Spelt, a hard-grained type of wheat, poses an even greater mystery. It is the product of "an unusual mixture of botanic genes," neither a development from one genetic source nor a mutation of one source. It is definitely the result of mixing the genes of several plants. The whole notion that Man, in a few thousand years, changed animals through domestication, is also questionable.
Modem scholars have no answers to these puzzles, nor to the general question of why the mountainous semicircle in the ancient Near East became a continuous source of new varieties of cereals, plants, trees, fruits, vegetables, and domesticated animals.
The Sumerians knew the answer. The seeds, they said, were a gift sent to Earth by Anu from his Celestial Abode. Wheat, barley, and hemp were lowered to Earth from the Twelfth Planet. Agriculture and the domestication of animals were gifts given to Mankind by Enlil and Enki, respectively.
Not only the presence of the Nefilim but also the periodic arrivals of the Twelfth Planet in Earth's vicinity seem to lie behind the three crucial phases of Man's post-Diluvial civilization: agriculture, circa 11,000 B.C., the Neolithic culture, circa 7500 B.C., and
the sudden civilization of 3800 B.C. took place at intervals of 3,600 years.
It appears that the Nefilim, passing knowledge to Man in measured doses, did so in intervals matching the periodic returns of the Twelfth Planet to Earth's vicinity. It was as though some on-site inspection, some face-to-face consultation possible only during the "window" period that allowed landings and takeoffs between Earth and the Twelfth Planet, had to take place among the "gods" before another "go ahead" could be given.
The "Epic of Etana" provides a glimpse of the deliberations that took place. In the days that followed the Deluge, it says:
The great Anunnaki who decree the fate
sat exchanging their counsels regarding the land.
They who created the four regions,
who set up the settlements, who oversaw the land,
were too lofty for Mankind.
The Nefilim, we are told, reached the conclusion that they needed an intermediary between themselves and the masses of humans. They were, they decided, to be gods - elu in Akkadian, meaning "lofty ones." As a bridge between themselves as lords and Mankind, they introduced "Kingship" on Earth: appointing a human ruler who would assure Mankind's service to the gods and channel the teachings and laws of the gods to the people. A text dealing with the subject describes the situation ' before either tiara or crown had been placed on a human head, or scepter handed down; all these symbols of Kingship - plus the shepherd's crook, the symbol of righteousness and justice - "lay deposited before Anu in Heaven." After the gods had reached their decision, however, "Kingship descended from Heaven" to Earth.
Both Sumerian and Akkadian texts state that the Nefilim retained the "lordship" over the lands, and had Mankind first rebuild the pre-diluvial cities exactly where they had originally been and as they had been planned: "Let the bricks of all the cities be laid on the dedicated places, let all the [bricks] rest on holy places." Eridu, then, was first to be rebuilt.
The Nefilim then helped the people plan and build the first royal city, and they blessed it. "May the city be the nest, the place where Mankind shall repose. May the King be a Shepherd."
The first royal city of Man, the Sumerian texts tell us, was Kish. "When Kingship was lowered again from Heaven, the Kingship was in Kish." The Sumerian king lists, unfortunately, are mutilated just where the name of the very first human king was inscribed. We do know, however, that he started a long line of dynasties whose royal abode changed from Kish to Uruk, Ur, Awan, Hamazi, Aksak, Akkad, and then to Ashur and Babylon and more recent capitals.
The biblical "Table of Nations" likewise listed Nimrud - the patriarch of the kingdoms at Uruk, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyria - as descended from Kish. It records the spread of Mankind, its lands and Kingships, as an outgrowth of the division of Mankind into three branches following the Deluge. Descended from and named after the three sons of Noah, these were the peoples and lands of Shem, who inhabited Mesopotamia and the Near Eastern lands; Ham, who inhabited Africa and parts of Arabia; and Japheth, the Indo-Europeans in Asia Minor, Iran, India, and Europe.
These three broad groupings were undoubtedly three of the "regions" whose settlement was discussed by the great Anunnaki. Each of the three was assigned to one of the leading deities. One of these was, of course, Sumer itself, the region of the Semitic peoples, the place where Man's first great civilization arose.
The other two also became sites of flourishing civilizations. Circa 3200 B.C. - about half a millennium after the blooming of the Sumerian civilization - statehood, Kingship, and civilization made their first appearance in the Nile valley, leading in time to the great civilization of Egypt.
Nothing was known until some fifty years ago about the first major Indo-European civilization. But by now it is well established
that an advanced civilization, encompassing large cities, a developed agriculture, a flourishing trade, existed in the Indus valley
in ancient times. It came into being, scholars believe, some 1,000 years after the Sumerian civilization began.
Ancient texts as well as archaeological evidence attest to the close cultural and economic links between these two river-valley
civilizations and the older Sumerian one. Moreover, both direct and circumstantial evidence has convinced most scholars that
the civilizations of the Nile and Indus not only were linked to, but were actually offspring of, the earlier civilization of
Mesopotamia.
The most imposing monuments of Egypt, the pyramids, have been found to be, under a stone "skin," simulations of the Mesopotamian ziggurats; and there is reason to believe that the ingenious architect who designed the plans for the great pyramids and supervised their construction was a Sumerian venerated as a god.
The ancient Egyptian name for their land was the "Raised Land," and their prehistoric memory was that "a very great god who came forth in the earliest times" found their land lying under water and mud. He undertook great works of reclamation, literally raising Egypt from under the waters. The 'legend" neatly describes the low-lying valley of the Nile River in the aftermath of the Deluge; this olden god, it can be shown, was none other than Enki, the chief engineer of the Nefilim.
Though relatively little is known as yet regarding the Indus valley civilization, we do know that they, too, venerated the number twelve as the supreme divine number; that they depicted their gods as human-looking beings wearing horned headdresses; and that they revered the symbol of the cross - the sign of the Twelfth Planet.
If these two civilizations were of Sumerian origin, why are their written languages different? The scientific answer is that the languages are not different. This was recognized as early as 1852, when the Reverend Charles Foster (The One Primeval Language) ably demonstrated that all the ancient languages then deciphered, including early Chinese and other Far Eastern languages, stemmed from one primeval source - thereafter shown to be Sumerian.
Similar pictographs had not only similar meanings, which could be a logical coincidence, but also the same multiple meanings and even the same phonetic sounds - which suggests a common origin. More recently, scholars have shown that the very first Egyptian inscriptions employed a language that was indicative of a prior written development; the only place where a written language had a prior development was Sumer.