The Ancient Sumerians May Have Left Us Our True Legacy

The 12th Planet: Book I of the Earth Chronicles – Zecharia Sitchin (1976)

            I have always enjoyed my forays into what mainstream writers refer to as “the Fringe,” or, if they are being blunt, “the Lunatic Fringe.”  Ideas and subjects once considered ridiculous or plain deluded, have been shown throughout history to be valid, sometimes because it takes time for society to catch up to the ideas being described, and sometimes because what may come intuitively to a human being as a Truth cannot be verified until years or centuries later. 

An example of the former is Copernicus, whose writings were deemed heretical, solely because the mass consciousness at the time was living under a reality tunnel that did not allow for anything other than the will of a god to determine what happens to our world.  In a world rife with illiteracy, those who were literate and powerful (the church) controlled what the illiterates thought and believed.  An example of the latter would be Alfred Wegener, a meteorologist who, in the early 20^th century, wrote up his ideas that the continental plates were in constant motion, and that the landmasses were all connected at one time in the distant past.  His ideas, while consistent with the observational data, were dismissed out of hand by geologists and earth scientists, who still believed the Earth was an unchanging rock, only altered by erosion and wind.  Once we humans began to create tools to explore the possibilities and history of plate tectonics, it was discovered that all the landmasses had indeed been connected in the past, and not just once, but at least 5 different times that can be verified through rock strata.  There are countless such examples.

I am not stating that what Mr. Sitchin describes in his book is factual, or even possible, but who am I to know?  I am just a well-read, educated reader, but in no way am I an expert on ancient cultures, especially the Sumerian kingdom, and what came before it.  What I do have experience with is reading about religion and myth and exploring how truth can be coded into legend, and how legends can betray truth when misread.  I say that as a caveat.  Mr. Sitchin studied the Hebrew Bible in the original Hebrew, and has studied the Greek early translations.  I am not sure if he has taught himself to read cuneiform and earlier writings, or if he is using other’s work, but I have to take all of his translations with a grain of salt.

That being said, what is described in this book is, to my mind, plausible, and a bit frightening if even slightly true.  There are some very serious and unanswered questions regarding the evolution of Homo sapiens, from the previous hominid species (Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalis, etc.) that immediately preceded our species.  The anthropological record seems to show that hominids evolved in Africa, and around 100,000 years or so ago (maybe longer), the ancestors of our species migrated out of Africa, settling in the Tigris-Euphrates valley and spreading through the world.  The earliest civilization that we can find any record of, whether archaeologically, or in ancient myths and writings, seemingly began out of nowhere around 8-10 thousand years ago, complete with agriculture, livestock, and societal structures we would recognize already in place.  This also coincided with the end of the last Ice Age on record.

Sitchin claims that the legends of Sumer and their tales of their gods are actually factual accounts retold as legendary history.  The 12^th planet of the title, is supposed to be a planet on an inclined elliptical orbit of the Sun, taking it out way past Pluto, and then back into the Solar System, between Mars and Jupiter, every 6,400 or so years.  This planet was the home of beings that sought out the mineral riches of Earth for their benefit, and who settled down on our planet, building several cities in the Euphrates to serve as their “space port” in a way, for every one of their years afforded them a chance to return to Earth or return from Earth back home.

In this tale, the beings asked their lesser brethren to work on Earth, gathering the minerals (gold, lithium, plutonium) that they needed from the southern areas of Africa.  According to Sumerian myth, these workers got fed up and asked their leaders to create a race of beings to serve as their work slaves.  This was to be us, the humans.  Much is discussed about how the biblical story of creation seems to describe exactly such events, especially when the god of genesis describes how he is one of many gods, and how they created humans in the gods’ image.  Sitchin goes into a lot of detail regarding this, and it makes for very interesting reading.  Humans served the gods.  The gods watched over the humans.

In recent times, WWII air forces would set up temporary bases in secluded Pacific Ocean islands, bringing with them everything modern, and, once the usefulness of the island was gone, the Air Forces would leave.  The people who lived there, the native islanders who had very little, if any, knowledge of the world outside their islands, started very quickly to believe they were gods, who, if placated or inspired, would return, providing the islanders with the modern goods and luxuries they saw as nearly magical.  They would build effigies of WWII propeller fighter planes, and create landing strips, hoping to inspire the visitors to return again and grace them with their godly presence.  They stopped their native religious practices in the attempt to feed this new belief.  That is our human nature.  It is very plausible to me that if beings from another world ever came to our planet and interacted with us that we would see them as gods and build our entire culture around them.

There are a lot more examples and cool stories in this book.  While it may all be a writer-created hope, there is always the possibility that what Sitchin is describing is the truth of our existence.  Ancient man had deities that were eternal, always with us, always a part of the world around us.  In fact, the world itself was full of life spirit.  Modern man, however, created civilization, rigid religion, and the idea that the god/gods came once in our past, and will return again in the future.  This makes no sense if it was just a truth gathered by our experience in the world round us.  This makes more sense if we are collectively remembering a past in which humans were the subservient slaves of what seemed to us to be god-like beings.

 

This book is from 1976, and helped foster the Ancient Aliens hypothesis that I so deeply loathe.  (This states that the great works of humanity’s past were too hard for lowly ancient man, and must have been created by aliens, or with the help of aliens, etc.  This insults the brain of ancient man which was exactly like ours today.  If we can do something, they could have done it too.  The only difference is in our storehouse of aggregated knowledge that we can all build upon.)  What Sitchin proposes is not that aliens came down and helped humans, but that an alien race came down to Earth, genetically altered Homo erectus, and created what we call Homo sapiens.  This is why our upward mobility and societal structures have exponentially grown in the past 6,000 years, where before our ancestors were pleased enough to just chill in family groups, and enjoy their lives.  It is a crazy idea, but there have been far crazier ideas that have turned out to be correct.  Many of the criticisms I read about this book and Sitchin's work pertain to very specific instances of sections that critics state are mistranslated from the Sumerian language.  They outright dismiss any of the other claims in this book, without properly addressing them.  That is lazy criticism.  The jury is still out!

(This book can be downloaded and read as a PDF here: The 12th Planet - Sitchin )

The Anomalies are Where the Real Work of Life Happens

Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution – Mark S. Blumberg (2009)

            As I was browsing the selections in the M.D. Anderson Library at the University of Houston I came across this book.  Sometimes interesting books just fall in your lap.  The title, Freaks of Nature, seems sensationalist, but what is found inside is a deeply researched and well-written account of the wide processes by which nature creates the seemingly infinite variety of life and life-forms on our planet Earth.

            The main subject of this book is exceedingly topical in today’s world where people are starting to understand the wide spectrum of human sexuality, human sexual development, and the evolution of sexual roles in the many species that display them.  Too often our human group-mind seeks to designate everything and anything into tidy examples of dichotomy.  For example, it is very easy to reduce the infinitely complex nature of human experience with chocolate as “some people like chocolate,” and, “some people do not like chocolate.”  Both of these statements, while true, do not speak to the actual reality of chocolate experience among humans.  Some humans adore chocolate, and it is the main object of their snack desires.  Others are allergic to cocoa, and eating it is a health risk.  Other people appreciate chocolate smells but cannot stand the taste.  Still others experience euphoria and altered states of consciousness upon ingesting chocolate.  Even with something as seemingly simple as a foodstuff, a dichotomous reduction fails.  This idea is what the author applies to the understanding of those life-forms that humans deem “freakish” or monstrous” or “misbegotten.” 

            One of the early chapters discusses birth defects which are similar throughout the animal kingdom.  Twinning, or congenital malformations, can be found in almost all plants and animals we research.  Sometimes one can crack a hen egg and two separate yolks come out.  Sometimes snakes are born with two heads, just like the humans that were displayed in freak shows and sideshows in our recent past.  These similarities, and the similarities between all vertebrate embryos that were discovered through the development of microscopy, helped us humans accept that there is a universal “code” for development.  This code is called DNA.  For a long time, humans seemed to accept that DNA was a hard-wired instruction manual, and that any deformation or defect was caused by a mutation in the genetic material.  This seemed to make sense in a world where everything was dictated by a supernatural and perfect entity.

            However, this viewpoint fails to account for the equally important, and sometimes more important, aspects of development brought forth by environment.  In humans, for example, a normally developing baby can start to develop malformations or defects based on the mother’s exposure to a certain chemical.   These issues do not arise from DNA.  They come from outside the developing organism.  In many species of reptiles, such as crocodiles, the temperature of the soil in which the eggs are laid determines the sex of the animals.  In some, high temps mean male children, while in others high temps mean female children.  In yet other reptiles, extreme temps either low or high result in one sex of offspring, and median temps result in the other.  These factors are so varied and so complex that it has been very difficult to identify and determine exactly what shapes a life-form’s development.  The more we look the more non-dualistic nature seems to be.

            Life is about change.  Life is endlessly adaptable.  If not the single organism then the entire species will adjust.  Understanding the near-infinite variety of forms and functions allowed in Nature helps us to better understand a current hot-button topic.  That is the idea of intersexuality.  Humans assign sex roles to their children as soon as they are born, sometimes to highly detrimental effect.  We assume males are males and females are female but this is not ever that clear.  There are humans born with XX, or “female” designating chromosomes, but who show outward male sexual characteristics.  There are humans born with XY chromosomes, but who lack certain enzymes that allow their body to process the testosterone it creates, leading to female physical traits.  There are humans born every day that have two separate gonads, or two separate sexual organs.  Humans are not alone in this.  There are examples from all of the animal kingdom of such births, creatures that do not fit our dichotomous male/female model.  In many children, reconstructive surgery is imposed on them by worried doctors and parents, parents who think, if I shape my child’s genitals to be male, he will then identify as male, and all will be great.  Studies show this is fraught with trauma, especially as the individuals in question have had no say in how they wish to live.

            The way in which we treat each other depends a lot on the definitions we assign to the world around us.  Intersex organisms weird people out sometimes.  We have been taught that there is but one way to be, either male, or female, and that some sort of god decreed that this is how everything should be.  Everything else is either a mistake, or an abomination, or a punishment from this supposedly benevolent deity.  Humans still abandon or murder babies they see as malformed or cursed.  We still force our ideas of what life is supposed to be like on others.  I wish more people would read books like this, the better for them to understand that Life is a process, an ever-developing, and ever-expanding process, and that there is no one way to be.  Those we call freaks or monsters are just as developed and evolved as we are.  They deserve the same respect and dignity we shower upon the life we deem normal, and in many ways, may be pointing to what our future could be.

(This book can be purchased here:  FREAKS OF NATURE  )

Sometimes the idea for a book is better than the finished product

Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-First Century – Marina Warner (2008)

            As an artist, I have always been interested in the way we humans perceive the world around us.  Most people take it for granted that what they see, hear, touch, etc. is corporeally real.  They assume that our brains are just receptacles, containers for the input our senses provide.  This is a very limited view of our minds.  Every single one of us is living in a world that exists solely in our minds, filtered by our personal experiences, beliefs, and prejudices.  Where some people see images in clouds, others never bother to look at all.  Our human culture, literature, and especially religion, has been reading into the visions of the mind since before we have record of it.  Marina Warner explores the many different ways that humans have tried to visualize the ephemeral.

            One thing that Ms. Warner does so well is to combine what appears to be a shit-ton of research and information into a concise accounting.  Each chapter describes human’s explorations into the meaning of ephemeral visions, such as clouds, shadows, fata morgana, mirror images, etc., from ancient times to the modern day.   This makes the book a very valuable resource from which to find other material that further explores the topics at hand.

            There is one big problem though.  I read such books to encounter new analysis and new insights into these subjects, as I am already well-versed with all these topics through my own personal research and reading.  This book does not have such analysis or thought.  After a few chapters it begins to read like a thesis by a graduate student, one that contains too many examples and too little substance.  Too many examples are cited with no context, just to pad out some of the thin chapters.  That is a shame.  I think a wonderful book could be written using this material, if it was more carefully edited and if it included more original insight.

(This book can be purchased here: https://www.amazon.com/Phantasmagoria-Visions-Metaphors-Twenty-first-Century/dp/0199299943 )

The Area X Trilogy may be over, but its slow madness lives on on my brain

The Southern Reach Trilogy, Vol. 3: Acceptance – Jeff Vandermeer (2014)

            Sometimes when you finish a novel you are left with a deep longing to somehow continue your experience in the world that the writer created out of words on paper.  It can hurt to detach oneself from a world that only truly exists in one’s head.  This is why so many beloved books are read and re-read throughout one’s life.  However, sometimes you read a novel that is so unnerving that once you finish you are glad you escaped with your mind intact!   Many genre books function in this manner, from science fiction to fantasy to hard-boiled detective fiction.  You may never re-read that book, but the world within its pages will forever reside in the recesses of your brain.  I think Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy perfectly fits that description.

            Having read the first two volumes of the trilogy, (Vol. 1 review, Vol. 2 review) I knew what I was getting into with Acceptance, but it did not make things any less engrossing or disturbing.  Like much of my favorite speculative fiction, The Area X Trilogy does not concern itself with merely pushing a plot along to its finale.  It instead takes time to explore the minds of the characters, their motivations, their lies, the things they keep secret, and the things that make them who they are.  It is in these sometimes delirious interludes that the true dread arises as I read. 

I have long been of the opinion that the things going on in people’s minds can be far more frightening than their actions, partly because they are part of a delicate subterfuge, and partly because there is no way to know what someone else is actually thinking.  We go through life assuming that the smiling person who greets you when you get to work is actually smiling inside instead of plotting how to kill you and get away with it.  It makes living easier.  The human mind is the one truly unpredictable thing in the Universe.  Jeff Vandermeeer understands this, and uses it to great effect in this trilogy, as we progressively explore more and more of the main character’s internal monologues and concerns.  It is far scarier to change slowly, to understand and notice the small variances as they happen, than it is to change all at once and then have to live with that change.

 

The way Acceptance brings the story of Area X to a close is a good one.  I prefer to be given hints and suggestions rather than detailed exposition specifically tying up the threads of a story.  Ending the books in any other way would have felt cheap.  Instead, I finished the last pages of this novel and felt a deep sadness, and a strong sense of the novel’s own world blowing wide open, hinting at the extent of the changes Area X brings about once it is through with the protagonists.  I am certain that in the coming weeks my mind will find itself drawn back to think about these books, and the story within.  Thank you to Severian from the Sonic Youth Gossip Forum for the recommendation!

(This book can be purchased here :  AMAZON  )

Volume 2 of the Southern Reach Trilogy keeps the unsettling story going

The Southern Reach Trilogy, Vol. 2: Authority – Jeff Vandermeer (2014)

            Where to begin…Well, this is the second volume of Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy.  The first volume, (Annihilation, reviewed HERE) dealt with a mysterious and seemingly malevolent area of coastline labeled “Area X” that was cordoned off by the government, into which were sent expeditions to explore it by the Southern Reach, the organization created to monitor and explore this odd development.  Annihilation told the story of a member of one of the expeditions, a biologist, and her experiences in Area X.  This second volume, Authority, tells the story of a man who is assigned to the Southern Reach as its new Director, and what he finds there.

            This is a very clever structure that has been set up by Mr. Vandermeer.  Having us, the reader, engrossed in the unsettling experiences of the biologist in the first volume, he then shows us an outside angle, by having us follow the new Director as he takes over the Southern Reach following the biologist’s group’s excursion into Area X.  The two volumes take place sequentially, so it feels like a continuation of the story.  This in no way reduces the amount of dread created in the first volume.  It only amps it up, for is it not always worse to find out that those in power, those that are supposed to have a handle on things, actually are just as flummoxed as anyone else?  Where do you turn for guidance and help when you realize that the ones that “know” actually know nothing?

            In the first volume, none of the characters are provided proper names, instead being referred to by their job title, such as Biologist, Linguist, Psychologist, etc.  In this volume, everyone is named early on except for our protagonist, who chooses the nickname “Control.”  It is not until he begins to unravel the deep insanity at work in Area X and the Southern Reach that he begins to associate more with his given name.  It is quite awesome to essentially shadow his mind at work, for he is a person expertly trained in interrogation techniques, and his internal monologue sheds light on things that a layperson would never think of, such as the change in tone or body language that signifies fear, or willingness to cooperate, etc.  This is a problem for Control as he begins to second-guess himself and his intuition, only to find that his mental tools are not adequate for what he encounters.

Does this look innocuous to you?

            The first volume in this trilogy read like an existential horror story where the true horror is the breakdown of the human individual, while this second volume read like an enigmatic detective tale, where the information gathered leads to a mind-fuck conclusion, one that Control cannot escape or ignore and one which affects the greater group at large. I am very excited to break into the third volume, Acceptance.  I can only guess at what is to come, but if the first two books are any indication, it will warp my brain and leave me gasping for breaths of reality!

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )