“Ancient History Reexamined”: A Review of Journey Through the Origins of History by Tyrone Ellington

 (Dimensionfold Publishing, 2024). ISBN: 978-1-998395-15-6

Over the past several years, Dimensionfold Publishing has built a solid reputation for scholarly works that analyze ancient texts, myths, cultures, and the Bible from an array of eye-opening, alternative-narrative lenses. With a stable of authors that includes Rev. Michael Carter, Wallace Wagner Jr., and Ken Goudsward, Dimensionfold gives readers plenty to think about, girded by painstaking textual and contextual analysis and well-developed theories founded on years of scholarship.

If you’re daunted by the idea of considering Sumerian, Babylonian, and Mesopotamian texts and the most challenging passages of the Bible through the lens of advanced civilizations and technology (gods and magic), but are interested in ancient history, religion, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life, Tyrone Ellington’s Journey Through the Origins of History is an excellent place to start. The use of journey here is twofold—meaning both the survey/overview nature of the book and the author’s own journey as an independent scholar. The cover of Journey Through the Origins of History is a depiction of the author in headphones, reading research material surrounded by stacks of books, recalling the classical scholar in their study or laboratory. Like many researchers, I know that depiction well and live it every day.

Throughout the book, Ellington shares his curiosity and seeker nature as primary drivers in his life. Much of the book is taken from his blog; this at times leads to repetition, and circling back to previously covered subjects, but this is quite a good thing. As much as educators talk about scaffolding (learning incrementally from basic to complex topics and skills, where the preceding material serves as an essential foundation), the type of big-picture, transdisciplinary research Ellington is doing does not work well that way. Using what I term parallels, patterns, and pathways, a survey like Ellington’s of ancient history and the most challenging theological, cultural, anthropological, philosophical, and sociological aspects of our existence on Earth becomes essential reading for those seeking deeper understanding of the human condition.

Starting from The Beginning of Time, Ellington considers the creation of the Universe, the development of life on Earth (focusing primarily on our forebears and us), and the definitions and conditions of Civilization. Compared to some recent books I’ve read where this journey is taken solely through the lenses of traditional Hard Science, Ellington examines these meta topics, not just through science but also through the transdisciplinary topics listed in the final sentence of the previous paragraph. This approach allows him to incorporate case-building contextual analysis while not dismissing religion, spirituality, mythology, and belief in extraterrestrial life as reprehensible paganism. Like Wallace Wagner, Jr., Ellington presents us with passages from a range of ancient religious and mythological texts, placing them together so the overlaps emerge and contribute to painting a larger picture of our history.

A core focus of the book is the mysterious Annunaki and the work of Zecharia Sitchin, whose (mis)interpretations of Sumerian texts Ellington begins to unpack through his own research and that of additional scholars. As it turns out (and this is supported by the work of Ken Goudsward), one of the pieces of scholarship for which Sitchin is most well known, the existence of a planet called Nibiru from which the Annunaki originate, is the shakiest.

Again like Goudsward, Ellington considers the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, offering new and compelling insights into one of humanity’s oldest narratives. While engaging with this story, the author also enlightens us regarding the overlaps between the gods in the Epic and those that appear in the stories of other ancient civilizations, a la comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell and alternative history researcher Graham Hancock. He returns to this later when contemplating flood stories and variations on the Garden of Eden mentioned throughout a variety of ancient texts. His links between the Sumerian Enkidu and Bigfoot are intriguing, and I would add that they are also akin to the folktale of Iron John. Again, these parallels and pathways are invaluable in any search for the truth of humanity’s origins and the evidence for outside influences on early civilizations. This is essential work given that it is clear that institutionalized academia and myriad gatekeepers have obfuscated, lied about, distorted, and suppressed a great deal of crucial information in the name of governmental, theological, and economic control.  

Ellington spends a fair amount of time considering the nature of and characteristics attributed to “God.” In this endeavor, he proceeds with the care and respect for which Wallace Wagner and Rev. Michael Carter are known.

The author also considers such wide-ranging topics as out of body experiences, alien encounters, visions and dreams, astral projection, giants, haplogroups and genetics, and even fasting. Chapter 10, “From Pictographic Script to the Translation of Myths,” makes for excellent reading, providing both an overview of the composition and function of myths and educating the reader on finding elements of comparison. An example of the latter is Ellington’s study of the Mesoamerican serpent god Quetzalcóatl/Kukulcán and its striking similarities to the Egyptian god Thoth and Annunaki god Ningishzidda, which again calls to mind the work of Campbell and Hancock.

Ellington closes many sections of the book with the phrase, Until next time, Knowledge is Power. He certain demonstrates his pursuit of knowledge in the Bibliography, which comprises 224 entries.