Introduction
Zecharia Sitchin's The Twelfth Planet purports to contain
"indisputable documentary proof" that all of humanity was created by a
group of aliens who visited this planet between roughly 450,000 BC and
13,000 BC. The aliens created humanity by combining their DNA with
that of the proto-humans the found on Earth in a scheme to create
somewhat intelligent workers for the mining enterprises they were
founding on Earth.
This work is intended to be an analysis of Sitchin's book in
light of mainstream archeological thought about ancient Sumeria and
mainstream science in other fields such as aerospace engineering,
astronomy, evolution, Bible research, and so on. The opinions I
express below are my own, of course, and not those of any
organization, except where noted.
References
I used the following works as primary sources:
The 12th Planet, Z. Sitchin, 1976. Paperback edition
published by Avon. The work in question.
The Sumerians, C.L. Woolley, 1929. Published by AMS
Press, New York. One of the first authoritative works on the subject,
widely quoted by others (although no doubt considered dated now).
The Sumerians, Their History Culture and Character,
S.N. Kramer, 1971. Paperback edition by University of Chicago Press.
Used as a textbook by some universities.
Anthropology, The Exploration of Human Diversity,
C.P. Kottak, 1978. Published by Random House. A general text of
anthropology and ancient civilizations.
Origins Reconsidered, R. Leakey and R. Lewin, 1992.
Published by Doubleday. A look at the modern problems of anthropology
and evolution of man.
Planets, A Smithsonian Guide, T.R. Waters, 1995.
Published by Macmillan. Modern info about the planets.
The Foundations of Astrodynamics, A.E. Roy, 1965.
Published by Macmillan. A good reference for orbital dynamics and
orbital characteristics of the planets and moons.
I used several translations of the Bible, to cross check:
King James, The New American Bible and
The American Standard Bible.
Asimov's Guide to the Bible, I. Asimov, 1968. Published
by Avon. One of the best handbooks around to help you with the history
and translations behind the Bible.
Below are the URLs for assorted helpful Internet resources:
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/RECONselect.html :NASA
Technical Report Server. Abstracts of all papers published by
NASA and NASA contractors.
http://www.archaeology.org/9707/newsbriefs/squash.html :Early
Plant Domestication. Archeological evidence of this 10,000 years
ago in Oaxaca, Mexico.
http://ragz-international.com/sumerian_language.htm :Sumerian
Language Page. A summary of modern thought on the Sumerian
language.
http://www.usfca.edu/westciv/Sumerian.html :Sumerian Gods.
University of San Francisco page describing Sumerian Gods.
http://www.talkorigins.org/ :TalkOrigins.org. Everything
you ever wanted to know about evolution, and then some.
http://www.ramtops.demon.co.uk/siren.html :Sitchin's Sumerian
Astronomy Refuted, by Chris Siren. Another skeptic's view of
Sitchin's astronomy.
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/8148/ :Skeptics web
page. Links to other interesting places.
http://lovecraft.cc.utexas.edu/Sitchin/sitchin.html>Web page for
Sitchin supporters. Links to other interesting places.
Abstract
Sitchin's work is a masterpiece of
linguistic
maneuvering and
allegorical interpretation. He is clearly well-read
in the archeology and mythology of ancient Sumeria and related lore.
His work conflicts, however, with mainstream archeological and
scientific opinion. In fact, in
Usenet discussions of Sitchin's work,
several well-published, respected archeologists familiar with this
period have called Sitchin a fool and an idiot (but in less polite
terms). While he's well-read, he seems to live in his own little
world when it comes to translation of
ancient texts. He also takes
certain liberties in his
translations and interpretations that are not
usually allowed by the scientific community. The part of his work
that relates to
physics,
geology,
cosmology and
orbital dynamics
completely falls apart under the lightest scrutiny. Sitchin's
interpretations of Sumerian Epics and other writings describe events
that simply couldn't have happened.
The first thing that confronts a reader of The 12th Planet is an Author's
Note. The note talks about the translations of biblical verses quoted
within the book. The second paragraph says:
In the final version quoted in The 12th Planet, I have compared
the available translations against each other and against Hebrew source
and the parallel Sumerian and Akkadian texts/tales, to come up with what
I believe is the most accurate rendering. (Sitchin, Authors Note)
As we will see, this is a telling statement. Instead of quoting standard
translations for
Biblical verses, Sitchin makes up his own translations,
based on his interpretation of "the parallel Sumerian and Akkadian
texts/tales". Unfortunately, he is using those verses to support his
interpretation of those texts.
Right away, things aren't looking good. He's let us know he's going
to twist the translations around to support his thesis. Indeed, a reader
of Sitchin's book would do well to keep a couple of Bibles handy to check
up on the verses Sitchin quotes. Many of them will sound odd or
unrecognizable because they have been translated from their familiar form
(this is made harder by the fact that Sitchin rarely tells you just which
verse he is quoting). This would be much more acceptable if he wasn't
using the twisted translations to support the thesis that led to the
twisted translations.
The book starts with a brief survey of ancient history, from 2,000,000
years ago to the beginning of modern man and leading up to what he sees
as the real mystery: how did modern man get started and why did
civilizations suddenly spring up?
Why--why did civilization come about at all? For, as most scholars now
admit in frustration, by all data Man should still be without
civilization. (Sitchin, 4)
None of the other books about Sumeria or general archeology bring up this
question at all and Sitchin offers no support for his claim about
academic frustration. Kramer, in fact, has an answer for this question:
.. there was on overriding factor which fostered a strong spirit of
cooperation among individuals and communities alike: the complete
dependence of Sumer on irrigation for its well-being -- indeed for its
very existence. Irrigation is a complicated process requiring communal
effort and organization. Canals had to be dug and kept in repair. The
water had to be divided equitably among all concerned. To ensure this, a
community was mandatory: hence the growth of governmental institutions
and the rise of a Sumerian State. (Kramer, 3-4)
Kottak says practically the same thing:
..a group of regulatory officials arose in southern Mesopotamia,
concerned with the management of domesticated animals, agricultural
activities, distribution, manufacture and other economic activities.
(Kottak, 234)
Now, we
know that Sitchin has at least read
Kramer. He lists all
of Kramer's books in his bibliography and even mentions Kramer by name
several times, calling him "one of the great Sumerologists of our time"
(Sitchin, 40). Why does Sitchin ignore this obvious theory of the rise
of Sumerian civilization without refuting it?
Sitchin moves on, describing the rise of agriculture in
Sumeria and claims that Sumeria had the earliest instance of plant
domestication. Modern archeology disagrees with
this. (http://www.archaeology.org/9707/newsbriefs/squash.html) Plant
domestication in fact occured as early as 10,000 years ago in Oaxaca,
Mexico.
As he describes the rise of Sumeria, he makes many statements
that run contrary to mainstream archeology, but in tiny ways that make
you wonder. For example, Sitchin describes Akkadian (spoken by
Babylonians and Assyrians and derived, he claims, from the Sumerians)
as "the first known Semitic language, akin to but predating Hebrew,
Aramaic, Phoenician, and Canaanite." (Sitchin, 19). Kramer, though,
says "Sumerian is an agglutinative tongue unrelated to the inflected
Semitic family of languages of which Hebrew forms a part." (Kramer,
298) It's details like this that drive you crazy reading Sitchin's
work. A Google search on "sumerian language" will lead to many pages
describing modern thought on the Sumerian language. From the Sumerian
Language page at http://ragz-international.com/sumerian_language.htm
we find this paragraph:
The linguistic affinity of
Sumerian has not yet been successfully established. Ural-Altaic (which
includes Turkish), Dravidian, Brahui, Bantu, and many other groups of
languages have been compared with Sumerian, but no theory has gained
common acceptance. Sumerian is clearly an agglutinative language in
that it preserves the word root intact while expressing various
grammatical changes by adding on prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. The
difference between nouns and verbs, as it exists in the Indo-European
or Semitic languages, is unknown to Sumerian. The word dug alone means
both "speech" and "to speak" in Sumerian, the difference between the
noun and the verb being indicated by the syntax and by different
affixes.
While Kramer and Wolley make much of the idea that Sumerian
civilization was almost completely unknown to us before the
excavations in the 1800's and early 1900's, Sitchin argues that the
Bible is full of references to Sumeria and the Sumerians. Yet, from
the page mentioned above we see this additional quote: "Around the time
of Christ, all knowledge of the Sumerian language disappeared along
with that of cuneiform writing, and in the succeeding centuries even
the name Sumer vanished from memory." Again, Sitchin is at odds with
almost everyone else.
Sitchin makes the claim that "Shinar" was the "Biblical name for Shumer
(Sumeria)". (Sitchin, 22) While Kramer makes a much more sweeping and
interesting statement:
..except for the rather obscure word "Shinar", which scholars usually
identify with Sumer, but which actually stands for the Sumerian
equivalent of the compound word "Sumer-Akkaid", there seems to be no
mention of the Sumerians in the entire Bible... (Kramer, 297)
So, "Shinar", as a reference to Sumeria, is more complicated than Sitchin
mentions. Sitchin never recognizes that there is any argument, however,
just states his opinion and moves on.
Page 24 of Sitchin's book contains a table that shows the development of
some aspects of Cuneiform writing. This table is very interesting for an
unexpected reason: it's copied directly from Kramer's earlier book.
Since the table contains hand-written symbols, it's easy to compare the
strokes, relative weights of lines, and so on and come to the conclusion
that the table has been photocopied somehow, not merely reproduced
by hand. Even more interesting, the labels of the table have been
changed. Where Kramer clearly states that the table shows the evolution
of the writing system over a 2500 year time span, Sitchin labels the
table with a bunch of other classifications that obscure this fact. To
his credit, Sitchin also adds in columns that show the pronunciation and
meanings of the symbols. although I can't vouch for his accuracy.
Did Sitchin get permission to use this table? No way to tell, but he
certainly doesn't credit Kramer or anyone else with drawing it.
Sitchin now continues with his rather fawning praise of the Sumerians.
He claims they invented writing, printing, various metallurgical
technology, a written code of laws and lots of medical technology. He
goes too far, however, when he claims that one of the Sumerian tablets
"shows, without question, a man lying on a special bed; his face
protected by a mask, and he is being subjected to some kind of
radiation." (Sitchin, 35) He refers us to a figure which is a hand-drawn
copy of a scene, presumably from some unearthed tablet. Personally, I
would say that the figure could represent a lot of things, but I'm
not an archeologist.
This is a problem in several academic ways, however. We have no way to
know what the original tablet actually showed. We have no reference or
citation so we can go look up the tablet. Yet, we have a totally wild
claim based solely on this reproduction.
We now come across a chapter that describes the religions of many other
peoples from that part of the world over time. Greeks, Romans, Hindus,
and so on all get their innings. I'm not enough of an expert to know if
Sitchin gets all this right or not, I didn't spot anything odd, however.
Since this chapter has little to do with the rest of the book, let's
just assume it's all correct and move on.
Sitchin now turns to the Sumerian pantheon. He heads up the Sumerian
pantheon by describing AN as the master:
The head of this family of Gods of Heaven and Earth was AN (or Anu in the
Babylonian/Assyrian texts). He was the Great Father of the Gods, the
King of the Gods. His realm was the expanse of the heavens and his
symbol was a star. (Sitchin, 89)
Well, this matches somewhat with the other sources, but not quite. While
Kramer and Wolley list a pantheon and it includes An, they don't seem to
put An up as the undisputed head of the group.
There is good reason to believe that AN, the heaven-god, was at one time
conceived by the Sumerians to be the supreme ruler of the pantheon,
although in our available sources reaching to about 2500BC it is the
air-god, Enlil, who seems to have taken his place as the leader of the pantheon.
AN continued to be worshipped in Sumer throughout the millenniums, but he
gradually lost much of his prominence. He became a rather shadowy figure...
By far the most important deity in the Sumerian pantheon, one who played
a dominant role throughout Sumer in rite, myth, and prayer, was the
air-god, Enlil. (Kramer, 118-119)
Again, we find Sitchin glossing over the way his opinion disagrees with
the rest of the archeological community and stating his case as if it
were generally accepted.
Sitchin goes on to develop the central gods of the Sumerians, describing
each one and the relations among them. Once the main set is lined up,
however, he drops off the deep end into numerology. He finds mystical
significance to the idea that twelve gods made up the "ruling
council" of the Sumerian gods. Not only do other authorities fail to
list twelve members for this inner circle, they describe no Sumerian
interest in numerology.
It may be that this group of seven deities, An, Enlil, Enki, Ninhursag,
Nanna-Sin, Utu, and Inanna that is referred to as the seven deities who
"decree the fates".
The fifty "great gods" are never named but seem to be identical with the
Anunnanki, the children of An, at least with those of them who are not
confined to the nether world. (Kramer, 122-123)
The description at
http://www.usfca.edu/westciv/Sumerian.html (University of San
Francisco) lists only nine major Sumerian Gods. Sitchin piles some of
the sons of Enlil and Enki into the ruling council, apparently to
round out the number to the mystical twelve.
Sitchin moves on to describe the Nefilim, the "people of the fiery
rockets". There are a few pages of wind-up here, where he lays the
groundwork for his later assertions that could be nitpicked. He claims,
for example, that one of the ancient statues unearthed by modern
archeologists is wearing things over their ears that "remind one of
pilot's earphones" (this was written before the Walkman changed our
perceptions of headphones). I don't see an reason to pick the nits,
however, there are larger things to come.
Now we come to the word "shem". Much of Sitchin's
work revolves around the interpretation of this particular
Biblical word. Interestingly, Kramer also looks into the meaning of
the word "shem", but comes up with a study by Arno Poebel
(famous Sumerologist of the early 1900's, try a Google search for more
info) that describes a completely different alternate meaning from the
one Sitchin promotes.
From "traditional" authorities, we see that shem is generally translated
to mean "name", as it would be used in the sentence: Sam has made a name
for himself. In this sense, it perhaps comes closer to "reputation" than
the way we use the word "name" in modern English. Originally, it may
also have meant "monument", a physical artifact that bore the name of
something to be remembered.
All three of the translations of the Bible I checked (representing the
reputations of hundreds of Biblical scholars) translate "shem" as "name".
Asimov and Kramer go along with the rest. Sitchin argues that shem
meant "monument", but that the monuments were copies of the rockets used
by the ancient gods (space aliens).
Stone pillars shaped to simulate the oval vehicle were erected at
selected sites, and the image of the god was carved into the stone to
indicate he was within the object. (Sitchin, 145)
To buck this up, he goes through a paragraph that relates the names given
these pillars to the idea of fire or "going up". "The Sumerians called
them NA.RU, stones that rise." (Sitchin, 145) Well, we talk about
high-rise buildings all the time, but we don't mean they fly into the air.
The Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians called them naru (objects that
give off light). The Amurru called them nuras ("fiery objects" - in
Hebrew, ner still means a pillar that gives off light, and thus today's
"candle"). (Sitchin, 145)
Well, it sounds shaky to my non-professional ears. All of these objects
did indeed
look like stone candles, even if they didn't glow, so
it's not much of a stretch to me. The capper comes when he makes the
following quote, which he attributes to Isaiah:
And I will give them,
In my House and within my walls,
a yad and a shem.(Sitchin, 145)
He goes on to talk about how this relates to the shapes of the memorials,
which he claims look like rocket ships. It took quite a while for me to
search through Isaiah and find this quote. He didn't give us the number
of the verse, I think, since it is so different from the original and he
didn't want to start an argument. The various bibles translate this as
(the
King James is almost identical to the
New American translation):
To them I will give in My house and
within My walls a Memorial,
And a name better than that of sons
and daughters.
I will give them an everlasting name
which will not be cut off.
Isaiah, 56:5, American Standard Bible
I will give, in my house
and within my walls, a monument
and a name
Better than sons and daughters;
an eternal, imperishable name
will I give them.
Isaiah, 56:5, New American Bible
When you look at the word "name" in this verse, it's pretty ease to
imagine that it came from the original word "shem". You could replace
"name" with "reputation" and it would all still make sense. However, if
you change it to "rocketship", the meaning sort of sags. After all, how
would a
rocketship be better than "sons and daughters"? Sitchin has
pulled yet another translational fast one, this time by not quoting the
whole verse.
Next he supports his claim by quoting the verses about the building of
the tower of Babel:
Let us build a city,
and a tower whose top shall reach the heavens;
and let us make a shem,
lest we be scattered upon the face of the Earth. (Sitchin, 148)
Of course, he wants us to read this as "let us make a skyborne vehicle",
but it's getting hard to keep a straight face by now. If you read the
quote in context, it's not so hard to read "shem" as "name". The
American Standard lists this verse as:
And they said to one another, "Come,
let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly."
And they used brick for stone, and they
used tar for mortar.
And they said, "Come let us build for
ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will
reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves
a name; lest we be scattered abroad
over the face of the whole earth."
Genesis 11:3-4, American Standard
It's hard to see how they would be using
burned bricks to make a rocket
or how they could even talk in the same sentence about
mud brick towers
and
rocket ships. Sitchin is
tap-dancing as fast as he can here, but
I don't think it's working very well.
Sitchin beats this dead horse a while longer, then switches over to the
tales of Gilgamesh for support. He quotes the following verses:
The ruler Gilgamesh
toward the Land of Tilmun set his mind.
He says to his companion Enkidu:
"O Enkidu...
I would enter the Land, set up my shem.
In the places where the shem's were raised up
I would raise my shem." (Sitchin, 156)
Interesting, as far as it goes, but notice the ellipsis in the fourth
line. What's
that doing there? If you see the lines in Kramer's
translation, you'll understand:
The lord set his mind toward the "Land of the Living."
The lord Gilgamesh set his mind toward the "Land of the Living".
He says to his servant Enkidu:
"Enkidu, brick and stamp have not yet brought forth the fated end,
I would enter the "land", would set up my name,
In it's places where names have been raised up, I would raise up
my name,
In it's places where names have not been raised up, I would raise up
the names of the gods." (Kramer, 192)
What a difference! First of all that "brick and stamp" stuff would
have ruined the whole thing, so it got accidentally "translated" into
the ellipsis. That last line about raising up the shems of the gods
would have been awkward too (wouldn't the gods take care of their own
rockets? how could Gilgamesh set up a rocket ship of the gods?), so
off it goes. If you think of "name" in it's older meaning of
"monument", this all works just fine, no need to resort to "skyborne
vehicles" at all. This shem business is central to Sitchin's
arguments, yet it seems to me to be some of his poorest scholarship.
On page 157, Sitchin quotes some verses that he claims represent the
"launching of a rocket ship", but the verses don't seem to show up in
Kramer's account. Whether the translation is unrecognizable or he claims
Kramer left something out, I can't tell.
Continuing to gather support for these ancient rocket ships, Sitchin
launches into a tale of Etana and comes up with a bizarre correlation:
The tale of Etana informs us that, seeking a shem, Etana had to
communicate with an Eagle inside a pit. A seal depiction shows a winged,
tall structure (a launch tower?) above which an eagle flies off. (Fig
78) (Sitchin, 163)
Figure 78 is another hand-drawn representation of a clay tablet, without
reference or citation. It does contain what looks like a fluted cylinder
with wings and some sort of bird above it. It also contains about a
hundred other things, many taller than the "launchpad". Sitchin has more
for us, though, an amazing revelation:
What or who was the Eagle who took Etana to the distant heavens? We
cannot help but associate the ancient text with the message beamed to
earth in July 1969 by Neil Armstrong, commander of the Apollo 11
spacecraft: "Houston! Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed".
(Sitchin, 163)
He goes on to speculate that "
Eagle" could not only represent the lander,
but the astronauts inside of it as well. So could it be mere coincidence
that "just as in the Etana tale, they, too, were 'Eagles' who could fly,
speak, and communicate."? (Sitchin, 164) He also gives us a nice photo
of the
Apollo 11 mission patch, which shows an Eagle flying over the moon
(when what we could have used was a photo of the tablet recreated in Figure 78).
Sitchin goes on to wind up this chapter with some drawings of ancient
cuneiform symbols and pictographs, attempting to show that they resemble
rocket ships. Of course, the English letter 'A' looks a little like a
rocket, too... I'll get into my opinion of his aerospace engineering and
orbital dynamics later on.
The next chapter has Sitchin going for the heart of the matter. His
twelfth planet and the beings that lived there. It starts out
innocuously enough, with more translations and speculations, but at least
one of them is odd. When describing a cylinder seal, he says:
When the central god or celestial body in the Berlin seal is enlarged
(Fig 89), we can see that it depicts a large, ray-emitting star
surrounded by eleven heavenly bodies - planets. These, in turn, rest on
a chain of twenty-four smaller globes. Is it only coincidence that the
number of all the "moons", or satellites, of the planets in our solar
system (astronomers exclude those of ten miles or less in diameter) is
also exactly twenty-four? (Sitchin, 176)
Before we get to the Berlin seal and what it shows or doesn't show, let's
remember one thing: there are a
lot more than twenty-four
moons
in our solar system, even if you throw out those less than 10 miles in
diameter (which astronomers do not). Even if there
were
twenty-four known when Sitchin wrote this book (and I think there were
about 31), there have been some discovered recently, including Charon,
Pluto's moon. Live by numerology, die by numerology, no?
As for the seal itself, it's hard to say what it's supposed to depict.
While it does show eleven bodies around a central body with twenty
four others in a ring around it, some of the eleven have rays emanating
from them (and thus look more like stars than planets) and some don't.
There is a figure standing in front of the whole thing too, making it hard
to know if they intended for the guy to be covering up part of it or not.
I'm not the only one to find this odd. Chris Siren has a web
page dedicated to http://www.ramtops.demon.co.uk/siren.html
refuting Sitchin's Sumerian Astronomy.
In any case, he goes on to assert that the Sumerians "claimed that our
system was made up of the sun and eleven planets (counting the Moon), and
held steadfastly to the opinion that, in addition to the planets known to
us today, there has been a twelfth member of the solar system -
the home planet of the Nefilim". (Sitchin, 178)
This is hard to swallow in light of the fact that Kramer says that
astronomy was "practically unknown in ancient Sumer; at least as of today
we have only a list of about twenty-five stars and nothing more from
Sumer". (Kramer, 90) He goes on to say "observation of the heavenly
bodies must have been practiced in Sumer for calendrical purposes if for
no other reasons, but if the results of these observations were recorded,
they were not preserved". (Kramer, 90). Wolley makes no mention of any
astronomy in relation to the Sumerians.
More recently, however, something of Sumerian astronomy has
been discovered. As this http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~catshaman/13Sumerian/03Sumerian2.htm Sumerian astronomy web page describes, the
Sumerians did watch the stars. There's nothing there that supports
Sitchin's claims, however.
Sitchin finishes up the chapter with a survey of creation myths and
cosmology from other cultures.
The next chapter starts off with a bang. Right away we're introduced to
the most important illustration in the book. This time it's a photograph
of a cylinder seal and some hand-drawn reproductions of it to help
us out.
The seal (shown on page 205), shows a six-pointed star, surrounded by
eleven circular bumps of assorted sizes. Underneath it is a drawing of
the same sort, but with the bodies around the central sun moved around a
bit and changed in size. Underneath this is a drawing of the same
central sun, surrounded by eleven bodies, supposedly in the configuration
of the actual seal.
Sitchin first claims that the bodies involved represent the planets of
the solar system. Instead of being shown in increasing distance from the
sun, they are shown arranged circularly around the sun, but in order from
Mercury, counterclockwise to Pluto. But to say this, he refers to the
first drawing, (figure 100), which isn't of the seal itself, but an
explanatory drawing that Sitchin drew himself.
Now that we're supposed to have the idea in our heads, Sitchin refers us
to figure 101, the drawing of the seal he has made for clarification. He
says this about this figure:
The small Mercury is followed by a larger Venus. Earth, the same
size as Venus, is accompanied by the small Moon. Continuing in a
counterclockwise direction, Mars is shown correctly as smaller than
Earth, but larger than the Moon or Mercury.
The ancient depiction then shows a planet unknown to us --
considerably larger than Earth, yet smaller than Jupiter and Saturn,
which clearly follow it. Farther on, another pair perfectly matches
our Uranus and Neptune. Finally, the smallish Pluto is also there,
but not where we now place it (after Neptune); instead, it appears
between Saturn and Uranus.
Treating the Moon as a proper celestial body, the Sumerian depiction
fully accounts for all of our known planets, places them in correct
order (with the exception of Pluto) and shows them by size. (Sitchin, 204)
You have to really study these pictures to see what a laugh this is.
First of all, Mercury comes after Venus (assuming it's the smaller
one) or is shown in the position of being a moon of Venus. Next Mercury
is only a third the diameter of Venus or Earth, but it's shown a lot
bigger (about three-fourths their size). Next, the Moon should be a dot
on this scale, but it's shown pretty good size. Looking at the picture
(rather than his drawing) Mars looks exactly the same size as Earth.
Jupiter and Saturn are in reality three times the size of Uranus and
Neptune, but drawn less than twice as big. Pluto is shown about the same
size as the Earth, even though it's only a tiny bit bigger than the Moon
(about a seventh the size of the Earth).
Lots of other details are missing: no rings around Saturn, no bands
around Jupiter, Charon (half the size of Pluto, they're really a double
planet) missing, and so on. It's particularly hard to understand why the
earth's Moon is included in the list, but no other moons are. After all,
many are large bodies in their own right. Ganymede, for example, is
larger than Mercury.
So, if you're willing to overlook all these little details it's
pretty accurate, except for one extra planet and one out of place!
Does Sitchin think we just fell off the turnip truck? This is quite a stretch.
Before explaining the extra planet and Pluto's position and all, Sitchin
takes us on a little astronomy lesson, Sitchin style. Here are some
"facts" according to Sitchin:
* "Earth's heat comes from its radioactive materials, 'cooked' inside
Earth under tremendous pressure" (Sitchin, 207)
No! Earth's radioactivity only accounts for about 40% of the Earth's heat,
the other 60% comes from the heat of accretion and core formation.
* "Scientists are now certain that the Moon and the
Earth, formed of roughly the same elements at about the same time,
evolved as separate celestial bodies" (Sitchin, 207)
No! Current theory holds that the Moon was formed from the Earth
after the impact of a Mars-sized body. (see "The giant impact produced a
precipitated Moon", CAMERON, A. G. W, 1993, NASA RECON database).
* The asteroid belt: "beyond any doubt, this is the debris of a planet
that had shattered to pieces" and "astronomers are certain that such a
planet existed" (Sitchin, 209)
No! Current theory says the planet never formed, due to gravitational
effects from Jupiter. (see Watters, and see "Structure and evolution of
the asteroid belt", Chebotarev, G.A., 1974, NASA RECON database) There
isn't enough mass there for a decent planet anyway.
* Bode's Law "convinced astronomers that a planet ought to revolve in a
place where hitherto no planet had been known to exist - that is, between
the orbits of Mars and Jupiter".
True! But Bode's Law ALSO predicts a planet formed where the EARTH is,
which Sumerian cosmology says arrived later. Another case of Sitchin
using a fact when it supports him, but ignoring it when it doesn't.
* "How could they
ancient Sumerians know without telescopes and
spacecraft that Neptune is a watery planet?" (http://lovecraft.cc.utexas.edu/Sitchin/sitchin-interview.html)
True! Well, not exactly. While Neptune may have water oceans, they are
under extreme pressure, and tainted with methane, ammonia and ammonium
hydrosulfide. They lie on top of an ocean of liquid hydrogen. It's NOT
a "watery planet" the way earth is, not by a million miles. It's not a
"blue planet" due to these oceans, either, it's blue because it has a
methane atmosphere, same as Uranus. And how did the Greeks and Romans
know that Neptune was a watery planet? After all, they had
no access to Sumerian myths...
Tired of mangling astronomy, Sitchin goes back to mythology for a while,
then gets to the arrival of the
twelfth planet and how it molded
our solar system.
I'll have to synopsize his work, he takes up lots of pages tying it in
with Sumerian texts. I don't have any idea if his translations are
correct or not, by the way, it's the resulting interpretation that's
goofy. He has assumed that the gods represent planets, that the myths
represent actual events (events that happened before the Earth or
Nephilim existed) and a good deal of literary license. None of
the other sources make any assumptions like this. No one else seems
to think that the gods in the epics were really astronomical bodies.
Sitchin himself never really explains why he thinks this is a fair
interpretation, he just does it.
Here's what he claimed happened (the numbering of the steps is my own, to
make things easier to refer to later):
1) We started out with a solar system just like the one we have now, but
the Earth and Moon are missing and there was a planet between Jupiter and Mars.
2) The planet Marduk arrived from outer space and passed near to Neptune.
Marduk is a retrograde planet, orbiting in the opposite direction of all
the others. Neptune's gravity bent its orbit so that it plunged down
into the solar system (still against the grain, retrograde). At the same
time, Neptune's gravity pulled a bulge in the side of Marduk (which was
still plastic at this stage, it had just been formed).
3) The planet Marduk passed Uranus, where the bulge ripped open and
several moons were pulled out of Marduk to orbit it. It's path was bent
even more inward. As it pulled on Gaga, a moon of Saturn, Gaga was
pulled loose and eventually became Pluto in its present day orbit.
4) Marduk approached Tiamat (the planet where the asteroid belt is now)
and its gravity began to tear away bits of Tiamat.
5) Marduk missed hitting Tiamat, but its orbiting satellites delivered a
mighty blow. They also exchanged lightening in the form of static
electricity. Tiamat was cracked, but still together.
6) Marduk sailed out into deep space again, past Neptune.
7) When it came around again, Marduk smashed Tiamat all to hell. Half of
Tiamat was destroyed and became the asteroid belt, the other half was hit
sideways by one of Marduk's orbiting moons, knocked into the orbit of
Earth and became the Earth. Kingu, one of Tiamat's satellites, went
along with the broken half and became the Moon.
8) Marduk continues in this orbit today, swinging out past Neptune and
back into the Asteroid belt in a retrograde orbit that takes 3,600 years
to complete.
There you have it, in all its glory, the twelfth planet wrecks the solar
system but creates the planet Earth in the process.
There is so much wrong with all of this, from a cosmological and physical
standpoint, that it's hard to know where to start (well, you can
start by laughing, but that won't help the situation at had).
Let's go through it a step at a time:
1) No way to know whether this is true or not, let's give him the benefit
of a doubt and assume this is true.
2) No current scientific cosmology can account for a large planet forming
in a retrograde, very eccentric orbit. If Neptune pulled on Marduk, then
Marduk pulled on Neptune. Yet its present-day orbit is very circular,
more so even than the Earth's. Same is true of Uranus. If Marduk is
falling freely near Neptune, the gravity of Neptune effects it the same
all over, no "bulge" would be pulled in it's side. Pack a ball of dirt
together with your hands and throw it into the air. Does the large
gravity of nearby-Earth pull a bulge out of the side of it? No. Tidal
forces might create sizable effects if Marduk got very close, but
obviously it didn't.
3) More of the same. How did Gaga get flung out to where Pluto is?
What about the many other moons of Saturn, why weren't their orbits
wrecked? Gaga could be flung outward by gravitational force, but what
circularized its orbit out there?
4) More gravity tearing away at things, a childish view of physics.
5) OK, assume this is true. However, after such a close encounter with a
massive retrograde body, both planets would have their orbits
seriously altered. They would both slow down quite a bit,
changing their orbits drastically.
6) OK, funny how it misses everyone on the way back out...
7) This is just nuts. Suppose that it came around again to exactly the
same spot (a huge supposition), how did Marduk smash Tiamat and still not
lose enough energy to alter its orbit? It's even worse: if Tiamat
collided with Marduk and picked up the vector needed to head for the
Earth's orbit, how did it get circularized? It's flatly impossible (ask
anyone how knows about this sort of thing) for a body to have left the
asteroid belt and ended up in a circular orbit where the earth is without
some additional acceleration. Flatly impossible. So what
accelerated the entire earth by a couple kilometers per second to
circularize the orbit once it got down to the right slot? Sitchin offers
no answer.
Lots of other questions come to mind, too many to go into here. Some
examples I just can't resist:
* If Marduk is still in this retrograde orbit that crosses through the
outer planets every 3,600 years, why hasn't it disturbed the nice,
circular orbits of Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus? If the disruption caused
by puny Pluto (smaller than Earth's Moon and not in a retrograde
orbit) is noticeable, why not Marduk? Why haven't those asteroids been
swept out of there by Marduk in the millions of times it has cruised through?
* How did Kingu become tide-locked (one side facing always towards the
Earth) if it used to be a satellite of body twice as large and how did
its orbit get so circular after that rough ride?
* Where's all the missing mass? There just isn't an Earth-sized planet
worth of junk in the asteroid belt.
* Marduk should have swung through the asteroid belt sometime in the last
3,600 years. While the Chinese and others have very good astronomical
records over this period, there is no mention of what would no doubt have
been a very important event -- a bright new planet.
* Marduk, having an orbital period of 3,600 years must swing out about
230 AU from the Sun (about 6 times further out than Pluto). It seems to
me that any body in such an orbit (receiving almost no solar
radiation) would be dark and frozen most of the time. I know some people
argue that it might have a hot core that heats the surface. Fine, it's
still completely dark, nothing like earthly life could evolve there.
You get the picture, you can probably come up with a lot of examples of
your own. This is unquestionably the screwiest cosmology since
Velikovsky. Nothing in his text gives one any reasons to think that he's
even considered these sorts of problems, much less suggested answers.
Now we're set to meet the aliens. The next chapter introduces us to
Sitchin's theory about the people who have evolved and developed on
Marduk, then made their way to Earth. Along the way, we're treated to
the usual mangled Bible verses. There is one that I great difficulty finding (of
course, Sitchin was no help):
The Book of Job, having described the celestial collision, contains
these significant verses telling us where the lordly planet had gone:
Upon the Deep he marked out an orbit;
where light and darkness merge
Is his farthest limit. (Sitchin, 239-240)
Since the book of Job is pretty clear in it's purpose and contains
nothing but the sufferings of Job, I was sure this verse is weirdly
translated, but I couldn't find it. Luckily, David Byrne was reading this and emailed me the answer. This is Sitchin's translation of
Job 26:10. Here's what is really in the bible:
"He has marked out a circle* on the surface of the deep
as the boundary of light and darkness." (New American Bible)
*The footnote on "circle" reads, "26, 10: Circle: the horizon
of the ocean which serves as the boundary for the activity of
light and darkness."
Clearly, Sitchin has translated to his own benefit again. Translating
"
circle" to "
orbit" is quite creative.
After a bunch of additional Bible and Sumerian Epic quotes, we wind up at
figure 114, on page 246. The explanation of this figure shows Sitchin's
childish understanding of orbital dynamics.
This figure shows a view of the solar system with Earth to the left of
the sun, in a counter-clockwise orbit. Below and to the right is Marduk,
the twelfth planet. To show how some Sumerian verses might be adapted to
orbital dynamics, Sitchin draws a line from Earth down and to the right
to intersect Marduk at what is labeled point "A", where Marduk supposedly
first comes into view (at this angle, looking past the orbit of Mercury).
He also draws a line from Earth to point B, where Marduk is now just
past the orbit of Jupiter. Then he draws a line from Earth to point C,
where Marduk is in the orbit of the asteroids (hard to describe without
the figure). Each of these lines corresponds to a verse from an ancient
epic and the purpose of the figure is to show us how Marduk can actually
occupy all three positions in the course of its path through the solar system.
Only one problem with this figure: Marduk moves, but the earth stands
still! Yep, he missed this one by a mile. If Marduk was seen by
Earthlings along line "A", the Earth would be half-way (or more) around
the Sun before it could be seen at point "B", at which point the angle
would be completely different. The same goes for the line to point "C".
Now, you can argue that he's just showing what's possible, that the earth
could be moving, he's just showing us some of the possible angles. Fine,
what he doesn't mention, then, is that every angle is possible if
Marduk is in an orbit outside of the earth's -- Marduk could appear
anywhere in the ecliptic, just as the other outer planets do
(this, however wouldn't tie his quotes in quite so easily).
The whole figure is goofy.
On we go. Not only has Marduk scrambled a couple of planets, but now
life has evolved there. Life with DNA exactly the same as that
of Earth (we'll see how this happened later on). We get another dose
of psuedo-science:
Scientists have also come to the
unexpected conclusion that not only could life have evolved upon the
outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune), but it probably
DID evolve there. (Sitchin, 254)
This is
balderdash.
Check any and every source you can find. I can't find
anyone
who thinks this now or did in the past. While it is true that organic
molecules can be found in space (as Sitchin suggests), there is
no suggestion,
none, that DNA has evolved on the gas
giants. You can't prove a negative, but I challenge Sitchin
supporters out there to come up with a source for this one.
Think a little about Marduk, too. Here is a planet out past the orbit of
Mars at its closest. All of the other planets in this range are composed
mostly of liquid hydrogen, frozen methane and so on (Watters, 126-181).
No planet in this range will evolve an Earthly form of life. None of the
outer planets have liquid water (at a reasonable pressure anyway), none
have free oxygen (necessary for most earthly life), none have carbon or
nitrogen in any large amounts (necessary for earthly life), none receive
enough solar radiation for photosynthesis or other earthly life. Of
course, this is all speculation anyway, so why not just decide that
Marduk was different from all the other outer planets...
So, the Nephilim come from Marduk to earth, just to explore and exploit,
the same way we would. They come in ships that resemble rockets and they
desire the petrochemicals of earth (well, you would too, if you came from
a planet that was mostly liquid hydrogen). Sitchin goes to a lot of
trouble to make us believe all of this, but it's hard to keep believing
by this time.
Once they get to earth, they set up a base and start to create
improvements. This turns out to be tough though, as Sitchin mentions:
The task was understandably complex and time consuming. Enlil stayed in
Larsa for 6 shar's (21,600 years) while Nippur was under construction.
(Sitchin, 295)
Of course, we lowly humans have built all of the
cities of the earth
and all other
human works of engineering and construction in a mere
5,000 years or so (and, mostly, in the last 200). Evidently Nippur
was quite a feat of engineering. Of course,
nothing of any
Nephilim engineering survives to this day. The mud-brick
ziggurats of
the ancient Sumerians survive, but not the great engineering feats of
the Nephilim.
Now we're treated to a series of linguistic and geological arguments for
the location of the Nephilim's cities. One of the most interesting is
the map, Figure 130, shown on page 300. The map is used to show us why
the Nephilim decided to settle the area they did. Only one problem:
this is a current map and we know the area has changed drastically
over time, both in the boundaries of the land and the courses of the
rivers. For example:
Lower Mesopotamia, which includes both Sumer and Akkad, is a delta
reclaimed from the Persian Gulf whose waters once reached as far north as
Hit, and it is a delta of very recent formation. (Woolley, 2)
Of course, Sitchin claims the Nephilim selected this region more than
400,000 years ago as their base -- when it was underwater (Hit, by the
way, is north of present-day
Baghdad).
We're treated now to more and more inducements to believe this theory
(none of which ring very true to me personally), including one that
will ring the bell of any devout Jew: Sitchin seems to think that the
Ark of the Covenant, built by Moses to Gods' specification was
"principally a communications box" (Sitchin, 307). Oddly, Moses and
the Jews in general, came long after the Sumerians were dust and the
Nephilim had fled the scene (or were, at least, only in communication
with earth a little bit out of every 3600-year orbit). If it was a
"communications box", just whom was Moses going to call on it?
The next chapter has Sitchin interpreting more myths. The gods settle
southern Africa and decide to mine there. I won't attempt any critical
analysis of the section. There's not enough to go on. Sitchin rarely
tells you exactly what parts of the epics he's quoting and mixes them all
together as needed to make his point. A more serious scholar than myself
will be required to judge his interpretations in this section.
According to Sitchin, the Nephilim were hot to mine the Earth primarily
of what we would consider precious metals today: gold, silver and copper
(well, copper isn't too precious, but he says they needed all of these
strictly for engineering purposes anyway). They planned, evidently to
purify them and ship them back to the home planet, Marduk.
This is pretty nutty when you consider the incredible expense of lifting
them against Earth's gravity in rocket ships. It also ignores the fact
that iron, aluminum and titanium are needed in much greater volume
to build rockets - gold, silver and copper aren't tough enough for
structural uses. Why didn't the Nephilim mine the asteroids where there
is no gravity well to overcome?
The lesser Nephilim gods start to get mad, however. All that mining is
harder labor than they had bargained for. Sitchin grants that they
probably used some sort of sophisticated tools, but that the labor was
still too much for them. The lesser gods throw down their tools and go
on strike against Enlil.
Enlil is pretty mad and almost decides to take up arms against the
strikers, but decides not to. He thinks about throwing in his godly
towel and going home, but one of the other gods comes up with a brilliant
idea: they'll create some slaves!
Instead of building better machines or robots, they decide to do some
genetic engineering and combine their own DNA with that of the
proto-humans already inhabiting the earth and create a new breed of man
smart enough to be a decent slave.
The next chapter goes into the proof of this assertion in more detail.
Of course, there is the old Genesis tale of God creating man "in his
own image" and so forth. Sitchin also argues:
But evolution cannot account for the appearance of Homo Sapiens, which
happened virtually overnight in terms of the millions of years which
evolution requires, and with no evidence of the earlier stages which
would indicate a gradual change from Homo Erectus. (Sitchin, 340)
I direct you to TalkOrigins.org (http://www.talkorigins.org/),
where you can find all of the evidence for human evolution, laid out
in great detail. Judge for yourself.
Also, Richard Leakey, who has been personally present for so many of
the important archeological discoveries of this century, sees no
problem in proclaiming that man has evolved steadily from proto-humans
to homo sapiens sapiens. He presents the competing theories of how it
might have happened quite eloquently (Leakey, chapters 12 and 13), but
never seems to doubt that it happened for a moment.
Sitchin even goes a bit farther. He claims, "during the celestial
collision, their planet had seeded the earth with its life". (Sitchin,
344) In other words, the cosmic ping-pong match that cracked Tiamat in
half and sent one half down to earth orbit to become earth also
transferred life (in the form of DNA, etc) over to Tiamat to evolve,
eventually, into the proto-humans (and incidentally, all other earthly
life). Of course, Marduk was still hot enough to be "plastic" at this
point (remember the steps numbered before), so the chance of highly
evolved organic molecules being present seems slight.
Now, we know that Tiamat was molten after the collision, since it
was half a planet that somehow flowed back into a round shape (and,
despite Sitchin's claims, the earth is round, to within a couple
of parts per thousand). Somehow, however, the fragile organic molecules
of life managed to survive this rough handling. After a billion years or
more, when earth had cooled and had oceans, these organic molecules were
still around to kick-start life on earth.
My "skeptic" circuits have burned out by this point, however, so I'll
just let this silliness lie.
It gets even better, however. Since the biological science of the
Nephilim was limited, they decided to gestate these new slaves inside
their own women (goddesses, that is). The Nephilim, evidently, were not
exactly into women's lib. To get around all this awful mine labor, they
decided to let their women labor and birth a bunch of slaves to take
their place. Imagine suggesting this on Earth today...
This scheme worked and the new slaves were gleefully put to work with
"pickaxes".
So, what happened to the Nephilim, why aren't they under foot today?
Well the next chapter tells us. First, the Nephilim didn't intend man
to procreate on his own. They intended for the goddesses to manufacture
man in the assembly line of their own bellies. Why they would be this
stupid, Sitchin doesn't say. However, man soon learned to reproduce
(amazingly discovering sex unaided), a feat that didn't sit particularly
well with the gods.
This reproductive ability, evidently practiced to extreme by man, along
with man's tendency to violence and other unwholesomeness angered the
gods that had created man (you can see how this follows Genesis, if you
fracture the quotes just right). So, the gods "held a council and voted
on the destruction of mankind". (Sitchin, 381)
The next chapter (we're getting near the end, hold on) tells of the
Deluge that the gods allowed to destroy most of mankind. To cut the
story to its basics, the gods foresaw a great Deluge coming. Since they
had decided to kill off man anyhow, they decided not to tell any men
about it and let the Deluge wipe mankind out for them. Enki, however,
had a soft spot for man and arranged for one group of men to escape the
flood in a boat, along with a bunch of animals.
Since the Sumerian descriptions of the Flood and the deliverance of
Man from that Flood by divine intervention are very similar to
Biblical tales of Noah, Sitchin has no trouble bucking up this story
with many quotes from the Bible and Sumerian epics. The flood, he
asserts (on what I consider very flimsy evidence) was caused by a
gigantic sheet of ice breaking off the Antarctic and falling into the
ocean, all at once.
The Nephilim's science was completely unable to cope with this coming
flood. To escape the Flood, the Nephilim retreated into orbit
(suggesting that the flood was indeed world-wide and very, very deep --
moving to orbit is much more expensive than moving to high ground), where
they watched all of their centuries of engineering efforts being wiped
out (they evidently had never built a single building or artifact on high
ground -- not one shred of their works has ever been found). Somehow,
there was enough water to cover everything and wipe out all of the works
of the Nephilim, but it "subsides" quickly (where does it go?) and the
men in the boat can get out and get on with their lives.
Feeling a bit guilty, the Nephilim land back on earth and decide to teach
the upstart humans that survived the flood enough agriculture and animal
husbandry to get by. They had had enough, however, of trying to colonize
the earth. From now on, they would only visit occasionally and help man
out here and there (which, in Sitchin's view, accounts for much of the
rest of mankind's advances over the rest of ancient times).
Of course, there is no geological or archeological evidence for a
gigantic world-wide flood 13,000 years ago (the date Sitchin uses) that I
can find. Perhaps an alert reader (if any are so by this time) can shed
additional light.
There you have it! The Twelfth Planet laid bare.
Of course, Sitchin has more books. Lots more books. I'm tired, though,
and I'll leave them for someone else.
Conclusion
Clearly, Sitchin is a smart man. He weaves a complicated tale from
the bits and pieces of evidence that survive from ancient Sumeria to
the present day. Just as clearly, I think Sitchin is capable of
academic transgressions (fracturing quotes, ignoring dissenting
facts), "borrowing" of intellectual property (those tables he copied)
and flights of intellectual fancy (the whole book, really). Worst of
all, he seems utterly innocent of astronomy and other assorted
fields of modern science that are quite germaine to his subject.
He nevertheless paints a picture that is very attractive. One wants
to believe it, for it explains so many things. Intellectual honesty,
however, prevents anyone with common sense, access to archeological
and astronomical data and the ability to read from taking his book
seriously. In the end, I think he's just another clever huckster
making a living selling books that treat folks to a tale they want to
believe in.