Zecharia Sitchin (born 1922) is an author of books promoting an explanation for human origins involving
ancient astronautsAccording to ancient astronaut theories, intelligent extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth and this contact is connected with the origins or development of human cultures, technologies, and/or religions.Some of these theories propose that deities from most—if not all—religions are actually...
, amidst other aspects of
pseudosciencePseudoscience is a methodology, belief, or practice that is claimed to be scientific, or that is made to appear to be scientific, but which does not adhere to an appropriate scientific methodology, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
.
Sitchin attributes the creation of the ancient
SumeriaSumeria may refer to:*A misnomer for Sumer, the city states of Ancient Mesopotamia....
n culture to the "
AnunnakiThe Anunnaki are a group of Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian deities...
" (or "
NephilimNephilim are beings who appear in the Hebrew Bible; specifically mentioned in the Book of Genesis and the Book of Numbers; they are also mentioned in other Biblical texts and in some non-canonical Jewish writings.- Etymology :...
"), a race of aliens from a
planetA planet , is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, science,...
he calls
Nibiru, which he believes to be in an elongated, elliptical orbit in the
EarthEarth is the third planet from the Sun. It is the fifth largest of the eight planets in the solar system, and the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System in terms of diameter, mass and density...
's own
Solar SystemThe Solar System consists of the Sun and those celestial objects bound to it by gravity, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago...
and asserts that Sumerian mythology reflects this view.
His speculations are entirely discounted by professional
scientistA scientist, in the broadest sense, is any person who engages in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge or an individual that engages in such practices and traditions that are linked to schools of thought or philosophy. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the...
s,
historianAn historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all events in time...
s, and archaeologists, who note many problems with his translations of ancient texts and with his understanding of physics.
Life
Sitchin was born in
BakuBaku , sometimes known as Baqy, Baky, Baki or Bakou, is the capital, the largest city, and the largest port of Azerbaijan and all the Caucasus. Located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, the city consists of two principal parts: the downtown and the old Inner City...
,
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan , formally the Republic of Azerbaijan , is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to the south...
, and was raised in
PalestinePalestine is a conventional name used, among others, to describe a geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands.As a geographical term, Palestine can also refer to 'ancient Palestine,' an area...
. He acquired some knowledge of modern and ancient Hebrew, other
SemiticIn linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages....
and European languages, the
Old TestamentIn Christianity, the Old Testament is the collection of books that form the first of the two-part Christian Biblical canon. These works correspond to the Hebrew Bible , with some variations and additions. In the Eastern Orthodox Church the comparable texts are known as the Septuagint, from the...
, and the history and archeology of the
Near EastNear East today is an ambiguous term that covers different countries for archeologists and historians, on one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other...
. Sitchin graduated from the
London School of EconomicsThe London School of Economics and Political Science, commonly referred to as the London School of Economics or LSE, is a specialist constituent college of the University of London in London, England....
,
University of LondonBased primarily in London, England, United Kingdom, the University of London is a federal mega university made up of 31 affiliates: 19 separate university institutions, and 12 research institutes...
, majoring in
economic historyEconomic history is the study of how economic phenomena evolved from a historical perspective. Analysis in economic history is undertaken using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and by applying economic theory to historical situations. The topic includes business history and...
. A
journalistA journalist is a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues, and people while striving for viewpoints that are not biased.Reporters are one type of journalist...
and editor in
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
for many years, he now lives and writes in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
. His books have been widely translated, converted to
brailleThe Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write. Braille was devised in 1821 by Louis Braille, a blind Frenchman. Each Braille character or cell is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two columns of three dots each...
for the blind, and featured on radio and television.
Ideas
According to Sitchin's interpretation of Sumerian
cosmologyCosmology is the study of the Universe in its totality, and by extension, humanity's place in it...
, there is an
undiscovered planetA hypothetical Solar System object is a planet, natural satellite or similar body in our Solar System whose existence is not known, but has been inferred from observational scientific evidence. Over the years a number of hypothetical planets have been proposed, and many have been disproved...
which follows a long, elliptical orbit, reaching the inner solar system roughly every 3,600 years. This planet is called
NibiruNibiru may refer to:*Nibiru : a celestial object in the Babylonian poem Enuma Elish, associated with the god Marduk, generally accepted to be the planet Jupiter....
(the planet associated with the god
MardukMarduk was the Babylonian name of a late-generation god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi , started to slowly...
in Babylonian cosmology). According to Sitchin, Nibiru collided
catastrophicallyCatastrophism is the idea that Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope.The dominant paradigm of modern geology, in contrast, is uniformitarianism , in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance...
with Tiamat, another supposed planet located by Sitchin between
MarsMars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. It is also referred to as the "Red Planet" because of its reddish appearance, due to iron oxide prevalent on its surface....
and
JupiterJupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass slightly less than one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all of the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas...
. This collision supposedly formed the planet Earth, the
asteroid beltThe asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets...
, and the
cometA comet is a Small Solar System Body that has coma and is bigger than a meteoroid. When close enough to the Sun, a comet exhibits a visible coma , and sometimes a tail, both because of the effects of solar radiation upon the comet's nucleus...
s.
TiamatIn Babylonian mythology, Tiamat is a goddess who personifies the sea. Tiamat is considered the monstrous embodiment of primordial chaos. Although there are no early precedents for it, some sources identify her with images of a sea serpent or dragon...
, as outlined in the
Enûma ElishThe is the Babylonian creation myth . It was recovered by Henry Layard in 1849 in the ruined Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh , and published by George Smith in 1876....
, 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.
According to Sitchin, Nibiru was the home of a technologically advanced human-like
extraterrestrialExtraterrestrial life is defined as life which does not originate from planet Earth. The existence of life outside the planet is theoretical and all assertions of such life remain disputed....
race called the
AnunnakiThe Anunnaki are a group of Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian deities...
in Sumerian myth, who Sitchin states are called the
NephilimNephilim are beings who appear in the Hebrew Bible; specifically mentioned in the Book of Genesis and the Book of Numbers; they are also mentioned in other Biblical texts and in some non-canonical Jewish writings.- Etymology :...
in Genesis. He claims they first arrived on Earth probably 450,000 years ago, looking for minerals, especially
goldGold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. It has been a highly sought-after precious metal for coinage, jewelry, and other arts since the beginning of recorded history. The metal occurs as nuggets or grains in rocks, in veins and in alluvial deposits. Gold is...
, which they found and mined in
AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the...
. 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 erectusHomo erectus is an extinct species of the genus Homo, which originated in Africa and spread as far as China and Java. Depending on the definition of the species, it is considered to be either a direct ancestor of modern humans, or a separate species which co-existed with the distinct Homo...
. Sitchin claims ancient inscriptions report that human civilization in
SumerSumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Iraq . It is the earliest known civilization in the world and is known as the Cradle of Civilization...
of
MesopotamiaMesopotamia "land between the rivers" is a name for the Tigris–Euphrates region in the eastern Mediterranean, largely corresponding to Iraq, as well as northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern...
was set up under the guidance of these "gods", and human
kingshipThe person who heads a monarchy is called a monarch. It was a common form of government in the world during the ancient and medieval times. A Monarchy is a form of government in which supreme power is absolutely or nominally lodged with an individual, who is the head of state, often for life or...
was inaugurated to provide intermediaries between mankind and the Anunnaki. Sitchin believes that
falloutFallout is the residual radiation hazard from a nuclear explosion, aptly named because it "falls out" of the atmosphere into which it is spread during the explosion. It commonly refers to the radioactive dust created when a nuclear weapon explodes. This radioactive dust, consisting of hot...
from
nuclear weaponA nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion...
s, used during a war between factions of the extraterrestrials, is the "evil wind" that destroyed
UrUr was a city in ancient Sumer, located at the site of modern Tell el-Mukayyar in Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate....
around 2000 BC. Sitchin claims the exact year is 2024 BC. This event is described in the
Lament for UrThe Lament for Ur is a Sumerian lament composed after the fall of Ur to the Elamites and the end of the city's third dynasty . It contains one of five known Mesopotamian "city laments"—dirges for ruined cities in the voice of the city's tutelary goddess—within its eleven kirugu...
. Sitchin claims that his research coincides with many biblical texts, and that biblical texts come originally from Sumerian writings.
Criticisms
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
astronomerAn astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars, and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
s — the giant impact theory of the
MoonThe Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is , about thirty times the diameter of the Earth. The common centre of mass of the system is located at about —a quarter the Earth's...
'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 VelikovskyImmanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-born American independent scholar, best known as the author of a number of controversial books reinterpreting the events of ancient history, in particular the US bestseller Worlds in Collision, published in 1950...
'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's scenario for the creation of the Solar System is hard to reconcile with the Earth's current small
orbital eccentricityIn astrodynamics, under standard assumptions, any orbit must be of conic section shape. The eccentricity of this conic section, the orbit's eccentricity, is an important parameter of the orbit that defines its absolute shape...
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.
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 failed search for a trans-Plutonian planet by
T.C. Van FlandernThomas C Van Flandern was an American astronomer, specializing in celestial mechanics, who was known as an outspoken proponent of unorthodox views on various topics. He graduated from Xavier University in 1962 and then attended Yale University on a scholarship sponsored by the U.S. Naval Observatory...
, then with the U.S. Naval Observatory, which Sitchin uses to bolster his thesis, is no support at all."
Sitchin claims 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."
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. 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. HeiserMichael S. Heiser is an American scholar, linguist and author. His books include The Façade and The Bible Code Myth.-Education and background:...
, 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.
Peter James has criticised him both for ignoring the world outside of Mesopotamia and more specifically for misunderstanding Babylonian literature:
Similar ideas have been advanced by authors such as
Immanuel VelikovskyImmanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-born American independent scholar, best known as the author of a number of controversial books reinterpreting the events of ancient history, in particular the US bestseller Worlds in Collision, published in 1950...
,
Erich von DänikenErich Anton Paul von Däniken is a controversial Swiss author best known for his claims about extraterrestrial influences on early human culture, in books such as Chariots of the Gods?, published in 1968...
,
Alan F. AlfordAlan F. Alford, B. Com, FCA, MBA is a British writer and speaker on the subjects of ancient religion, mythology, and Egyptology.His first book Gods of the New Millennium drew on the ancient astronaut theory of Zecharia Sitchin and became a number 11 non-fiction bestseller in the UK...
and
Laurence GardnerLaurence Gardner is a writer and lecturer on historical revisionism. He has written many books on alternative history.Gardner is occasionally styled "Chevalier Labhran de Saint Germain", "Presidential Attache to the European Council of Princes" and "Prior of the Celtic Churches Sacred Kindred of...
. 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.
Influence
RaëlismRaëlism, or The Raëlian movement, is a UFO cult that believes that planet Earth and its people had received contacts by ancient extraterrestrials with the resemblance of human beings. Members, called Raëlians, believe that civilizations of the ancient and medieval eras became convinced that the...
, the
UFO religionUFO religion is an informal term used to describe a religion that equates extraterrestrials with gods or other semi-divine beings and that humanity either currently is, or eventually will become, part of a preexisting extraterrestrial civilization...
founded by Claude Vorilhon, appropriated some of its beliefs from Sitchin's work, as does the Nuwaubian religion founded by
Dwight YorkDwight York , also known as Malachi Z. York, Issa Al Haadi Al Mahdi, et alii, is an author, black supremacist leader, musician, and convicted child molester, who founded various esoteric fraternal orders and black nationalist groups collectively referred to as Nuwaubians.York and the Nuwaubians...
.
ZetatalkThe Nibiru collision is a supposed encounter between the Earth and a large planetary object which certain subcultural groups believe will take place in the early 21st century...
, the internet cult founded by self-proclaimed contactee Nancy Leider, describes "Planet X", a large object they claim is about to hit Earth, as "Nibiru" in reference to Sitchin's claims.
David IckeDavid Vaughan Icke is a British writer and public speaker who has devoted himself since 1990 to researching "who and what is really controlling the world." A former professional football player, reporter, television sports presenter, and spokesman for the Green Party, he is the author of 20 books...
also draws on Sitchin's work in his conspiracy theories.
DVDs
- Are We Alone in the Universe? (based on Genesis Revisited), documentary, 1978 (2003 DVD release)
Criticisms