In 1919, archaeologists in Iraq unearthed a 7,000-year-old statue. It depicts a mother nursing her infant—except both share the slitted, elongated faces of lizards. Dating back to the Ubaid period a culture that predates the Sumerians—this piece is part of a larger collection of terracotta figurines featuring unmistakably reptilian traits. The statues boast elongated, tapered snouts, wide slitted eyes, and dome-like skulls made of bitumen. The act of breastfeeding is intimately human, but the fact that the reptilian features are passed down to the infant is what makes the artifact very unusual. It suggests the statuettes do not depict humans wearing ceremonial masks, but rather biological beings possessing these physical traits. The purpose of these figures remains entirely unsolved. Because the Ubaid culture flourished over a millennium before the known invention of writing, there are no recovered texts, myths, or records to provide context. They do not appear to be gods; later Mesopotamian deities were almost exclusively depicted as fully human, and these statuettes lack the traditional markers of divinity. Without written context, the Ubaid lizard figures remain an anomaly. They survive as a silent puzzle that continues to baffle historians.