Zecharia Sitchin on the Hidden Meaning of the Past & his Career
William Henry interviews
Zecharia Sitchin about the hidden meaning of the past. This wide ranging interview covers
Sitchin's whole career and concentrates on his sources and the research he did for his great
Earth Chronicles series. Then
Linda Howe with new revelations about the
Shag Harbor Incident, the best-documented
UFO case in history!
Zecharia Sitchin (
Russian: Заха́рия Си́тчин;
Azerbaijani: Zaxariya Sitçin) (July 11,
1920 -- October 9,
2010) was an Azerbaijani-born
American author of books proposing an explanation for human origins involving ancient astronauts. Sitchin attributes
the creation of the ancient
Sumerian culture to
the Anunnaki, which he states was a race of extraterrestrials from a planet beyond
Neptune called
Nibiru. He believed this hypothetical planet of Nibiru to be in an elongated, elliptical orbit in the Earth's own
Solar System, asserting that
Sumerian mythology reflects this view. Sitchin's books have sold millions of copies worldwide and have been translated into more than 25 languages.
Similar to earlier authors such as
Immanuel Velikovsky and
Erich von Däniken, Sitchin advocated hypotheses in which extraterrestrial events supposedly played a significant role in ancient human history.
According to Sitchin's interpretation of Mesopotamian iconography and symbology, outlined in his
1976 book
The 12th Planet and its sequels, there is an undiscovered planet beyond Neptune that follows a long, elliptical orbit, reaching the inner solar system roughly every 3,600 years. This planet is called Nibiru (although
Jupiter was the planet associated with the god
Marduk in
Babylonian cosmology). According to Sitchin, Nibiru (whose name was replaced with MARDUK in original legends by the Babylonian ruler of the same name in an attempt to co-opt the creation for himself, leading to some confusion among readers) collided catastrophically with
Tiamat (a goddess in the
Babylonian creation myth the
Enûma Eliš), which he considers to be another planet once located between
Mars and Jupiter. This collision supposedly formed the planet Earth, the asteroid belt, and the comets. Sitchin states that when struck by one of planet Nibiru's moons, Tiamat split in two, and then 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 (called "the twelfth planet" because, Sitchin claimed, the
Sumerians' gods-given conception of the Solar System counted all eight planets, plus
Pluto, the Sun and the
Moon) 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
Genesis. He wrote that they evolved after Nibiru entered the solar system and first arrived on Earth probably 450,000 years ago, looking for minerals, especially gold, which they found and mined in
Africa. Sitchin states that these "gods" were the rank-and-file workers of the colonial expedition to Earth from planet Nibiru.
Sitchin wrote that Enki suggested that to relieve the Anunnaki, who had mutinied over their dissatisfaction with their working conditions, that primitive workers (
Homo sapiens) be created by genetic engineering as slaves to replace them in the gold mines by crossing extraterrestrial genes with those of
Homo erectus. According to Sitchin, ancient inscriptions report that the human civilization in
Sumer, Mesopotamia, was set up under the guidance of these "gods", and human kingship was inaugurated to provide intermediaries between mankind and the Anunnaki (creating the "divine right of kings" doctrine). Sitchin believes that fallout from nuclear weapons, used during a war between factions of the extraterrestrials, is the "evil wind" described in the
Lament for Ur that destroyed Ur around
2000 BC. Sitchin states the exact year is
2024 BC. Sitchin says that his research coincides with many biblical texts, and that biblical texts come originally from Sumerian writings.