Zecharia Sitchin

Zecharia Sitchin was born in 1920 in Baku

Zecharia Sitchin was born to a Jewish family in Baku on July 11, 1920. His family moved to Mandatory Palestine, where he grew up.

He earned a degree in economics from the University of London. In the Land of Israel he worked as a journalist and newspaper editor. He married in 1941 and had 2 daughters.

In 1952 he moved with his family to New York. While working as an executive for a shipping company, he taught himself Sumerian cuneiform and visited archaeological sites.

His first book appeared in 1976. He claimed that the Anunnaki, the Sumerian gods, were extraterrestrials from a planet called Nibiru that circles the Sun every 3,600 years. He wrote that they reached Earth about 450,000 years ago and created humans through genetic engineering.

His books sold millions of copies and were translated into more than 25 languages. Scientists and historians reject his ideas as pseudoscience and pseudohistory and criticize his translations. He died on October 9, 2010.