Perhaps? Maybe, instead of my suggestion, they terrified humanity into submissiveness, and became the god-kings of old, behind the scenes, but ruling all?

(Has a nice cinema ring to it, if nothing else.)

All those old images of horned people, perhaps they got creative with their horny heads ( ) and grew different forms of bone, and some of those old statues of people with Statue of Liberty style spikes were actually real people?

And for whatever reason they've hidden for years, and they're shaping society to whatever purposes, and they'll emerge sometime in the future, once again embracing their role as god-kings?

(Almost every ancient society has a tradition that at one point there were a group of gods who were overthrown by men...maybe some of that is truth?)