Reptilians: From an Ubaid Figurine to the Story of a Hidden Ruling Class

A small fired-clay figurine sits in the British Museum’s collection. It is only about 4.2 centimetres tall. It was found at Tell al-‘Ubaid in southern Iraq and dated to roughly 5900–4000 BCE. The figure has a human body, an elongated head, slanting eyes and a pointed nose. The museum describes it plainly as a human figure with a reptilian head. The object cannot tell us who made it, but its location, date and excavation record are real.

From that object, the reptilian story takes a different route. This reading treats the Ubaid faces as more than artistic convention or a ritual mask. It treats them as memories of a species that once stood beside humans. The Ubaid people lived before the Sumerians in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates. They made pottery, built settlements and organised communities. If those figures recorded a real group, the question changes from “which god was being worshipped?” to “who had these people met?”