Did the Sumerians have extraterrestrial knowledge?
In the Vorderasiatische Museum in Berlin there is a Sumerian engraving with the initials VA/243 which would depict with the correct scale dimensions all the planets in our solar system.
Judging from the picture below, any person would say that it can only be the diagram of a planetary system. If that pattern is not an optical illusion, isn't it fair to wonder how it was possible to reproduce the Solar System some 5,000 years ago?
As we all know, there were no telescopes in Sumerian times, and the most distant planet visible by naked eye was Saturn. What is also mind-boggling is that the drawing would depict a tenth planet, nicknamed Nibiru by the ancient Sumerians, a planetary body larger than the Earth that would cross the Solar System once every 3,600 years or so according to a very eccentric orbit inclined a few tens of degrees on the ecliptic. This planet in the present day has not yet been discovered ...
There is also another very important point: in Sumerian times it was believed that the earth was at the center of the universe and all the stars revolved around it! Instead, the drawing would show how already in those times the geocentric theory was outdated! Many theories have developed around this engraving, one of them by occult author Zecharia Sitchin, who believes that the inhabitants of Nibiru were our founders through genetic engineering.
In 1966 Carl Sagan, a very great astrophysicist who has now passed away, wrote in his book "Intelligent Life in the Universe" about the engraving in question:
"In the illustration we see that the central circle is surrounded by rays and can be identified very clearly as a sun or a star. But how are we supposed to interpret the other objects surrounding each star? It is at least a natural assumption that they represent planets [...]. The cylindrical seal in the illustration has, interestingly, nine planets around the prominent sun in the sky (and slightly to the right, two minor planets)."
Could it be that the Sumerians knew more about our solar system than we believe and left this engraving to give us astronomy lessons ?
Are we in the midst of fantarcheology or does a more rational explanation exist?
Well, let's start by analyzing the table below and try to distinguish one by one all the planets depicted.
The figure shows what the arrangement of planets should be.
There would be 12 objects: the sun (1) would be located at the center, and around it would revolve all the planets, moon (3) included which would be represented as a planet as well.
On examination of an 'expert' eye, many abnormalities immediately appear:
the first and most obvious is that the distances between the planets are far from perfectly to scale. In the drawing Mars and Venus are closer to the sun than Mercury, when in fact the exact sequence of distances is Mercury -> Venus -> Earth -> Mars. In addition, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are represented almost at the same distance from the sum.
The second obvious anomaly consists in the proportions between the planets: the moon is depicted smaller than Pluto, when in reality it exceeds it by almost 50%. Jupiter (which in reality is 110 times the earth), in the drawing looks just 3 times the same (similar thing for Saturn, Uranus and Neptune).
There are, however, more strictly logical anomalies.
The first: Saturn (which is the planet with rings par excellence) and Uranus have no rings! If they really knew all the planets why not draw Uranus, or at least Saturn with rings as they are illustrated in any modern-day Solar System diagram? I find it a little hard to believe that they knew Pluto and not Saturn's rings ...
For the second anomaly, a premise is needed: the main reason why an object is classified as a planet lies precisely in its size; in August 2006, the IAU downgraded Pluto to a "dwarf planet", bringing the number of actual "planets" in our Solar System to 8.
There's a reason why Pluto has been downgraded: its size. There are bodies in the Solar System that are much larger than Pluto such as Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Triton, Eris and our own moon.
Going back to Sumerian engraving, why would the Sumerians have depicted Pluto and not the other objects larger than it if they knew our Solar System so well?
We know well that objects of Pluto's caliber, at greater distances appear with their own orbit independent of the other planets in the Solar System: Eris is an example, as are Sedna and Qauoar.
By how they did decide what to report and what not ?
Ours is a simple idea: today we know that the Solar System has 8 planets, but for over 60 years there were 9. Why would the Sumerians have represented a 10-planet system by including Pluto and not Eris, Sedna and the other similar objects?
The tenth planet called Nibiru, which from the proportions would seem to be as large as Neptune, where would it come from? Of course, we don't know EVERYTHING about our solar system, and it is safe to assume that at very great distances a planet with these characteristics could be found, although for now it is completely hidden! Sedna goes as far as 800UA, roughly 1/10th the distance to the Oort cloud... It is very strange that an object of that caliber has gone so far unnoticed ...
I am sure that all readers who are reading the article have not noticed one detail: look at this detail of the Sumerian drawing and try to recalculate the number of objects in this hypothetical solar system.
Yes, the items are 13 and no longer 12!
In the upper right corner, an object smaller than the others 'appears' bringing the number to 13! Now look again at the drawing at the beginning of the article and you will see it clearly!
So what? Did the Sumerians commit a drawing error?
It is very easy to find a 'solution': one could safely say that that little object represents Eris or Sedna or some candidate nano-planet...
This shows how easy it is to add planets and how simple it is to imagine that draw as a representation of our solar system. But there is more!!
Observe the arrow in the engraving below:
Well: how should we interpret that new symbol?
Like a planet orbiting very far from the sun? Like a nearby star? Or should we interpret it as an object not belonging to the Solar System, as it is out of the context of the drawing?
The problem is just that: context. The engraving must be interpreted by analyzing the entire context in which it is found! It is not possible to analyze parts of it individually while neglecting the rest. And this is the task of archaeologists and not astrophysicists like Sagan (to quote his book).
Finally, there is one last point to discuss, just to answer Zecharia Sitchin: if the Sumerians really came into contact with extraterrestrial beings, or even were created by these 'superior' beings, one should expect at least a wide citation of them in the works that have come down to the present day, a citation that practically does not exist. A very convoluted design to demonstrate clear contact with other life forms is certainly insufficient.
If we want to think of a concrete example, many of us have read Jules Verne's famous novel "From the Earth to the Moon," where incredibly Verne managed to anticipate the capsules and rockets that were later effectively used to reach our satellite 100 years later! But Verne was not the first! He had great fantasia both in imagining them, and incredibly guessed! But no (sane) person can believe that Verne traveled through time to see them, return to his own time, and then write his novel.
For all these reasons, the true meaning of the tablet should not be sought among the stars, but among things far more terrestrial. And here the ball must be passed to the archaeologists, the experts in the field ...
And what do the experts say? Well, they don't have a definite answer either.
Archaeologists believe that the Sumerian cylinder seals were the forerunners of modern gravure, and that they were used in the schools and universities of Sumer, all of which were governed by priests, to increase their scientific models and depictions of their symbols. Indeed, on the seal preserved in the Berlin Museum along with the celestial bodies, a demigod and a priest are also depicted worshipping the god Enlil, sacrificing two cap kings to him. In short, nothing to do with extraterrestrials.
However probably we will never have a correct interpretation of it. Perhaps by inventing the time machine and asking the author of the draw what he is depicting we will get an answer. On maybe not ?
