There Were Giants Upon the Earth is Zecharia Sitchin's final major work in the Earth Chronicles series and his most archaeologically specific. Published in 2010, the year of his death at ninety, it returns to the core claim of The 12th Planet (1976) — that the Anunnaki of Sumerian tradition were extraterrestrials who genetically engineered Homo sapiens — and focuses the argument on a single question: who were the Nephilim and demigods described in Genesis and the Mesopotamian royal lists, and does physical evidence of their presence survive? Sitchin centers the book on the Royal Tombs of Ur, the opulent burials excavated by Leonard Woolley in the late 1920s, and argues that two of the most extraordinary tombs held an Anunnaki goddess and her demigod consort. From their grave goods and the king-lists, he traces a genealogical thread back to the first Anunnaki to have landed from Nibiru.
The book's culminating proposal is addressed directly to science: test the DNA of skeletal remains from the Royal Tombs. Sitchin argued that a genetic profile from those bones could constitute physical proof of a non-human ancestral contribution to the human line — the evidential foundation his Earth Chronicles had been building toward since 1976. No such testing was conducted before his death. Academic Sumerologists, archaeologists, and geneticists have rejected his interpretive framework; the book is read as a concluding statement of his thesis rather than as a scientific program.
Contents
Part 1 — Introduction: And It Came to Pass
I. Alexander's Quest for Immortality
II. In the Days Before the Flood
III. In Search of Noah
IV. Sumer: Where Civilization Began
V. When Kingship Was Brought Down from Heaven
VI. A Planet Called "Nibiru"
VII. Of Anunnaki and Igigi
VIII. A Serf Made to Order
IX. Gods and Other Ancestors
X. Of Patriarchs and Demigods
XI. There Were Giants Upon the Earth
XII. Immortality: The Grand Illusion
XIII. Dawn of the Goddess
XIV. Glory of Empire, Winds of Doom
XV. Buried in Grandeur
XVI. The Goddess Who Never Left
Part 2 — Postscript: Mankind's Alien Origins — The Evidence
Reception
Sitchin's last major book before his death in October 2010. It is the capstone volume of the Earth Chronicles and the one that most directly appeals to modern genetics as a potential avenue for testing his claims. Academic reception followed the pattern established for his earlier work: rejection by Sumerologists, Assyriologists, and archaeologists on grounds of mistranslation and selective evidence. It remains in print and is read primarily by the audience already committed to the ancient-astronaut genre.
Frequently asked
What is There Were Giants Upon the Earth about?
It is Zecharia Sitchin's final Earth Chronicles volume, focused on the Nephilim — the giants and demigods of Genesis and Mesopotamian sources — and on the Royal Tombs of Ur, which Sitchin argued were the burials of an Anunnaki goddess and her demigod spouse. The book proposes that DNA testing of those remains could verify a non-human ancestral lineage.
Who are the Nephilim in Sitchin's reading?
Sitchin identifies the Nephilim of Genesis 6 with the demigod offspring of Anunnaki–human couplings. He treats them as historical individuals traceable through the Sumerian king-lists, and argues that figures such as Gilgamesh — who claimed a right to immortality — belonged to this half-Anunnaki lineage.
What is the DNA proposal in the book?
Sitchin ends the book with a request to modern geneticists: extract and analyze DNA from skeletal remains found in the Royal Tombs of Ur. He argued that those remains, which he identified as an Anunnaki goddess and her demigod consort, would carry genetic markers unlike any known human profile. No such testing was carried out before his death in 2010.