Chapter Nine
THE MOTHER CALLED EVE
 

"....Regarding the biblical tale of Eve, it was the great Sumerologist Samuel N. Kramer who first pointed out that her name, which meant in Hebrew "She who has life," and the tale from the origin from Adam’s rib in all probability stemmed from the Sumerian play on the word TI, which meant both "life" and "rib".

"....The genetic manipulations, we have seen, were conducted by Enki and Ninti in a special facility called, in the Akkadian versions, Bit Shimti - "House where the wind of life is breathed in"....

"....The Akkadian term, as earlier stated, was a rendering of the Sumerian SHI.IM.TI.... SHI stood for what the Bible called Nephesh, commonly translated "soul" but more accurately meaning "breath of life." IM had several meanings, depending on the context. It meant "wind," but it could also mean "side." In astronomical texts it denoted a satellite that is "by the side" of its planet; in geometry it meant the side of a square or a triangle; and in anatomy it meant "rib." To this day the parallel word Sela means both the side of a geometric shape and a person’s rib. And, lo and behold, IM also had a totally unrelated fourth meaning "clay."

"....The term TI added to the Sumerian’s linguistic fun. It meant as previously mentioned, both "life" and "rib" - the latter being the parallel of the Akkadian silu, from which came the Hebrew Sela. Doubled, TI.TI meant "belly" - that which held the fetus; and, lo and behold, in Akkadian titu acquired the meaning "clay," from which the Hebrew word Tit has survived. Thus, the component TI of the laboratory’s Sumerian name, SHI.IM.TI, we have the meanings "life"/"clay"/"belly"/"rib."

And Yahweh Elohim caused a deep sleep
upon the Adam, and he slept.
And He took one of his ribs
and closed up the flesh in its place.
And Yahweh Elohim constructed of the rib
which He had taken form the Adam a woman,
and He brought her to the Adam.
And the Adam said,
"This is now bone of my bones,
flesh of my flesh..."

"....The Adam, having already been placed in the E.DIN to till and tend its orchards, was all alone. And Yahweh Elohim said, it is no good that the Adam is by himself; let me make him a mate. "This obviously is a continuation of the version whereby The Adam alone was created, and not part of the version whereby Mankind was created male and female right away.

"....First the male lulu, "mixed one" was perfected; then the fertilized eggs of Apewoman.... were placed in a "mold," where they acquired either male or female characteristics. Reimplanted in the womb of Birth Goddesses, the embryos produced seven males and seven females each time.... To get more of them, the process had to be repeated over and over again.

"....A way had to be found to get more of these humans without imposing the pregnancies and deliveries on female Anunnaki. That way was a second genetic manipulation by Enki and Ninti, giving the Adam the ability to procreate on his own. To be able to have offspring, Adam had to mate with a fully compatible female. How and why she was brought into being is the story of the Rib and of the Garden of Eden.

"The tale of the Rib reads almost like a two-sentence summary of a report in a medical journal. In no uncertain terms it describes a major operation of the kind that makes headlines nowadays, when a close relative for example.... donates an organ for transplant....

"....The donor in the biblical case is Adam. He is given general anesthesia and is put to sleep. An incision is made and a rib is removed. The flesh is then pulled together to close up the wound, and Adam is allowed to rest and recover.

"....The Elohim now use the piece of bone to construct a woman; not to create a woman, but to "construct" one. The difference in terminology is significant; it indicates that the woman in question already existed but required some constructive manipulation to become a mate to Adam. What ever was needed was obtained from the rib, and the clue to what the rib supplied lies in the other meanings of IM and TI - life, belly, clay. Was an extract of Adam’s bone marrow implanted in that of a female Primitive Worker’s "clay" through her belly?

Regrettably, the Bible does not describe what was done to the female (named Eve by Adam) and the Sumerian texts that have dealt with this have not been found so far....

"....But we do know nowadays, thanks to modern science, that sexuality and the ability to procreate lie in human chromosomes....

"....Since both female and male Primitive Workers already existed, their sterility was not due to the lack of X or Y chromosomes. The need for a bone - the Bible stresses that Eve was "bone of the bones" of Adam - suggests that there was a need to overcome some immunological rejection by the female Primitive Worker’s of the males’ sperms. The operation carried out by the Elohim overcame this problem. Adam and Eve discovered their sexuality, having acquired "knowing" - a biblical term that connoted sex for the purpose of procreation....

"....With that, "The Adam" Elohim said, "has become as one of us." He was granted "Knowing." Homo sapiens was able to procreate and multiply on his own. But though he was given a good measure of the genetic makeup of the Anunnaki, who made Man in their image and their likeness even in this respect of procreation, one genetic trait was not transmitted. That was the longevity of the Anunnaki....

"....The ancient texts make clear that this longevity was not passed on to Man, but intelligence was. This implies a belief or knowledge, in antiquity, that the two traits, intelligence and longevity, could somehow be bestowed upon or denied to Man by those who had genetically created him. Not surprisingly, perhaps, modern science agrees. "Evidence amassed over the past 60 years suggests that there is a genetic component to intelligence," Scientific American reported in its March 1989 issue....

"....Evidence has also been mounting for the genetic source of the life cycles of living organisms.... Every species clearly has a life span fixed by its genes - a single day for the mayfly, about six years for a frog, a limit of about fifteen years for a dog. Nowadays the human limit lies somewhere not much beyond one hundred years but in earlier times human life spans were much longer.

"....While it is believed the genetic errors that accumulate as DNA keeps reproducing itself in the cells contribute to the aging process, scientific evidence indicate the existence of a biological "clock" in all creatures, a basic, built-in genetic trait that controls the life span of each species. What the gene or group of genes is, what makes it tick, what triggers it to "express" itself, are still matters of intense research.... Viruses, show that they possess fragments of DNA that can literally "immortalize" them.

"Enki must have known all that, so that when it came to perfecting The Adam - creating a true, procreating Homo sapiens - he gave Adam intelligence and "Knowing," but not the full longevity that the Anunnaki genes possessed.

"....The evidence that corroborates the ancient tales of creation, massive as it has been so far, does not end with genetic manipulation. There is more to come, and it is all above Eve!

"....By now the question "Where did we come from?" had been clearly answered: Mankind arose in southeastern Africa.

"The story of Man, we now know, did not begin with Man; the "chapter" that tells of the group of mammals called "Primates" takes us back some forty-five or fifty million years, when a common ancestor of monkeys, apes, and Man appeared in Africa. Twenty-five or thirty million years later, that is how slowly the wheels of evolution turn - a precursor of the Great Apes branched off the primate line. In the 1920s fossils of this early ape, "Proconsul" were found by chance on an island in Lake Victoria, and the find eventually attracted to the area the best known husband-wife team of paleontologists, Louis S. B. and Mary Leaky. Besides Proconsul fossils they also discovered in the area remains of Ramapithecus, the first erect ape or manlike primate; it was some fourteen million years old - some eight or ten million years up the evolutionary tree from Proconsul.

"....They unlocked the door to nature’s secret laboratory, the hide away where Mother Nature keeps forging ahead with the evolutionary march that has led from mammal to primate to great apes to hominids. The place was the rift valley that slashes through Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania - part of the rift system that begins in Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea in Israel, includes the Red Sea, and runs all the way to southern Africa.
 

Hominid Fossils at Leakey’s Museum; Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.

"....Putting aside the problems raised by pride of discovery (among several other explorers), different interpretations of finds, and a propensity for splitting species and genuses into smaller subdivisions, it is safe to state that the branch leading to humans separated from that of four-legged apes some fourteen million years ago and that it took another nine million years or so until the first apes with hominid aspects, called Australopithecus, showed up - all where nature had chosen its "man-making" laboratory to be.

"....Among the outstanding road markers have been such findings as skeletal parts of a female nicknamed "Lucy" believed to have been an advanced Australopithecus who lived some 3.5 million years ago; a fossil known by its catalog number as "Skull 1470" of a male from perhaps 2 million years ago and considered by its finders to be a "near man," or Homo habilis ("Handy Man")....; and skeletal remains of a "strapping young male" cataloged WT.15000 of a Homo erectus from about 1.5 million years ago, probably the first true hominid. He ushered in the Old Stone Age; he began to use stones as tools, and migrated via the Sinai peninsula, which acts as a land bridge between Africa and Asia on the one hand and to southern Europe on the other.

"The trail of the Homo genus is lost after that, the chapter between about 1.5 million years to about 300,000 years ago is missing, except for traces of Homo erectus on the peripheries of this hominid’s migrations. Then, about 300,000 years ago, without any evidence of gradual change, Homo sapiens made his appearance. At first it was believed that Homo sapiens neanderthalis, Neanderthal man..., who came into prominence in Europe and parts of Asia about 125,000 years ago, was the ancestor of the Cro-Magnons, Homo sapiens sapiens, who took over the lands about 35,000 years ago.... Related but not the offspring of each other, the two lines of Homo sapiens lived side by side as far back as 90,000 or even 100,000 years ago.

"The evidence was found in two caves, [around 1930] one in Mount Carmel and the other [at Qafzeh] near Nazareth, in Israel.... (The cave near Nazareth was re-excavated in the 1960s)

"....Themselves incredulous, the scientists at Hebrew University in Jerusalem turned for verification to the remains of rodents found in the same layers (The age of the rodent remains coincided with the date of the Hominids remains).

"....Devoting an editorial in Nature to the findings, Christopher Stringer of the British Museum acknowledged that the conventional view that Neanderthal preceded Cro-Magnons had to be discarded....

"Wherever the original "Eden" for modern humans might have been," the editorial stated, it now appeared that for some reasons Neanderthals were the first to migrate northward, about 125,000 years ago.... A northward migration by these first Homo sapiens from an African birthplace was confirmed by the discovery (by Fred Wendorf of Southern Methodist University, Dallas) of a Neanderthal skull near the Nile in Egypt that was 80,000 years old.

""Does it all mean an earlier dawn for humans?" a Science headline asked.... it became clear the answer was yes. The Neanderthals, they were not the primitive brutes that earlier notions had made them out to be. They buried their dead in rituals that indicated religious practices and "at least one type of spiritually motivated behaviour that allies them with modern humans" (Jared M. Diamond of the University of California Medical School at Los Angeles).... Ralph S. Solecki of Columbia University, [and others] believe that the Neanderthals knew how to use herbs for healing - 60,000 years ago.... Neanderthals could speak: "Fossil brain casts show a well-developed language area," stated Dean Falk of the State University of New York at Albany....

"All these discoveries have left no doubt that Neanderthal man was without doubt a Homo Sapiens - not an ancestor of Cro-Magnon man but an earlier type from the same human stock.

"In March 1987 Christopher Stringer of the British Museum, along with a colleague, Paul Mellars, organized a conference at Cambridge University to update and digest the new findings concerning "The Origins and Dispersal of Modern Man...." They concluded that after a hiatus of 1.2 to 1.5 million years by Homo erectus, Homo sapiens made a sudden appearance soon after 300,000 years ago (as evidence by fossil remains in Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa)....

"....The conference also examined other lines of evidence, including the brand-new data provided by the field of biochemistry. Most exciting were the findings based on genetics. The ability of geneticists to trace parentage through comparisons of DNA "sentences" has been proven in paternity lawsuits....

"....Because a person’s DNA keeps getting mixed by the genes of the generational fathers, comparisons of the DNA in the nucleus of the cell (which come half from mother, half from father) do not work well after several generations. It was discovered, however, that in addition to the DNA in the cell’s nucleus, some DNA exists in the mother’s cell but outside the nucleus in bodies called "mitochondria." This DNA does not get mixed with the father’s DNA; instead, it is passed on "unadulterated" from mother to daughter to granddaughter, and so on through the generations.... The surprising conclusion, which he announced at a scientific conference in July1986 was that the mtDNA in all of them [800 women had been compared] appeared to be so similar that these women must have all descended from a single female ancestor.

It was concluded, after checking 21 women from different parts of the globe, that they owed their origin to "a single mitochondrial Eve" who had lived in Africa between 300,000 and 180,000 years ago.

Mr. Sitchin continues:

"These intriguing findings were taken up by others, who set out to search for "Eve." Prominent among them was Rebecca Cann....

Placentas of 147 women from all races showed also a common female ancestor who had lived between 300,000 and 150,000 years ago....

And then:

"The upper limit of 300,000 years, paleoanthropologists noted, coincided with the fossil evidence for the time Homo sapiens made his appearance. What could have happened 300,000 years ago to bring this change about?" Cann and Allan Wilson asked, but they had no answer.

"....All these very recent discoveries (even more in the book) go a long way indeed in confirming the biblical claim regarding the first couple of Homo sapiens....

"....Several conclusions are offered by the Sumerian data. First, the creation of the Lulu was the result of the mutiny of the Anunnaki about 300,000 years ago. This date as the upper limit for the first appearance of Homo sapiens has been corroborated by modern science.

"Second, the forming of the Lulu had taken place "above the Abzu," north of the mining area. This is corroborated by the location of the earliest human remains in Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia - north of the gold-mining areas of southern Africa.

"Third, the full emergence of the first type of Homo sapiens, the Neanderthals - about 230,000 years ago - falls well within the 250,000 years suggested by the mtDNA findings for the data of "Eve," followed later by the emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens, "modern Man."

"There is no contradiction at all between these later dates and the 300,000-year date of the mutiny....

"....Clearly, the tracing of mtDNA accounts for the "Eve" who could bear children, not a female Lulu unable to procreate. The granting to mankind of this ability, it was shown earlier, took place as a result of a second genetic manipulation by Enki and Ninti which, in the Bible, is reflected in the story of Adam, Eve, and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden....

"....What seems certain is that the Bible does recognize the final emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens, modern human beings.... It was in the time of Enosh (son of the third son of Adam and Eve, Seth), the Bible states that "men began to call the name of Yahweh. It was then, in other words, that fully civilized Man and religious worship were established.

"With that, all the aspects of the ancient tale stand corroborated.

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Chapter Ten
WHEN WISDOM WAS LOWERED FROM HEAVEN
 

"The Sumerian King Lists - a record of rulers, cities, and events arranged chronologically - divide prehistory and history into two distinct parts: first the long record of what had happened before the Deluge, then what transpired after the Deluge. One was the time when the Anunnaki "gods" and their sons by the "daughters of Man," the so-called demigods, ruled upon the Earth; the other was when human rulers - kings selected by Enlil - were interposed between the "gods" and the people....

"...."When kingship was lowered from heaven," begins the Sumerian King List, "kingship was in Eridu...."

"....Although the subject of this volume is what we call Science and the ancients called Wisdom, a few words about "Kingship" - the good order of things, an organized society and its institutions - will not be out of place, because without them no scientific progress or the dissemination and preservation of "Wisdom" could be possible....

"....Various aspects of an organized and orderly society were incorporated into the concept of kingship, first and foremost among them the need for justice. A king was required to be "righteouss" and to promulgate and uphold the law.... Hamurabi’s was a code of crime and punishment: if you do this, your punishment will be that. The Sumerian law codes, on the other hand, were codes of just behavior; they stated that "you should not take away a widow’s donkey" or delay the wages of a day laborer. The Bible’s Ten Commandments were, like the Sumerian codes, not a list of punishments but a code of what is right to do and what is wrong and should not be done.

"....It is from Sumer that we have inherited the concept of judges, juries, witnesses, and contracts, the unit of society we call the "family," based on a contractual marriage, was instituted in Sumer; so were rules and customs of succession, of adoption, of the rights of widows. The rule of law was also applied to economic activities: exchange based on contracts, rules for employment, wages, - how else - taxation....

"....All that and more came under the umbrella of "Kingship." As the sons and grandchildren of Enlil entered the stage of relations between Man and his gods, the functions of kingship and the supervision of kings were gradually handed over to them, and Enlil as the All Beneficent became a cherished memory. But to this day what we call a "civilized society" still owns its foundation to the time when "kingship was lowered from heaven."

"Wisdom" - sciences and the arts, the activities that required know-how - were the domain first of Enki, the Chief Scientist of the Anunnaki, and later on, of his children....

"....Like Kingship, Wisdom was "lowered to Earth from Heaven," granted to Mankind by the Anunnaki "gods." It was by their sole decision that scientific knowledge was passed on to Mankind, usually through the medium of selected individuals....

"....There was no doubt in ancient times that scientific knowledge was a gift and a teaching from the "gods" - the Anunnaki, Elohim - to Mankind. The assertions that astronomy was a major subject are self-evident statements, since, as must be evident from earlier chapters in this book, the astounding knowledge in Sumerian times of the complete Solar System and the cosmogony that explained the origin of Earth, the asteroid belt, and the existence of Nibiru could have come only from the Anunnaki.

"While I have seen a gratifying increase - to some extent, I would like to think, due to my writings - in the recognition of the Sumerian contribution to the beginning and concept of laws, medical treatment, and cuisine, the parallel recognition of the immense Sumerian contribution to astronomy has not come about; this, I suspect, because of the hesitation in crossing the "forbidden threshold" of the inevitable next step: if you admit that the Sumerians knew about celestial matters, you must admit the existence not only of Nibiru but also of its people, the Anunnaki... Nevertheless, this "fear of crossing" (a nice play on words, since Nibiru’s name meant "Planet of the Crossing" . . .) in no way negates the fact modern astronomy owes to the Sumerian (and through them, to the Anunnaki) the basic concept of a spherical astronomy with all its technicalities; the concept of an ecliptic as the belt around the Sun in which the planets orbit; the grouping of stars into constellations; the grouping of the constellations seen in the ecliptic into the Houses of the Zodiac; and the application of the number 12 to these constellations, to the months of the year, and to other celestial, or "divine" matters.... Astrologers certainly owe much to these celestial divisions, since in the planet Nibiru astrologers find the twelfth member of the Solar System that they have been missing for so long.

"As the Book of Enoch details and as the biblical reference to the number 365 attests, a direct result of the knowledge of the interrelated motions of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth was the development of the calendar: the counting of the days (and their nights), the months, and the years. It is now generally recognized that the Western calendar we use nowadays harkens back to Mankind’s first-ever calendar, the one known as the Calendar of Nippur....

"....The Jewish Calendar, as I have repeatedly pointed out in books and articles, still adheres to the calendar of Nippur not only in its form and structure but also in its count of years. In A.D. 1990 the Jewish calendar counts the year 5750; and it is not from "the creation of the world," as the explanation has been, but from the start of the calendar of Nippur in 3760 B.C.

"It was in that year, I have suggested in The Lost Realms, that Anu, Nibiru’s king, came to Earth on a state visit. His name AN in Sumerian and Anu in Akkadian, meant "heaven," "The Heavenly One," and was a component of numerous astronomical terms, such as AN.UR ("celestial horizon") and AN.PA ("point of Zenith"), as well as being a component of the name "Anunnaki," "Those Who From Heaven to Earth Came...."

".... Enki imparted the knowledge of astronomy (and other sciences) to his firstborn son Marduk, and the renown ziggurat of Babylon, built there after Marduk gained supremacy in Mesopotamia, was built to serve as an astronomical observatory.

"Enki bestowed the "secrets" of the calendar, mathematics, and writing on his younger son Ningishzidda, whom the Egyptians called Thoth. In The Lost Realms I present substantial evidence to show that he was one and the same Mesoamerican god known as Quetzalcoatl, "The Plumed Serpent." This god’s name, which means (in Sumerian) "Lord of the Tree of Life," reflected the fact that it was to him that Enki entrusted medical knowledge, including the secret of reviving the dead....

"....Putting aside the ability to revive the dead (which is mentioned as fact in the Bible), it is certain that the teaching of anatomy and medicine was part of priestly training, as stated in the Enmeduranki text. That the tradition continued into later times is clear from Leviticus, one of the Five Books of Moses, which contains extensive instructions by Yahweh to the Israelite priests in matters of health, medical prognosis, treatment and hygiene.... These instructions were not unlike those in numerous earlier Mesopotamian texts that served as medical manuals for the A.ZUs and IA.ZUs.... That the Elohim were the source of these teachings should come as no surprise when we recall the medical, anatomical, and genetic feats of Enki and Ninti.

"....The Sumerian numbers system is called sexagesimal, meaning "base 60." The count ran from 1 to 60, as we now do with 1 to 100. But then, where we say "two hundred," the Sumerians said (or wrote) "2 gesh," meaning 2 x 60, which equaled 120....

"....When record keeping began, a stylus with a round tip was used to impress on wet clay the various symbols that stood for the numbers 1, 10, 60, 600, and 3,600. The ultimate numeral was 3,600, signified by a large circle; it was called SAR (Shar in Akkadian) the "princely" or "royal" number, the number of Earth-years it took Nibiru to complete one orbit around the Sun.

After Mr. Sitchin explains the "cuneiform" writing ("wedge-shaped"), in which scribes used a wedge-shaped stylus.... he continues:

"....Although dubbed "sexagesimal," the Sumerian system of numeration and mathematics was in reality not simply based on the number 60 but a combination of 6 and 10. While in the decimal system each step up is accomplished by multiplying the previous sum by 10, in the Sumerian system the numbers increased by alternate multiplications: once by 10, then by 6, then by 10, then again by 6. This method has puzzled today’s scholars. The decimal system is obviously geared to the ten digits of the human hands (as the numbers, too, are still called), so the 10 in the Sumerian system can be understood; but where did the 6 come from, and why?

"....There have been other puzzles. Among the thousands of mathematical tablets from Mesopotamia many held tables of ready-made calculations. Surprisingly, however, they did not run from smaller numbers up (like 1, 10, 60, etc.) but ran down, starting from a number that can only be described as astronomical: 12,900,000... it stemmed from the phenomenon of Precession, which retards the zodiac constellation against which the Sun rises by a full House once in 2,160 years....

"....It was incredible to learn, as Hilprecht (The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania), and others have, that the Sumerians were not only aware of the phenomenon of precession but also knew that a shift from House to House in the zodiac required 2,160 years; it was doubly incomprehensible that they chose as the base of their mathematics a number representing five hundred complete twelve-House-cycles, each one of which required the fantastic (as far as human beings are concerned) time span of 25,900 years. In fact, while modern astronomy accepts the existence of the phenomenon and its periods as calculated in Sumer, there is no scientist now or in former times who can or could confirm from personal experience the shift of even one House (a shift to Aquarius is now anticipated); and all the scientists put together have to witness one complete cycle. Still, there it is in the Sumerian tablets.

"It seems to me that a solution to all these puzzles can be found if modern science will accept the existence of Nibiru and its Anunnaki as fact....

"....Although a complete shift in 2,160 years was also beyond an Earthling’s lifetime, the gradual shift of one degree every 72 years was an observable phenomenon (which the astronomer-priests witnessed and dealt with). This was the "earthly" in the formulation.

"....Then there was the orbital period of Nibiru, which the Anunnaki knew equaled 3,600 Earth-years....

Mr. Sitchin gives plenty information about numerology of the ancients, from the Sumerian records. He also mentions some biblical passages, Psalm 90, where the Lord, referring to the "Celestial Lord" (Nibiru) is mentioned. Also in Psalm 102....

"....Relating it all to the orbit of Nibiru, to its cycle of 3,600 Earth-years, the precessional retardation of Earth in its orbit around the Sun - this is the secret of the Wisdom of Numbers of the Anunnaki lowered from heaven to Earth.

"....Before Man could "calculate with numbers," the other two of the "three Rs" -reading and ’riting- had to be mastered. We take for granted that man can speak, that we have languages by which to communicate to our fellow men (or clansmen). But modern science has not held it so; in fact, until quite recently, the scientists dealing with speech and languages believed that "Talking Man" was a rather late phenomenon that may have been one reason the Cro-Magnons - who could speak and converse with each other - took over from the nonspeaking Neanderthals.

"This was not the biblical view. The Bible took it for granted, for example, that the Elohim who were on Earth long before the Adam could speak and address each other....

"....Let us now look at the Adam. He is placed in the Garden of Eden and is told what to eat and what to avoid. The instructions were understood by The Adam, as the ensuing conversation between the Serpent and Eve makes clear.... Adam and Even hide when they hear the footsteps of Yahweh, "strolling in the garden in the cool of the day." Yahweh calls out to Adam.... (The dialogue in Genesis is given in the book).

Mr. Sitchin then continues:

"....This is quite a conversation. Not only the Deity can speak; Adam and Eve can also speak and understand the Deity’s language. So, in what language did they converse, for there must have been one (according to the Bible).

"....Again scholars began by differing with the Bible. They assumed that language was a cultural heritage rather than an hereditary trait. It was assumed that Man progressed from groans to meaningful shouts (on seeing prey or sensing danger) to rudimentary speech as he formed clans....

"....It is gratifying to note that in recent years, modern science has come around to the belief that there was indeed a Mother Tongue; and that both types of Homo sapiens - Cro-Magnon and Neanthertal - could talk from the very beginning.

"....It was mainly advances in other fields, such as anthropology, biogenetics, and the Earth sciences, as well as computerization, that opened new avenues of study of what some call "linguistic genetics...."

"....Meanwhile, archaeological discoveries kept pushing back the time of human migrations, and this was especially significant in regard to the arrival of migrants in the Americas. When a time of twenty thousand years or even thirty thousand years ago was suggested, Joseph Greenberg created a sensation when he demonstrated in 1987 (Language in the Americas) that the hundreds of tongues in the New World could be grouped into just three families, which he termed Eskimo-Aleut, Na-Dene, and Amerind. The greater significance of his conclusions was that these three in turn were brought to the Americas by migrants from Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific and thus in effect were not true-proto-languages but offshoots of Old World ones....

(Readers wishing to know more about the earliest arrivals in the Americas may want to read The Lost Realms, Book IV of the "Earth Chronicles" series).

"....But did true languages begin only about twelve thousand years ago - only after the Deluge? It is not only according to the bible that language existed at the very beginning of Homo sapiens (Adam and Eve), but also the fact that Sumerian texts repeatedly refer to inscribed tablets that dated from before the Deluge....

"Discoveries by paleontologists and anthropologists make linguists push their estimations back in time. The discoveries in the Kebara cave, mentioned earlier, indeed forced a complete reevaluation of previous timetables.

"....Still, scientist from other fields relating to the anatomy of speech, such as Philip Lieberman of Brown University and Dean Folk of the State University of New York at Albany, see speech as a trait of Homo sapiens from the very first appearance of these "Thinking/Wise Men." Brain specialists such as Ronald E. Myers of the National Institute of Communicative Disorders and Strokes believe that "human speech developed spontaneously, unrelated to the crude vocalization of other primates," as soon as humans acquired their two-part brains."

"And Allan Wilson, who had participated in the genetic research leading to the "One-Mother-of-All" conclusion, put speech back in the mouth of "Eve"; "The human capacity for language may have come from a genetic mutation that occurred in a woman who lived in Africa 200,000 years ago," he announced at a meeting in January 1989 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"....And so we arrive at the last of the Rs - writing.

"....Undoubtedly, Man learned to write long after he began to speak. The Mesopotamian texts insist that there was writing before the Deluge, and there is no reason to disbelieve this. But the first writing discovered in modern times is the early Sumerian script which was pictographic. It took a few centuries for this script to evolve into the cuneiform script which was the means of writing in all the ancient languages of Asia until it was finally replaced, millennia later, by the alphabet.

"....Three generations of scholars have been able to arrange the signs in a logical order and, as a result, have come up with lexicons and dictionaries of the ancient languages - Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Hittite, Elamite and so on - that used cuneiform.

"But modern science reveals that there was more than some logical order to creating such a diversity of signs.

"Mathematicians, especially those leading with graph theory - the study of points joined by lines - are familiar with the Ramsey Graph Theory....

"....The almost one hundred signs, only partly illustrated here [in the book] are simple graphs based on no more than a dozen Ramsey Numbers. So, if Enki or his daughter Nidaba, the Sumerian "goddess of writing," had known as much as Frank Ramsey, they must have had no problem in devising for the Sumerian scribes a mathematically perfect system of cuneiform signs.

"I will greatly bless thee, and I will exceedingly multiply thy seed as the stars of the heavens," Yahweh told Abraham. And with this single verse, several of the elements of the knowledge that was lowered from heaven were expressed: speech, astronomy, and the "counting with numbers."

"Modern science is well on its way to corroborating all that.

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Chapter Eleven
A SPACE BASE ON MARS

"....Vowing to make the United States "a spacefaring nation," the goal, the President said, will be "back to the Moon, back to the future . . . and then, a journey into tomorrow, to another planet: a manned mission to Mars."

"Back to the future." The choice of words may or may not have been coincidental; the promise that going to the future involves going to the past might have been more than a speech writer’s choice slogan.

"For there is evidence that "A Space Base on Mars," this chapter’s heading, should apply not to the discussion of future plans but to disclosure of what has already taken place in the past: Evidence that a space base existed on the planet Mars in antiquity; and what is even more startling, that it might have been reactivated before our very eyes.

"....A spaceship capable of carrying a team of astronauts to Mars and back might have to weigh as much as four million pounds.... (U.S. space shuttles now have a payload capacity of sixty-five thousand pounds.)

"....Such lift-off and fuel problems would be greatly reduced if the spaceship will be assembled in weightless orbit around the Earth. This scenario envisions an orbiting, manned space station, to which shuttle craft will ferry the knocked-down spaceship. Meanwhile, astronauts stationed on the Moon at a permanent space base would develop the technology required for Man’s survival in space. Man and vehicle would then be joined for the voyage to Mars.

"....The round trip may take between two and three years depending on the trajectory and Earth-Mars alignments....

"....The progression from shuttlecraft to an orbiting space station to landings on the Moon and the establishment of a space base thereon, all as stepping-stones or way stations toward a landing on Mars, has been described in scenarios that read like science fiction but are based on scientific knowledge and attainable technology. Based on the Moon and on Mars, even a colony on Mars, have been in the planning for a long time and are deemed entirely feasible. Sustaining human life and activity on the Moon is certainly challenging, but the studies show how it could be achieved. The tasks are even more challenging for Mars, since re-supply from Earth (as the Moon projects envision) is more difficult and costly. Nevertheless, the vital resources needed by Man to survive and function are available on Mars, and scientists believe that Man could live "off the land" there.

"Mars, it has been concluded, is habitable - because it was habitable in the past.

"Mars appears nowadays as a cold, half-frozen planet inhospitable to anything living upon its surface.... But not so long ago in geological terms, it was a planet with relative pleasant seasons, flowing water, oceans and rivers, cloudy (blue!) skies, and perhaps - just perhaps - even some forms of indigenous simple plant life.

"All the various studies converge towards the conclusion that Mars is now going through an ice age, not unlike the ice ages that Earth has experienced periodically....

Mr. Sitchin explains the orbital anomalies of Planet Earth and how it is affected in its seasons and cycles of ice and warmth. He then continues:

"....The planet Mars is also subject to all these cycles, except that its larger orbit around the Sun and greater tilt differential cause more extreme climatic swings. The cycle as we have mentioned, is believed to last some fifty thousand years on Mars (shorter and longer durations have also been suggested).

"When the next Martian warm period, or interglacial, arrives, the planet will literally flow with water, its seasons will not be as harsh, and its atmosphere will not be as alien to Earthlings as it is today. When was the last "interglacial" epoch on Mars? The time could not have been too distant, because otherwise the dust storms on Mars would have obliterated more, if not most, of the evidence on its surface of once-flowing rivers, ocean shorelines, and lake basins; and there would not be as much water vapor still in the Martian atmosphere as is found today....

"....Those who are planning the landings and extended stays on Mars do not expect the climate there to revert to an interglacial epoch within the next two decades; but they do believe that the basic requirements for life and survival on Mars are locally available.... Aquifers - subterranean water pools - are a sure source of water in the opinion of many scientists.... Morning fogs and mists that have been observed on Mars suggest to scientists the existence of dew, a source of water for many plants and animals on Earth in arid areas.

"....The Martian atmosphere, at first site inhospitable and even poisonus to Man and life, could in fact be a source of vital resources. The atmosphere has been found to contain some water vapor, which could be extracted by condensation. It could also be a source of oxygen for breathing and burning....

"....The planet’s reddish-brown, or "rusty," hue is also a clue to the availability of oxygen, for it is the result of the actual rusting of iron rocks on Mars....

"....Although the Martian soil is relatively high in salts, scientists believe it could be washed with water sufficiently to the point where patches would be suitable for plant cultivation in green-houses; local foods could thus be grown, especially from seeds of salt-resistant strains of grains and vegetables; human waste could be used as fertilizer, as it is used in many Third World countries on Earth....

"....Another source not just of water but also of heat on Mars, is indicated by the past volcanic activity there. Of several notable volcanoes.... the largest volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, rises 6.3 miles; Olympus Mons on Mars towers 15 miles above the surrounding plain.... The volcanoes of Mars and other evidence of volcanic activity on the planet indicate a hot molten core and thus the possible existence of warm surface spots, hot-water springs, and other phenomena resulting from internally generated heat.

"With a day almost exactly the length of a day on Earth, seasons (although about twice as long as Earth’s), equatorial regions, icy northern and southern poles, water resources that once were seas and lakes and rivers, mountain ranges and plains, volcanoes and canyons, Mars is Earthlike in so many ways. Indeed, some scientists believe that Mars, although created at the same time as the other planets 4.6 billion years ago, is at the stage Earth was at its beginnings, before plant life began to emit oxygen and change Earth’s atmosphere. This notion has served as a basis for the suggestion by proponents of the Gaia Theory of how Man might "jump the gun" on Martian evolution by bringing life to it; for they hold that it was Life that made Earth hospitable to life.

"....The plans proposed by the advocates of Gaia Hypothesis are based on an assumption and a presumption. The first, that Mars does not have life-forms of its own; the second, that people from one planet have the right to introduce their life-forms to another world, whether or not it has its own life.... it is evident that Life as it has blossomed on Earth - trees and forests, bushes and grasses, flying birds and roaming animals - is just not there. But what about lesser life-forms lichens or algae or the lowly bacteria?

Mars probes, Mariners 4, 6, and 7 (1965-69) revealed a desolated planet....

"....This image, of a planet not only without life on it but itself a lifeless and dead globe changed completely when Mariner 9 went into orbit around Mars in 1971 and surveyed almost its entire surface. It showed a living planet with a history of geologic activity and volcanism, with plains and mountains, with canyons in which America’s Grand Canyon could be swallowed without a trace, and the marks of flowing water. It was not only a living planet but one that could have life upon it.

"The search for life on Mars was thus made a prime objective of the Viking Missions. Viking I and Viking 2 were launched from Cape Canaveral in the summer 1975 and reached their destination in July and August of 1976.... the landers sent thrilling photographs of the Martian landscape at very close range and conducted a series of experiments in search of Life.

"Besides instruments to analyze the atmosphere and cameras to photograph the areas in which they touched down, each Lander carried a combined gas-chromatograph/mass-spectrometer for analyzing the surface for organic material as well as three instruments designed to detect metabolic activity by any organism in the soil.... There were no living organisms in the samples; only carbon dioxide and a small amount of water vapor were found. There were not even the organic molecules that impacting meteorites bring with them; the presumption is that if such molecules had been delivered to Mars, the present high level of ultraviolet light that strikes the planet, whose protective atmosphere is now almost gone, must have destroyed them.

"In subsequent years, in laboratory experiments in which the soil and conditions of Mars were simulated as best as the researchers could, the reactions indicated biological responses.... [Moscow University 1980]: when Earth life-forms were introduced, birds and mammals expired in a few seconds, turtles and frogs lived many hours, insects survived for weeks - but fungi, lichens, algae, and mosses quickly adapted themselves to the new environment; oats, rye, and beans sprouted and grew but could not reproduce.

"Life, then, could take hold on Mars, but had it? With 4.6 billion years at the disposal of evolution on Mars, where are not merely some microorganisms (which may or may not exist) but higher life-forms? Or were the Sumerians right in saying that life sprouted on Earth so soon after its formation only because the "Seed of Life" was brought to it, by Nibiru?

"While the soil of Mars still keeps its riddle of whether or not its test reactions were chemical and lifeless or biological and caused by living organism, the rocks of Mars challenge us with even more enigmatic puzzles.

"....The rocks discovered in Antarctica are even more puzzling. A photograph of one of them, released by NASA and published in The New York Times of September 1, 1987, shows it to be not "football sized" as these rocks had been described, but rather a broken-off block of four bricklike artificially shaped and angled stones fitted together - something one would expect to find in pre-Inca ruins in Peru’s Sacred Valley but not on Mars. Yet all tests on the rock (it is no longer referred to as a meteorite) attest to its Martian origin.

"To compound the mystery, photographs of the Martian surface have revealed features that, on seeing them, astronomers dubbed "Inca City." Located in the planet’s southern part, they represent a series of steep walls made up of squarish or rectagular segments. John McCauley, a NASA geologist commented that the "ridges" were "continuous, show no breaching, and stand out among the surrounding plains and small hills like walls of an ancient ruin."

"This immense wall or series of connected shaped stone blocks bears a striking resemblance to such colossal and enigmatic structures on Earth as the immense wall of gigantic stone blocks that forms the base of the vast platform at Baalbek in Lebanon or to the cruder but equally impressive zigzagging parallel stone walls at Sacsahuaman above Cuzco in Peru. In The Stairway to Heaven and The Lost Realms, I have attributed both structures to the Anunnaki/Nefilim. The features on Mars might perhaps be explained as natural phenomena, and the size of the blocks, ranging from three to five miles in length, might very well indicate the hand of nature rather than of people, of whatever provenance. On the other hand, since no plausible natural explanation has emerged, they might be the remains of artificial structures - if the ’giants" of Near Eastern and Andean lore had also visited Mars . . .

"The notion of "canals" on Mars appeared to have been laid to rest when - after decades of ridicule - scientists suggested that what Schiaparelli and Lowell had observed and mapped were in fact channels of dried-up rivers. Yet other features were found on the Martian surface that defy easy explanation. These include white "streaks" that run in straight lines for endless miles - sometimes parallel, sometimes at angles to each other, sometimes crossing other, narrower "tracks." Once again, the NASA teams suggested that windblown dust storms may have caused these features. This may be so, although the regularity and especially the intersecting of the lines seem to indicate an artificial origin. Searching for a comparable feature on Earth, one must look to the famous Nazca lines in southern Peru which have been attributed to "the gods."

"....As pictures taken by the Mariner and Viking cameras seem to show, even pyramids, or what look like pyramids, have been seen on Mars.

Mr. Sitchin presents several photos of Mars, its "pyramids, Face," and other features, and opinions of various experts. He continues:

"....Although it is said that the NASA scientist who examined the photographs [of the Face] received from the Viking I Orbiter on July 25, 1976, "almost fell out of his chair" when he saw this frame and that appropriate "Oh, my god" or expressions to that effect were uttered, the fact is that the photo was filed away with the thousands of other Viking photographs without any further action because the similarity to a human face was deemed just a play of light and shadows on a rock eroded by natural forces (water, wind)....

"....Three years later Vincent DiPietro, an electrical engineer and imaging specialist, who remembered seeing the "Face" in a popular magazine came face-to-face with the Martian image as he was thumbing through the archives of the National Space Science Data Center.... Intrigued by the decision to keep the photo in the scientific data center under that tantalizing caption - the "Head" whose very existence had been denied - he embarked, together with Greg Molenaar, a Lockheed computer scientist, on search for the original NASA image. They found not one, but two, the other being image 070-A-13(Plate F). Subsequent searchers came up with more photos of the Cydonia area taken by different Viking Orbiter cameras and from both the right and left sides of the features (there are eleven by now). The Face as well as more pyramid-like and other puzzling features could be seen on all of them. Using sophisticated computer enhancements and imaging techniques, DiPietro and Molinaar obtained enlarged and clearer images of the Face that convinced them it had been artificially sculpted.

"Armed with their findings (DiPietro and Molenaar), they attended the 1981 The Case for Mars conference but instead of acclaiming them the assembled scientists cold-shouldered their assertions - undoubtedly because they would have to draw the conclusion that the Face was the handiwork of intelligent beings, "Martians" who had inhabited the planet; and that was a totally unacceptable proposition.... All they claimed [their book Unusual Mars Surface Features’ s epilogue stated], was "that the features do not seem natural and warrant further investigation." NASA scientists, however, strongly rejected any suggestion that future missions should include a visit to the Face, since it was clearly just a rock shaped by the forces of nature so that it resembled a human face.

"The cause of the Face on Mars was thereafter taken up primarily by Richard C. Hoagland, a science writer and one time consultant at the Goddard Space Flight Center. He organized a computer conference titled the Independent Mars Investigation Team with the purpose of having the features and all other pertinent data studied by a representative group of scientists and specialists; the group eventually included Brian O’Leary, a scientist-astronaut, and David Webb, a member of the U.S. President’s Space Commission. In their conclusions they not only concurred with the view that the "Face" and "pyramids" were artificial structures, they also suggested that other features on the surface on Mars were the handiwork of intelligent beings who had once been on Mars.

"I was especially intrigued by the suggestion in their reports that the orientation of the Face and the principal pyramid indicated they were built about half a million years ago in alignment with sunrise at solstice time on Mars. When Hoagland and his colleague Thomas Rautenberg, a computer specialist, sought my comments on their photographic evidence, I pointed out to them that the Anunnaki/Nefilim, according to my conclusions in The 12^th Planet, had first landed on Earth about 450,000 years ago; it was, perhaps, no coincidence that Hoagland and Rautenberg’s dating of the monuments on Mars coincided with my timetable. Although Hoagland was careful to hedge his bets, he devoted many pages in his book The Monuments of Mars to my writings and to the Sumerian evidence concerning the Anunnaki.

"The publicity according the findings of DiPietro, Molenaar, and Hoagland has caused NASA to insist that they are wrong. In an unusual move, the National Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which supplies the public with copies of NASA data, has been enclosing along with the "Face" photographs copies of rebutals on the unorthodox interpretations of the images. These rebutals include a three-page paper dated June 6, 1987, by Paul Butterworth, the Center’s Resident Planetologist. He states that "there is no reason to believe that this particular mountain, which is similar to tens of thousands of others on the planet, is not the result of the natural geological processes which have produced all the other landforms on Mars....

""No reason to believe" that the feature is other than natural is, of course, not a factual argument in disproving the opposite position, whose proponents contend that they do have reason to believe the features are artificial structures.... the Face and some features near it, especially those with straight sides, remain a challenging enigma.

"A scientifically significant study by Mark J. Carlotto, an optics scientist, was published in the May 1988 issue of the prestigious journal Applied Optics.... and Carlotto’s conclusions were that the "Face" was indeed a bisymmetrical human face, with another eye socket in the shaded part and a "fine structure of the mouth suggesting teeth." These, Carlotto stated, "were facial features and not a transient phenomenon" or a trick of light and shadow....

"Applied Optics deemed the study important enough to make it its front-cover feature, and the scientific journal New Scientist devoted a special report to the published paper and to an interview with the author. The journal echoed his suggestion that "at the very least these enigmatic objects" - the Face and the adjoining pyramidal features that some had dubbed "The City" - "deserve further scrutiny by future Mars probes, such as the 1988 Soviet Phobos mission or the U.S. Mars Observer."

"The fact that the controlled Soviet press has published and republished articles by Vladimir Avinsky, a noted researcher in geology and mineralogy, that support the non-natural origin of the monuments, surely indicates the Soviet aerospace attitudes on the matter - a subject that will be dealt with at greater length later on.

Avinsky suggests:

"....one must bear in mind that due to the low gravity on Mars a man could perform gigantic tasks on it, and he attaches great importance to the dark circle that is clearly seen in the flat area between the Face and the Pyramids. While NASA scientists dismiss it as "a water spot on the lens of the Viking Orbiter," Avinsky considers it "the centre of the entire composition" of the "Martian complex" and its layout.

"Unless it is assumed that Earthlings possessed, tens of thousands or even half a million years ago, a high civilization and a sophisticated technology that enabled them to engage in space travel, arrive on Mars and, among other things, put up monuments on it, including the Face, only two other alternatives logically remain. The first is that intelligent beings had evolved on Mars who not only could engage in megalithic construction but also happened to look like us. But in the absence even of microorganisms in the soil of Mars, nor evidence of plant and animal life that among other things could provide the humanlike Martians with nourishment, the rise of a Martian population akin to Earthlings and one that even duplicated the structure forms found on Earth seems highly improbable.

"The only remaining plausible alternative is that someone, neither from Earth nor from Mars, capable of space travel half a million years ago, had visited this part of the Solar System and had stayed; and then left behind monuments, both on Earth and on Mars. The only beings for which evidence has been found - in the Sumerian and biblical texts and in all the ancient "mythologies" - are the Anunnaki from Nibiru....

"....The Giza Sphinx was so oriented that its gaze was aligned precisely eastward along the thirtieth parallel toward the spaceport of the Anunnaki in the Sinai peninsula....

"....The reference to the message-transmitting role of the "Fair of Face" - the sphinx at Giza - raises the question of what the purpose of the Face on Mars was.... was the purpose, as the Egyptian text suggests, to send the "message from Heaven" to the sphinx on Earth, a "command" according to which the gods acted, sent from one Face to another Fair-of-Face?

"If such was the purpose of the Face on Mars, then one would indeed expect to find pyramids nearby, as one finds at Giza.... Interestingly, Dr. Avinsky discerns three true pyramids in the area adjoining the Face on Mars.

"As the ample evidence presented in the volumes of "The Earth Chronicles" series indicates, the Giza pyramids were not the handiwork of Pharaohs but were constructed by the Anunnaki....

Mr. Sitchin explains at this point the reasons of the Anunnaki for their facilities in the Sinai peninsula, their main aim was to transport the gold mined from southern Africa to Nibiru. The Anunnaki also went to the mountains and plains of South America to exploit the various minerals there, constructing monumental features for the purpose. He then continues:

"....Of the unusual features the orbiting cameras captured on the Face of Mars, two appear to me to be almost certainly artificial - and both seem to emulate structures found on the shore of Lake Titicaca in the Andes.

"....The two features, which cannot be explained away as the result of the play of light and shadow, thus bear similarities to the facilities and structures on the shores on Lake Titicaca. In this they not only support my suggestion that they are the remains of structures put up by the same visitors - the Anunnaki - they also offer a hypothesis for explaining their purpose and possible function. This conclusion is further supported by features that can be seen in the Utopia area: a pentagonal structure (enhanced NASA frame 086-A-07) and a "runway" next to what some deem evidence of mining (NASA frame 086-A-08).

Mr. Sitchin presents a good number of pictures and sketches in his book, with its corresponding hypothesis.

"....It has been pointed out that if an alien spacecraft were to search for signs of life on Earth in areas of the Earth’s surface outside the cities, what would give the presence of intelligent beings on Earth would be the tracks we call "roads" and the rectilinear patterns of agricultural lands. NASA itself has supplied what might amount to evidence of deliberate agricultural activity on Mars. Frame 52-A-35 shows a series of parallel grooves resembling contoured farmland - as one would find in the high mountains of Peru’s Sacred Valley. The photo caption prepared by the NASA News Center in Pasadena, California, when the photograph was released on August 18, 1976, stated thus:

Peculiar geometric markings, so regular that they appear almost artificial can be seen in this Mars picture taken by Viking Orbiter 1 on August 12 from a range of 2053 kilometers (1273 miles)....

The parallel contours look very much like an aerial view of plowed ground....

The feature’s similarity to a "farmer’s field after plowing" was noticed as soon as the image was received, and the comment of Michael Carr, head of the imaging team, was, "we’re getting some strange things, it’s very puzzling. . . It’s hard to believe of a natural cause because the stripes are so regular." Not surprising, perhaps, was the location: the Cydonia region, site of the Face and other enigmatic features!

"....Since the Anunnaki counted the planets from the outside inward, Mars was the sixth planet; and the Sumerians depicted it accordingly by the symbol of a six-pointed star.... Using these symbols as a clue, we can now turn to examine an amazing Sumerian depiction on a cylinder seal. It shows a spacecraft, with its solar panels and antennas extended, passing between the sixth and the seventh planet (Earth), that is, between Mars and Earth. A winged Anunnaki.... [by the seven dots which represent Earth] is greeting another [using a helmet and by the six point star representing Mars]....

"....Even more enlightening as to what role Mars, or the space facilities on it, had played on the journeys of the Anunnaki to Earth is the Babylonian text concerning the Akitu festival....

"....The Akitu ceremonies included a reenactment by Marduk of the voyages of the Anunnaki from Nibiru/Marduk to Earth. Each planet passed on the way was symbolized by a way station.... The station/planet Mars was termed "The Traveler’s Ship," and I have taken it to mean that it was at Mars that the astronauts and cargo coming from Nibiru transferred to smaller spacecraft in which they were transported to Earth (and vice versa).... Nearing Earth, these transporters linked up with the Earth orbiting station(s) manned by the Igigi....
 

"....Planners of the forthcoming steps into space by Mankind envision almost the same sequence of different vehicles.... In this, once again, modern science is only catching up with ancient knowledge.

Coupled with these ancient texts and depictions, the photographic data from the surface of Mars, and the similarities between the Martian structures and those on Earth erected by the Anunnaki all lead to one plausible conclusion:

"Mars, sometime in the past was the site of a space base.
And there is also evidence suggesting that the ancient space base has been reactivated - in our very own time, in these very days.

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