Chapter 5 -  Sitchin’s 12th planet and
                  Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods    
   In the present chapter, I will discuss one of the less accepted theories of our development. I believe that by looking at even less accepted ideas, we will be able to build a better understanding of how our perfect stress-free existence is the best that anyone can hope for.

​     One theory about how Homo sapiens actually descended from aliens from another planet was contained in a series of books by a scientist, Zecharia Sitchin. (None of these books are available after the inferno in 2051, but my great-great-great-grandfather Douglas had a number of references to them in his writings.)
      Sitchin grew up in Mandatory Palestine (became later the state of Israel) and had a university degree in Economics. He was interested in Mesopotamian iconography and in 1952 he taught himself Sumerian cuneiform and translated some Sumerian texts probably dating from about 5,000 years ago. He claimed to be the first to do a good and accurate translation of these Sumerian tablets, which described history dating back to a time long before Homo Sapiens came into existence.
​      His translations and interpretations of these texts indicate that an alien society sent astronauts here to explore and find gold dust they needed for their planet. Sitchin also compared his work with Assyrian, Babylonian, and Hittite texts in order to in later work have as true interpretations as possible. Sitchin maintained that the astronauts were Anunnaki, who came from the planet Nibiru which orbits beyond Neptune in an elongated 3,600 year elliptical orbit around our sun and thus is very seldom visible from earth.
     The first of his books The 12th Planet describes the orbit of this planet as well as some of the dwellings on it where the “gods” lived. In this book, he relates the forming of the planet earth as a result of a collision between an asteroid and the planet Tiamat. (Tiamat is named in what is usually assumed to be Babylonian mythology of creation in script written in cuneiform where Tiamat is the goddess of creation.) 

       Stichin describes how Enki came to earth with 20 astronauts including his wife, and how later an ape-man (perhaps Homo erectus) was cross-bred with DNA from Enki’s wife to create a group of creatures that they could have, more or less, as slaves to mine gold for them. The first of these creatures was called Adam.
     After some thousands of years, there arose problems and Stichin’s translation of the ancient Sumerian tablets includes what he calls the Deluge (probably the flood that Noah in the