Unexplained Mysteries - Ancient astronauts

Ancient astronaut theories are various proposals that Earth has been visited by intelligent extraterrestrial beings, and that such contact is linked to either the origins or development of human cultures, technologies and/or religions. Some of these theories suggests that gods from most -- if not all -- religions are actually extraterrestrial beings, and their technologies were mistaken for divine entities by primitive man.

Ancient astronaut adherents often claim that humans are either descendants or creations of beings who landed on Earth millennia ago. An associated theory is that much of human knowledge, religion and culture came from extraterrestrial visitors in ancient times: ancient astronauts acted as a “mother culture”. These ideas are generally discounted by the scientific community.

Ancient astronaut theories also may include the idea that civilization may have evolved on earth twice, and that the visitation of ancient astronauts may reflect the return of descendants of ancient humans whose population was separated from earthbound humans.
Proponents of ancient astronaut theories point to what they perceive as gaps in historical and archaeological records and also what they see as an absence of definitive explanations in certain contexts from the archaeological sciences. Advocates of these theories put forward as evidence their interpretations of various archaeological artifacts, which they deem to have been anachronistic or beyond the presumed technical capabilities of the historical cultures they are associated with. Another common theme relies upon the interpretation of depictions in certain ancient artworks as being representations of actual extraterrestrial visitors as realized by the contacted cultures.

Paintings from Val Camonica, Italy, c.10.000BC, have been claimed to depict extraterrestrial visitors. It has also been posited that they show gods or other mythological persons from religions of that time.

Sitchin's Theories

According to Sitchin, the Earth was created when a new planet, called Nibiru, inhabited by a race of powerful beings known as the Anunnaki, entered our solar system, causing massive disruption to the existing pattern of planetary interactions. After Nibiru collided with Uranus, Sitchin believes, some of the disturbed planetary matter coalesced in a different location, forming the Earth.
One day the Anunnaki landed on Earth in spaceships. They were interested primarily in mining Earth's gold. Nibiru, it seemed, suffered from some atmospheric disturbance and gold flecks could be used to mitigate the effect of the disturbance on the planet's inhabitants. After mining the Earth for some time on their own, the Anunnaki decided to genetically engineer a slave race to do the mining for them. According to Sitchin, that was us: humans. The Anunnaki created us by splicing some of their own genetic material with that of Earth's native apes.

The Anunnaki

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