ATLAS

Verified factsEPSILON-1-17-3Sheet 3 of 5 of the dossier Reptilians

Literary and folkloric origins

What is documented about where the reptilian motif comes from: Asian serpent beings, 1929 pulp fiction, a 1983 television series.

Black-and-white pulp magazine illustration with the title word Kingdom and the author's name, above a crowded scene with a woman in profile.
Second title illustration by Hugh Rankin for Robert E. Howard's "The Shadow Kingdom", Weird Tales, August 1929, the story whose serpent men are cited as an origin of the reptilian motif. Hugh Doak Rankin · public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Summary

The history of the reptilian motif is well documented, and it points to fiction rather than to hidden facts. In South and Southeast Asian religions, the Nāgas are semi-divine beings, half human and half serpent, a very old image of a snake-like people. The modern version of a shape-shifting reptilian people infiltrating humanity appears in 1929, when Robert E. Howard published "The Shadow Kingdom" in Weird Tales, where an ancient pre-human race of serpent men rules from the shadows by disguising itself. The political scientist Michael Barkun judges that the idea of a reptilian conspiracy originated in this pulp fiction, and that an occultist's 1940s pamphlet on a "serpent race" most likely drew on it. The 1983 television miniseries V, about reptilian aliens disguised as humans, added a popular image, and a French encyclopedia notes that Icke's theory mixes ancient-astronaut ideas with works of science fiction such as V. The historian Edward Guimont adds another strand: legends born of colonisation in Africa that Icke would have inherited.

These are established facts about publications and dates. They explain how the motif was assembled, not whether any such beings exist.

Verified facts

  1. Verified fact

    In South and Southeast Asian religious traditions, the Nāgas are a divine or semi-divine race of half-human, half-serpent beings living in the netherworld.

    • Nāga, Wikipedia
      are a divine or semi-divine race of half-human, half-serpent beings that reside in the netherworld
  2. Verified fact

    The Serpent Men of Robert E. Howard's 1929 Kull stories, reptilian humanoids able to project an illusion of human form, are credited with originating the modern reptilian humanoid trope.

  3. Verified fact

    In "The Shadow Kingdom", the Serpent Men are an ancient pre-human race who rule from the shadows, disguising themselves by magic.

    • The Shadow Kingdom, Wikipedia
      Serpent Men, an ancient pre-human race who had founded Valusia but were almost extinct, rule from the shadows
  4. Verified fact

    The political scientist Michael Barkun argues that the idea of a reptilian conspiracy originated in Howard's fiction.

    • Reptilian conspiracy theory, Wikipedia
      Michael Barkun, professor of political science at Syracuse University, posits that the idea of a reptilian conspiracy originated in the fiction of Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard
  5. Verified fact

    In the 1940s the occultist Maurice Doreal wrote a pamphlet describing a "serpent race" able to take human form; Barkun says its ideas in all likelihood came from "The Shadow Kingdom".

  6. Verified fact

    The 1983 television miniseries V features alien "Visitors", reptilian humanoids disguised as human beings, who try to take over Earth.

    • V (franchise), Wikipedia
      reptilian humanoids disguised as human beings
    • Reptilien, Wikipédia
      Il échafaude une théorie du complot en mélangeant des thèses ufologiques, comme la théorie des anciens astronautes et des œuvres de science-fiction comme la franchise Stargate ou la série V
Weathered sandstone sculpture of a many-headed serpent held up by a stone figure, among trees.
A seven-headed nāga carved in stone at the south gate of Angkor Thom, Cambodia. The Nāgas are half-human, half-serpent beings of Asian religious traditions. BrightRaven · CC BY · Wikimedia Commons

Official version

  1. Official version

    The historian Edward Guimont argues that Icke's version drew on earlier pseudohistorical legends born during the colonisation of Africa.

    • Reptilian conspiracy theory, Wikipedia
      Historian Edward Guimont has argued that the reptilian conspiracy theory, particularly as expounded by Icke, drew from earlier pseudohistorical legends developed during the colonisation of Africa
    • Hunting Dinosaurs in Central Africa, Contingent Magazine, 18 March 2019
      combining the revisionist history of Ley’s sirrush link to Central Africa, racist stereotypes, and the thinly-veiled colonialist concept of ancient aliens