
The gods come from above and travel to Earth, walking among the people. The main mythological characters are Anu, a distant father god, and two sons, Enlil and Enki, who vie for superiority and power. Similarly, Sitchin gives the stories of the Greek and Roman gods and traces similar stories through other cultures, arriving at Sumerian mythology. In this way, he shrouds Sumer in mystery. He gives the impression that earlier cultures were more advanced than later ones and that Sumer arose suddenly and was amazingly advanced. Sitchin gives a history of the archeological investigation into ancient societies, tracing the known culture of ancient Greece back to earlier cultures, finally arriving at the earliest known civilization of Sumer. Based on a Sumerian origin myth, he recounts how the arrival of this planet formed the solar system as we know it, and he credits the Nefilim for advancing humanity and also for the stories of the Great Flood. The planet, he claims, is inhabited by advanced alien beings called Nefilim.

In THE 12TH PLANET, Zecharia Sitchin argues that Sumerian myths of a pantheon of gods are no less than fact and that Earth's solar system includes an additional planet called Shar which comes near Earth every 3,600 years on an elliptical orbit that takes it deep into space.
