INTRODUCTION
Some 445,000 years ago, astronauts from another planet came to Earth in search of gold.
Splashing down in one of Earth's seas, they waded ashore and established Eridu, "Home in the Faraway." In time the initial settlement expanded to a full-fledged Mission Earthwith a Mission Control Center, a spaceport, mining operations, and even a way station on Mars.
Short of manpower, the astronauts employed genetic engineering to fashion Primitive Workers-Horno sapiens. The Deluge that catastrophically swept over the Earth required a fresh start; the astronauts became gods, granting Mankind civilization, teaching it to worship.
Then, about four thousand years ago, all that had been achieved unraveled in a nuclear calamity, brought about by the visitors to Earth in the course of their own rivalries and wars.
What had taken place on Earth, and especially the events since human history began, has been culled by Zecharia Sitchin, in his The Earth Chronicles Series, from the Bible, clay tablets, ancient myths, and archaeological discoveries. But what had preceded the events on Earth-what had taken place on the astronauts' own planet Nibiru that caused the space journeys, the need for gold, the creation of Man'
What emotions, rivalries, beliefs, morals (or the lack thereof) motivated the principal players in the celestial and space sagas? What were the relationships that caused mounting tensions on Nibiru and on Earth, what tensions arose between old and young, between those who had come from Nibiru and those born on Earth? And to what extent was what had happened determined by Destiny-a destiny whose record of past events holds the key to the future?
Would it not be auspicious were one of the key players, an eyewitness and one who could distinguish between Fate and Destiny, to record
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for posterity the How and Where and When and Why of it all-the First Things and perhaps the Last Things'
But that is precisely what some of them did do; and foremost among them was the very leader who had commanded the first group of astronauts!
Scholars and theologians alike now recognize that the biblical tales of Creation, of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, were based on texts written down millennia earlier in Mesopotamia, especially by the Sumerians. And they, in turn, clearly stated that they obtained their knowledge of past events-many from a time
before civilizations began, even before Mankind came to be-from the writings of the Anunnaki ("Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came")-the "gods" of antiquity.