AmphibianThe Adaptors
Amphibious visitors run through ancient myth: the Babylonian Oannes who taught civilisation, and the Nommo of Dogon tradition. The Amphibian is that lineage rendered as a species; the Atlas records it as folklore with a modern speculative gloss.
At a glance
- Home system
- Various (water worlds)
- Avg. height
- 5′3″ – 7′3″
- Appearance
- Amphibious, mottled skin, large eyes
- Reported lifespan
- 300 – 600 years (lore)
- Social structure
- Described as shoreline communities
- Technology
- Described as adaptive
- Primary traits
- Adaptive, resilient, quiet
- Relationship to Earth
- Unclear
Physical profile
The Amphibian is a smooth-skinned, mottled humanoid with large forward eyes, a wide mouth and webbed hands and feet, at home in water and on land. Renderings give it grey-green colouring and a quiet, watchful bearing.
Reported origin
Water worlds, unspecified. The lore's real origins are Mesopotamian and West African.
Culture
Shoreline communities that, in the myths, taught early humans the arts of civilisation.
Technology
Adaptive; the myths credit the beings with knowledge rather than machines.
Craft
Not described.
Communication
Speech, in the myths; the Oannes tradition says the being taught in the daytime and returned to the sea at night.
Earth encounters
The Babylonian priest Berossus, writing in the third century BCE, recorded the tradition of Oannes, a being with a fish's body and a man's head and feet who came out of the Persian Gulf to teach humanity writing, agriculture and law. The Dogon Nommo, amphibious ancestors described in twentieth-century ethnography, were folded into the alien lore by Robert Temple in 1976. Both are the roots of the Amphibian.
Lore & history
XenoAtlas lists the Amphibian as folklore with a modern speculative gloss.
The Apkallu, the seven sages of Mesopotamian myth, are shown on palace reliefs as fish-cloaked men; they are among the oldest images of a wise visitor from the water.
Source notes
- Oannes / Apkallu tradition; Dogon Nommo · folklore
- Robert K. G. Temple, The Sirius Mystery (1976) · ancient-astronaut literatureFind on Amazon
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XenoAtlas documents extraterrestrial concepts appearing in mythology, contactee literature, popular culture, speculative accounts, and related sources. Inclusion does not constitute scientific verification.
Side by side
Related species
See every type in the Types of Aliens guide.