© Adam Oleksiak/CAŚ UWThe clay head unearthed at Bahra 1 in northern Kuwait dates back nearly 7,000 years.
But while this figurine may look more supernatural than human, its style was common in ancient Mesopotamia, although it's the first of its kind ever to be found in Kuwait or the Arabian Gulf.
The small, finely crafted head, with slanted eyes, a flat nose and an elongated skull, was found during excavations this year at Bahra 1, a prehistoric site in northern Kuwait where a joint Kuwaiti-Polish team has been excavating since 2009. Bahra 1 was one of the Arabian Peninsula's oldest settlements, with occupation lasting from around 5500 to 4900 B.C.
During this time, Bahra 1 was settled by the Ubaid, a culture that originated in Mesopotamia and is known for its distinctive pottery, including its alien-like figurines. The Ubaid intertwined with Neolithic, or New Stone Age societies in the Arabian Gulf in the sixth millennium B.C. and turned the area into a sort of ancient melting pot, said Agnieszka Szymczak, an expedition leader at Bahra 1 in charge of the small finds at the site, like the newly discovered figurine.
The collision of these peoples and their cultures resulted in a "prehistoric crossroads of cultural exchange," Szymczak, an archaeologist at the University of Warsaw's Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, told Live Science in an email. Part of this exchange included art, like the recently unearthed figurine.
