If you are inclined to dismiss ideas of intelligent life beyond our home planet as utterly unfounded and improbable, reading a brilliant scholar may leave you having second thoughts. At least, that is how I felt after trying to find ways around perceived biblical inconsistencies and ending up reading his books.

Not too long ago, in the 1970's, books written by Erich von Daniken (Chariots of the Gods?, Signs of the Gods?) became best-sellers. These were not the ordinary UFO stuff. These called popular attention to enigmatic traces of ancient civilizations supposedly spawned by extraterrestrial visitors. The lingering proposition is that it is not our fault that all those enigmas are there but, rather, we could be at fault if we don't even bother to investigate.

I am a deeply religious Christian who have experienced the power of Christ's name first-hand. (Don't be impressed. Most everybody else claim that.) But I am not dogmatic. In fact, it was the process of attacking the basis of my own faith that I arrived at these ideas and, in my own way, strengthened my religious convictions.

One man, a Jewish scholar by the name of Zecharia Sitchin, did much of the investigation that explosively gave coherence to these mysteries and came up with the most astonishing hypothesis to date. May my brethren forgive me, but it seems that we humans were the first genetically-modified organisms, a hybrid between an advanced hominid and an anthropomorphic alien race of giants.

By piecing together archeological findings with data from original versions of ancient scriptures including the Hebrew Bible, Sitchin sort of chronicled the Earth's prehistory starting from a cataclysmic event that formed our Solar System to its present arrangement. The so-called Earth Chronicles are based mostly on a modern technological interpretations of data from the Enuma elish, the Mesopotamian version of Creation believed to predate the biblical version by millenia.

The first ever civilization known to us is the Sumerian one. It blossomed all too suddenly some 6,000 years ago with no known precursor. Yet it had all the features of an advanced culture, from a written language to high-rise temples. Amazingly, they already knew then much about our Solar System that are only just now being confirmed by our space probes. The ancient Sumerians even had a plausible explanation as to why the planet (now plutoid) Pluto came to be.

Sitchin proposed that if the ancient Sumerians knew so much about outer space it shouldn't be hard to accept their claims as to who gave them their knowledge. The Sumerian dingir, the Akkadian ilu and the Hebrew elohim seem to be the source of these knowledge. And they came from outer space.

Since childhood, Sitchin had this burning desire to learn more about the Nefilim, a term which his teacher insisted to mean "giants". Arguing that the literal meaning is "those who were cast down", he went on to build a scholarly career around the subject. What follows is my summation of his hypothesis.

A very long time ago, perhaps millions of years, our Solar System was not as it is now. There was no planet Earth then. There was a big watery planet called Tiamat (the biblical Tehom?) orbitting the sun where the Asteroid Belt is now. Tiamat was so big that its gravity was causing instability in the orbits of its neighbors.

Then, from deep space, another big planet named Nibiru, traversing the expanse of space like a comet, came too close to that former Solar System and got pulled in. Two of its moons ("winds") not only "hovered over the waters" but hit Tiamat and split her apart. About half of her were broken to pieces and became the "firmament", the rakiah or "hammered-out bracelet". It is what we now know as the Asteroid Belt. The intact half was dislodged from its original orbit to be where it is now, the planet Earth. The Greeks appropriately called the Earth Gaia or "the cleaved planet". Its healing wound is still gaping as the Pacific Ocean.

After that cataclysmic event, Nibiru was permanently caught in solar orbit, returning here every 3,600 years. The ancients referred to it as "The Lord" in honor of their foremost deity. Everytime it returns, "The Lords' Day", it brings with it a trail of asteroids that rain on us as "fire and brimstones". Its gravity causes massive earthquakes and, as it did the last time when Joshua was engaged in battle and the sun stood still at the valley of Gabaon, stop the Earth's rotation.

Nibiru was (and still is?) inhabited by the Anunnaki or "those who from heaven to earth came". On one of their planet's return trips to our Solar System, they decided to land and colonize the Earth. They made their base of operations at the Edin ("Place of the Righteous Ones"), somewhere in what is present-day Iraq. (Yeah, there is more than just oil in Iraq. Whatever is still undiscovered under its hallowed grounds should interest the intelligence agencies of powerful nations.)

The Anunnaki were primarily searching for gold. Their mining operations were mostly in Africa. (This explains why carbon-dating of ancient mines arrived at times when there should have been no humans yet.) The head of operations was their chief scientist, the eldest son of the Nibiruan ruler Anu. His name was Enki ("Lord of the Earth") and his symbol was the double-helix (DNA) which may have been the origin of the entwined serpent symbol for Medicine. Enki had a younger brother named Enlil ("Lord of Command"). Enlil's mother, however, was the official spouse of the Nibiruan ruler. The rivalry of the two went beyond the name-calling where Enlil dubbed Enki as the "serpent".

In time, the Anunnaki miners began to complain and then rebelled. It was at this point that Enki suggested fashioning the adamu ("primitive worker"). It seems that the cataclysmic event that shaped our solar System also caused germs to transfer from Nibiru to Earth which spawned the evolutionary chain. Enki, aware of an advanced hominid, proposed to "bind upon it the image of the ilu". Genetic manipulation fashioned the first humans.

The resulting hybrid, with hominid and Anunnaki genes, couldn't procreate initially. The immune system of the female was rejecting the male sperm. The burden of child-bearing rested upon Anunnaki surrogate mothers, and they were fed up. So, to remedy the situation, Enki took something from the bone of the male adamu and somehow corrected the rejection. Sitchin related it with present-day bone-marrow transplant. In short, humans began procreating on their own. This enraged Enlil, perhaps because he knew what was coming.

Even for the seemingly immortal Anunnaki, the 3,600 years it took to see their families on Nibiru again was a long time. Realizing that they could have human wives and even have children with them, they took wives. And so the stories of demi-gods and kings claiming to be descended from some god. But Enlil abhorred the practice and secretly sought the annihilation of Mankind.

Enlil's chance came on one of Nibiru's return trips. At the time, the huge ice glacier that covered Antartica was threatening to collapse into the Indian Oean causing a global deluge. The passage of Nibiru would make it so, and Enlil caused every Anunnaki to swear not to tell the humans. But Enki found a way to alert his favorite human - the equivalent of the biblical Noah.

Realizing they needed workers, Enlil eventually consented to letting Mankind flourish. But the rivalry with Enki continued to their children and grandchildren. These often went to war using their human subjects as pawns. So it wasn't God killing innocent civilians after all but the warring Anunnaki.

In one such war, the grandson of Enki, Nabu, infiltrated the population of what may be termed as "sinning cities" to recruit support against the ruling Anunnaki based in the Edin. The Edin may have sent the "kings of the East" who defeated the "sinning cities" and their allies but who were later ovepowered by Abraham, himself originally from Ur of the "East". To stop Nabu and the "sinning cities", a son of Enlil and a double-faced son of Enki used nuclear weapons.

Even before these devastating wars, Marduk, the father of Nabu tried to take over power by erecting an alternative launch tower at Bab-ili ("Gateway of the Ilu"). He was not successful and, to divide powers, the ruling Anunnaki decided to scatter Mankind as well.

Should I go on? Nah, the books are best understood by reading them yourself. Besides, the pictures and illustrations of evidence supporting the hypothesis would not fit in here. But, no worries, I have arranged with Amazon for a special page where you can access these books. The page is Bro. Dan At Amazon.

I suggest reading the books in the following chronological order:

The 12th Planet

The Stairway To Heaven

The Wars Of Gods And Men

The Lost Realms

When Time Began

Divine Encounters

Genesis Revisited

Enjoy!