The Anunnaki were an advanced extraterrestrial species from the planet Nibiru who arrived on Earth roughly 450,000 years ago, genetically engineered humans as a labor species, and are described doing so in ancient Sumerian texts.

Across his Gaia series "Anunnaki: Ancient Secrets Revealed," his own Anunnaki-themed books, and years of podcast appearances (including The Joe Rogan Experience episode #2160), Carson presents the Anunnaki as literal extraterrestrials from a planet called Nibiru who arrived on Earth roughly 450,000 years ago, mined gold, and genetically engineered Homo sapiens as a labor species, and he presents this as decoded Sumerian history rather than one author's speculative reading. The framework did not originate with Carson; it comes almost entirely from Zecharia Sitchin's "Earth Chronicles" series, published from 1976 onward, which Carson explicitly builds on. (The site's existing Anunnaki and Nibiru entries cover Sitchin's original claims in full; This record addresses only what Carson has changed, which is essentially nothing: he repackages Sitchin's conclusions as settled fact for a new audience.)

The scholarly rebuttal to Sitchin is old, specific, and has never been answered on its own terms. Michael S. Heiser, who held a PhD in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published a line-by-line "Open Letter to Zecharia Sitchin" (hosted at sitchiniswrong.com) itemizing individual mistranslations: for example, Sitchin's claim that a Sumerian term for "sky/heaven" secretly meant "rocket" has no support in any Sumerian lexicon ever compiled, ancient or modern. Heiser's central, repeated challenge (echoed since by mainstream Assyriologists) is simple and has never been met: produce one Sumerian or Akkadian text that says the Anunnaki came from a planet called Nibiru. None exists. In the actual cuneiform corpus, the Anunnaki are a class of Mesopotamian deities, and "Nibiru" is a name associated with the god Marduk or a celestial body in astronomical omen texts, not a planet beyond Neptune on a 3,600-year orbit.

This matters for evaluating Carson specifically because he is not an independent researcher checking Sitchin's readings against primary sources: he does not read Sumerian or Akkadian, and none of his listed credentials (an MIT executive-education certificate, a Harvard Extension certificate) are in ancient Near Eastern languages. By his own framing, he is popularizing and dramatizing Sitchin's conclusions for television and podcast audiences, presenting a translation professional Sumerologists rejected decades ago as though it were live, contested scholarship rather than a long-settled academic dead end.