Post by Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe on Jul 13, 2004 2:52:23 GMT -6
The Lost Planet of Tiamat
I was listening to an author talk about the abnormal gap between Mars and Jupiter filled by the asteroid belt. He states that ancient texts describe a planet that was once there. Here is an excerpt:
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In the "Enuma elish" the cuneiform tablet from Sumeria which describes the Annunaki beliefs of how the solar system formed there is reference to the watery giant planet, Tiamat, being hit by one of the moons of Nibiru. Tiamat's original orbit was the present day asteriod belt between Mars and Jupiter. Pieces of Tiamat now make up the asteroid belt and the largest piece is now the Earth.
According to the harmonic rule known as Bode's Law, a planet should exist between Mars and Jupiter - some 260 million miles from the Sun. Beginning in 1801, tiny rock and metallic objects were discovered to be orbiting the Sun at about this distance. Since then, several hundred thousand large asteroids have been catalogued, and it is estimated that there are more than a million 1 km asteroids.
Stretched out at a distance of 205 to 300 million miles from the Sun, this band is known as the Asteroid Belt. The asteroids range in size from Ceres, which has a diameter of about 1000 km, down to the size of pebbles. If the estimated total mass of all the asteroids was gathered into a single object, the object would total about 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) across - less than half the diameter of the Earth's moon.
Astronomer H. Olbers discovered the second asteroid, Pallas, in 1802, and the fourth asteroid, Vesta, in 1807. In his time, Olbers thought these bodies were fragments of a planet that had exploded. Another generally accepted theory suggests the asteroids are the remains of a planet that was destroyed in a massive collision. Nonetheless, it had earlier become evident that much of the material of this 'missing planet' had been pulled into the orbits of Earth, Mars and Jupiter as either meteors or orbiting satellites.
Among catastrophists there is substantial disagreement on the matter of the "missing" fifth Planet from the Sun, in the place of which lies the Great Band, the debris of an enormous planet which the Sumerians knew as Tiamat. There are various opinions on what caused the Asteroid Belt; for instance, Tom van Flandern's Exploding Planet Hypothesis in Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets, asserts that a former major planet between Mars and Jupiter exploded about 65 million years ago. Van Flandern believes this event is the origin of the great bombardment of comets and asteroids which ended the reign of the dinosaurs on Earth. However, according to Zecharia Sitchin in The Twelfth Planet, written accounts left by the lost Sumerian civilization state that Tiamat isn't missing, it just moved shop. Tiamat is the planet on which we are standing right now.
This article will discuss two anomalies that suggest the Earth was once further away from the Sun, suggesting that prior to a grand cataclysm described in the Babylonian Enuma elish, the Earth was the planet which the Sumerians called Tiamat. According to Sumerian/Babylonian cosmogony (cosmic genesis), the fifth Planet from the Sun, Tiamat, was shunted to third position by a calamitous event. First, a quick overview of the Sumerian/Babylonian story of Tiamat is in order.
Nibiru: The Retrograde Interloper
Ancient Sumerian texts indicate that Tiamat was struck by a large planet, which moved it into its present orbit, and also created the Earth's moon and the Asteroid Belt. In his books, The Twelfth Planet and The Cosmic Code, Zecharia Sitchin outlines this "celestial battle" as described in the Babylonian text Enuma elish. The planet "Marduk" (the Sumerian "Nibiru"), as it came into the solar system on its 3,600-year clockwise (retrograde) elliptical course, struck Tiamat, which was moving in its ordained counterclockwise orbit.
According to Sitchin's well-known translations, one of Marduk's satellites struck Tiamat first, followed by two more of Marduk's moons. Then Marduk itself, an enormous cosmic entity, struck Tiamat, smashing one half of the planet into pieces, which became what the Sumerians called the Great Band. The remaining half of the planet, which was struck by a smaller moon of Marduk, was catapulted into a new orbit, along with a chunk of material which became its moon. According to the Enuma elish, Tiamat's original moons were dispersed, many changing the direction of their orbits and rotations.
There is indeed evidence of this great cataclysm in our solar system today. Tom van Flandern, a specialist in Celestial Mechanics at the US Naval Observatory, has suggested that the great rift on Mars may be the impact site of a former moon, the moons of Neptune show evidence of violent disruption, Mercury was originally a moon of Venus, Mars once had many more moons, and Pluto and Charon are escaped moons of Neptune. Van Flandern finds the retrograde rotation of Venus peculiar, he believes that our moon originated from the Pacific Basin of the Earth, and he agrees that there is probably an undiscovered planet beyond Pluto which belongs to our solar system. In addition, Hubble recently investigated one of the largest asteroids, Vesta, and found evidence of differentiated layers similar to the terrestrial planets, distinctive light and dark areas like the face of our moon, and a geology similar to the Earth, including evidence of ancient lava flows.
Impossible Knowledge
Sitchin believes that the "impossible knowledge" of the Sumerians was imparted to them by "Anunnaki" space travelers in a series of texts forming the basis of ancient science and religion, and was translated into many languages, including Greek and biblical Hebrew. According to Sitchin, all ancient mythologies stem from this original knowledge imparted to earthlings by spacefaring ETI hailing from this wayward bowling ball, Nibiru. According to Sitchin, the Anunnaki called our planet ERIDU, meaning "Home away from Home."
Sitchin also argues in The Cosmic Code that the Anunnaki used their detailed sky charts to group the stars into constellations, and then honored their leaders by naming the constellations after them. Thus, the Sumerian god EA, ("Whose Home is Water") was honored by the zodiacal signs of Aquarius and Pisces, and the "priests who oversaw his worship" were dressed as Fishmen. Enlil, the strong-headed one, was honored by the sign of Taurus. Ninmah was Virgo. The warrior Ninurta was Sagittarius. Over time, Sitchin explains, as second and third generation Anunnaki 'gods' joined the scene on Earth, "all the twelve zodiacal constellations were assigned to Anunnaki counterparts." He argues, "not men, but the gods, devised the zodiac."
The continent that the ancients called Pangea likely represents the prehistoric truth regarding the land formation on the Earth after it was involved in this collision. Over time, the continents then drifted to where they are now. As Sitchin points out, Earth's largest landmasses are mostly on one side and the oceans take up the rest of the planet. Looking at the Earth's globe from a distance, if you took the water away, what's left is a "cleaved planet," which is the meaning of "KI" - the Sumerian word for the present embodiment of Earth.
According to the Enuma elish, the Earth came to rest as the third Rock from the Sun after this watery calamity. Here is where the Biblical genesis tale picks up the story, only telling it as a beginning, at the point where the waters of these two great bodies separated in the firmament, the waters belonging to two worlds going bump in the night. Current advances in astronomy have, in fact, corroborated certain aspects of this tale.
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Now, I don't know if all this is true, but the writings of ancient scribes tell of similar events all over the world. Answers some questions tho.
