Anyone who has heard the word “Anunnaki” knows that it refers to aliens from outer space who are of reptilian origin. They are believed by various sects or just people with a weak psyche and a low level of education. However, in reality, this word does not mean what everyone thinks it means.
Anunnakis in our lives and ancient Sumer
The recent fuss made around the Allatra sect has made the unusual word “anunnaki” popular. Many people see it as something funny and, at least for most people, it is extremely unusual. But everyone knows that its synonym is the word “reptilians.”
Modern conspiracy theories say that a race of lizard-like aliens once came from outer space and has been living among us ever since. The “evidence” for this theory is increasingly absurd. However, the term “Anunnaki” has a very earthly history.
It all began in the Middle East, in the interfluve of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. 4-5 thousand years ago, the Sumerian-Akkadian civilization existed in these places. It was so long ago that we know about it only from its own texts and archaeological excavations.
We don’t know everything about it, but we are sure that it was a well-developed culture at the time. Of course, its carriers were people. They had their own beliefs, which we can investigate by the texts on clay tablets.
It was there that researchers read the word, which they pronounced “anunnaki.” It apparently comes from the name of the sky god Anu and means his children. As far as they could understand, this term was used by the ancient inhabitants of the Mesopotamia to refer to the younger gods and spirits of nature and the underworld.
They did not worship them in any special way; people simply believed that every stream or forest had its own soul that deserved respect. Here we can draw parallels with the ancient Greek dryads and nymphs, or with the Western European alves, who later turned into elves. Or with Ukrainian mavkas, foresters, and other “evil spirits.”
Zekharia Sitchin
Until the second half of the twentieth century, no one had any idea that the Anunnaki were somehow connected with outer space or with reptiles. They were ordinary “younger gods” who could look like anything, but they were mostly imagined as people with various animal elements.
The basis of the modern myth about them was laid by a guy named Erich von Deniken. It was this writer, who was repeatedly sentenced for fraud, who in his book Chariots of the Gods presented us with the theory of paleocontact, the idea that aliens came to Earth sometime in the past and influenced the development of our civilization.
Von Deyneken’s book, published in the 1960s, does not mention reptilian people or the word “Anunnaki,” but it became the basis for all subsequent layers of urban legends. In 1976, it was used by another controversial writer, Zechary Sitchin.
An ethnic Jew, Sitchin was born in Baku, grew up in Mandatory Palestine (modern Israel), and lived almost all his life in the United States, where he worked as a journalist and newspaper editor. He learned Acadian and Sumerian on his own and began translating the texts of clay tablets because he decided that the professional orientalists who had studied them before him had misunderstood the ancient texts.
In his book The 12th Planet, Sitchin proclaimed that Sumerian-Acadian myths should be understood literally. He extracted from them the concept of “Nibiru” and explained that it means a planet that has an elongated orbit and approaches the Sun every 3600 years. It is on this planet that the Anunnaki aliens live, who in his interpretation did not yet have reptilian features.
According to Sitchin, 450 thousand years ago, the Anunnaki first visited the Earth and interbred with representatives of the Homo Erectus species, giving rise to modern humans and civilization. They successfully ruled it for several thousand years, until they took offense to humans and decided to destroy them.
Then the author of The 12th Planet begins a not-so-science fiction story with the rescue of people on a submarine and the Anunnaki’s nuclear war with each other. Among other things, it was Sitchin who equated the Anunnaki with the giants of the Nephilim mentioned in the Bible. If you have heard somewhere that they are the same thing, you should know that it was he who proclaimed them to be identical.
Anunnaki and astronomy
Of course, paleontologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and orientalists in the 1970s reasonably assessed Sitchin’s work as unprofessional nonsense. Everything he wrote looks no less ridiculous from the point of view of astronomy.
Even the title “The 12th Planet” refers to the author’s assertion that the ancient Sumerians knew exactly twelve planets: 8 that are recognized by our modern astronomy, as well as the Sun, Moon, Pluto, and Nibiru.
Why Sitchin didn’t include Eris, Ceres, and a bunch of ice dwarfs orbiting Neptune, which are also quite planets (albeit dwarfs), and didn’t forget Pluto, is unclear. Not to mention the fact that the existence of a large body in the Kuiper belt, whose orbit would allow it to approach the Earth every 3,600 years, is not confirmed by modern observations.
The modern mythology of the Anunnaki
The modern myth of the Anunnaki was formalized in the early 1990s by former football player and sports commentator David Icke. He decided that there was a worldwide conspiracy all around us and reinterpreted Sitchin’s work in the spirit of conspiracy theories.
It was he who took the idea of a secret conspiracy of reptilian people, which had existed in the circles of world conspiracy theorists since the late nineteenth century, and announced that it were in fact the Anunnaki, who secretly controlled everything. His ideas then spread across the Internet and were adopted by conspiracy theorists around the globe.
The hysteria around the end of the world, which was supposed to come in 2012 according to the Mayan calendar, played a significant role in the spread of the Anunnaki myths. Of course, the inhabitants of Central America could not be connected to the Sumerians in any way, but the supporters of the theory did not care about this fact at all. Some of them began to argue that it was the arrival of Nibiru that would cause the “Anunnaki invasion.” Although they did not eventually arrive, this did not prevent the spread of conspiracy theories. So we will probably hear about these amazing creatures more than once.
