Billy Carson's answer to "are the Anunnaki still here?" is a qualified yes: in this conversation with Roderick Martin of Truth Versus Authority, he argues that the beings ancient cultures called gods fought wars, engineered humanity and then mostly withdrew, while their technology, their descendants and their systems of rule stayed behind. Part I of "Gods Among Us?" runs from the Atrahasis epic and the Indus Valley to cargo cults, remote viewing and religion versus spirituality.
The question matters because it sits under almost everything 4biddenknowledge covers. If the gods of Sumer, Egypt and Mesoamerica were real visitors, the origins of kingship, temple building and organized religion all need re-reading; if not, the stories still show how early societies explained power, labor and the sky. This companion sets out what Carson says, the texts he cites, and where mainstream scholarship differs.
What the video covers
Did the gods leave or change their clothes (from about 2:30)
Martin opens with the episode's framing question: "did the gods really leave or they just change their clothes?" Carson starts from the observation that indigenous peoples worldwide tell similar stories of advanced beings who resembled humans and brought agriculture, building methods, city planning and systems of government and money. In his telling they stayed for millennia, fought among themselves and gradually disappeared.
As evidence of those wars he points to Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley, where he says buildings were vitrified, skeletons lie where people fell and radiation remains above background. He adds desert glass, the Rig Veda's Battle of the Ten Kings, which he reads as a war in space, and Vedic accounts of flying cities battling in the sky. The broader context is in the 4biddenknowledge guide to the Indus Valley civilization and Mohenjo-daro.
The Atrahasis epic and the making of humans (from about 9:00)
Asked whether the bloodline idea is genetic, Carson says every human carries the gods' DNA and turns to the Epic of Atrahasis, which he has seen in the British Museum. He summarizes the story: the junior gods, the Igigi, rebel against endless labor and surround the dwelling of the senior gods; Enki proposes taking an existing being, adding the gods' essence through the blood of a slain god, and letting the new creature "bear the load of the gods." Carson reads this as genetic modification of an earlier hominin into Homo sapiens sapiens, and places the Igigi revolt at the site in South Africa known as Adam's Calendar. The full story is covered in the Atrahasis epic explainer.
Abductions and the global cast of sky beings (from about 12:00)
Martin asks whether modern abduction reports, with their paralysis and bright lights, are the same ancient beings in a different mask. Carson agrees and lists parallels: the Anunnaki of Sumer, the Anakim of the Bible, the Nommo of the Dogon, the Wandjina of Aboriginal Australia, Quetzalcoatl and Kukulkan in Mesoamerica, the kachinas of the Hopi and the Chitauri of Zulu tradition.
Knowledge as a tool of rule (from about 14:30)
Was ancient knowledge given freely? Carson argues it was handed down so the gods could rule more comfortably and get their monuments built. His analogy is a master architect who hands a blueprint to an engineer and a foreman, who train the laborers. In his reading Thoth was that architect. He cites the Emerald Tablets for Thoth's role in building the Great Pyramid and links him to the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, saying the two share a base size, sit over water, align with Orion, and that the Mexican pyramid is exactly half the Great Pyramid's height. He describes crews being taught to run anti-gravity and cymatic machines. That thread continues in Carson's reading of Teotihuacan and Thoth.
Voices, psychics and remote viewing (from about 19:00)
Martin asks whether people who hear voices or have visions could be in contact with ancient intelligence. Carson offers three possibilities. First, leftover technology: he names the Black Knight satellite, which he says emits a signal that has been decoded several times. Second, human technology, including what he describes as military systems such as the Active Denial System that can put voices in one person's head. Third, natural ability: psychic perception, he says, was once as normal as the other senses until the gods' genetic modification switched it off in most people; he describes it as quantum entanglement. He mentions training in remote viewing with Major Ed Dames in Orlando, Florida. The history of that discipline is set out in the remote viewing and Stargate explainer.
Why the gods demanded worship (from about 28:30)
After a clip of the late researcher Jordan Maxwell warning that people accept "authority as truth rather than truth as the authority," Martin asks why every set of gods insisted on being worshipped. Carson's answer: "the greatest slave is a slave that does not know that it's a slave." Less advanced peoples, he says, deify more advanced ones. His example is the cargo cult, which he places on Pacific atolls during the atomic-weapons era: islanders who painted "USA" on their chests, carved rifles from reeds, built a mock runway and waited for the sky gods to return. "Humanity is one gigantic hodgepodge of cargo cults," he concludes, and he sets Thoth's arrival in Khem, where Carson says a vibrational weapon froze attackers in place, and the reception of Columbus in the Caribbean alongside it.
Religion, spirituality and the brain as projector (from about 32:30)
Asked why religions teach people to fear God, Carson draws a sharp line: "religion is designed to keep you disconnected. Spirituality is designed to keep you connected." He resolves the puzzle of an omniscient God who is surprised in scripture by describing God as inhabiting everything. His analogy is the brain sealed in darkness, receiving data from the senses and projecting a hologram; at the cosmic scale, every being and object acts as a sense organ for the source. Citing "as above, so below," he argues that every manufactured object began as a thought, and that "the same power that God has to create, we've been imbued with the same power to create."
Symbols, allegiance and the returning gods (from about 37:30)
Carson describes flags, eagles and currency imagery as the brands of the old rulers, and modern life as layered financial, political and educational matrices held together by divide and conquer. Asked how people would react if beings with godlike powers arrived today (from about 41:30), he predicts three groups: the devout who fall to their knees, the military that tries to capture and weaponize the technology, and a third group ready simply to talk.
Key takeaways
- Carson argues that the gods of ancient texts were real, advanced beings who mostly left after internal wars but left technology, bloodlines and systems of control behind.
- He reads the Atrahasis epic as an account of genetic engineering that produced modern humans as a labor force.
- He treats abduction reports and global sky-being traditions, from the Nommo to the kachinas, as one continuous phenomenon.
- He holds that psychic ability is a natural human sense that was suppressed, and points to remote viewing as a trained form of it.
- He separates religion, which he says keeps people disconnected, from spirituality, which he says reconnects them to their own divine nature.
Billy Carson's reading
Carson's framework is consistent across the episode: advanced beings arrived, organized human society for their own purposes, and encoded that arrangement into kingship, religion and labor. He reads the Sumerian and Akkadian tablets as literal history rather than myth, which is the approach he sets out more fully in the 4biddenknowledge guide who were the Anunnaki. Thoth, the master architect of this episode, is the central figure of his book, the Compendium of the Emerald Tablets.
The turn at the end is what matters to his audience: if the old rulers relied on people not knowing their own nature, the remedy is awareness that the creative power attributed to the gods is already present in every person. That is why an episode about ancient wars ends on personal agency rather than fear.
What mainstream scholarship says
At Mohenjo-daro, the skeletons found in the 1920s and 1930s were excavated and studied; the archaeologist George Dales showed in his 1964 paper "The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjo-daro" that they came from different levels and periods rather than a single catastrophe, and no excavation report documents vitrified buildings or elevated radiation. The nuclear reading traces largely to David Davenport and Ettore Vincenti's 1979 book. Desert glass such as Libyan Desert Glass is attributed to ancient impacts or airbursts. The Battle of the Ten Kings in Book 7 of the Rig Veda is described as a battle between human tribes at the Parushni River, won by King Sudas; the best-known flying-city story, Tripura, is told most fully in the Mahabharata and the Puranas.
The Epic of Atrahasis is an Old Babylonian text written in Akkadian, not Sumerian. In it the mother goddess, with Enki, mixes clay with the flesh and blood of a slain god, We-ila, to create humans; the Igigi surround Enlil's house, and the text names no site in southern Africa. Scholars read it as myth explaining human labor, and the fossil and genetic evidence points to gradual human evolution in Africa rather than a single intervention. On Teotihuacan, the Pyramid of the Sun's base is close to but not the same as the Great Pyramid's, its height is well under half, and it was built around 200 CE, more than two thousand years after Giza. The text Carson calls the Emerald Tablets of Thoth was published by Maurice Doreal in the 1930s; it is distinct from the medieval Hermetic Emerald Tablet that gave the world "as above, so below."
On the modern claims, the Active Denial System is a millimetre-wave beam that heats the skin's surface; pulsed microwaves can produce faint clicks perceived inside the head (the Frey effect), but there is no public evidence of systems delivering speech from orbit. The 1998 Space Shuttle photographs usually labelled the Black Knight are generally identified as a thermal blanket lost during a spacewalk. The government's remote-viewing work, later known as Stargate, was closed in 1995 after an independent review found no operational value, and Ed Dames served in that military unit rather than heading it. Physicists note that quantum entanglement cannot carry messages. Cargo cults are documented mainly in Melanesia, such as the John Frum movement on Tanna, and anthropologists treat them as complex responses to colonial contact and wartime upheaval rather than simple worship.
Watch, read and go deeper
The Sumerian background is gathered on the Anunnaki and Sumer hub, and the long-running debate around these ideas is summarized in ancient astronaut theory explained. For Carson's longer treatment of the Igigi, Enki and Enlil, the 4BK TV series Anunnaki: Ancient Secrets Revealed works through the tablets episode by episode.
Frequently asked questions
Are the Anunnaki still on Earth according to Billy Carson?
Carson says most of them left after wars among themselves, but that some of their offspring may remain and rule from behind the scenes. He also argues that every human carries some of their DNA through ancient genetic modification. Scholars regard the Anunnaki as Mesopotamian deities, not visitors.
What does the Epic of Atrahasis say about the creation of humans?
In the Atrahasis epic the junior gods, the Igigi, rebel against their workload. The gods agree to create humans to take over the labor, and the mother goddess, with Enki, forms them from clay mixed with the flesh and blood of a slain god. Carson reads this as genetic engineering; scholars read it as myth.
Was Mohenjo-daro destroyed by a nuclear blast?
No archaeological report supports that. The skeletons found there came from different times and contexts, and no vitrified buildings or elevated radiation have been documented. The city's decline is usually linked to climate, river shifts and changing trade.
What is a cargo cult?
A cargo cult is a twentieth-century movement, documented mostly in Melanesia, in which communities used ritual to seek the goods brought by outsiders. The best-known case is the John Frum movement on Tanna in Vanuatu. Carson uses cargo cults as a model for how people deify more advanced visitors.
Sources mentioned
Carson draws on the Epic of Atrahasis, the Rig Veda's Battle of the Ten Kings, Indian flying-city stories, the Emerald Tablets of Thoth as published by Maurice Doreal, and the Hermetic maxim "as above, so below." He refers to Mohenjo-daro, Adam's Calendar, Teotihuacan and Giza, Dogon, Aboriginal, Mesoamerican, Hopi and Zulu traditions, the Black Knight satellite and the Active Denial System. Martin plays a clip of Jordan Maxwell. Standard references: W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard's Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood, Stephanie Dalley's Myths from Mesopotamia, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer's Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization, and Peter Worsley's The Trumpet Shall Sound on Melanesian cargo cults.
