Zecharia Sitchin's writing is hysterically funny. If you thought Thor Heyerdahl was loony, or that Von Daniken was a kook, then you just have to pick up Sitchin's book, Genesis Revealed. This guy is the epitome of crackpots.

His theory is two parts science fiction, one part ancient astronauts and four parts pure fudge. Sitchin believes that mankind rose suddenly four thousand years BCE when ancient astronauts from the twelfth planet, variously known as Wormwood, Niburu or Marduk, came to earth, genetically modified Neanderthal and created a slave race called Homo Sapiens. These extraterrestrial godlings are called the Annunaki. We were designed because these extraterrestrials needed someone to do manual labor, which includes building pyramids and such.

Sitchin also claims that nuclear radiation fallout from weapons caused the demise of Ur by an "evil wind," mentioned in Sumerian literature.

Now, aside from purely entertainment value, the equivalent of watching undergrads at a frat party acting really stupid, there is no scientific value to this theory. Now I know that supporters have concocted a bunch of seemingly rational "but what about" kind of discussion points to confuse matters, but each of these elements taken by themselves proved the paucity of Sitchin's methodology.

1. Sitchin claims great prowess in translating Sumerian texts and seals, especially VA 243. The difficulty with this is that his translations are very often inaccurate, sloppy and misapplied. He claims that the Sumerians knew about a twelfth planet, when they really only had knowledge of five.

2. Sitchin offers evidence of a rogue planet. The problem with this is that earth has an orbital eccentricity of only 0.0167. That means that if you account for the bodies we know are orbiting earth, there is no other body out there, no matter how eccentric an orbit it may have, that can possibly be impacting us. We can measure the orbital eccentricities of systems 150 light years away with as a great an accuracy, and there just is no room for a mythical twelfth planet of the type Sitchin posits.

3. Sitchin believes that Neanderthal was genetically modified to become human. Sitchin shows a supernal naivet about both Biblical scientific creationism as well as traditional evolutionary theory. He can only see evolution as an either or model, and since the reality doesn't fit his limited understanding, he throws everything under his kook-mobile. First, if we presuppose

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