Ancient Sumerians’ Impossible Knowledge of Our Solar System: What Did They Know?

For the sake of keeping with my out of the box thinking, I'm saying… perhaps. For this write-up, I'll briefly lean heavily on Zacharia Sitchin's interpretation of the Sumerian tablets.

If I've lost you already with that man's name, I understand. But don't leave just yet, you might learn some pretty interesting details about Sumerians and their advanced astronomical systems and observations.

So, what you see above is Sumerian cosmology etched on a Sumerian tablet, according to Sumerian clay tablet researcher, Zacharia Sitchin. In this particular tablet, you see the sun surrounded by 10 planets (9 planets plus Pluto), along with our moon. They, the Sumerians, even had a name for each planet along with mythology about the Solar System, according to Sitchin.

But, dare I ask, why ten planets?

Let's go down the rabbit hole… one that might be real, or completely misinterpreted…

…but first, a brief history lesson to give you some knowledge about how incredible this ancient civilization was.

The Sumerian civilization, believed to have emerged around 4500–4000 BCE in southern Mesopotamia, is one of the world's earliest societies. In an archeological perspective, they had a relatively rapid urbanization with the emergence of large, complex urban centers like Uruk, Ur, and Eridu, and again in archeological terms, these cities seemingly rose overnight (In laymen terms, over many decades). And, these cities grew quickly in size.

At the time, the Sumerians were extremely advanced, and in many areas. In fact, they laid the groundwork for several, and I mean several, aspects of today's society. In mathematics, they developed a complex numeral system based on 60. This is still used today in measuring time and angles. This mathematical genius extended to arithmetic, geometry, and algebra. All of this enabled them to create mathematical tables along with solving complicated equations.

The Sumerians invented one of the world's earliest writing systems, as well, known as cuneiform. This system helped with record-keeping, literature, and sophisticated communication. It led to the production of vast numbers of written works, including the Epic of Gilgamesh — one of my favorites. The Sumerians' advanced thinking was also evident in their urban planning, with cities featuring sophisticated multi-story buildings, temples (ziggurats), palaces, and marketplaces, all organized with grid-like street systems, including designated public spaces.

Now, to me, that's pretty amazing.

The Sumerians' ingenuity extended to practical areas of daily life, too, including advanced water management systems for irrigation and flood control, as well as primitive forms of plumbing in some homes. Their agricultural techniques — crop rotation, irrigation systems, and plow technology — allowed for surplus food production, leading to massive population growths.

There in ancient Sumeria, we see the invention of the wheel, metallurgy techniques for copper and bronze, the creation of practical hand-held tools, and weapons. Their society was governed by one of the earliest known legal codes, predating Hammurabi's famous code by centuries. They established elaborate trade networks and a refined economic system, including concepts of private property, contracts, and of all things, commercial law. Additionally, and what I'll be getting more in depth in during this article, the Sumerians made significant astronomical observations, dividing the year into 12 months based on lunar cycles, and somehow identifying ten planets in Solar System. They discovered five planets visible to the naked eye, as well.

They were advanced, to say the least.

The fall of ancient Sumeria came about gradually, unfolding over several centuries, rather than a single, dramatic event. The decline began around 2000 BCE when the Sumerian city-states were conquered. They were then absorbed into the Akkadian Empire, founded by Sargon the Great. Although Sumerian culture, including its language, persisted under Akkadian rule, political power shifted away from the Sumerians. Following the collapse of the Akkadian Empire, there was a brief Sumerian revival under the Third Dynasty of Ur, but this was short-lived. By around 1750 BCE, Sumerian political autonomy had effectively ended with the rise of the Babylonians under Hammurabi.

Despite their political decline, the Sumerians left an indelible mark on human history, and in one specific realm that baffles many archeaologists, historians, astronomers, and researchers to this day (those who agree with Sitchin's interpretations), in astronomy and cosmology. Their innovative approach in mapping celestial movements became a cornerstone for astronomical advancements in the millennia that followed. They built ziggurats as observatories, created early star catalogues, identified constellations, and developed a lunar calendar, all while tracking planetary cycles and using mathematical calculations to predict celestial events. Their observations were recorded on clay tablets using a sexagesimal system, demonstrating a systematic approach to astronomy remarkably advanced for its time. The Sumerians even assigned unique names to each planet, but how did they pinpoint some of these planets without the invention of telescopes?

In their celestial classification system, the Sumerians identified and named the planets visible to the naked eye, but according to Sitchin, they also named other planets in our Solar System not seen by the naked eye. They called Mercury "Mummu," Venus "Lahamu," and Earth "Enuma." Mars was known as "Lahmu," while Jupiter and Saturn were referred to as "Kinshar" and "Anshar". They had names for planets discovered much later in human history: Uranus was "Anu," Neptune was "Ea," and even Pluto, no longer classified as a planet, was known to them as "Gaga." The tenth planet in the image of the tablet above, "Nibiru."

To Zecharia Sitchin, Nibiru is the tenth planet shown on the ancient Sumerian tablet. In his interpration of the ancient Sumerian writing, the large planet — Nibiru — has an elliptical orbit that brings it into the inner solar system every 3,600 years. Sitchin claimed that the Sumerians knew of this planet. That it played a significant role in Earth's history. However, the concept of Nibiru and its supposed effects are highly complicated and contentious, involving mythological, astronomical, and historical claims far too difficult to explain fully in this article. It would require an entire chapter to do justice to the topic, which is beyond the scope of this current discussion.

But, to some ancient astronaut experts and astronomers, along with some researchers, Sitchin isn't only wrong, he's labeled the tenth planet as the 'wrong' planet. It's not Nibiru, but indeed Tiamat.

In some interpretations of Sumerian literature, the ancient people labeled Tiamat an ancient planet they believed was destroyed and transformed into what we now know as the asteroid belt, while some of its remnants created another world known as… Earth.

Could that actually happen, though?

It could, hypothetically.

If you look at the combined mass of all asteroids in the belt, you'll find it's estimated to be less than that of Earth's moon, making it unlikely to be the remnants of a full-sized planet. However, if we were to entertain the idea of a planetary explosion creating an asteroid belt, the process would be far more chaotic than a simple disintegration into a neat band of debris. The initial explosion would eject material in all directions at varying speeds, with gravitational influences from nearby planets and the sun affecting their trajectories. This would result in a wide distribution of debris throughout the solar system, not just confined to a single belt. Some rocks would stay within the belt, while most wouldn't. The fragments would settle into diverse orbits, some highly elliptical while others more circular, with some potentially on collision courses with other celestial bodies, like our moon, our Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Jupiter's moons, etc., and could have become the numerous meteors and comets moving around the Solar System to this day, or they've disintegrated over time. Material ejected at speeds exceeding the solar system's escape velocity might leave the system entirely, or formed into something we call the Oort Cloud, which is just beyond our last planets in our system.

This is quite the hypothesis, I know.

So, did an ancient civilization know more about our solar system than we did just 300 years ago?

If you take the tablet at face value, they did know of the planets in our Solar System, and for some reason, gave us an extra one for various reasons explained in there cosmological mythology.

You've got to really open your mind to a much different history we've been presented in order to agree with the above ideas and interpretations, but there's some potential possibilities that some of the interpretations are correct.

To me, it's important to approach these ideas with a balance of curiosity and skepticism. The advanced nature of Sumerian astronomy is undeniable, but the extent of their knowledge and its origins continue to be subjects of intense debate among scholars.

Ultimately, the story of Sumerian astronomy serves as a reminder of the ingenuity and observational skills of our ancient ancestors. Whether or not they possessed knowledge beyond their time, their contributions to astronomy and other fields laid crucial foundations for human progress. As we continue to unravel the mysteries of our universe, we may yet find that ancient civilizations like the Sumerians still have much to teach us about our place in the cosmos. Their legacy invites us to keep questioning, exploring, and pushing the boundaries of our understanding, just as they did millennia ago.