Fourth Era: Fighting among the gods

When the Anu came here, they operated within the strict hierarchy that was typical to their people. They had a clear chain of command, in which Enki was in charge of the scientific mission and Enlil was in charge of everything to do with the ship and military operation. Every engineer, crewmember and research staff reported to a more experienced senior.

In the early days of their involvement on Earth, they acted within their roles and treated their superiors with great respect.

To the humans, a large group of people living together, obedient to seniors, was familiar only within the context of a family. They thought the Gods were a big family, with Enlil and Enki as brothers, Ninhursag as Enki’s wife, Inanna as a granddaughter and all of them children of Anu.

After creating a human workforce and setting themselves up as Gods, the Anu became increasingly involved in human society. Many of them started to live on the surface rather than on the ship, as the Earth’s atmosphere filtered out some of the energies.

They set up great houses in strategic places, and brought humans to entertain them, serve them, and labour for them. They taught their humans about governance, and gave them basic technological developments that would have taken them thousands of years to discover on their own. Great city states developed around them, where an organised priesthood ensured that the worship of the gods continued even in times when the Anu were in stasis.

The social hierarchy was clear to every Anu, and such an engrained part of their culture that none would have even thought of violating it until madness set in.

The more they were exposed to the energies, however, the more the Anu started to fight amongst themselves. The greed and suspicion that their race had never quite managed to edit out of their DNA, flared up again. Especially at times when the energies were strong, they competed with one another for power, for influence, for wealth.

They manipulated, stole from each other, and infiltrated each other’s cities, often using their human servants to do the job for them.

Even in their madness, the Anu maintained a close mind-to-mind link. Harming one of their own was harmful to all of them. So when their madness and hunger for power grew, they started fighting each other - not by assaulting each other physically, but by attacking each other’s Earth bases.

To the Anu, the human city states became empires that they could build up to generate armies, using them as chess pieces to conquer one another. They played a great “chess game” that could last for entire human generations. And because humans lived so shortly in comparison to the Anu, it didn’t matter if a whole generation was wiped out in the process of a power play.

In the great chess game the Anu played to battle each other for power and influence, humans became the pawns. Humans were taught to fight each other, to hate their neighbours, to send their children into war, all in the name of the Gods.

Over the course of history, many religious battles were fought between the armies of rivalling Anu.

This is the time where the rise and fall of human empires was driven not by a human motivation to expand, but by the madness of the Gods – who often got actively involved in organising wars and providing their side with tactical advantages.

Initially, the Anu resorted to genetic modification to speed up human evolution and change several key traits. However, they did not stop there.

As they were on a scientific mission, much of their early time on Earth had been spent studying the evolutionary history of our world. They had studied early species and their genetic make-up. In their boredom, they thought it would be interesting to re-create some of the earlier species like the dinosaurs (Earth’s biggest lizard species). They also experimented making hybrids between humans and other species.

They might enjoy watching these monsters in their gardens, have them hunt humans for sport, let them loose on rivalling Anu or use them to punish humans who were not respectful enough.

While in the 3rd era, the Gods would generally help the humans in their care and make an effort to make their lives easier, in the 4th era, people began to fear their Gods.

It was terrifying to humans living in the city states to see Gods and strange beings with superpowers, using technology they did not understand, fighting above their heads. They felt helpless as they watched their houses and their lives being destroyed. They lived in fear, knowing that a small group of people were manipulating everything behind the scenes.

The insanity of the Gods was not constant. In times when the energy was strong, they were more crazy, but in times when the energy was receding, they often impose a more sensible rule.

Not only the humans on Earth were afraid of the Gods. The Anu, also, increasingly feared each other.

The Anu who had set up bases on the surface of the planet started to worry that their own people would come and invade their structures or steal their wealth. It was a realistic concern.

They started to use their technology and their human workforce to create underground caverns to hide, sometimes with protective pyramids to shield them during times when the energies were strong. Given their technology, these caves were not small or damp or dark: they could be massive, well-lit spaces that could house entire civilisations.