Transcripts:
Hello and welcome back to Project Wake. I'm Connor and I'm Rex, your friendly neighborhood skeptic, archaeologist of snacks. Today, ancient aliens, ancient gods, or ancient bad PR. We're digging into the story of the Anunnaki. The Anunnaki, a name you've probably heard if you follow ancient mystery shows, conspiracy books, or late night internet rabbit holes.
But who were they originally in the ancient sources? In Sumerian and Mesopotamian texts, the Anunnaki are a group of gods part of the Mesopotamian pantheon, associated with the highest ranks of divine beings. Translation: They were the original group chat with more thunderbolts and fewer emoji. Exactly.
In Sumerian and later Aadian traditions, names like Anu, the skyfather, ruler of Nibberu, Enlil, the strict and often harsh enforcer of order, Enki, Oria, the genetic scientist and more sympathetic figure towards humanity. Ninhers and others appear in the myths. Gods who order the cosmos decide fates and in some stories play roles in creating humanity.
One clear example is the Sumerian tale where gods tired of toil create humans to take over labor. According to the Sumerian story, Enki and Ninma, the lesser gods burdened with the toil of creating the earth, complained to Nama, the primeval mother, about their hard work. She in turn roused her son Enki, the god of wisdom, and urged him to create a substitute to free the gods from their toil.
Nama then needed some clay, placed it in her womb, and gave birth to the first humans. So the gods made us to do the chores. That explains modern life. Hey Siri, do my taxes. Ancient tech, same energy. But then enter modern reinterpretation. In the 20th century, authors like Zakaria Sitchin reinterpreted the Sumerian corpus in a radically different way.
Sitin argued that the Anunnaki were actually extraterrestrials from a planet he called Nibberu, advanced beings who came to Earth to mine gold, genetically engineered humans as worker species, and then left a blueprint of civilizational knowledge in ancient myths. These ideas are detailed in his book, The 12th Planet, and follow-up books. Ah, yes.
Nibbro, the cosmic neighbor who shows up like that weird cousin at reunions every few thousand years. It weaves together ancient texts, space drama, and the idea that humans owe our progress to visitors from the stars. But it's crucial we separate what the ancient texts actually say from modern reinterpretations.
You're saying Sitchin read the texts like someone reading the weather report and somehow heard intergalactic mining expedition? Is that it? In a way, Sitchin translated Sumerian and Aadian texts in unconventional ways, often reassigning astronomical and linguistic meanings that mainstream aiologists don't accept. His books sold millions and influenced the ancient astronaut subculture.
But professional historians, linguists, and archaeologists have largely rejected his methods and conclusions as unsupported by the evidence. In short, Sitchin's Anunnaki equals a modern reinterpretation, not the consensus reading of ancient Neareastern specialists. So, the experts say, "Nope." The conspiracy channels say, "Yep." And the internet says, "But what if?" Classic triangle.
Let's get specific. The oldest ununiform tablets we have are administrative lists, myths, and hymns. The Anunnaki show up as a group of powerful deities, sometimes as judges of the underworld, sometimes as creators. For example, the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Ellish and Sumerian myths recount a pantheon where gods like Enki also known as a god of wisdom and waters and inl god of air and authority shape the world and humanity.
These texts talk in theological symbolic language not mechanical spaceship manuals. So when a tablet says Enki stirred the waters, it probably means metaphor, not presses big blue lever labeled atmosphere. Exactly. Many early Mesopotamian myths explain natural phenomena and social order. Attribute origins to gods and encode ritual and political relationships. A recurring theme, God's delegate work.
Humans are created to relieve divine labor. And if the gods made us to work, then politics is just ancient divine outsourcing. H my boss might have a deity tattoo. Dude, whether you believe in the sky gods or not, you live in a world shaped by their legacy. A world where control is disguised as order and freedom is framed as chaos.
The II were an intelligent and obedient race of beings. They were the younger celestial gods who served the elder Anunnaki with similar appearance to humans between 12 to 15 ft tall with elongated skulls and slaves who served the Anunnaki in all things. after the Anunnaki conquered and defeated them.
Before the 20th century, humans had no use for gold. But why is it so valuable now? Not only on Earth, but in the entire solar system. Gold has many applications from jewelry, electronics, data processing and transmission even to medicine due to its unique properties such as excellent conductivity, malleability and resistance to corrosion.
In the fields of air and water purification, gold's properties become especially useful at the nanocale where gold nano particles act as powerful catalysts. Supposedly, the Anunnaki were aliens from another planet and not gods. They looked almost human. Two arms, two legs, two eyes, a nose and mouth, but with elongated skulls, and very tall, over 8 ft. Some texts describe them as angelic beings with wings.
In theories popularized by Zechariah Sitchin, Nibberu's atmosphere was suffering from radiation caused by a new energy they were using. So, gold was then sought by the Anunnaki of the planet Nibberu to repair their deteriorating atmosphere by suspending gold particles to form a reflective protective layer.
The physical properties of gold, such as its resistance to corrosion and ability to reflect sunlight, made it ideal for this purpose. But gold, which was a vital element, was rare on Nibberu. And they needed a solution, planet Kai, or what we know today as Earth. And Earth had abundance of it, which the Anunnaki knew. The Anunnaki council gathered about 300 Anunnakis and 600 Iis to come to Earth and build the great city of Aridu for Anu's son, Enki, who will now live here and rule over the gold mining process. He then forced and enslaved the IG to
mine gold for around 150,000 years, extracting gold by the ton, collected by ships, and returning them to Nibberu. Although Enki didn't like the way the IIS were being treated and tortured to work faster and harder, he felt like he had no choice. This was their last and only option to save Nibberu.
The Iis grew tired of being slaves and fought back. They refused to mine for gold, setting their tools on fire along with the city of Aridu. So, so they didn't come to Earth 450,000 years ago to help humanity. They came to use it. They wanted every ounce of gold. And so, they bred us as a slave race to work and mine for gold, sustaining their planet's atmosphere and energy systems.
Finding early hominids here, they saw potential but not usefulness. So they intervened. They didn't just enslave us. They re-engineered us. Enki and Ninhurse are said to combine their own essence with that of the primitive human species. The result, a genetically altered human capable of thought, language, obedience, and labor.
Similar creation stories echo through ancient culture. A god mixes his blood with the clay of the land, creating a being. Stories of gods descending from the stars, mixing their seed with humans. [Music] Demigods such as Perseus, Gilgamesh, and Hercules. Examples of offsprings from gods mixing with humans. Now, Enki, according to many texts, was the one responsible for designing us, modifying early hominids to serve the needs of the Anunnaki.
But he didn't just create us as machines. Some say he embedded within us a piece of something divine, something the others feared. Enley, on the other hand, is often portrayed as humanity's oppressor, enraged by our growing independence, disturbed by our spiritual potential, believed we served our purpose and were a nuisance.
It was in Liil who ordered the great flood to wipe out humanity when they became too noisy, too violent. Too aware he saw us as tools, believed we fulfilled our purpose, and had no more use. Enki in defiance loved humans even fell in love with a woman and married her. Enki saw potential in us.
So after consulting with the Anunnaki council, "The flood will come as planned, but one family would be spared." He warned a human named Utnapishtam, a wise and good man, pretty much like the story of Noah from the Bible. [Music] ensured the survival of our kind by building an ark, saving the seeds of all living creatures in hopes to regrow life and the human population. I am Utnapishta.
I will recount to you the tale of the time when the gods tired of mankind's way in lil did conspire to destroy us with a flood to cover all the earth with waters deep and dark. Dark were the skies and the moon was gone. Clouds filled the sky up above. Hard fell the rain. All of mankind turned to stone. All of mankind far below.
Anki's heart was softened, knowing of our flight, and in secret revealed the end of all mankind. Enki spoke to me. You must build an ark and into it secure creatures great and small. It seems like almost every culture and religion has a flood story and are all pretty similar, just different names. But this version was written almost 3,000 years earlier before the Bible.
We find identical flood stories in Quran, Hindu, Greek, Chinese, Mayan and many more writings. Now that mankind was reborn, the Anunnaki added a few tweaks. They shortened the human lifespan. They made us more susceptible to illness.
They made child birth dangerous for both mother and child in hopes of the human population to not get out of control. Did you just eat an animal cracker from there? Oh, you saw that, huh? Sorry. Please continue, dude. Soon, humanity will begin rebuilding again, but without any memory or previous knowledge of the world before. It was a big reset. Back to the stone age. It's said that many genetic experiments took place to create us humans.
But not all were successful at first. Some creations turned out to be monsters. Cyclops, two-headed creatures, or giants known as the Nephilims caused by the Aiji's breeding with human females. Anki and Enlil impressed by the humans resilience and decided to visit the settlements and villages. The Anunnaki descended from the heavens and rose up from the seas to give humanity the gift of knowledge and civilization.
Teaching us reading and writing, math, astronomy, and even engineering. teaching us to build big cities and even tales of building pyramids and obelis. [Music] The Samrians are thought to be the first civilization of mankind. Sitin proposed specific claims that Nibberu is a long period planet whose inhabitants the Anunnaki came to Earth, mind gold and created humans via genetic engineering.
He also associated the Anunnaki with the biblical nefilm, the giants or fallen ones mentioned in Genesis, arguing a direct line between Mesopotamian myth and biblical passages. [Music] So, Sichin basically made a mashup of Sumerian gods, biblical giants, and sci-fi. Added a pinch of space opera and baked it until it smelled like clickbait. That's a blunt but fair description.
Sitchin's storytelling is compelling and it inspired a generation of writers and TV shows. But scholars point out numerous linguistic, historical, and scientific problems with his claims. From misreading ununiform grammar to inventing astronomical mechanics not supported by evidence, professional assriologists and archaeologists consider his work pseudocience, which is a polite way of saying don't use his footnotes to land your spaceship unless your spaceship is made of metaphors.
[Music] Mainstream scholarship treats the Anunnaki as mythological figures within the cultural, religious, and political life of ancient Mesopotamia. Archaeologists use material culture, strategraphy, inscriptions, and careful philology to reconstruct what the texts meant in their original context.
Claims that ancient engineers left us literal spaceship blueprints are not supported by these methods. The ancient astronaut stance is widely viewed as pseudocientific. Okay, so the official archaeologist verdict is great stories, questionable alien gear. They want artifacts, not sci-fi fanfiction. Right? And historians caution that using modern technology concepts to interpret ancient religious texts risks imposing present-day categories onto ancient minds.
[Music] That said, the Anunnaki have migrated from clay tablets into modern myth. Books, TV shows, internet forums, and podcasts have spun thousands of narratives. Here are a few recurring popular claims and where they come from. The Anunnaki as gold miners who engineered humans, a Sitchin idea, not in the extent Sumerian texts, as a literal extraterrestrial mining operation.
Anunnaki equals Nefilm from Genesis, a proposed equivalence that appears in fringe literature. But the biblical texts are complex and scholars read Nefilm in multiple ways. Mainstream biblical scholarship does not equate the two. As Sitchin does. Ancient monuments as evidence of alien technology.
widely popular, but archaeologists point to human ingenuity, incremental development, and cultural exchange as explanations. In short, rumor factory open 24/7. Ancient tablet says giant, internet says space giant with latte. Yes, the storytelling is vivid and that's important. These stories tell us more about our present curiosity and anxieties than about unambiguous ancient facts.
People often ask, "Is there a biblical link? Did the Anunnaki create Adam and Eve?" The Bible has its own creation stories and figures like the Nephilim in Genesis 6. [Music] Some interpreters, especially in fringe traditions, link Mesopotamian creation tales and Sitchin's Anunnaki to biblical narratives, suggesting overlaps.
But mainstream scholars treat these as separate traditions with shared ancient neareastern cultural backgrounds. Similar themes, flood stories, divine councils, creation motifs circulate in the region, but that's not the same as proving extraterrestrial meddling. So, Adam and Eve, probably human, probably symbolic, possibly had questionable wardrobe choices.
No hard evidence of celestial Taylor. Good line. And historically, scholars map how Mesopotamian myths influenced Hebrew texts through cultural contact and shared motifs. But that's literary and religious influence, not necessarily literal identity. Quick tour of the strongest verifiable pieces of evidence.
We have ununioform tablets from Sumer, Akad and Babylon. Administrative lists, hymns, mythic epics. These are primary sources for the Anunnaki as deities [Music] creation epics like the Anuma Ellish and Sumerian myths eg Enki and Ninma that describe gods shaping life and society. These explain world order, kingship and ritual.
Scholarly consensus. Mainstream mysterology has rigorous methods and conclusions about gods and myths come from careful linguistic and archaeological work which does not support modern alien interpretations. So hard tablets, sturdy translation methods, soft speculation, like building a sandwich with good bread and a questionable spread.
[Music] Why do these theories stick? A few reasons. They offer big explanations for big questions. Who made us? Who gave us knowledge? Here is a Sumerian tablet that actually shows the tree of life flanked by divine beings. You can see here the Anunnaki on each side. We also see the winged disc, a symbolic reference that the Anunnaki had the power of flight.
They actually had necklaces with astronomical references, a moon, a star, various symbols which even could be symbolized as a wristwatch. Technology being used 6,000 years ago. The written accounts etched into stone suggest the Anunnaki were giant beings standing 8 ft tall who came to Earth in search of gold for their home planet.
We're told we emerged from apes through slow chaotic evolution, random mutations, natural selection, survival of the fittest. And yet suddenly around 200,000 years ago, modern homo sapiens appeared fully formed with language capacity, spiritual instinct, and the ability to build, farm, create, organize, and worship.
That kind of leap doesn't just happen. No other species on Earth has experienced anything like it. The gap between what came before us and what we are now is a chasm science still can't fully explain. And they mix the awe of ancient civilizations with modern ideas of technology.
They also let us imagine that humanity's origins are connected to larger cosmic stories. That's emotionally and aesthetically powerful. Plus, they sound cooler than we evolved gradually and learned to farm, which fun fact is still pretty impressive. evolution, long timeline, short bragging rights. Exactly.
The Anunnaki narrative supplies drama, mystery, and the feeling that history has hidden chapters. Two quick caveats. First, ancient texts are nuanced, symbolic, and embedded in ritual contexts. reading them like instruction manuals for technology is methodologically unsound. Second, popular reinterpretations sometimes appropriate or distort the cultural heritage of ancient peoples.
In other words, don't meme your way into rewriting ancient history. Be suspicious of perfect explanations that require ignoring inconvenient details like language, context, and evidence. Exactly. [Music] Hey listeners, welcome to Interstellar Bureaucracy. Today we audit the human labor policy. Also, Earth's Wi-Fi is terrible. Next week, tips for avoiding meteorological chaos.
Sponsored by Ancient Space Suits and Retrofitted Sandals. To be clear, when we talk about real life people and historians, many named assiologists and archaeologists emphasize careful translation and context. Sitchin's work is well known for its reach, but also for being rejected by specialists who point to linguistic errors and unsupported astronomical claims.
publications in mainstream outlets and academic rebuttals repeatedly caution against treating fringe reinterpretations as equivalent to peer-reviewed scholarship. So listeners, if someone tells you they decoded a tablet and it turns out to be a grocery list, check for peer review and ask if the tablet wanted hummus or world domination.
Rumors, gold mining, Anunnaki, secret ancient tech, hidden ruins spread because they're sensational, satisfy curiosity, and combine disperate facts into a single narrative. The internet amplifies patchy evidence and conjecture. And humans love origin stories that make us special. Special as in designed by celebrities from another solar system.
It's like wanting your family tree to include a dragon. Exactly. The appeal is psychological and cultural. Paraca skulls are elongated skulls primarily a result of artificial cranial deformation practiced by the Paracus culture of ancient Peru between 8 B.CE and 100 B.CE. Archaeologists discovered them in 1928.
DNA analysis confirm them to be native human skulls, but some theories claim that these could be from ancient non-human species or possibly alien and human hybrid due to their unusual shape and some of these elongated skulls lacking the sagittal suture. We promised more detail on Anu, the leader. So, let's start there.
In ancient Mesopotamia, Anu, also written N or Anam, is the sky god. The name literally meaning sky. Sitchin's translation of Anunnaki was those who came from the heavens. But it turns out the real translation means of royal blood. In god lists, he often appears at the very top of the pantheon, a kind of symbolic head of gods or ancestor figure whose authority legitimized kingship and divinely ordered power.
So Anu is the CEO of the guards, the kind of boss who signs the memo but never attends the staff meeting. Fancy title, limited email replies. [Music] That's one way to put it. Anu's role shifts through time and place in literary lists. He's prime, but in popular religion and myth in Liil, Enki and Anana often do the hands-on stuff.
Within Liil becoming the head of the pantheon and Enki organizing the world and teaching human skills while Anu remained sky god. His sons in Liil and Enki became active rulers with Anana playing a key role in matters of love, war, and destiny. Anu's symbolic power, source of heavenly authority, is what's most consistent across texts. The Sumerians describe him as the embodiment of the sky, which can come to earth in human form.
Anu is also the king of gods and sometimes attributed with the creation of humans with assistance of his sons inl and some later Sumerian texts describe Anu as coming from parents Absu god of fresh waters and goddess of salt water and the primeval sea. Anu had a wife who was the goddess of the earth.
She was named Kai by the Sumerianss unto by the Acadians and Uras by the Babylonians. Anu and Kai gave birth to the Anunnaki which was the group of gods to the Mesopotamians. The Mesopotamian myth states that Enlil separated the sky god Anu from the earth goddess Kai with Anu taking the heavens and Enlil claiming the earth as his domain.
Enlil born from the union of Anu and Kai performed the separation which created the world as it is known and made it habitable for humans. Anu held a pivotal role in determining the fate of individuals and nations. Acting as the supreme judge, Mesopotamian kings sought his approval to legitimize their rule. He played a significant role in the flood myth.
Initially agreeing to unleash the flood but later advising on sparing some individuals. Now who are the people the anunnaki in the ancient sources the word anunnaki sometimes written ana literally means offspring of Anu in one reading and it referred to a group of important deities or divine judges. In myths, they act as a high council.
Sometimes as judges in the underworld, sometimes as powerful divinities shaping fate and social order. These are theological beings in a religious world, not biological aliens in the original texts. [Music] So originally divine family reunion, not interstellar labor union. The people were guards, not guys in coveralls with mining helmets.
A Sumerian myth known today as Gilgamesh and the Netherworld opens with a mythological prologue. It assumes that the gods and the universe already exist and that once a long time ago the heavens and earth were united only later to be split apart. Later humankind was created and the great gods divided up the job of managing and keeping control over heavens, earth and the netherworld.
The origins of humans are described in another early second millennium Sumerian poem, the song of the hoe. In this myth, as in many other Sumerian stories, the god and liil is described as the deity who separates heavens and earth and creates humankind. Humanity is formed to provide for the gods, a common theme in Mesopotamian literature.
In the Sumerian poem, the debate between grain and sheep, the earth first appeared barren without grain, sheep or goats. People went naked. They ate grass for nourishment and drank water from ditches. Later, the gods created sheep and grain and gave them to humankind as sustenance.
According to the debate between bird and fish, water for human consumption did not exist until Enki, Lord of Wisdom, created the Tigris and Euphrates and caused water to flow into them from the mountains. He also created the smaller streams and water courses, established sheepfolds, marshes, and reeds, and filled them with fish and birds.
He founded cities and established kingship and rule over foreign countries. In the debate between winter and summer, an unknown Sumerian author explains that summer and winter, abundance, spring floods, and fertility are the result of Enlil's population with the hills of the earth. Another early second millennium Sumerian myth, Enki and the world order provides an explanation as to why the world appears organized.
Enki decided that the world had to be well-managed to avoid chaos. Various gods were thus assigned management responsibilities that included overseeing the waters, crops, building activities, control of wildlife and hurting of domestic animals as well as oversight of the heavens and earth and the activities of okay the planet Nibberu in Sitchin's books.
Nibberu is a long period planet beyond Neptune with an elongated orbit that brings it near Earth every few thousand years. Sitchin used that hypothetical orbit to explain many ancient events and to place the Anunnaki's home world in our solar system. This description of Nibberu is central to theories that predict its return would cause widespread disasters on Earth such as earthquakes, tidal waves, and volcanic eruptions. Some texts mention it was the cause of the great flood that wiped out humanity.
Crucial point Nibberu as Sitchin describes it is not a concept found in standard Mesopotamian astronomy or mainstream planetary science. The name Nibberu in Mesopotamian texts more commonly refers to a crossing point, a celestial marker, or sometimes to the planet Jupiter in later lists, not a retrograde lifebearing planet on a 3,600year orbit.
So, Nibberu is less mysterious planet with drama and more ancient astronomers note that someone later turned into a Netflix original planet. Also, astronomy says no comfy Nibberu apartment in our solar system. Right.
Scientists point out both the physical implausibility of Sitchin's orbital claims and the inaccuracies in his linguistic readings. Assiologists have repeatedly shown that many of his translations and interpretations don't hold up under standard philological methods. That's why his hypothesis is considered pseudocience by mainstream scholars even as it remains influential in popular culture. So how did this modern remix changed the narrative? It transformed gods into beings with technology, replaced ritual meaning with resource extraction stories, and offered a cosmic origin that explains human civilization in
terms of outside intervention. For many people, that's appealing. It reframes human history as an encounter story rather than gradual cultural development. And it's easier to sell a t-shirt that says, "I survived the last Nibberu visit." Marketing's got to adapt. [Music] Jokes aside, the responsible approach is to treat Sitchin's books as provocative modern mythmaking, fascinating cultural texts in their own right, while recognizing they are not supported by standard readings of Sumerian texts or by if you want to study the original Anu and Anunnaki, the best path is through peer-reviewed,
museum translations, and reputable overviews of Mesopotamian religion. If you want the sci-fi remix, enjoy it as speculative fiction fun but separate from mainstream scholarship. So, vote time. You can be team temple tablet, factual, philological, or team interstellar mining sparkly helmets. Either way, bring popcorn.
Anu's authority and the Anunnaki's presence in myth reveal how ancient peoples explained power, fate, and the world. And modern retellings reveal our modern hopes, fears, and storytelling habits. Both layers are meaningful. Both deserve critical reading. And if a guard shows up and asks for a forwarded invoice, hang up.
That's how you know it's a scam. So where does that leave us historically and archaeologically? The Anunnaki start as Mesopotamian deities documented in ununiform texts. Modern authors like Zakaria Sitchin reimagined them as extraterrestrials with a dramatic speculative narrative. That narrative is powerful and popular, but it is not the consensus among specialists and is considered pseudoscientific by many scholars.
We've given you the clay tablet, the sci-fi novel, the academic review, and the late night forum post. You can accept the official translation, enjoy the speculative remix as fiction, or live somewhere in the glorious middle. Skeptical but curious. We don't want to tell you what to believe.
What matters is understanding the difference between sources, primary ancient texts, modern scholarly interpretation, and modern reinterpretations or fiction. Each has value if you keep the categories straight. And if you want to believe the Anunnaki install tiny USB ports in ancient obelisks, go ahead. Just don't blame us when your conspiracy software requires a firmware update.
[Music] Before we go, we'll leave you with a few further reading suggestions, scholarly translations of Sumerian myths, and critical assessments of ancient astronaut claims. Check university press books or museum essays for primary translations, and read critical reviews of fringe authors for context. The Met Museum and curated assiology sources are a good place to start for primary myths.
Or if you prefer like me, binge a show and enjoy the ride. Just remember, entertaining is not equal to accurate, but it sure is fun. That's it for today. If you enjoyed this episode or learned anything new, then why not hit the like and subscribe and help us reach more amazing people like yourself.
Keep asking, keep reading, and keep your helmets on. You never know when a god will need directions. What? We'll see you next time.