Zecharia Sitchin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message.
This article has been tagged since February 2007.

Zecharia Sitchin's photograph from The 12th Planet

Zecharia Sitchin (born 1922)^[1] is a best-selling author of books promoting the ancient astronaut theory of mankind's origins. He attributes the creation of the ancient Sumerian culture to the Annunaki (or Nephilim) from a hypothetical planet named Nibiru in the solar system. He asserts that Sumerian mythology reflects this view. His speculations have largely been ignored by mainstream scientists and historians.

1 Life
2 Ideas
3 Controversy over his views
- 3.1 Astronomical and environmental objections
- 3.2 Genetic objections
4 Sitchin Bibliography
5 References
6 See also
7 External links and sources
- 7.1 Pro-Sitchin
- 7.2 Critical of Sitchin

[edit] Life

Zecharia Sitchin was born in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, and raised in the British Mandate of Palestine, where he acquired a knowledge of modern and ancient Hebrew, other Semitic and European languages, the Old Testament, and the history and archaeology of the Near East. Sitchin graduated from the University of London, majoring in economic history. A journalist and editor in Israel for many years, he now lives and writes in New York. His books have been widely translated, converted to Braille for the blind, and featured on radio and television.

[edit] Ideas

Fertile Crescent myth series

Mesopotamian
Levantine
Arabian
Mesopotamia
Primordial beings
The great gods
Demigods & heroes
Spirits & monsters
Tales from Babylon
7 Gods who Decree
4 primary: Anu Enlil Ki Enki	3 sky: Ishtar Sin Sama

According to Sitchin's interpretation of Sumerian cosmology, there is a hypothetical planet which follows a long, elliptical orbit, reaching the inner solar system roughly every 3,600 years, called Nibiru (the planet associated with Marduk in Babylonian cosmology). Nibiru collided catastrophically with Tiamat, a hypothetical planet that was between Mars and Jupiter, forming the planet Earth, the asteroid belt, and comets. Tiamat, as outlined in the Enûma Elish, is a goddess. According to Sitchin, however, Tiamat may have been what we now know as Earth that, when struck by one of planet Nibiru's moons, broke it into two separate pieces. On a second pass Nibiru itself struck the broken pieces and one half of Tiamat became what is now known as the asteroid belt. The second half, being struck again by one of Nibiru's moons, was pushed into a new orbit and created today's planet Earth. Although scientists argue that the scenario is not plausible, Sitchin's supporters argue that it would explain Earth's peculiar early geography due to cleaving resulting from the celestial collision i.e. solid continents on one side and a giant ocean on the other, and would also explain why the Earth is layered in sediments.

According to Sitchin, Nibiru was the home of a technologically advanced human-like extraterrestrial race, called the Anunnaki in Sumerian myth who were called the Nephilim in the Bible. He claims that they first arrived on Earth probably 450,000 years ago, looking for minerals, especially gold, which they found and mined in Africa. These "gods" of the Anunnaki were the rank and file workers of the colonial expedition to earth from planet Nibiru. Sitchin believes that the Anunnaki genetically engineered Homo sapiens as slave animals to work in their gold mines by crossing extraterrestrial genes with those of Homo erectus. Sitchin claims that ancient inscriptions report that human civilization in Sumer of Mesopotamia was set up under the tutelage of these "gods" and human kingship was inaugurated to serve as a go-betweens between the Anunnaki and man. Sitchin believes that fallout from nuclear weapons used during a war between separate factions of the extraterrestrials is the "evil wind" that destroyed Ur around 2000 BC, as recorded in the Lament for Ur.[1] Sitchin claims that his research coincides with many biblical texts and that the biblical texts come originally from the Sumerian writings of their history. When Sitchin researched his books, only specialists could read the Sumerian language, but now anyone can check his translations in a recently published Sumerian Lexicon. ^[2] Sitchin's translations do not hold up under linguistic scrutiny.

In a recently published book, entitled 2012: Appointment With Marduk, Turkish proponent Burak Eldem presented a new view suggesting an orbital period of 3,661 for the planet Nibiru and positing a "return date" in the year AD 2012. According to Eldem's theory, 3,661 is one-seventh of 25,627, which is the total time span of "Five World Ages" according to the Mayan Long Count Calendar. The last orbital passage of Marduk, he adds, was in 1649 BC and caused great catastrophes on earth, including the Thera eruption. Sitchin has recently put forth his own date for the next passage of Nibiru in the year 2085, but the date most talked about is 2012 which marks the end of the Maya calendar.

[edit] Controversy over his views

His '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. Sitchin's proposed series of rogue planetary collisions however differ in both details and timing. As with Immanuel Velikovsky's earlier Worlds in Collision thesis, Sitchin claims to find 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.

Similar ideas have been advanced by authors such as Immanuel Velikovsky, Erich von Däniken, and Laurence Gardner.

[edit] Astronomical and environmental objections

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
This article has been tagged since February 2007.

If planet Nibiru's orbit takes 3,600 years, then its aphelion would be much further than Pluto's. At such a distance from the Sun, temperatures are so low that water would exist as ice, life as we know it would probably be impossible. If a form of life can exist in such conditions, then it would not be water-based and could conceivably perish at Earth's much warmer temperatures.

Sitchin counters the distance theory by stating that Nibiru may have an internally generated heat source. To quote Sitchin: "My answer has been that we need not go that far out to freeze to death, just rising above Earth’s surface would do the trick. It is the planet’s atmosphere that retains the warmth, be it warmth obtained from the Sun, or from an internal source of heat. The crucial issue for the Anunnaki, I explained, was to prevent the loss of Nibiru’s atmosphere; they sought to do that with a shield of gold particles, and they came here to obtain the gold."

[edit] Genetic objections

Argument against Sitchin's views:

If alien visitors to Earth created humans, then evidence for this would have been found by now within our DNA. Since DNA sequencing is now cheap and easy, the conspiracy theory idea that our true DNA sequences have been suppressed would seem to be discounted, the idea being that since almost anyone can sequence our genes, if there was any extraterrestrial DNA to be found it would have been by now. Additionally, humans and chimpanzees share up to 99% of their DNA and the remaining 1% is posited by some unknown agent, possibly bacterial. Thus, present-day genetics fails to produce evidence that supports Sitchin's theories and more readily supports the idea that humans evolved through a series of DNA mutations from a precursor ape-like species. There is no empirical evidence for his speculations. It is also based on unproveable speculation and is therefore not a scientific theory and should not be confused as one.

Counter argument in support of Sitchin's theories:

Since Sitchin has not presented a theory, there cannot be any serious counter arguments to support the speculations of Sitchin.

[edit] Sitchin Bibliography

The 12th Planet (Earth Chronicles, No. 1). New York: Harper, 1976. ISBN 038039362X
The Stairway to Heaven (Earth Chronicles, No. 2), 1980.
The Wars of Gods and Men (Earth Chronicles, No. 3), 1985.
The Lost Realms (Earth Chronicles, No. 4), 1990.
Genesis Revisited: Is Modern Science Catching Up With Ancient Knowledge?, 1991.
When Time Began (Earth Chronicles, No. 5), 1993.
Divine Encounters: A Guide to Visions, Angels and Other Emissaries, 1995.
The Cosmic Code (Earth Chronicles, No. 6), 1998.
The Lost Book of Enki: Memoirs and Prophecies of an Extraterrestrial god. Bear & Company, 2002. ISBN 1591430372

[edit] References

^ Ronald Story, ed., The Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters, (New York New American Library, 2001), s.v. "Zecharia Sitchin," pp. 552.
^ Halloran, John A. (2006). Sumerian Lexicon: A Dictionary Guide to the Ancient Sumerian Language. The David Brown Book Company.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links and sources

Find more information on Zecharia Sitchin by searching Wikipedia's sister projects
	Dictionary definitions from Wiktionary
	Textbooks from Wikibooks
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Images and media from Commons
	News stories from Wikinews
	Learning resources from Wikiversity