Several decades ago, a team of archaeologists uncovered the skeleton of a child with a strange skull deformation. For a long while, this was thought to be proof that our planet had been visited by extraterrestrials, until research recently revealed this not to be so.
The case came to be known as the Mystery of the Kerch Alien, with Kerch being the region in Russia where the remains had been discovered. Analyses showed that they are at least 2000 years old.
Throughout the course of the studies that began in 2014, which included a team of anthropologists as well, it became evident that it was not an extraterrestrial but a boy with a severe skull deformation, making his head appear as if belonging to an alien from a sci-fi movie.
The boy was a Sarmatian - a nomadic tribe of peoples originating from Eastern Europe - who died between 18 months and 2 years of age, reports the Daily Mail.
The Sarmatians were a society that practiced cruelty toward young children uncustomary for other European societies. They purposefully disfigured the heads of young boys by squeezing the skull, believing that this would make them more brutal and combative.
Near the grave of the boy, archaeologists also found jars, small beads, glass and a copper alloy bracelet that he had worn on his right hand.
Nikolay Sudarev from the Russian Archaeological Institute denied claims of the tribe itself being part of an alien civilization and added that deformations on the heads and bodies of children were common in other ancient cultures as well.
