HERE BE GIANTS

A very famously known line is "Let us create man in our image".. Notice the US and the OUR... It was never "Let ME create man in MY image" ... Never... Those who were speaking those words were a group of advanced extraterrestrial race of beings who we now know as the Anunnaki. Anunnaki is a term that simply means "Those who from the heavens came down to the Earth." So technically all ET races can be considered 'Anunnaki' beings.
However, in terms of the beings who spoke this famous line, they are specifically a race of beings in which the Sumerian tablets speak of, who came to this earth somewhere between 250,000-450,000 earth years ago. These beings originally came to this earth to mine gold in order to transport it back to their planet.
After a great war ensued on their planet, they nearly destroyed their planet's atmosphere. Gold is very valuable throughout the universe and it can be used to even repair an entire planet's atmosphere. Earth creates a LOT of gold! When the Anunnaki came, they brought with them a slave race called the "Igigis" who were tasked in mining the gold for them.
After much resistance they rebelled against the Anunnaki and unfortunately were nearly completely destroyed by them. The Anunnaki now found themselves without a workforce to mine the gold. Through genetic engineering, Enki and his sister Ninurta, who were master geneticists, created an almost identical race to theirs, yet much smaller, less intelligent and less powerful than them to replace the Igigis?
Earth humans today are a result of this experience. There has now been a total of 5 civilizations since then all which have perished. The last one was due to the great Flood. We are currently the 5th civilization on the earth according to the Mayans. We were created in the image of the Anunnaki. We are just miniature versions of them. This is the origin of that famous Line!
To learn more, do your research.