This week the internet has been buzzing with the discovery of an “alien” mummy near the Nazca lines - but let’s be clear, this has all the hallmarks of a hoax and not even a good one.
A mummified being covered in a white powder has been hailed as a mystery because the “creature” has six fingers and six toes unlike the normal set of 10 and 10. The skull is also elongated, which was quite a common practice in a pre-Columbian society in Peru.
This “discovery” has been announced by the Gaia.com website which claims to be a skeptical portal against "conventional wisdom" (more usually called evidence and logic). The series of videos related to this “finding” are full of leading questions and the implication that whatever this is, it’s not from Earth.
“From the DNA sample, we were able to identify that this is a woman, now known as Maria, as the Y chromosome is missing,” said Michael Aseev, head of the genetic analysis department of the Russian Academy of Science in the video.
Now, the previous paragraph requires a lot of consideration. If the team was able to extract and analyze the DNA and found out that the mummy is a woman then they would know for sure if it was a human or not. And let me assure you if researchers have found alien DNA they wouldn’t announce it through a dodgy conspiracy website "The Mysterio".
On top of that, a quick google search shows that Michael Aseev is not listed as a member of the Russian Academy of Science or as part of the Institute of Molecular Genetics. We have contacted the Academy to find out in what capacity, if any, Aseev is part of the institution.
If all of this wasn’t suspicious enough, three members of the “expedition” have a long history of creating hoaxes to make money. Jamie Maussan and Jesus Zalce Benitez in 2015 claimed another mummy, which belonged to a human child, was an alien. That alien mummy was announced in a for-profit event called Be Witness.
The third person, Dr. Konstantin Kototkov, who states that surely the Nazca mummy “belongs to another creature” has claimed to have a camera that can photograph souls. And that’s only $850, definitely a bargain if you’re that sort of gullible.
The final point raised by many across the internet is about the mummification technique. The real mummies which have been discovered are usually leathery in appearance. It’s dried skin after all. While the new one just looks like a plaster cast with some badly designed fingers attached to it.
This “discovery” has more red flags than a bullfighters convention so it is very unlikely that this will turn out to be the first evidence of alien life.
