The ancient alien astronauts? They may never have left the Earth, simply decided to settle below its surface to observe what was happening on its surface without giving too much attention. The theory may be less imaginative than it seems, if some popular legends succeed in finding a definitive confirmation or refutation.

Woolpit green children legend

Among the most interesting is that of the two children who according to the chronicles of the time appeared in XII century, probably during the reign of Stephen King of England (Stephen of Blois, nephew of William the Conqueror, who reigned over England from 1135 to 1154) in the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, Great Britain. Why did the news concern them? Because according to legend the two (brother and sister) had a greenish skin, spoke an unknown language and only ate beans.

Over time they learned to eat other foods, their skin lost its pale green color, but the boy became ill and died shortly after he and his sister were baptized. The girl survived and she adapted to her new life, learned English and then explained that she and her brother were from an underground place, dark place where the sun never rose, called “the land of St. Martin”, where lived other people like them.

Quotes that come back over the centuries

Before being rediscovered in the nineteenth century the legend had been reported in the Historia rerum Anglicarum of William of Newbury (William Parvus), English historian of the twelfth century, and in the Chronicum Anglicanum of Ralph of Coggeshall, English chronicler who was a monk and then abbot of Coggeshall, a Cistercian monastery in Essex, from 1207 to 1218. The legend then provided the inspiration to the British poet and literary critic Herbert Edward Read (died in 1868) for his novel, “The Green Child”, published in 1935.

Since then the story has been repeatedly re-interpreted in a fantasy, magical or ufological way. It could indeed be the imaginary encounter with creatures from the world of fairies and elves, or be an authentic testimony of descendants of ancient visitors from other worlds or dimensions, or, according to the supporters of the hollow earth theory, of one of the many contacts between the inhabitants "below" and those above the earth's surface.

Was it an old case of racial discrimination?

Unless, as some claim includingJeffrey Jerome Cohen, Professor of English and Director of the Institute for Medieval & Early Modern Studies, as well as a researcher and scholar of mysterious phenomena, the whole story and its subsequent reinterpretations do not cover anything other than an old case of “racial discrimination” between modern English and ancient Britons, Celtic population among whose uses there was to paint the face or the whole body with blue / greenish tinctures. In short: the “ancient alien” would have been only ancient racial minorities, whose memory then turned into elves and fairies, or was it really something "alien"?