Mexico’s Congress is normally meant to be a venue for solemn displays on budgets and different severe laws. However this week, lawmakers heard testimony from a self-proclaimed U.F.O. researcher who introduced with him some uncommon objects: two mummified specimens that he claimed had been the our bodies of aliens.
Actually.
The presentation of the mummies on Tuesday by Jaime Maussan, a journalist who has speculated extensively on aliens, triggered jaws to drop and memes to multiply across the nation. The 2 specimens, which Mr. Maussan stated had been present in Peru in 2017, had been tiny in stature and chalky in colour; every had three-fingered palms and what seemed to be shrunken or desiccated heads.
“These are nonhuman beings who should not a part of our terrestrial evolution,” Mr. Maussan declared below oath, with a sign-language interpreter at his aspect.
The specimens, he added, had been buried at a distant website in Peru and had been about 1,000 years previous, in accordance with carbon testing carried out by researchers on the Nationwide Autonomous College of Mexico. The researchers, nevertheless, distanced themselves from Mr. Maussan’s conclusions.
Mr. Maussan lives in Mexico and is well-known for making such claims whereas dabbling within the realm of pseudoscience on tv and on YouTube, in addition to promoting his personal line of well being dietary supplements. His presentation forged consideration on the rising fascination in Mexico with the opportunity of extraterrestrial life, an outgrowth, some say, of efforts by American authorities to elevate the veil on secrecy in authorities packages which have studied unexplained phenomena.
Mr. Maussan didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Others talking earlier than Mexico’s Congress included Ryan Graves, a former fighter pilot within the U.S. Navy who has described a shut encounter with what regarded like a flying sphere encasing a dice. Mr. Graves, who equally testified this 12 months within the U.S. Congress, informed Mexican lawmakers that such encounters had been “grossly underreported.”
In an announcement after talking to Mexico’s Congress, he criticized the occasion. “My testimony centered on sharing my expertise,” he stated on X, previously Twitter. He added: “However I’m deeply upset by this unsubstantiated stunt.”
Mr. Maussan was invited by a lawmaker, Sergio Gutiérrez Luna, who stated he was taken with listening to completely different views on a subject of extensive curiosity.
“What we did right here was an train in listening,” Mr. Luna, who belongs to the governing Morena social gathering, informed reporters after the presentation. “Studying about topics, no matter they might be, is finished by discovering contrasting opinions.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Maussan’s presentation surprised many in scientific circles in Mexico. After photographs of the mummies started circulating, the Institute of Physics on the Nationwide Autonomous College of Mexico launched a assertion making it clear that its researchers had by no means examined the specimens themselves however had merely achieved carbon testing in 2017 on pores and skin samples offered by a shopper.
The college lab which did the testing “disassociates itself from any use, interpretation, or subsequent misrepresentation of the outcomes it offers,” the institute stated. “In no case will we draw conclusions in regards to the origin of those samples.”
Equally, Antígona Segura, one in every of Mexico’s prime astrobiologists, questioned Mr. Maussan’s contentions. “These conclusions are merely not backed up by proof,” stated Dr. Segura, who collaborates with the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, a NASA initiative to seek for life on distant worlds. “The entire thing could be very shameful.”
It was unclear how Mr. Maussan bought the mummified specimens to Mexico from Peru, whether or not they’re really from Peru, or if his specimens are reproductions or completely different from different mummified stays beforehand stated to be extraterrestrial, that are nonetheless in Peru.
However Peruvian information studies have steered that Mr. Maussan bought wind of some mummies in 2017 from a Peruvian tomb raider. Evaluation of the specimens in query in Peru confirmed that they had been manufactured utilizing a mixture of human and animal bones, vegetable fibers and artificial adhesives.
One other evaluation in 2021 decided that the pinnacle of one of many specimens was a deteriorated llama braincase. Whereas debunking the rivalry that the mummies had been extraterrestrials, the researchers expressed surprise as to how the specimens had been made centuries in the past, showing to be “constructions of very top quality.”
Elda Cantú and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.