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Case of the Layered
Asteroid
Once
Again, Modern Science Corroborates Ancient Knowledge
by
Zecharia Sitchin
It
is not every day that I get an overseas call with someone shouting;
Congratulations!
But
it happened on Friday, February 18th 2000; and the reason was NASA's press
conference the day before, reporting the first findings by the spacecraft
NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous,) of its examination of the asteroid
Eros.
Potato-shaped
and about 21 miles long, Eros is one of countless bits and pieces of
planetary matter that orbit the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, collectively
called the Asteroid Belt. One
theory is that these are remains from the time when primordial matter
around the Sun coalesced into planets, but these bits and pieces failed to
do so. Another theory is that
these are remains of a planet that did form there, but that it somehow
broke up; the inability to explain how or why it broke up has been the
reason why this theory has not been embraced by scientists.
What
NASA Announced
To
learn more about the origin of the asteroids, NASA launched NEAR four
years ago (February 17, 1996) for the purpose of reaching and going into
continuous orbit around the asteroid named Eros; this was successfully
achieved on St. Valentine's Day, February 14, 2000.
And
the first findings. reported at a news conference on Friday February 17th,
triggered the congratulatory call to me; for they corroborated an ancient
cosmogony pieced together in my 1976 book The
12th Planet.
“Eros
has an ancient, heavily cratered surface," reported Dr. Andrew Cheng,
chief project scientist. "There
are also tantalizing hints that it has a layered structure, as if it were
made up of layers, like plywood."
Such
stratified features, Dr. Cheng explained, could occur if the asteroid was melted
while it was part of a planet (quoted by Associated Press
Science News, 2/18/00-, emphasis by Z. S.).
What
Sitchin Said
In
The
12th Planet
I asserted that an ancient Sumerian text, best preserved in a later
Babylonian version called Enuma Elish, which has been taken by
scholars to be an allegory or myth about gods fighting in the heavens, was
in reality a record of a sophisticated cosmogony dealing with the
formation of our solar system..
The
protagonists Tiamat and Nibiru (which the Babylonians renamed
"Marduk" in honor of their national god), I wrote, were not
allegorical or mythical celestial gods but actual planets -- one (Tiamat)
that existed between Mars and Jupiter, the other (Nibiru,/Marduk) an,
invader from outer space that, passing by our solar system and pulled in
by the system's gravitational pull, ended up colliding with Tiamat.
In this Celestial Battle (as the ancient text names the
catastrophic event), Tiamat broke up; one half of her was thrust into a
new orbit to become Earth; the other half was smashed in an infernal
collision to become the “Hammered Out Bracelet” (which we call the
Asteroid Belt):
Nibiru
(Marduk) enters our solar system from outer space.
The
Sumerian cosmogony, Sitchin asserted back in 1976, offers the best
explanation for many enigmas in our solar system, among them the
explanation for the Asteroid Belt.
Now little Eros
tells its robotic visitor from Earth: Yes indeed, I was once part of a
beautiful planet that broke up; yes, I
originated as a result of a fiery collision, as the Sumerians described
thousands of years ago; and that is why I am layered!
And this, my friends
is only the latest modern discovery that corroborates the amazing ancient
knowledge.
©
Z. Sitchin 2002
Reprinted with permission
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