A terracotta Goddess on a Throne figurine estimated to be 6,000 years old resembles an extraterrestrial, as noted in Atlas Obscura. The exceptionally well-preserved 7-inch figurine from the Vinča (also called Turdas) culture is being displayed at the Kosovo Museum 66 years after her discovery in 1956 in Pristina, north of Greece and North Macedonia. 

The Great Mother figure is one of thousands of such figurines and one of the best preserved.

You can see that the figurine truly looks like a being from another world. Her features with large, almond-shaped eyes and elongated nose would not be seen as a human by many today. 

She’s so popular today that the Goddess is Pristina and the Museum’s chosen symbol.

Just some casual observations: There’s nothing there to suggest the figure is necessarily female, aside from what looks like a necklace with a circular pendant and lines that could be exaggerated eyelashes. There is no mouth. The Goddess wears what seems to be an elaborate suit. It’s unclear where her legs end and the lotus-like “throne” begins. Similar figurines have been found with clearly defined legs.

Below, you can see another figurine at the Cleveland Museum of Art with what appears to be a lower body.

Goddess on a Throne Extraterrestrial?

Do these figurines look human to you?

“Angular and vaguely anthropomorphic, these heads may call to mind stereotypical depictions of extraterrestrials,” Atlas Obscura writes.

However, local archaeologists say the Great Mother’s big eyes are symbolic. Dragan Jankovic, a curator at the Belgrade City Museum, says, “the figurines have big eyes because they vigilantly watch over the population, the crops and the animals, securing their fertility.”

Below, you can see a Goddess on the Throne figurine on display in 2013, which was recovered and returned from Germany via AP Archive. There was also a large big-eyed cat figurine head alongside the Goddess, bringing to mind Egyptian goddesses associated with cats, like Bastet.

But this description of extraterrestrials isn’t as surprising as what came next. 

Benevolent Extraterrestrial Goddess?

Next: A hypothesis that the Goddess is an extraterrestrial who helped the mysterious Vinča people make a dramatic leap forward in progress. 

“Additionally, the unexpected level of complexity and advancement of the Vinča society has convinced some that such a massive leap forward in human progress could only be explained by the intervention of a benevolent extraterrestrial entity,” Atlas Obscura writes.

Advanced Culture of the New Stone Age?

Goddess on the Throne comes from the Neolithic or New Stone Age and right before the Bronze Age. People of that time were refining stone tools and beginning agricultural practices as they moved away from the hunter-gatherer way of life. 

Archaeologists believe the Vinča were advanced for the time in part because of the discovery of so many figurines. It was like they were mass-produced, and one must ask why that would happen when people were still in the New Stone Age. 

In nearby Pločnik, Serbia, they were beginning to use copper in a metal workshop, a surprising find at least 500 years earlier than expected. They also used pigments, red ones often used for “cult” purposes. Indeed, some figurines have traces of red.

The culture was Europe’s biggest prehistoric civilization with sophisticated art, fashion, trade, handicrafts, and even early metallurgy. Homes had their own stoves in them, and people were keeping animals. There is no proof that wars existed at the time.

Indeed, Jankovic believes the culture was more advanced than the warring cultures that followed.

“The people who lived in Vinca during Neolithic times had a higher culture of living than those in the Middle Ages in the same place,” he said, ‘explaining that the absence of war and the domination of knowledge was the key to their advance,'” writes the BalkanInsight.

Related: Gods and Goddesses Ruled as Equals in Pre-Roman Etruscan Civilization 

Nevertheless, the archaeological site in Serbia has been called the “most neglected Neolithic site in the world,” partly due to its isolation and lack of tourism.

Below, you can see excavations from 2006 showing archaeologists in Kosovo and a similar Goddess on the Throne figurines and smaller fragments on display at the Kosovo Museum via AP Archive:

Goddesses, Young Women, and Other Figures

Although the Goddesses look extraterrestrial, archaeologists believe some figurines are not deities but depict young women wearing fashions of the day, like mini skirts, tops, and jewelry like bracelets. There are also artifacts of children’s toys, like animals and clay rattles. Animal depictions are also oddly shaped with big eyes like the “deer head” below:

When the Bronze Age began, there were many similarly extraterrestrial-looking bronze “Goddess of Wealth” figurines found around the site of one of the earliest Bronze Age battles in what is now Germany 3,200 years ago. It’s just a guess, but were these Goddesses placed on the battlefield as a way to remember the peaceful way of life that came before?

You can see more about these fascinating figures here.

Featured image: The Goddess on the Throne (5700–4500 BC) by Ardianlumi at the Kosovo Museum, in Pristina via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0