Ancient Reptilians: The Unsolved Mystery of the 7,000-Year-Old Ubaid ‘Lizard Men’

Ancient Reptilians: The Unanswered Mystery of the 7,000-Year-Old Ubaid Lizardmen Artifacts, the Age of the Artifacts is Estimated to Be Even Older Than the Sumerian Civilization

It is a commonly accepted view in mainstream archaeology that civilization began in ancient Mesopotamia with the great civilization of Sumer in what is now Iraq. However, in the early 20th century, archaeologists excavating at Tell Al’Ubaid in Iraq made an unusual discovery when they unearthed several 7,000-year-old artifacts that appear to depict humanoid figures with reptilian features.

Understanding Ubaidian culture

The Ubaidian culture is a prehistoric culture of Mesopotamia dating from between 4000 and 5500 BC. As with the Sumerians, the origins of the Ubaidian people are unknown. They lived in large rural settlements in adobe houses and had developed architecture, agriculture and cultivated the land by irrigation.

The domestic architecture of the Ubaidians included large T-shaped houses, open courtyards, paved streets, and food processing equipment. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, some of these villages began to develop into cities, temples began to appear, as well as monumental buildings such as at Eridu, Ur, and Uruk, the main sites of the Sumerian civilization. Sumerian texts explain that Ur was believed to be the first city.

Discovering Ubaid Lizardmen Figures at Tell Al’Ubaid

The main site where these unusual artifacts were discovered is called Tell Al’Ubaid, although figurines were also found at Ur and Eridu. The Al’Ubaid site is a small mound about half a kilometer (0.3 mi) in diameter and two meters (6.56 ft) above the ground. First excavated by Harry Reginald Hal in 1919, male and female figurines were found in different postures. Most of the figurines appear to be wearing helmets and have some form of shoulder padding.

Other figures were found holding a staff or a sceptre, possibly as a symbol of justice and rule. Each figure has a different pose, but most strangely of all, some female figures are holding babies suckling milk, and the child is also depicted as a lizard-like creature.

Ubaid Lizardmen: The prehistoric lizard figures

The figures are depicted with long heads, almond-shaped eyes, elongated, tapering faces and a lizard-like nose. What they represent exactly is completely unknown. According to archaeologists, their postures, such as that of a breastfeeding female figure, do not suggest they were ritual objects. So what did these Ubaid lizardmen represent?

Whatever they were, they seem to have been important to the ancient Ubaidian people. We know that the snake was an important symbol used in many societies to represent various gods, for example the Sumerian god Enki, and the snake was later used as a symbol of the Brotherhood of the Snake, supposedly an ancient secret society. Is there any link between the snake symbol and depictions of lizards? For now, these questions remain unanswered.