This obit was written by Lloyd Pye who is out securing funding for mapping the genome of the Star child Skull. I read all of Zecharia’s work over the years and he will be missed. Like several other pioneers in the topic of alternative history and myself, initial inspiration came from a close reading of the Bible and the many questions that engenders in the inquisitive mind.
He followed up with extensive scholarship on Sumerian cuneiform tablets and their interpretation. This led to his alternative history in which modern man emerged as an genetic upgrade two hundred years ago.
As with Velikovsky and with Hapwood and Fell and Daniken and others, the evidence is undeniable while the interpretation is all too deniable and often poorly cast. I can blame Daniken for getting me into this subject. I thought his interpretations were idiotic and worse, unnecessary and I set out to prove it. My opinion has not changed but I did develop the evidence as did others and generated new knowledge. I can build the Great Pyramid on time and on budget using Bronze Age technology. That actually took twenty years to winkle out.
If there is justice, there is a special place in heaven for seekers of knowledge and Zecharia Sitchin is home.
I'm sure everyone was saddened to hear that Zecharia Sitchin died on the morning of October 9th, and was buried the next day. This news was especially meaningful to me because I knew Zecharia well. I was a member of the first three of his fifteen or so trips taking interested fans around the world to see and experience the places he would write about in his books. And then today I suddenly realized that I was speaking on the stage in Malta at the same time he was being buried in New York
When I heard the news my first reaction was to recall my initial meeting with him, in the airport in Miami on our way to Egypt Miami
Another thing I remember was how he would read. He moved slowly and deliberately in everything he did, except when he wanted to examine something, or read. He would snap his thick glasses up to the top of his head and pull the object of his attention close to his face so he could scrutinize it with sharp, focused intensity. Anyone who knew him would recognize that gesture, which epitomized why he was who and what he was. He went after what puzzled or intrigued him the way sharks hunt. He had a zeal for learning that was unquenchable.
My most memorable personal interaction with him taught me a wonderful lesson that scientists would do well to emulate. I have dealt with enough scientists now to know they are, with a few outstanding exceptions, men and women terrified at the prospect of ever being caught wrong at anything. But "wrong" is what science is fundamentally all about. Progress in science is nothing but one long series of corrected mistakes. They are wrong at an astonishing rate, so they do everything they can to pretend it never happens, desperately trying to balance a cosmic scale that can never be tipped in their favor.
During my first trip with Zecharia, he was discussing with the group a passage in his book "The 12th Planet," something he had published in 1976, a decade and a half before I read it so it was much fresher in my mind. He mentioned something to the group that I knew conflicted with what he had written in the book. Later, in a quiet moment on the bus, I brought him my well-worn copy of the book and showed him his error. I mean, here was this upstart nobody pointing out to "The Man" where he had made a small but signifcant error. He snapped those glasses up, pulled the book close to his face, read his own words, and lowered the book. The moment of truth......
He turned to me, smiled broadly, and gestured with a nod of respectful agreement. "I stand corrected." That is exactly how it happened, and what it showed was what made him so great. He wasn't afraid of not being perfect. He just wanted to KNOW, and I had taught him something that he once knew but which somehow had slipped his mind. So now I had re-taught him his own bit of knowledge, and he seemed, and no doubt was, genuinely grateful to have it back where it belonged. "I stand corrected." THAT is what makes a great scientist, and a great person---the self-assurance and confidence to accept a correction as a natural part of moving forward.
Zecharia Sitchin was an icon in the world of alternative knowledge, a man who single-handedly created an astounding body of original research that has stood, and will continue to stand, the test of time. And in the future he will be vastly more lauded than he is now. As with so many original geniuses, he did not live long enough to see wide acceptance of his work, but in the fullness of time he will be recognized worldwide for his academic accomplishments.
Erich Von Daniken will be remembered as the person who in 1967 started all of us on the road to the real truth about our origins. In 1976, however, with the publication of "The 12th Planet," Zecharia pointed us onto a much more direct path to the Truth with a capital "T," and for that he will ultimately be revered. If there is ever a posthumous Nobel Prize, he will have earned one.
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