Zecharia Sitchin Page II

If an astronaut were ever to corroborate an aspect of my writings, I would have expected it to be in regard to planetary matters. Surprisingly, such a corroboration concerns, of all things, the Olmecs of ancient Mexico.

The unexpected corroboration is tucked away in the recently published book A Leap of Faith by the Mercury-7 astronaut Gordon Cooper, in which his story as a test pilot and astronaut is peppered with (to quote from the dust jacket) "his strong views on the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence -- and even the distinct possibility that we have already had contact."

Readers of my books, and especially of The Lost Realms, as well as of a previous article on this website titled "The Case of the Missing Elephant," know by now that beginning with the discovery of a colossal stone head in 1869, an advanced civilization that preceded the Mayas and Aztecs of Mexico came to light. Its leaders and bearers were unmistakably black Africans. They were arbitrarily named by archaeologists "Olmecs"; and their embarrassing enigma -- of who they were, and how they had come across the ocean, and why, was compounded by the timing of their arrival in the New World.

Once it was conceded (very grudgingly!) that the 'Olmecs' did indeed represent the earliest or even Mother Civilization of Mesoamerica, the date of their arrival was at first set at about 250 B.C.; then at about 500 B.C.; then farther back and back, until 1500 B.C. was acknowledged.

But I have argued for a date twice as old!

My conclusion that the Olmec presence in the New World went back at least 5,000 years, to circa 3000 B.C., was reached by many paths. The first one was an attempt to identify the great god of Mesoamerica, the Winged Serpent (Quetzalcoatl to the Aztecs, Kukulkan to the Mayas), and the significance of his promise to return to those lands on the first day of a 52-year cycle, (AD 1519, when the Aztec king Montezuma believed that the appearance of the Spanish conquistador Cortez was such a Return, coincided with the anticipated sacred date).

The peoples of Mesoamerica employed in addition to a practical calendar of 365 days, called the Haab, also a Sacred Calendar (called Tzolkin) of 260 days. The two cyclical calendars were conceived as two wheels with meshing teeth that turned and returned to the same spot once in 52 years; and 52 was the Sacred Number of the Winged Serpent god?

Since 52 was also the Secret Number of the god known to the Egyptians as Thoth; since Thoth as Quetzalcoatl, was the god of science and the calendar; and since Thoth was exiled from Egypt circa 3100 B.C., I have suggested that it was he who took a group of his African followers to a new land, bringing the "Olmecs" to Mesoamerica.

Accordingly, I said, Olmec presence goes back to at least 3000 B.C. -- a date twice as old as that conceded by established archaeologists.

By the time I was writing The Lost Realms, the book devoted to the prehistory of the Americas, I was sure that the arrival of the Olmecs with Thoth/Quetzalcoatl could be established with astounding precision. The key to unlocking the enigma was the Olmec Calendar.

In addition to the Haab and the Tzolkin, there was in Mesoamerica a third calendar, used to inscribe dates on monuments. Given the name the Long Count, it was not cyclical as the other two, but linear -- a continuous one, counting the total number of days that had passed since the counting began on a mysterious Day One.

By means of glyphs denoting groups of days
(1, 20, 360, 7,200 or even 144,000) and dots
and bars giving the number for each group-glyph, monuments were dated by saying: A total of so many days from Day One have passed when this Monument was erected.

But what was that Day One, when did it occur, and what was its significance?

It has been established beyond doubt that this Long Count calendar was the original Olmec calendar; and it is now generally agreed that Day One was equivalent to August 13, 3113 B.C.

But what does that date signify? As far as I know, the only plausible answer was provided by me: It was the date of Thoth/Quetzalcoatl's arrival, with his followers in Mesoamerica!

All official publications continue, however, to remain at 1250 B.C. -- 1500 B.C. at most -- as the date of the start of the Olmec presence.

Imagine my pleasant surprise to come across an eye-witness report by the astronaut Gordon Cooper in chapter 11 of his book A Leap of Faith. "During my final years with NASA," he writes, "I became involved in a different kind of adventure: undersea treasure hunting in Mexico." One day, accompanied by a National Geographic photographer, they landed in a small plane on an island in the Gulf of Mexico; local residents pointed out to them pyramid-shaped mounds, where they found ruins, artifacts and bones. On examination back in Texas, the artifacts were determined to be 5,000 years old!

"When we learned of the age of the artifacts," Cooper writes, “we realized that what we'd found had nothing to do with seventeenth-century Spain... I contacted the Mexican government and was put in touch with the head of the national archaeology department, Pablo Bush Romero."

Together with Mexican archeologists the two went back to the site. After some excavating, Cooper writes,

Proceeding to describe some of the amazing discoveries about the Olmecs and their achievements, Gordon Cooper continues thus:

It was this, rather than his experiences as an astronaut, that triggered Gordon Cooper's "Leap of faith": "This left me wondering: Why have celestial navigation signs if they weren't navigating celestially?” And he asks: If ‘someone’ had helped the Olmecs with this knowledge, from whom did they get it?

The outstanding museum on the Olmec civilization in Jalapa, in the Veracruz province of Mexico, included when it was built a wall panel showing the extent and dates of Mexico's various cultures. On my first visit there, I could hardly believe my eyes: The first (earliest) civilization, that of the Olmecs, was shown as begun circa 3000 B.C.!

I urged the members of my group to take pictures of me pointing to the date: Finally, the date claimed by me has been officially accepted!

On a second visit, however (to which the previous article, The Case of the Missing Elephant relates), not only the telltale elephant-toy disappeared; the Olmec column starting at 3000 B.C. was also gone... And the official Museum Catalogue, reviewing the Olmec civilization, reverted to 1500 B.C.

But now comes the astronaut Gordon Cooper, and innocently and inter-alia tells, as an eye-witness, what he was told by the chief Mexican archaeologist: 3000 B.C.

The ruins and remains of Mexico's pre-Columbian civilizations enchant, intrigue, fascinate and puzzle. Of them the oldest and earliest, that of people referred-to as Olmecs, is the most enigmatic -- for they challenge present-day scholars to explain how had people from Africa come and settled and thrived in this part of the New World, thousands of years before Columbus.

We know how they looked because they left behind countless sculptures, marvelously carved in stone, depicting them; some, in fact, are stone portraits of Olmec leaders; colossal in size, they immortalize in stone what, to many, has been an unpleasant enigma.

The first colossal stone head was discovered in the Mexican state of Veracruz back in 1869. Its discoverer reported it in the Bulletin of the Mexican Geographical and Statistical Society as "a magnificent sculpture that most amazingly represents an Ethiopian." The report included a drawing clearly showing the stone head's Negroid features; and that doomed the discovery to oblivion...

It was not until 1925 that the existence of the Olmecs was reaffirmed when an archaeological team from Tulane University found another such gigantic stone head in the adjoining Mexican state of Tabasco; it measured about eight feet in height and weighed some twenty four tons.

In time, many more such colossal sculptures have been found; they depict distinctly different individuals wearing helmets; they also clearly depict, in each case, a person with African features -- black Africans.

As archaeological discovery followed archaeological discovery, it became evident that in a vast central area of Mexico stretching from the Gulf coast to the Pacific coast, these "Olmecs" built major urban centers, engaged in mining, were the first in Mesoamerica to have a calendar and hieroglyphic writing, and established what is by now recognized as Mesoamerica's Mother Civilization.

The Unpleasant Problem

The problem that this posed was twofold: Not only the issue of Negroid Africans somehow crossing the Atlantic Ocean and settling in the New World before others; but also the incredible antiquity of such arrival. This problem was dealt with by first suggesting that the Olmecs appeared after more famed peoples such as the Mayas; then by grudgingly acknowledging earlier dates B.C. --250 B.C., then 500 B.C., then 1250 B.C., then even 1500 B.C.

Faced with such evidence, the solution was to deny that these were Africans ... Even now a noted scholar, writing in the official catalogue of the Museum of Anthropology of Jalapa, states in regard to the individuals depicted in the sculptures: "in spite of the general similarity of features -- flat noses with flaring nostrils and thickened lips (leading some to falsely claim an African origin for the Olmec)," etc.

Jalapa, a gem of a town, is about two hours' drive from Veracruz (where the Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes landed in 1519). Its museum is undoubtedly second only to the famed one in Mexico City; but unlike Mexico City's which displays artifacts from all over the country, the Jalapa one exhibits only locally discovered artifacts -- predominantly Olmec ones.

Dramatically and effectively displayed in an innovative setting, the Museum boasts several colossal stone heads as well as other stone sculptures. It also displays smaller objects found at Olmec sites; among them, in special display showcases, are what are considered to be Olmec "toys." They include animals mounted on wheels -- a visual and evidentiary negation of the common claim that the people of Mesoamerica (and America in general) were unfamiliar with the wheel.

And included in the same display case were elephants -- "toys" made of clay.

I, and some of my fans who accompanied me, saw them on previous visits to the Museum.

BUT when I (and again some of my fans with me) was there recently -- in December 1999 -- the elephants were nowhere in sight!

I could find no one in authority to obtain an explanation from. But that the elephants were once there was a fact indeed, here is a photograph of one, shot on a previous visit:

Now, here is the significance of this small artifact: There are no, and never have been, elephants in the Americas. There are and have been elephants in Africa. And a depiction of an elephant could have been made only by someone who has seen an elephant, i.e. someone who has been to Africa!

At this and other museums later visited in December 1999, guards have asserted that objects that I wished to point out and that were written up in my book The Lost Realms but somehow vanished, were loaned for an overseas exhibit.

Perhaps. But that such a hard-to-explain depiction of an elephant would be selected to highlight Mexico's ancient heritage, is either unlikely or highly significant.

I suppose one will have to revisit Jalapa and find out whether the little elephant is back among the "toys."

ZECHARIA SITCHIN

The Case of the Misplaced Teapot
A Failed Challenge To An Enigma of Ancient Astronomy

I was recently pleasantly surprised to encounter an old friend: The colorful cover of the first edition of my first book The 12th Planet (1976), reproduced in the April 2000 issue of Sky & Telescope. The photo was provided by the astronomer E.C. Krupp for his article "Lost Worlds" about misconceived predictions of planetary dooms (such as that regarding 5/5/2000).

Almost a full page is then devoted to "a different astronomical misconception" -- "Zecharia Sitchin's books about ancient space colonists from a lost "12th planet" that once violently invaded our solar system." Conceding (or lamenting?) that “credulous readers are persuaded by Sitchin that the traditions of ancient Sumer validate this unorthodox reconstruction of solar system history," the article suggests in a sidebar (see reproduction) that "Sitchin's case originates in an Akkadian cylinder seal from the third millennium B.C.; a portion of it features a six-pointed star surrounded by eleven dots of varying size; Sitchin judged that the star symbolizes the Sun and the smaller elements are supposedly planets, including the lost 12th world."

My inclusion in an article about misconceived predictions of doom (in which I have not engaged -- and this is not the only misrepresentation in the article) was thus an excuse to tackle the embarrassing depiction on cylinder seal VA/243 which I had found in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in (then East) Berlin. On this seal, as on many others, the "mythological scene" is decorated with celestial symbols -- in this case, I have suggested, showing the Sun surrounded by all the planets we know of today, plus the Moon and plus one more planet passing between Mars and Jupiter, the planet named NIBIRU by the Sumerians:

The depiction and my interpretation thereof have embarrassed astronomers for the past quarter of a century, because it is just not possible for ancient peoples to have known about post-Saturn planets, to say nothing about one more yet to be acknowledged "unknown planet." My explanation that the knowledge was provided by the Anunnaki ("Those who from Heaven to Earth came”) -- Extraterrestrial visitors to Earth -- is an even greater anathema to the scientific establishment.

What then to do about cylinder seal VA/243? It exists, it is authentic, it is at least 4,500 years old, If not Sitchin's interpretation -- what?

So now, a quarter of a century after The 12th Planet was published, the Sky &Telescope article comes to the rescue. The sidebar and its two illustrations offer an alternative. The one on the right purports to show my interpretation of the seal -- colorful, but conveniently omitting the key planet between Mars and Jupiter... The other shows how the "dots" around the central object can be connected to "roughly resemble the Teapot of Sagittarius":

The solution to the embarrassing enigma of ancient knowledge, as stated in the article's sidebar, is this: The depiction "could easily represent a bright planet -- such as Jupiter -- in the midst of familiar stars; in fact, the arrangement around the star like object roughly resembles the Teapot of Sagittarius."

And so, if the central object is not the Sun but Jupiter (with which the ancients were familiar) and the surrounding objects not planets but the stars of Sagittarius (with which the ancients were familiar)-- Sitchin's extraterrestrials and Nibiru are not needed.

Sagittarius, one of the twelve zodiacal constellations (a Sumerian first), was named PA.BIL (The Defender) by them and was depicted in antiquity as an Archer, a name and a depiction retained to this day. But some modern astronomers (while having afternoon tea?) decided that the central part of Sagittarius resembles a teapot:

When these eight stars are connected by imaginary lines, a "teapot" seems to emerge:

One need not be an astronomer to see that the "teapot" imposed upon the ancient depiction (magazine's left illustration) is far from being similar to the actual celestial one;

But one might have to be an astronomer to realize that the offered solution is not only improbable -- it is impossible: Jupiter moves about the Sun in the ecliptic (the plane of planetary orbits around the Sun); it never dips enough in the southern skies to appear in the midst (the magazine's words!) of the Teapot!

The illustration of Sagittarius that shows the "teapot" also indicates the ecliptical path, in which Jupiter moves. AND THE TWAIN CAN NEVER MEET!

Jupiter, once in about twelve years, does scratch the northernmost protrusion of Sagittarius; but it never comes even close (in astronomical terms) to the Teapot, and could have NEVER been observed "in the midst" of the Teapot.

And so, even after a quarter of a century, "Sitchin’s misconception" continues to stand.