In all ancient pictorial depictions of gods and men, this physical likeness is evident. Although the biblical admonition against the worship of pagan images gave rise to the notion that the Hebrew God had neither image nor likeness, not only the Genesis tale but other biblical reports attest to the contrary. The God of the ancient Hebrews could be seen face-to-face, could be wrestled with, could be heard and spoken to; he had a head and feet, hands and fingers, and a waist. The biblical God and his emissaries looked like men and acted like men—because men were created to look like and act like the gods.
But in this very simplicity lies a great mystery. How could a new creature possibly be a virtual physical, mental, and emotional replica of the Nefilim? How, indeed, was Man created?
The Western world was long wedded to the notion that, created deliberately, Man was put upon Earth to subdue it and have dominion over all other creatures. Then, in November 1859, an English naturalist by the name of Charles Darwin published a treatise called On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Summing up nearly thirty years of research, the book added to earlier thoughts about natural evolution the concept of natural selection as a consequence of the struggle of all species—of plant and animal alike—for existence.
The Christian world had been jostled earlier when, from 1788 on, noted geologists had begun to express their belief that Earth was of great antiquity, much, much greater than the roughly 5,500 years of the Hebrew calendar. Nor was the concept of evolution as such the explosive: Earlier scholars had noted such a process, and Greek scholars as far back as the fourth century B.C. compiled data on the evolution of animal and plant life.
Darwin's shattering bombshell was the conclusion that all living things—Man included—were products of evolution. Man, contrary to the then-held belief, was not generated spontaneously.
The initial reaction of the Church was violent. But as the scientific facts regarding Earth's true age, evolution, genetics, and other biological and anthropological studies came to light, the Church's criticism was muted. It seemed at last that the very words of the Old Testament made the tale of the Old Testament indefensible; for how could a God who has no corporal body and who is universally alone say, "Let us make Man in our image, after our likeness?"
But are we really nothing more than "naked apes"? Is the monkey just an evolutionary arm's length away from us, and the tree shrew just a human who has yet to lose his tail and stand erect?
As we showed at the very beginning of this book, modern scientists have come to question the simple theories. Evolution can explain the general course of events that caused life and life's forms to develop on Earth, from the simplest one-celled creature to Man. But evolution cannot account for the appearance of Homo sapiens, which happened virtually overnight in terms of the millions of years evolution requires, and with no evidence of earlier stages that would indicate a gradual change from Homo erectus.
The hominid of the genus Homo is a product of evolution. But Homo sapiens is the product of some sudden, revolutionary event. He appeared inexplicably some 300,000 years ago, millions of years too soon.
The scholars have no explanation. But we do. The Sumerian and Babylonian texts do. The Old Testament does.
Homo sapiens—modern Man—was brought about by the ancient gods.
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The Mesopotamian texts, fortunately, provide a clear statement regarding the time when Man was created. The story of the toil and ensuing mutiny of the Anunnaki informs us that "for 40 periods they suffered the work, day and night"; the long years of their toil are dramatized by repetitious verses.
For 10 periods they suffered the toil;
For 20 periods they suffered the toil;
For 30 periods they suffered the toil;
For 40 periods they suffered the toil.
The ancient text uses the term ma to denote "period," and most scholars have translated this as "year." But the term had the connotation of "something that completes itself and then repeats itself." To men on Earth, one year equals one complete orbit of Earth around the Sun. As we have already shown, the orbit of the Nefilim's planet equaled a shar, or 3,600 Earth years.
Forty shar's, or 144,000 Earth years, after their landing, the Anunnaki protested, "No more!" If the Nefilim first landed on Earth, as we have concluded, some 450,000 years ago, then the creation of Man took place some 300,000 years ago!
The Nefilim did not create the mammals or the primates or the hominids. "The Adam" of the Bible was not the genus Homo, but the being who is our ancestor—the first Homo sapiens. It is modern Man as we know him that the Nefilim created.
The key to understanding this crucial fact lies in the tale of a slumbering Enki, aroused to be informed that the gods had decided to form an adamu, and that it was his task to find the means. He replied:
"The creature whose name you uttered–
IT EXISTS!"
and he added: "Bind upon it"-on the creature that already exists—"the image of the gods."
Here, then, is the answer to the puzzle: The Nefilim did not "create" Man out of nothing; rather, they took an existing creature and manipulated it, to "bind upon it" the "image of the gods."
Man is the product of evolution; but modern Man, Homo sapiens, is the product of the "gods." For, some time circa 300,000 years ago, the Nefilim took ape-man (Homo erectus) and implanted on him their own image and likeness.
Evolution and the Near Eastern tales of Man's creation are not at all in conflict. Rather, they explain and complement each other. For without the creativity of the Nefilim, modern Man would still be millions years away on the evolutionary tree.
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Let us transport ourselves back in time, and try to visualize the circumstances and the events as they unfolded.
The great interglacial stage that began about 435,000 years ago, and its warm climate, brought about a proliferation of food and animals. It also speeded up the appearance and spread of an advanced manlike ape, Homo erectus.
As the Nefilim looked about them, they saw not only the predominant mammals but also the primates—among them the manlike apes. Is it not possible that the roaming bands of Homo erectus were lured to come close to observe the fiery objects rising to the sky. Is it not possible that the Nefilim observed, encountered, even captured some of these interesting primates?
That the Nefilim and the manlike apes did meet is attested to by several ancient texts. A Sumerian tale dealing with the primordial times states:
When Mankind was created,
They knew not the eating of bread,
Knew not the dressing in garments;
Ate plants with their mouth like sheep;
Drank water from a ditch.
Such an animal-like "human" being is also described in the "Epic of Gilgamesh." That text tells what Enkidu, the one "born on the steppes," was like before he became civilized:
Shaggy with hair is his whole body,
he is endowed with head-hair like a woman....
He knows neither people nor land;
Garbed he is like one of the green fields;
With gazelles he feeds on grass;
With the wild beasts he jostles
at the watering place;
With the teeming creatures in the water
his heart delights.
Not only does the Akkadian text describe an animal-like man; it also describes an encounter with such a being:
Now a hunter, one who traps,
faced him at the watering place.
When the hunter saw him,
his face became motionless....
His heart was disturbed, overclouded his face,
for woe had entered his belly.
There was more to it than mere fear after the hunter beheld "the savage," this "barbarous fellow from the depths of the steppe"; for this "savage" also interfered with the hunter's pursuits:
He filled the pits that I had dug,
the beasts and creatures of the steppe
he has made slip through my hands.
We can ask for no better description of an ape-man: hairy, shaggy, a roaming nomad who "knows neither people nor land," garbed in leaves, "like one of the green fields," feeding on grass, and living among the animals. Yet he is not without substantial intelligence, for he knows how to tear up the traps and fill up the pits dug to catch the animals. In other words, he protected his animal friends from-being caught by the alien hunters. Many cylinder seals have been found that depict this shaggy ape-man among his animal friends. (Fig. 149)
Fig. 149
Then, faced with the need for manpower, resolved to obtain a Primitive Worker, the Nefilim saw a ready-made solution: to domesticate a suitable animal.
The "animal" was available—but Homo erectus posed a problem. On the one hand, he was too intelligent and wild to become simply a docile beast of work. On the other hand, he was not really suited to the task. His physique had to be changed—he had to be able to grasp and use the tools of the Nefilim, walk and bend like them so that he could replace the gods in the fields and in the mines. He had to have better "brains"—not like those of the gods but enough to understand speech and commands and the tasks allotted to him. He needed enough cleverness and understanding to be an obedient and useful amelu—a serf.
If, as the ancient evidence and modern science seem to confirm, life on Earth germinated from life on the Twelfth Planet, then evolution on Earth should have proceeded as it had on the Twelfth Planet. Undoubtedly there were mutations, variations, accelerations, and retardations caused by different local conditions; but the same genetic codes, the same "chemistry of life" found in all living plants and animals on Earth would also have guided the development of life forms on Earth in the same general direction as on the Twelfth Planet.
Observing the various forms of life on Earth, the Nefilim and their chief scientist, Ea, needed little time to realize what had happened: During the celestial collision, their planet had seeded Earth with its life. Therefore, the being that was available was really akin to the Nefilim—though in a less evolved form.
A gradual process of domestication through generations of breeding and selection would not do. What was needed was a quick process, one that would permit "mass production" of the new workers. So the problem was posed to Ea; who saw the answer at once: to "imprint" the image of the gods on the being that already existed.
The process that Ea recommended in order to achieve a quick evolutionary advancement of Homo erectus was, we believe, genetic manipulation.
We now know that the complex biological process whereby a living organism reproduces itself, creating progeny that resemble their parents, is made possible by the genetic code. All living organisms—a threadworm, a fern tree, or Man—contain in their cells chromosomes, minute rodlike bodies within each cell that hold the complete hereditary instructions for that particular organism. As the male cell (pollen, sperm) fertilizes the female cell, the two sets of chromosomes combine and then divide to form new cells that hold the complete hereditary characteristics of their parent cells.
Artificial insemination, even of a female human egg, is now possible. The real challenge lies in cross-fertilization between different families within the same species, and even between different species. Modern science has come a long way from the development of the first hybrid corns, or the mating of Alaskan dogs with wolves, or the "creation" of the mule (the artificial mating of a mare and a donkey), to the ability to manipulate Man's own reproduction.
A process called cloning (from the Greek word klon—"twig") applies to animals the same principle as that of taking a cutting from a plant to reproduce hundreds of similar plants. The technique as applied to animals was first demonstrated in England, where Dr. John Gordon replaced the nucleus of a fertilized frog's egg with the nuclear material from another cell of the same frog. The successful formation of normal tadpoles demonstrated that the egg proceeds to develop and subdivide and create progeny no matter where it obtains the correct set of matching chromosomes.
Experiments at the Institute of Society, Ethics and Life Sciences at Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, have shown that techniques already exist for cloning human beings. It is now possible to take the nuclear material of any human cell (not necessarily from the sex organs) and, by introducing its twenty-three sets of complete chromosomes into the female ovum, lead to the conception and birth of a "predetermined" individual. In normal conception, "father" and "mother" chromosome sets merge and then must split to remain at twenty-three chromosome pairs, leading to chance combinations. But in cloning the offspring is an exact replica of the source of the unsplit set of chromosomes. We already possess, according to Dr. W. Gaylin of the Institute, the "awful knowledge to make exact copies of human beings"—a limitless number of Hitlers or Mozarts or Einsteins (if we had preserved their cell nuclei).
But the art of genetic engineering is not limited to one process. Researchers in many countries have perfected a process called "cell fusion," making it possible to fuse cells rather than combine chromosomes within a single cell. As a result of such a process, cells from different sources can be fused into one "super cell," holding within itself two nuclei and a double set of the paired chromosomes. When this cell splits, the mixture of nuclei and chromosomes may split in a pattern different from that of each cell before the fusion. The result can be two new cells, each genetically complete, but each with a brand-new set of genetic codes, completely garbled as far as the ancestor cells were concerned.
This means that cells from hitherto incompatible living organisms—say, that of a chicken and that of a mouse-can be fused to form new cells with brand-new genetic mixes that produce new animals that are neither chickens nor mice as we know them. Further refined, the process can also permit us to select which traits of one life form shall be imparted to the combined or "fused" cell.
This has led to the development of the wide field of "genetic transplant." It is now possible to pick up from certain bacteria a single specific gene and introduce that gene into an animal or human cell, giving the offspring an added characteristic.
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We should assume that the Nefilim—being capable of space travel 450,000 years ago—were also equally advanced, compared to us today, in the field of life sciences. We should also assume that they were aware of the various alternatives by which two preselected sets of chromosomes could be combined to obtain a predetermined genetic result; and that whether the process was akin to cloning, cell fusion, genetic transplant, or methods as yet unknown to us, they knew these processes and could carry them out, not only in the laboratory flask but also with living organisms.
We find a reference to such a mixing of two life-sources in the ancient texts. According to Berossus, the deity Belus ("lord")—also called Deus ("god")—brought forth various "hideous Beings, which were produced of a two-fold principle."
Men appeared with two wings, some with four and two faces. They had one body but two heads, the one of a man, the other of a woman. They were likewise in their several organs both male and female.
Other human figures were to be seen with the legs and horns of goats. Some had horses' feet; others had the limbs of a horse behind, but in front were fashioned like men, resembling hippocentaurs. Bulls likewise bred there with the heads of men; and dogs with fourfold bodies, and the tails of fishes. Also horses with the heads of dogs; men too and other animals with the heads and bodies of horses and the tails of fishes. In short, there were creatures with the limbs of every species of animals....
Of all these were preserved delineations in the temple of Belus at Babylon.
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The tale's baffling details may hold an important truth. It is quite conceivable that before resorting to the creation of a being in their own image, the Nefilim attempted to come up with a "manufactured servant" by experimenting with other alternatives: the creation of a
hybrid ape-man-animal. Some of these artificial creatures may have survived for a while but were certainly unable to reproduce. The enigmatic bull-men and lion-men (sphinxes) that adorned temple sites in the ancient Near East may not have been just figments of an artist's imagination but actual creatures that came out of the biological laboratories of the Nefilim—unsuccessful experiments commemorated in art and by statues. (Fig. 150)
The 12th Planet Page 33
