The story of Adam and Eve is often treated as an allegory, but in reality is quite likely a great deal closer to factual history, a story of genetic manipulations at the Dawn of Man, by a group of extraterrestrials who commit the ultimate in “Prime Directive” Violations.
According to ancient Sumerian texts, as interpreted by Laurence Gardner [1], Zecharia Sitchin [2], and others, the Anunnaki (“those who from heaven to earth came”) are extraterrestrials who arrived on the planet Earth after the discovery of gold by a deposed ruler of their race, named Alalu. The discovery eventually led to an Anunnaki mission to Earth to recover as much of this noteworthy example of the Precious Metals as possible.
The initial effort was led by Ea; whose title, Enki, meant “Lord of Earth”, and who was the son of the new ruler, Anu. Enki (or Ea) set up shop at Eridu, near the northwest end of the Persian Gulf at the point where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers meet the Gulf -- and at a time long before the silting of the two great rivers had extended the shoreline many miles to the southeast. At Eridu, Enki began to recover gold from sea water.
After this initial effort failed to produce the expected quantities of gold, an enlarged effort was commenced, this time under the command of Enlil (“Lord of the Command”), another son of Anu, and a half-brother to Enki. The new plan was to shift the operation from Mesopotamia to southern Africa (referred to in the Sumerian texts as Ab-zu), ship the gold back to Mesopotamia, and then lift it off the planet for trans-shipment to the home planet of the Anunnaki, Nibiru. (Nibiru is also a member of Earth’s solar system, but has an extremely elliptical orbit and only reaches perihelion every 3600 years or so.)
At this juncture, there were supposedly 600 Anunnaki in the Netherworld (i.e. working the mines) and 300 in the heavens (doing the trans-shipments and minding the store). After a long period of time (Sitchin reckons the date as 300,000 B.C.E.), the Anunnaki who were laboriously mining the gold from the South African mines, mutinied! The mutiny and the difficulties the Anunnaki had encountered in working the mines were resolved, however, when Enki proposed to create a “primitive worker” to work the mines in lieu of the Anunnaki. Enki’s proposal was, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”
Given the go-ahead, Enki and his half-sister, Ninki (Nin-khursag) created man, Homo sapiens, using genetic manipulation. They did so, allegedly, for the sole purpose of having workers to mine the gold for the Anunnaki, and thereby to quell the mutiny! The actual creation of Homo sapiens, as depicted in the ancient Sumerian texts in detail, was done by cross-breeding Homo erectus with that of the extraterrestrial Anunnaki! In other words, we’re all half-breeds! (Except for a few notable personalities such as described in the Epic of Gilgamesh, who might better be described as one-third breeds. No kidding.)
Ninki, the Lady of Life (now we know where she received her title!), carried the first “mixed worker” to term and gave birth to a being she called the “Lulu.” Later, fourteen “birth goddesses” (female Anunnaki) were used to produce additional workers. This solution was only a moderate success in that the Lulu was a hybrid and incapable of procreation (just as the mule, a cross between horse and donkey, cannot reproduce itself).
In addition, the “birth goddesses” had become weary of continually being pregnant!
Accordingly, it was back to the drawing board for Enki and Ninki. More work had to be done in genetically engineering a self-replicating, humanoid creature to be used as a slave.In the process, they may have encountered more than one dead end. It is possible, for example, that the legends of strange creatures and mythological monsters (from a Cyclops to a Hydra) may have arisen from the early experiments in genetic engineering, those which did not quite work quite so well. Cyclops, for example, was listed as the son of Neptune, the God of the Ocean -- another likely name or title for Enki (who was given the oceans as his bailiwick, and who was identified in the Sumerian texts with the planet Neptune. There is also the possibility that both the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon species were simply different “models” of the genetic engineering project, and created for different forms of work -- ostensibly the Neanderthal being the mine workers, and Cro-Magnon being the new, improved version of Homo sapiens for the purposes of housework and domestic servants. The latter may also have been the precursor of Homo sapiens sapiens.