In the 40s of the 20th century in the desert around Shahdad, Kerman Province in Iran, archaeologists came upon a mysterious village. The settlement, which bears the name Makhunik, was once home to an ancient civilization of dwarves.
Presently, the city is known as Shahr-e Kotouleha (the City of Dwarfs) but in the past it was called the City of Little People, the City of the Dwarf and the Land of the Little People from the Sky.
The ancient settlement stirs perplexity among archaeologists and historians. There are several reasons why.
First, no researcher could have ever imagined that the location housed the remains of an ancient civilization. The discovery of such a well-preserved settlement caused a real commotion among archaeological circles.
The group of archaeologists that arrived at the site itself discovered that the village was inhabited back in prehistoric times. It is theorized that it was in its heyday toward the end of the 4th millennium BC.
Workshops, numerous houses, as well as a tomb were found during excavations. They all lay buried in the heart of the Loot Desert for several millennia until they were finally unearthed.
Excavations reveal to scientists that the inhabitants of the village were grouped together based on their trade. The farmers lived in one area, the jewelry makers somewhere else, next to them the artisans and so on.
But the biggest mystery is the long-gone inhabitants. All the evidence points to them having been dwarves.
More than 800 ancient graves were dug up in the City of Dwarfs and they all contained the remains of extremely small people. The mummified remains of a dwarf were also found, confirming the theory that a lost civilization of dwarves once thrived there.
Researchers' presumptions are also backed by the strange architecture of the buildings, the size of the streets and tools found during excavations at Makhunik.
The size of the houses, walls, roofs and even the shelves were designed to be used only by little people.
According to Susan Martinez in her book The Lost History of the Little People: Their Spiritually Advanced Civilizations around the World, Earth was inhabited by an ancient race of little people in the distant past.
There are actual legends and stories about dwarf gods in the folklore of numerous ancient civilizations. The race of the dwarves is mentioned in stories told in Mexico and Peru, as well as the Menehune in Hawaii, the Nunnehi among the Cherokee Indians and others. Martinez points to the African pygmies and Semang in Malaysia as possible dwarf peoples.
Whether the ancient city of Makhunik, with its small sarcophagi, low doors, mounds and exceptionally low and narrow huts, is indeed the lost City of Dwarfs is still too early to tell.
But according to Dr. Martinez, the archaeological finds of narrow tunnel networks, tiny doors in mounds and extremely small and narrow huts are plenty enough proof for the theory of ancient dwarves.
