Thomas Graham in Mexico City
THE GUARDIAN
Wed, September 13, 2023
Mexican senators have heard testimony that “we are not alone” in the universe and been presented with the alleged remains of “non-human” mummies, in the country’s first official event on extraterrestrial life.
At a senate hearing on Tuesday, lawmakers were shown two shriveled bodies with shrunken heads – alongside video footage of “unexplained anomalous phenomena” – by Jaime Maussan, a sports journalist turned UFO enthusiast.
Maussan said the remains were more than 1,000 years old and belonged to “non-human beings that are not part of our terrestrial evolution”.
“It’s the queen of all evidence,” Maussan claimed. “That is, if the DNA is showing us that they are non-human beings and that there is nothing that looks like this in the world, we should take it as such.”
Other studies have suggested the mummies, which were found in Nazca, Peru, in 2017, are fraudulent.
Tuesday’s hearing was organised by Sergio Gutiérrez Luna, a lawmaker from the governing Morena party and aspiring governor of the state of Veracruz.
Related: Space oddity: Mexican group claims alien base offers hurricane protection
It included participants from around the world who made calls for transparency and international cooperation. Maussan suggested that Mexico could become the first country in the world to accept the presence of aliens on the planet.
Gutiérrez Luna said that Congress had not taken a position on the theories put forward during the hearing but stressed the important of listening to “all voices, all opinions”.
The event was inspired by the US congressional hearing on the same topic in July, in which the retired major David Grusch alleged that the US was hiding a program to retrieve and reverse engineer UFOs. The Pentagon has denied his claims.
In media interviews, Grusch has made even more outlandish claims that the US government has in its possession the bodies of “dead pilots” and a flying saucer found in Italy by Mussolini almost 100 years ago.
Nonetheless the congressional hearing was a sign of the increased respectability of a field once seen as the reserve of conspiracy theorists.
Well-known politicians, such as the Republican senator Marco Rubio, have pushed for more disclosure, and in 2022 Barack Obama told CBS that the government had “footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don’t know exactly what they are, we can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory”.
Alien corpses’ shown to Congress as UFO expert forced to testify under oath
Wed, September 13, 2023
Mexican senators have heard testimony that “we are not alone” in the universe and been presented with the alleged remains of “non-human” mummies, in the country’s first official event on extraterrestrial life.
At a senate hearing on Tuesday, lawmakers were shown two shriveled bodies with shrunken heads – alongside video footage of “unexplained anomalous phenomena” – by Jaime Maussan, a sports journalist turned UFO enthusiast.
Maussan said the remains were more than 1,000 years old and belonged to “non-human beings that are not part of our terrestrial evolution”.
“It’s the queen of all evidence,” Maussan claimed. “That is, if the DNA is showing us that they are non-human beings and that there is nothing that looks like this in the world, we should take it as such.”
Other studies have suggested the mummies, which were found in Nazca, Peru, in 2017, are fraudulent.
Tuesday’s hearing was organised by Sergio Gutiérrez Luna, a lawmaker from the governing Morena party and aspiring governor of the state of Veracruz.
Related: Space oddity: Mexican group claims alien base offers hurricane protection
It included participants from around the world who made calls for transparency and international cooperation. Maussan suggested that Mexico could become the first country in the world to accept the presence of aliens on the planet.
Gutiérrez Luna said that Congress had not taken a position on the theories put forward during the hearing but stressed the important of listening to “all voices, all opinions”.
The event was inspired by the US congressional hearing on the same topic in July, in which the retired major David Grusch alleged that the US was hiding a program to retrieve and reverse engineer UFOs. The Pentagon has denied his claims.
In media interviews, Grusch has made even more outlandish claims that the US government has in its possession the bodies of “dead pilots” and a flying saucer found in Italy by Mussolini almost 100 years ago.
Nonetheless the congressional hearing was a sign of the increased respectability of a field once seen as the reserve of conspiracy theorists.
Well-known politicians, such as the Republican senator Marco Rubio, have pushed for more disclosure, and in 2022 Barack Obama told CBS that the government had “footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don’t know exactly what they are, we can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory”.
Alien corpses’ shown to Congress as UFO expert forced to testify under oath
Tara Cobham
Thu, September 14, 2023
Alleged “non-human” alien corpses have been displayed to Mexican politicians at the country’s Congress.
A self-described UFO expert claimed the two small ‘corpses’ were retrieved from Cusco, Peru. They were presented in windowed boxes in Mexico City on Wednesday, stirring excitement within the UFO conspiracy theorist community.
The event was spearheaded by journalist Jaime Maussan, who claimed, under oath, that the mummified specimens are not part of “our terrestrial evolution”, with almost a third of their DNA remaining “unknown”, reported Mexican media.
The claims by the self-claimed ‘ufologist’ have not been proven and Mr Maussan has previously been associated with claims of discoveries that have later been debunked.
The two small alleged alien corpses, retrieved from Cusco, Peru, were presented in windowed boxes in Mexico City on Wednesday (Reuters)
At the public hearing, Mr Maussan showed US officials and members of the Mexican government several videos of “UFOs and unidentified anomalous phenomena” before unveiling the alleged alien corpses.
He said: “These specimen are not part of our terrestrial evolution... These aren’t beings that were found after a UFO wreckage. They were found in diatom (algae) mines, and were later fossilized.”
Mr Maussan claimed the specimens had been studied by scientists at the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) who were able to draw DNA evidence using radiocarbon dating. After comparisons were made to other DNA samples, it was found that over 30% of the specimens’ DNA was “unknown”, he claimed.
X-rays of the specimens were also shown during the hearing.
X-rays of the specimens were also shown during the hearing, with experts testifying under oath that one of the bodies is seen to have “eggs” inside
(Reuters)
Ryan Graves, Americans for Safe Aerospace Executive Director and former US Navy pilot, was in attendance, having earlier this year told US Congress of the threat that unidentified aerial phenomena posed to US national security.
Mr Maussan has previously been associated with claims of “alien” discoveries that have later been debunked, including five mummies found in Peru in 2017 that were later shown to be human children.
'This is complete nonsense': Scientists rail against 'alien' bodies shown before Mexican congress
Owen Jarus
Thu, September 14, 2023
We see a grayish head and torso of an "alien" in a pillow-like box
In a now-viral story, "alien" bodies were unveiled before Mexico's congress Tuesday (Sept. 12). But is there any real science behind this bizarre event?
Not by a long shot, according to scholars, who denounced the claim and affirmed that the bodies are not alien.
Mexico's congress was holding a hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), a term that is now used to describe UFOs. UAPs have also been the subject of congressional hearings in the United States over the past two years.
During the presentation, a team that included Mexican journalist Jaime Maussan and military medical doctor José de Jesús Zalce Benítez presented two bodies — which appear to be no more than 3.3 feet (1 meter) tall and appear skinny with grayish skin and large heads — in coffin-like boxes before Mexico's congress. They claimed that DNA tests reveal that the remains of these three-fingered beings are not human and that their abdomens hold eggs that may be used in reproduction. The duo also said the bodies came from Peru and that radiocarbon dating shows they date back 1,000 years, National Public Radio reported.
The same bodies made headlines in 2017 and 2018, Maussan told Live Science in an email. At the time, scholars denounced those bodies as consisting of manipulated human body parts. Maussan told Live Science that since that time, more tests have shown that the bodies are not human. He also stressed that he is not saying these bodies are necessarily alien — just that they are not human.
Related: Why are we seeing so many UFOs over America all of a sudden?
"We never said they are extraterrestrial," Maussan said, adding that they had found evidence for implants made of the elements osmium and cadmium inside the bodies, "a technology unknown 1,000 years ago." Live Science was unable to reach de Jesús Zalce Benítez at press time.
Ryan Graves, Americans for Safe Aerospace Executive Director and former US Navy pilot, was in attendance, having earlier this year told US Congress of the threat that unidentified aerial phenomena posed to US national security.
Mr Maussan has previously been associated with claims of “alien” discoveries that have later been debunked, including five mummies found in Peru in 2017 that were later shown to be human children.
'This is complete nonsense': Scientists rail against 'alien' bodies shown before Mexican congress
Owen Jarus
Thu, September 14, 2023
We see a grayish head and torso of an "alien" in a pillow-like box
In a now-viral story, "alien" bodies were unveiled before Mexico's congress Tuesday (Sept. 12). But is there any real science behind this bizarre event?
Not by a long shot, according to scholars, who denounced the claim and affirmed that the bodies are not alien.
Mexico's congress was holding a hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), a term that is now used to describe UFOs. UAPs have also been the subject of congressional hearings in the United States over the past two years.
During the presentation, a team that included Mexican journalist Jaime Maussan and military medical doctor José de Jesús Zalce Benítez presented two bodies — which appear to be no more than 3.3 feet (1 meter) tall and appear skinny with grayish skin and large heads — in coffin-like boxes before Mexico's congress. They claimed that DNA tests reveal that the remains of these three-fingered beings are not human and that their abdomens hold eggs that may be used in reproduction. The duo also said the bodies came from Peru and that radiocarbon dating shows they date back 1,000 years, National Public Radio reported.
The same bodies made headlines in 2017 and 2018, Maussan told Live Science in an email. At the time, scholars denounced those bodies as consisting of manipulated human body parts. Maussan told Live Science that since that time, more tests have shown that the bodies are not human. He also stressed that he is not saying these bodies are necessarily alien — just that they are not human.
Related: Why are we seeing so many UFOs over America all of a sudden?
"We never said they are extraterrestrial," Maussan said, adding that they had found evidence for implants made of the elements osmium and cadmium inside the bodies, "a technology unknown 1,000 years ago." Live Science was unable to reach de Jesús Zalce Benítez at press time.
Scientists blast claims
"Let me tell you that all this is complete nonsense," Rafael Bojalil-Parra, research reinforcement director at Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAD) in Mexico City, told Live Science in an email. "That our Congress gives a forum to this self-proclaimed UFOlogist is a reflection of the anti-scientific mood that prevails in our country today."
There were reports in some media outlets that tests on the bodies were performed at UAD. But Bojalil-Parra said no DNA tests were performed at the university, and while a carbon-14 test was conducted in 2017, a commercial agreement prevents the university from disclosing the results.
Tellingly, if the bodies were aliens, then carbon-14 dating would be useless. "Radiocarbon dating is based on Carbon 14 atoms which are created when the sun's radiation strikes the Earth's upper atmosphere," David Anderson, an assistant professor of anthropology who has written about pseudoarchaeology extensively at Radford University in Virginia, told Live Science in an email. "To radiocarbon date extraterrestrial beings, we would have to know what the rate of production of 14-C was on their home planet, not ours."
Other scientists also denounced the claims. "It is sad to see the well debunked claims of Jaime Maussan returning to the internet," Andrew Nelson, chair of anthropology at Western University in Ontario, told Live Science in an email. The bodies "have been debunked on the basis of anatomy," with studies showing that some of the bodies "are human mummies that had been deliberately manipulated to appear alien," Nelson said. They show, for example, the feet of the "aliens" could have been created by mutilating the foot of a human mummy.
"The feet would have suffered mutilations of digits I and V, in addition to the cutting of the skin and soft tissue of the foot behind the toes, producing a foot with extremely long toes," Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Cayetano Heredia University and the Museum of Natural History in Lima, wrote in a 2017 analysis.
Nelson said that "while Maussan claims to have CT, C-14 and DNA evidence, he has not presented that evidence for peer review by the scientific community." Nelson added that if these remains are in fact 1,000 years old and from Peru, it raises questions as to whether they were looted and how they left the country.
Another scientist said that if the remains are human, those involved with the claims should face legal implications. They "should be arrested and tried for whatever laws might apply for exploiting or desecrating human remains," Ken Feder, an archaeology professor at Central Connecticut State University, told Live Science in an email.
The hearing in Mexico took place partly because there have been high profile hearings on UAPs in the United States congress noted Jeb Card, an assistant teaching professor of anthropology at Miami University in Ohio. While "no one has yet wheeled out alien bodies in the US Capitol," Card told Live Science in an email, there has been testimony before the U.S. Congress made by former military officials that the American government has biological remains of aliens.
The growing popularity of conspiracy theories helps to explain why stuff like this is occurring, Card said. "The simple reality is that it is now profitable — figuratively and literally — to push narratives that 'elites' are inflicting their will on the broader people through devious, conspiratorial, and at times supernatural means."
Live Science contacted Peru's Ministry of Culture, which did not return requests for comment by the time of publication.
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