Way back in my youth (OK, about 12 years ago), I was introduced to Zecharia Sitchin's series, "The Twelfth Planet". In these books, it is believed that the Sumerians and their fellow Mesopotamians were visited by another race of people from a planet called "Nibiru". (Far out, man! Far out! LOL)

Now, I did take this book as a stepping stone of sorts in order to study Sumerian mythology. I'm ever the skeptic and so I decided to research the author's claims. I found that for the most part, his translations of the myths did coincide with the translations from others...it was just his interpretations of these myths that took on a life of their own.

Back to Nibiru:
With the recent discovery of a new, earth-like planet, it got me thinking more about Nibiru. Now, I have yet to find this planet mentioned in any of my current books, but according to Sitchin, and a wikipedia article, it means "Planet of the crossing". Sitchin estimated its elliptical orbit around our sun to be that of 3630 years.

So...if this is true, where is the planet in question? Surely it's been about this long since the last, ancient "sighting" of the planet that astronomers could spot it within our solar system. I've also wondered how much the Sumerians actually knew about astronomy and our solar system?