The Anunnaki of Sumer
The account
The Sumerian gods are said to be astronauts from a hidden planet who created humanity.
What investigators found
Assyriologists reject Sitchin's translations; the Anunnaki are gods of Mesopotamian mythology.
The story
The Anunnaki appear in cuneiform texts from ancient Mesopotamia as a group of gods linked to the heavens and the underworld. In 1976, writer Zecharia Sitchin published the book "The 12th Planet," claiming that these texts described beings from a planet called Nibiru, who supposedly created humans through genetic engineering to work in mines.
The idea became one of the foundations of the ancient astronaut theory and still fuels videos and books today. Experts in Mesopotamian languages, however, point to serious errors in Sitchin's translations and show that the texts say nothing about spacecraft or a hidden planet. In Babylonian sources, Nibiru is associated with a visible celestial body tied to the god Marduk. There is no astronomical evidence whatsoever for such a planet.