FigureZecharia Sitchin (1920–2010)

Born in Baku in 1920 and raised in Mandatory Palestine, Sitchin trained in economics at the University of London and worked as a journalist and shipping executive before publishing The 12th Planet in 1976, the first of the seven-volume Earth Chronicles. From his own readings of Sumerian and Akkadian texts he claimed that a planet called Nibiru, on a 3,600-year orbit beyond Neptune, is home to the Anunnaki, who came to Earth roughly 450,000 years ago to mine gold and genetically engineered Homo sapiens as a labor force.

Assyriologists reject the foundation of the argument. Sitchin was self-taught in cuneiform, and scholars such as Michael Heiser have shown his translations are inconsistent with the standard Mesopotamian bilingual dictionaries — his reading of cylinder seal VA 243 as a heliocentric solar system, in particular, is not supported by the sign values. There is no astronomical evidence for Nibiru. Sitchin’s lasting influence is cultural: the Anunnaki-as-ancient-astronauts frame he created is now a fixture of Ancient Aliens and of reptilian and New Age conspiracy lore. He died in New York in 2010.