In the latter half of the 20th century, Zecharia Sitchin popularized a form of the "ancient astronaut" theory that diverged significantly from the hypotheses of his contemporaries, such as Erich von Däniken. While von Däniken focused on global artifacts, Sitchin focused specifically on the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia—Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon. His central thesis, detailed in his 1976 debut The 12th Planet , argues that the Sumerian pantheon of gods were, in fact, flesh-and-blood aliens from a hitherto unknown planet within our solar system. According to Sitchin, human civilization was a byproduct of their intervention.
| Topic | Recommended Book | |-------|------------------| | Actual Sumerian myths | The Harps That Once… by Thorkild Jacobsen | | History of Sumer | Sumer and the Sumerians by Harriet Crawford | | Ancient astronaut theory (critique) | Ancient Aliens (skeptical analysis) by Brian Dunning | | Real Sumerian cuneiform translations | The Literature of Ancient Sumer by Jeremy Black | zecharia sitchin pdf