What is the strangest archaeological object ever found?
- Atacama skeleton
In 2003, a six-inch long, naturally mummified skeleton with a pointed head was found by Oscar Munoz in the Atacama Desert of Chile. Many people claimed that the skeleton, which had bone density characteristics of a 6-year-old, despite its tiny size, was an alien.
Scientists have since been able to study its DNA. Turns out Ata, as the female mummy is known, is a human being—she is closely related to indigenous Chileans but also had some European ancestry.
DNA analysis done in 2018 on the premature human fetus identified unusual mutation. Researchers found seven different mutations of her genes that are involved with growth, but they’re not sure which caused her skeletal malformation.
2. Nok Culture
In 1928, Lt. Colonel John Dent-Young led a group of European tin miners in the Jos region, in a village called Nok.
During one of their mining activities, they found small terra-cotta of a monkey head, a human head and foot. Years later, with numerous searches, many more were discovered in the region and beyond.
The sculptures tell the stories of an ancient people who lived during the early Iron Age in the middle of what is today Northern and Central Nigeria.
The culture flourished from 5th Century BCE to the 2nd Century CE, then vanished under unknown circumstances.
Nok was famous for the distinctive terracotta sculptures of human heads and figures. Their statues depicted alien-looking people with long heads, almond shaped eye and part lips.
Nok was the first known culture in West Africa to produce such art and perhaps the first sub-Saharan culture to perfect iron-smelting technology, forging small knives, spear points and brackets.
The memoire d’afrique, which houses a gallery of statues described the statues as “extraordinary, astonishing, ageless, timeless and almost extraterrestrial”
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