins.

Sitchin attributes the creation of the ancient Sumerian culture to the "Annunaki" (or "Nephilim"), a race of aliens from a planet he calls Nibiru in the solar system . He asserts that Sumerian mythology reflects this view, though his speculations are entirely discounted by mainstream scientists, historians, and archaelogists, who see many problems with his translations of ancient texts and with his understanding of physics.

Sitchin was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, and was raised in Palestine. He acquired some knowledge of modern and ancient Hebrew, other Semitic and European languages, the Old Testament, and the history and archeology of the Near East. Sitchin graduated from the London School of Economics, University of London, majoring in economic history. A journalist and editor in Israel for many years, he now lives and writes in New York City. His books have been widely translated, converted to braille for the blind, and featured on radio and television.

According to Sitchin's interpretation of Sumerian cosmology, there is an undiscovered planet which follows a long, elliptical orbit, reaching the inner solar system roughly every 3,600 years. This planet is called Nibiru (the planet associated with Marduk in Babylonian cosmology). According to Sitchin, Nibiru collided catastrophically with Tiamat, another supposed planet located by Sitchin between Mars and Jupiter. This collision supposedly formed the planet Earth, the asteroid belt, and the comets. Tiamat, as outlined in the Enûma Elish, is a goddess. According to Sitchin, however, Tiamat was what is now known as Earth. When struck by one of planet Nibiru's moons, Tiamat split in two. On a second pass Nibiru itself struck the broken fragments and one half of Tiamat became the asteroid belt. The second half, struck again by one of Nibiru's moons, was pushed into a new orbit and became today's planet Earth.

This scenario is hard to reconcile with the Earth's current small orbital eccentricity of only 0.0167. Sitchin's supporters maintain that it would explain Earth's peculiar early geography due to cleaving from the celestial collision, i.e., solid continents on one side and a giant ocean on the other. While this is consistent with the giant impact hypothesis for the origin of the moon, that event is estimated to have occurred 4.5 billion years ago.

The scenario outlined by Sitchin, with Nibiru returning to the inner solar system regularly every 3,600 years, implies an orbit with a semi-major axis of 235 Astronomical Units, extending from the asteroid belt to twelve times farther beyond the sun than Pluto. "Elementary perturbation theory indicates that, under the most favorable circumstances of avoiding close encounters with other planets, no body with such an eccentric orbit would keep the same period for two consecutive passages. Within twelve orbits the object would be either ejected or converted to a short period object. Thus, the search for a trans-Plutonian planet by T.C. Van Flandern of the U.S. Naval Observatory, which Sitchin uses to bolster his thesis, is no support at all.

Sitchin's theory "posits that, from an equal start, the Nefilim evolved on Nibiru 45 million years ahead of comparable development on Earth with its decidedly more favorable environment. Such an outcome is unlikely, to say the least, since Nibiru would spend over 99% of its time beyond Pluto. Sitchin's explanation that heat from radioactive decay and a thick atmosphere keep Nibiru warm is absurd and does not address the problem of darkness in deep space. Also unexplained is how the Nefilim, who evolved long after Nibiru arrived, knew what happened when Nibiru first entered the solar system.

According to Sitchin, Nibiru was the home of a technologically advanced human-like extraterrestrial race called the Anunnaki in Sumerian myth, who Sitchin states are called the Nephilim in the Bible. He claims they first arrived on Earth probably 450,000 years ago, looking for minerals, especially gold, which they found and mined in Africa. These "gods" were the rank and file workers of the colonial expedition to Earth from planet Nibiru. Sitchin believes the Anunnaki genetically engineered Homo sapiens as slave creatures to work their gold mines by crossing extraterrestrial genes with those of Homo erectus. Sitchin claims ancient inscriptions report that human civilization in Sumer of Mesopotamia was set up under the guidance of these "gods", and human kingship was inaugurated to provide intermediaries between mankind and the Anunnaki. Sitchin believes that fallout from nuclear weapons, used during a war between factions of the extraterrestrials, is the "evil wind" that destroyed Ur around 2000 BC. Sitchin claims the exact year is 2024 BC. This event is described in the Lament for Ur. Sitchin claims that his research coincides with many biblical texts, and that biblical texts come originally from Sumerian writings.

When Sitchin wrote his books, only specialists could read the Sumerian language, but now anyone can check his translations by utilizing the 2006 book Sumerian Lexicon. Sitchin's translations of both individual words and of larger portions of ancient texts are generally found to be incorrect.

Sitchin's "planetary collision" view does superficially resemble a theory which is seriously entertained by modern astronomers — the giant impact theory of the Moon's formation about 4.5 billion years ago by a body impacting with the newly-formed Earth. However, Sitchin's proposed series of rogue planetary collisions differ in both details and timing. As with Immanuel Velikovsky's earlier Worlds in Collision thesis, Sitchin claims to have found evidence of ancient human knowledge of rogue celestial motions in a variety of mythological accounts. In Velikovsky's case, these interplanetary collisions were supposed to have taken place within the span of human existence, whereas for Sitchin these occurred during the early stages of planetary formation, but entered the mythological account passed down via the alien race which purportedly evolved on Nibiru after these encounters.

Sitchin bases his arguments on his personal interpretations of Pre-Nubian and Sumerian texts, and the seal VA 243. Sitchin claims these ancient civilizations knew of a 12th planet, when in fact they only knew five.[10] Hundreds of Sumerian astronomical seals and calendars have been decoded and recorded, and the total count of planets on each seal has been five. Seal VA 243 has 12 dots that Sitchin identifies as planets. When translated, seal VA 243 reads "You're his Servant" which is now thought to be a message from a nobleman to a servant. According to semitologist Michael S. Heiser, the so-called sun on Seal VA 243 is not the Sumerian symbol for the sun but is a star, and the dots are also stars. The symbol on seal VA 243 has no resemblance to the hundreds of documented Sumerian sun symbols.

Similar ideas have been advanced by authors such as Immanuel Velikovsky, Erich von Däniken, Alan F. Alford and Laurence Gardner. Alford later recanted his views and became a critic of Sitchin's interpretation of myth.

Sitchin in “the case of Adam’s alien genes” claims that 223 unique genes found by the Human Genome Sequencing Consortium are without the required predecessors on the genomic evolutionary tree. Later researchers have argued that the conclusion from the Human Genome Sequencing Consortium can not be drawn due to a lack of a comprehensive gene database for comparison. An analysis by Salzberg identified 40 potential genes laterally transferred into the genome from prokaryotic organisms. Salzberg also argues that gene loss combined with sample size effects and evolutionary rate variation provide an alternative, more biologically plausible explanation.

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"Once I realized that this was the answer, that there is one more planet, everything else fell into place. The meaning of the Mesopotamian Epic of Creation on which the first chapters of Genesis are based and all details traveled from their planet to Earth and how they splashed down in the Persian Gulf and about their first settlement, their leaders and so on and so on, everything became clear!" 

The Russian-born Sitchin does not seem at first glance like one of the leading forces in the ancient astronaut debate. He looks like a kindly old man with thinning gray hair and thickening glasses poised above a gently moustached mouth. He is the author of eight works on the influence of ancient astronauts on the emerging human race, starting with the 1976 best-seller The Twelfth Planet. He grew up in Palestine where he says he learned Hebrew, Semitic and European languages before attending college at the University of London, where he graduated with a degree in economic history. He worked as a journalist in Israel for many years before moving to New York City. 

Sitchin skeptic Ian Lawton gives an overview of Sitchin's theories on his website:

"Not only does he suggest that a race of 'flesh and blood' gods who were capable of space flight visited Earth from their home planet, which the Ancients called 'Nibiru', nearly half a million years ago. He goes on to speculate that they came in order to mine precious minerals which were abundant on our planet; that they created modern Homo sapiens by genetic engineering, mixing their own genes with those of the primitive hominids they encountered ('in their own image'); that they did this in order to create a slave race to take over the mining and refining work; and that they lived for sometimes thousands of years, were capable of good, evil, compassion and brutality, and warred with each other and their human offspring." 

Sitchin described for Connecting Link what led him to these remarkable conclusions: "My starting point was, going backto my childhood and schooldays, the puzzle of who were the Nefilim, that are mentioned in Genesis, Chapter six, as the sons of the gods who married the daughters of Man in the days before the great flood, the Deluge." 

Sitchin translated Nefilim as "those who from heaven to earth came." (Standard translations have it as "fallen ones."), a meaning he says is identical with that of the Biblical Anunnaki. For him, his "discovery" that the Nefilim (also spelled Nephilim and translated in the King James Bible as "giants") were synonymous with the fifty mysterious gods of fate in Sumerian mythology, the Anunnaki, led him to a startling conclusion. The Anunnaki are extraterrestrials: 

"Ever since the publication of my first book (The 12th Planet) in 1976 I have asserted that Sumerian and other ancient Near Eastern texts and depictions showed familiarity with a complete Solar System that included, beside the Sun and the Moon, ten (not nine) planets -- the 3,600 years. Its Sumerian name was Nibiru." 

Sitchin told Connecting Link that this planet is the key to solving the mystery of the Anunnaki: 

"If Nibiru exists, (and this is the planet that astronomers nowadays call planet X) then the Anunnaki exist." 

Sitchin wrote and article for his website in May 2001 claiming that this mysterious planet has been located by astronomers. He cites an "alternative theory" proposed to explain the oddly eccentric orbit of a comet named 2000 CR/105. While one theory has it that Neptune exaggerated the comet's orbit, the alternative theory says that a Mars-sized planet could possibly affected the comet's orbit. Science magazine said "A Supercomet following an unexpectedly far-flung path around the sun suggests that an unidentified planet once lurked in the outermost reaches of the solar system, an international team of astronomers reports. What's more, the mysterious object may still be there." 

Sitchin believes this closes the case on his ancient Anunnaki astronauts. However, even if this planet does exist, it is a vast leap of logic to assume that it is the home of alien builder-gods. Sitchin may believe that if Nibiru exists the Anunnaki must, but there is as yet no evidence that one leads to the other. In fact, Sitchin's theory is vastly more ambitious than merely adding one more planet to the solar system's roster. On his website he says: 

"According to the ancient texts as interpreted by me, Nibiru was a planet ejected from some other planetary system in outer space that was captured into our Solar System as it passed near Neptune. It became involved in a collision with a pre-existing planet where the debris of the Asteroid Belt are now. As a result of that collision, some 4 billion years ago, the Earth and the Moon came to be where they are now." 

Of course, the main condition to accepting this theory is that Sitchin has a special expertise in interpreting ancient texts. Others are not quite ready to give him so much credit. Robert Todd Carroll's Skeptic's Dictionary explains Sitchin's position: 

"Sitchin's claim to fame is announcing that he alone correctly reads ancient Sumerian clay tablets. All other scholars have misread these tablets which, according to Sitchin, reveal that gods from another planet (Niburu, which orbits our Sun every 3,600 years) arrived on Earth some 450,000 years ago and created humans by some genetic engineering with female apes." 

Ian Lawton talked to a Sumerian linguist (who requested anonymity to avoid the onslaught of hate-mail from ancient astronaut believers). The linguist confirms Sitchin's "special" understanding of Sumerian is not that special: 

"[Sitchin] demonstrates a consistent lack of appreciation of even some of the most basic fundamentals of Sumerian and Akkadian grammar, even to the extent of regularly failing to distinguish between the two entirely different languages, and mixing words from each in interpreting the syllables of longer compound words." This mixing of languages allows Sitchin to make amazing "discoveries." 

Carroll is not impressed with Sitchin's scholarship, sarcastically adding, "Sitchin stands alone, on nobody's shoulders, as a scholar nonpareil... He alone knows how to correctly translate ancient terms allowing him to discover such things as that the ancients made rockets." 

Carroll says Sitchin's dubious translations are used to decieve: "Like [Erich] von Däniken and [Immanuel] Velikovsky, Sitchin weaves a compelling and entertaining story out of facts, misrepresentations, fictions, speculations, misquotes and mistranslations." 

So where did Sitchin go wrong?