A news item in the Feb. 21 issue of the Inquirer about the technical possibility of extracting or mining “rare earth” minerals or elements in outer space, i.e. outside the earth, caught my interest.

Although these elements are relatively abundant on Earth, “their extraction from surrounding rock requires laborious and waste intensive processing.”

So scientists are looking beyond the earth, such as the moon, stars and asteroids, for new supplies. They believe this will become a reality within 20 to 30 years, according to a recent “Off-Earth Mining Forum” in Sydney, Australia, where “a cross section of the space and mining industry’s top minds has gathered to swap ideas about the latest advances in space and mining technology.”

The above news item calls to mind the theory first proposed by researcher Zecharia Sitchin in his two books, “The 12th Planet” (published in 1976) and “Genesis Revisited” (1990) that 445,000 years ago, it was the other way around.

The Anunnaki, i.e. beings from another planet called Nibiru, landed on Earth during that time. In the Christian Bible, they were called the “Nefilim” which was mistranslated as either “giant” or “fallen angels.” According to Sitchin, this term actually means, in Hebrew, “Those who have come down from the heavens to the earth.”

Why did the Anunnaki or Nefilim come to Earth? According to Sitchin, it was to find gold, which their planet needed to protect their atmosphere from harmful radiation. They were faced with a similar problem that we now face on Earth, the growing hole in our ozone layer. To protect the planet Nibiru, they needed to suspend gold particles in the atmosphere as a shield.

The Anunnakis searched the different planets for gold and found the precious mineral most abundant on Earth, specifically in South Africa. They came to Earth in groups of 50 every 3,600 years of earth time. Some Anunnakis decided to settle on Earth.

Apparently, at the time Nefilims or Annunakis came to Earth, there were already humanoid beings who considered these space visitors as immortal gods.

They didn’t know that one year on Nibiru is 3,600 years of earth years. They were what the Bible called “The Sons of God,” and they married the “Daughters of Men” whom they found to be fair.

Myths

“All the ancient people,” according to Sitchin, “believed in gods who had descended to Earth from the heavens and who could at will soar back to heaven afterward. But these tales were never given credit, having been branded by scholars from the beginning as myths.” And modern astronomers do not believe in the existence of planet Nibiru (also called Marduk).

The sources from which Sitchin derived his theory about the Anunnaki were from ancient texts and legends of the first civilization called Sumer, the ancient name of Southern Mesopotamia. These texts were preserved in the oldest writing known to man, called “cuneiform,” which extremely few people understood. It took many years of research and deciphering these ancient cuneiform writings before their meaning became known to modern man.

“The ancient texts,” according to Sitchin, “described the Anunnaki as the rank-and-file gods who performed the tasks of gathering gold from Earth which they found to be extremely laborious.”

To free themselves from such labors, the gods decided to create “a primitive worker” to do the menial tasks. The gods created such a being after their image and likeness. That was the first Adam, meaning “of the Earth.”

“In the Sumerian version,” said Sitchin, “the decision to create man was made by the gods in their assembly. Significantly, the book of Genesis uses the plural Elohim (literally, “deities”) to denote God.”

It seems that history is about to repeat itself. Whereas 445,000 years ago the people of Planet Nibiru came to Earth in search of gold and other minerals needed by their planet, two or three decades from now, man will go to other planets, stars and asteroids to find precious minerals needed by Earth. Will man also create a being in his image and likeness?

Of course, such a radical theory that Sitchin has boldly proposed cannot go unchallenged by others. One critic, who brandished his academic credentials in ancient history and languages, has come out to say that, “Sitchin is wrong and does not know what he is talking about because he does not have the academic qualifications” that this critic says he has.

But this is typical of those who oppose unorthodox or unconventional ideas. They attack their motives, character and qualifications, not their arguments. Granted that Sitchin made a mistake in his interpretation of the word Nefilim, it does not mean everything he said in his book is wrong.

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