QAA Podcast - Premium Episode 166: The Anunnaki & Ancient Astronaut Theory (Sample)

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

Mesopotamian gods? Or ancient alien astronauts? We explore the "Anunnaki", a term familiar to anyone who has watched the History Channel, Gaia TV, or Ancient Aliens. But the tradition of this so-calle...d "ancient astronaut theory" was actually popularized in the late 60s by a Swiss hotel manager turned best-selling author. From there, it flourished into a hugely popular belief system and industry. Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week: http://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous Episode music by Matthew Delatorre. Editing by Corey Klotz. Merch / Join the Discord Community / Find the Lost Episodes / Etc: http://qanonanonymous.com

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Starting point is 00:00:00 What's up QAA listeners? The fun games have begun. I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm sorry, boy. Welcome listener to Premium Chapter 166 of the Q&ONANANANANANANAS podcast, the Anunnaki episode. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View. This week, we're continuing our exploration of so-called.
Starting point is 00:00:30 called Ancient Astronaut Theory, which grew in popularity in the late 1960s and has mushroomed into a lucrative open source intellectual property in top Western markets. Specifically, we're going to be focusing on the term Anunnaki, which was cribbed from ancient Mesopotamian myths to sell a new theory of archaeology and an alternate history of science, one based in the idea that extraterrestrials visited Earth long ago and are responsible for our most impressive scientific discoveries, monuments, and maybe even our DNA. This story begins both five millennia ago in the Fertile Crescent, or 50 years ago in West Germany, depending on your perspective.
Starting point is 00:01:11 The Enunaki. Around 5,000 years ago, a group of people known as the Sumerians divided themselves into several city-states in the region of Mesopotamia, which roughly encompasses modern-day Iraq and part of Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Kuwait. There in the Fertile Crescent, along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, they built pyramid-like temples to their gods called ziggurats and complex irrigation canals that allowed them to farm the land efficiently. The largest of the Sumerian city states, Uruk, was estimated to house between 40 and 80,000 people at its peak in 2800 BC, making it the largest urban center in the world. Historians are constantly squabbling about the history of Mesopotamia, mostly because it's difficult to study it before the invention of
Starting point is 00:01:54 cuneiform records, which the city-state of Uruk had a crucial role in development. in around 3,200 BC. The Samarians were polytheists and created a pantheon of gods tied to an elaborate set of myths. These beliefs persisted and evolved so that to explain the modern term Anunaki, one must study the myths of several intermingled ancient Mesopotamian cultures that dominated the region along the centuries, like that of the Acadians, Assyrians, Armenians, and Babylonians. All right, so you got to learn actual ancient history.
Starting point is 00:02:25 It's just not pilled shit. I mean, it's about them being pilled. We are studying them being pilled. We're just not studying the myths as if they were real. Yes, which is what I will get into in my section, which is brain breaking. Don't be time for that. This is a tiny moment of actual history before we absolutely slide down the slope at full speed into a... Can we stay in the actual history? I feel... Sunny Bono ourselves. I feel warm. I feel protected. I feel safe. Death Death awaits us all at the bottom of the slope, Jake. So let's dig into it.
Starting point is 00:03:01 On, that's A.N. was the Sumerian god of the sky, and he consorted with the goddess of the earth. Key, spelled K.I. They had several kids, all gods, who were named Enl, Enki, Ninersag, Nana, Utu, and Inana. The concept of the Anunaki basically emerged in Samaria to refer to this group of gods, but they called them the Anuna or Anna. I say basically because they're really only referenced in literary texts of the period, and there also seems to be disagreement among Samarian primary sources about how many gods were part of the group and what exactly their divine function was.
Starting point is 00:03:35 At first a local pantheon, this particular set of gods only became popular on a regional basis later when empire started forming in Mesopotamia. One major shift in the popular use of the term Anunaki appears to have occurred in late Samarian times, to then be enshrined more permanently in myth by the Acadians. Essentially, the Anunaki went from being considered celestial beings of great power, descendants of the sky god on, to representing deities of the underworld in broader Mesopotamian culture. So basically, they broke bad.
Starting point is 00:04:08 Which is, yeah, it is interesting because this plays into how conspiracy theorists sort of view them today. A crucial myth related to the Anunaki is the Samarian story about goddess Inana. the queen of heaven, and her descent into the underworld, which they describe as a, quote, shadowy version of life on earth, which is ruled by her sister, Eresh Kigal. To allow Inani access to the underworld, Erish Kigal ordered each of the seven, quote-unakki, to strip her sister of a piece of clothing or jewelry, symbolizing her great powers, until she ended up standing before her sister naked. According to this story, here's what happened next.
Starting point is 00:04:44 After she had crouched down and had her clothes removed, they were carried away. Then she made her sister, Erychigal, rise from her throne, and instead she sat on her throne. The Anunaki, the seven judges, rendered their decision against her. They looked at her. It was the look of death. They spoke to her. It was the speech of anger. They shouted at her.
Starting point is 00:05:08 It was the shout of heavy guilt. The afflicted woman was turned into a corpse, and the corpse was hung on a hook. So just normal fun stuff about how essentially God got turned into a corpse in hell by her own sister. They're always doing this shit, though, right? They're always, they always, they always have a brother. Right. Or sister that, you know, yeah, who did something wrong or, you know, they ate the wrong piece of fruit or whatever. Something.
Starting point is 00:05:40 And like they're roasted in the flames of eternity. Like it's not just, you know, I mean, sometimes they're exile, but then the exiled. but then the exile becomes another god. I mean, it's always complicated with these gods. In this version of the myth, while Inana was a corpse, all sex on earth ceased. The queen of heaven was eventually resurrected and restored, and humans as a result were able to fuck again.
Starting point is 00:06:01 It seems like that would be a famous period in history. It was like, remember that few months when like nobody was fucking? What was going on there? Insane. Yeah, I know. Like the myths even, they kind of say stuff like, everybody slept in their own bed, like, which sucks. dude so clearly the Mesopotamians were you know fucking a lot and they were like
Starting point is 00:06:20 this is this is horrible we need to liberate the Queen of Heaven from her sister so we can get bawling again and yeah I also it's kind of annoying because it makes the Anunaki seem like people who don't want you to bust in their version of this mythical story the Akkadians renamed Inana Ishtar and abandoned the term Anuna or Anna in favor of Anunaki when referring to the seven gods of the underworld that judge the queen of heaven but before stripping her of her clothes in power. To complicate things, early Babylonians introduced a whole new set of gods they called the Igigi,
Starting point is 00:06:52 which for a while was a term used interchangeably with Anunaki. But Igigi came to represent the heavenly gods, whereas Anunaki grew to be a reference to those of the underworld. Having said that, even among Babylonians, definitions of the Anunaki varied wildly. One of their epic poems appeared to describe 600 Anunaki belonging to the underworld and 300 to heaven, for example. By the time the term Anunaki is used in the standard Akkadian epic of Gilgamesh, around 1,200 BC, they are more or less understood to be a group of gods residing in the nether world, acting as judges. Religious beliefs in Mesopotamia continue to syncretize from there onwards, and the Neo-Assyrians
Starting point is 00:07:30 added all kinds of weird subplots, changed the gods names, sent all the characters to war, you know, all the plot points you'd expect from an exhausted writer's room asked to work with quite dated material at this point. So, it seems like these shifting references to the Anunaki in ancient religious myths is a story spanning thousands of years of human history that paints a fascinating picture of mankind's perennial longing for a world beyond the physical. Or what if it were something cooler? Fellas, join me in a little thought experiment. All right. What if instead of religious myths, these inconsistent and evolving ideas about the Anunaki were actually firsthand accounts left by ancient civilizations who'd been envisioned.
Starting point is 00:08:12 visited by extraterrestrials with advanced technology? What if these foolish, primitive people took one look at the cool spaceships and aliens and astronaut suits and decided that they were gods? You are totally on board unless it involves getting in bed with the Swiss. That is the one thing I cannot stand. Enter Swiss hotel manager, Eric von Denneken. And yes, this is basically about how the Swiss are responsible for all of this,
Starting point is 00:08:40 which I think are people, deserve a moment in the spotlight. The last one I think was the order of the solar temple. I think you guys deserve a good beating. You stripped of your clothes, hung up on a hook, in the underworld, judged by the gods. Turned to a corpse? Turned to a corpse. I don't like that. In the mid-60s, Von Denikin would wait for his hotel guest to be asleep so he could hole up in his office and write about how extraterrestrial astronauts had visited ancient human civilizations. In 1964, he had published a piece in the German-Canadian periodical Der Nord Western,
Starting point is 00:09:15 entitled, Did Our Ancestors Have a Visit from Space? But what he was now working on late into the night was a full-fledged book. He called it Memories of the Future. After being turned down by several publishers, the book was picked up by a Berlin publishing house after von Dennecken got one of his hotel guests to vouch for him with them. Their agreement included the condition that his book be thoroughly rewritten by a professional editor called Uttz Uttermann.
Starting point is 00:09:41 Now Udermann had in the early 40s written for a German newspaper called the Volkish Observer, which was at the time owned by Adolf Hitler. He was also a best-selling Nazi author. You have been listening to a sample of a premium episode of QAnon Anonymous. We don't run any advertising on the show, and we'd like to keep it that way. For five bucks a month, you'll get access to this episode,
Starting point is 00:10:06 a new one each week, and our entire library of premium episodes. So head on over to patreon.com slash QAnonanon Anonymous and subscribe. Thank you. Thanks. I love you. Jake loves you.

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