Thursday Things: Sneaky Snakes Edition
5 December 2024. Vol 6 No 49. By Dan McGirt. #278
Thursday Things is here! This week we keep to ourselves and keep an eye out for the snake people.
If you enjoy this edition, please click the heart icon in the header or at the end of the post to let me know.
Try the apple. What could go wrong? Photo by Marius Masalar on Unsplash
Sneaky snake people
I love conspiracy theories, the wilder the better. Hollow Earth? Tell me about it. Flat Earth? Fascinating. You two should talk.
The Roman Empire never existed? Birds aren’t real? The Internet is dead? The Tartarian Empire? Bring it on!
The world is secretly controlled by a hidden ancient race of Snake People? Eh … that seems a little ridiculous actually.
Or is it?1
Mysterious 'Snake Person' Head From 7,500 Years Ago Raises Questions
Excavations by the Kuwaiti-Polish Archaeological Mission at a site in Northern Kuwait's Al-Subiyah desert have uncovered a bizarre-looking clay head representative of the culture of a prehistoric people who flourished in the region between 5500 and 4900 BCE.
With an elongated skull, flat nose, absent mouth, and narrow, squinting eyes, the small sculpture looks well on the way to becoming another example of a 'snake person' figurine commonly crafted by the Ubaid culture…
"Its presence raises intriguing questions about its purpose and the symbolic, or possibly ritualistic, value it held for the people of this ancient community," archeologist Piotr Bieliński explains in a recent press release.
Well, no. It raises questions about the existence of freaking Snake People!
Long before the Sumerians established what is now regarded as one of humanity's earliest civilizations, the Ubaid laid many of the foundations.
Trade networks, irrigation systems, and even landmarks such as temples emerged throughout what is now Iraq and Kuwait, developed by a culture identified today by their unique style of pottery.
So these Snake People had an advanced civilization that predated the Sumerians?
Uh-huh.
If that doesn't convince you, then what about their pottery?
Artifacts uncovered at the site also helped solve a mystery of 'Coarse Red Ware' pottery…
…Among the remarkably decorated plates and pots fashioned by Ubaid artisans are strangely slim feminine figures, typically with the heads of birds or lizards.
Referred to as Ophidian figurines for their snake-like appearance, these terra-cotta sculptures often have 'coffee-bean' eyes, and dots painted onto their bodies as if to represent scales.
Just what these reptilian representations might mean is currently anybody's guess…
Oh, I have a guess. They’re the Snake People!!!
Otherwise known as the Serpent Men … Conan the Barbarian knew what was up:
From the video:
“Sometimes when it comes to Robert E. Howard's writing you really do have to take a step back and respect his understanding of the human condition. Serpent men were his famously favorite non-human enemies to use and the part of our evolutionary history as a species being played on here is quite obvious. These are serpent men, not lizardmen. The reason for that is that snakes are one of our oldest evolutionary predators, warring with us in the trees for living space during our chimpanzee phase, and are most likely the reason we developed sharp eyesight to survive encounters with these creatures through tool manipulation and taking away its greatest strength — camouflage. From the beginning the ethos of the serpent men was always going to be something in rivalry and antagonism to man that would use trickery or deception as its first line of defense. That's the camouflage.”
Pulp writer Robert E. Howard introduced the (allegedly) fictional race of serpent men as antagonists to his heroic Kull of Atlantis character, though he was not the first to write about sneaky serpent people up to no good.2
The serpent men were shapeshifters who sought to infiltrate and overthrow the kingdom of Valusia that barbarian Kull ruled.
Later writers adapted the Serpent Men into H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. When the Conan comics published by Marvel came along in the 1970s, writer Roy Thomas couldn’t resist pitting the Serpent Men against the comic book version of Howard’s more famous barbarian.
This blog post gives a nice summation of the Serpent Men’s literary history:
Crypts & Things - Serpent Men - A Retrospective
Serpent Men are awesome! They have been around in Howard & Lovecraft's work since the I first started reading them but really how much do you know about them?
Not as much as we should, apparently.
Were the serpent men merely a product of Robert E. Howard’s creative imagination?
Or was the pulp author from Texas trying to warn us through his fictional tales to beware a dark and dangerous secret threat to humanity that pre-dates the Sumerians?
I think we know the answer.3
Also, birds aren’t real.
Alone with your mental health
Are other people stressing you out? You’re not alone. But maybe you should be:
'Alone time' vital to mental health for many people
Nearly half (46%) of Americans say they don't get the alone time they need during the holidays, according to a new national survey by the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.
What's more, 56% of the people surveyed said it's very important to their mental health to have adequate alone time.
"By taking a brief pause alone, our nervous system can settle, our mind can settle, our body can settle. And I think that can be important. We know that chronic stress is not good for us," Lazarus said in a Ohio State news release.
As an introvert, I don’t need a survey to tell me this. Nor do I need any tips on how to get precious alone time. But as a service to our more extroverted Happy Subscribers, here are few tips from the article:
Folks who want to get a little self time can accomplish this by adding simple changes to their routine, Lazarus said.
"Try putting your phone in a totally different room when you decide you're going to spend alone time, knowing how hard it is to resist picking it up, the pulls on our attention and on our priorities," Lazarus said. "Or take two or three minutes in the car before you go pick your kids up or before you go back into the house after work to just be alone."
There is more information on the benefits of time to yourself from the Jed Foundation here.
Take a people break — it’s good for you.
Aside from the mental health benefits, you never know who around you might be one of those sneaky Serpent People in disguise...just saying.
Thank you for reading!
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Serpent Mound, Ohio: Inside the Archaeological Mystery
Imagine you're living in ancient times in what is now Ohio. One day you and your friends decide: Let's make a 1,376-foot-long (419-meter-long) snake sculpture on the edge of this meteorite crater over here!
Maybe the snake people made them do it?
Remind me again who talked Eve into eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden?
Oh. Right. I rest my case. Serpent People, man. They’ve always had it in for us.
Are the Serpent People still around? The 1983 television miniseries V might give you a clue, along with the 2009 remake. But were these shows a warning … or were they the Serpent People taunting us?
The V Files: The Shocking Legacy of an ’80s Sci-Fi Cult Classic
Don’t watch this if you’re eating lunch now: