12th Planet: Book I of the Earth Chronicles Mass Market Paperback – Illustrated, 27 March 2007

Nice. Too bad ur not visited by FBi or CIA. Could have become a thriller.

One of the most important books I have ever read. I must appreciate the author how minutely and painstakingly he has interpreted ancient texts and bible and uncovered theory of origin of earth and mankind.

Having already read Graham Hancock’s ‘Fingerprints of the Gods’ and ‘Underworld’; Christopher Dunn’s ‘The Giza Power Plant’, Elisabeth Haich’s ‘Initiation’ , this book was in my reading bucket list for too long.Though a bit dated, 12th Planet by Zecharia Sitchin, translated now into more than 25 languages, manages to sit us on the front row to raise the curtain over the celestial epic of creation and mankind’s history. Dismissed by some as mere science fiction, but revered by many, Sitchin was one of the few scholars able to read the Sumerian cuneiform tablets –at least in the 70’s when the book was written, and has taken great pain to combine Biblical narrative with ancient Sumerian clay-tablet texts to give an alternate version of pre-history.Outrageous, controversial, literalism of myth, a story of False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-religion: take your pick from the ever-increasing criticism against Sitchin and his works, but one can not miss his scholarly minute interpretations of obscure texts and engaging decipherment of the ancient pre-history – disguised as an entertaining read to infatuate the reader. At the very least, it does just that – an entertaining and mind-bending attempt to find the perfect Cindrella-shoe-fit for mankind’s evolution – another alternate-history version trying to find common ground in mythology – a mindgame of interpreting mythology.Better still, it will drive one into reading more about ancient pre-history of the Near-East. Sitchin can not be the final stop in one’s quest for knowledge on pre-history.Finally, as Graham Hancock –the famous author- says : ”One of the problems with the game of interpreting myth : the meaning ascribed may be more in the eye of the beholder than anything else..”For a long time, at least the Western world believed that the modern human civilization is a gift of Greece and Rome. As the counter-argument, Sitchin painstakingly arranges the pantheon of 12 Greek Gods along side the 12 Roman Gods, and the Egyptian pantheon of 12 Gods headed by Ra, and even Vedic Gods, to postulate the uncanny similarity between all of them pointing to a single Sumerian source of origin-to the highland region between Tigris and Euphrates. That the principal Greek deity “the master of the celestial fire”- , Zeus is comparable to Roman Ju-Pitar ( Jupiter) associated with Bull or Taurus constellation; and also to the head of the Rig-Vedic proto-Indo-European pantheon of Gods- Dyaus Pita; and proving that Zeus arrived in Greece from still older Sumer across the Mediterranean Sea via the Minotaur-worshipping island of Crete , the author proposes their coincidences pointing to a common root in Sumerian high culture and its pantheon of Gods.Day & Night each divided into 12 hours each, the three skies each divided into 12 zodiac constellations, the annual cycle made up of 12 months , and even our decimal counting system has the first 12 numbers as unique before reverting to decimal numbers ( thirteen, fourteen, etc): indicating to an ancient sexagesimal counting system of the Sumerians.1. Why the outer-most planet Pluto is having an orbital plane dramatically different than other planets?2. What is the origin of the neat belt of asteroids , arranged like a bracelet, separating the inner planets from the outer ones?3. How could the ancients ever observe and conclude the exceptionally long celestial events , such as the precession cycle, the Great Year of 25,920 years that is divided into twelve constellations of 2160 years each for the twelve Zodiac signs – the process where the very axis of our wobbling planet makes a circular clock-wise rotation around its own axis once in 25920 years, , i.e. 72 ( =25920/360 degrees) years to traverse 1 degree, and 2160 ( 72 x 30) years to traverse one zodiac sign of 30 degrees, and 4320 for two signs or 60 degrees , and so on.4. Why the number “7” is so important in our folklore?5. What is the origin of iconography associated with the Cross, and a winged planet found throughout religious texts?6. What can be the common source of the “ great flood” that is recorded in the cultural mythologies of almost all religions such as Noah of Ark story, the story of Matsya Avatar in Hinduism, story of Viracocha and Quetzalcoatl arriving in Central America from the far eastern sea on rafts of serpents, etc?7. What historical event is represented by the mythological description of Adam & Eve’s tasting of the forbidden fruit?8. What can be the reason of exact mathematical separation of 3600 years marking the spurts in mankind’s march to civilization : the Mesolithic period circa 11000 BC, the pottery phase circa 7400 BC, and the sudden cultures of Mesopotamia circa 3600BC, followed by Egyptian & Indus Valley ?Sitchin proposes answer to each of these and many more questions in building his founding citadel of proofs of an alien connection to our planet: That there existed a lost Planet Tiamat in the early stage of planetary evolution, which was collided and broken by a rogue Planet Marduk pulled into the solar system by gravitational force, resulting in creation of planet Earth and the asteroid belt. The planet Marduk is the 12th planet that orbits the sun in a highly elliptical orbit once only every 3600 years. Around 4,45,000 years ago, the highly intelligent Nefilim or Anunnaki race of the 12th planet descended on the earth, counted by them as the 7th planet from the outer-most edge of Solar System- and set up permanent earth stations in Mesopotamia. These were the Gods that once ruled our planet- a pantheon of 12 Gods who shaped earth’s sudden evolution: Anu, Enki, Enlil, Ninhursag,Marduk, Ishkur, Nannar, Ninurta, Nabu, Inanna, Utu & Nergel. Our lives and civilization is not evolved linearly from lesser life forms to monkeys to man as proposed by Darwin: it is the result of a planned scientific experimentation by these Gods.The pioneer of such inter-planetary exploration was Enki, or Ea ; son of Anu – the chief deity of the 12th planet. After 50,000 years; Enlil – brother of Enki- is descended down on earth to establish the inter-planetary mission control center at Nippur, Mesopotamia; while Enki – synonymous with Greek God Poseidon – is given the charge of the Lower World – Southern Africa, to establish gold mining operations, and establish sea-routes from Africa to Mesopotamia, where the mined gold was refined into ingots at the Bad-Tibira metallurgical center in the fossil-energy rich Mesopotamia, and transported to the 12th planet from the spaceport at Sippar. About 1,00,000 years pass by, and the workers at the gold mining facility revolt and complain to Anu about the never-ending hard work in the dark depths of the mines . The Gods decided to create a robot-force to carry out the mundane work; and the homo-sapien was created by artificial fertilization of God’s male-sperm into the female-egg of an ape-woman, and the ovum of the homo-erectus was then implanted within the womb of a female God. The ‘thinking man’ was born.After repeated experimentation, the perfect “model” – Adam & Eve were created, and thereafter mass production by genetic engineering was started, with Birth Goddesses. However, the mass produced perfect mankind was sterile and without the reproductive genes. Adam and Eve, it is reported, were the first homo sapiens who -with help from the friendly God Enki – were mutated from this deficient reproductive genes and were able to reproduce. This revolutionary event in man’s history is mythologically depicted as Adam & Eve’s tasting of the forbidden fruit of “knowledge” in the Garden of Eden, causing further friction among Enki and Enlil. Starting from this event, earth’s population multiplied boundlessly, and more-seriously, from the God’s view, rampant inter-mingling of the Gods and now-compatible Humans ensued. What infuriated Enlil & his assembly of Gods, was not any of moralistic concerns for the human species, but the degradation of the Gods themselves to nothing more than “flesh”. Enlil then ordered to completely wipe-off the human race by cutting off the food-supply – by introducing wide-ranging famines and starvation deaths.Around 11000 BC, when the Gods –specially Enlil- were planning to completely destroy the human race by starving them to death, they foresaw the coincidence with a forth-coming greatest natural disaster on the planet – the massive Deluge caused by earth’s crustal displacement of the Antarctic ice layer, triggered by massive weight of ice layers, and influenced by the 12th planet’s next orbital fly-by across earth, marking the end of the Ice Age. The Global Floods is reported by every religious texts, and mankind’s dramatic survival in the post-Deluvial world.Enky- however could not keep such a secret only to himself and provided all the design details to construct a submarine to Noah, who was able to sustain the Great Flood, and re-establish life after the floods receded. The Gods, fled the earth during the Deluge in spacecrafts, and when the earth was being devastated by unthinkably massive floods, were sky-born and pressed against the glass-windows of the rockets looking down, unable to control their emotions seeing the race they had created themselves getting wiped out. As the floods receded, the Gods found an unexpected sight – Noah & few others have been able to save themselves – and they returned to Noah’s abode and helped mankind to establish the first city at Kish, followed by flowering of “sudden” high civilizations at Mesopotamia, Egypt and at Indus Valley around 3600BC.

excellent book received in excellent condition

It's just amazing needs little patience and slow reading to understand. Wonderful work. Whole earth chronicle is just going to blast my head for sure

Good but paper quality very poor

I heard a lot about this book and I purchased it. I read some of the part of this book, here is my honest review -1. The book is interesting to read because of the ease of writing.2. This book explained a lot about archeological aspects about the ancient world of Mesopotemian or Sumerian mythology and texts but somehow it looks different than real archeological evidence.3. Sitichin elaborated it uniquely for readers and I like the way he gives the details of ancient world and mythology.For me its an overall fascinating to read and get knowledge about the ancient world of sumerian

I felt I brought this book from a street vendor. The pages are so thin. Not worth spending so much money on a worthless printing of a good book.