‘Alien mummies’ from Peru are bone dolls from Earth – 01/14/2024 – Science

A pair of dolls resembling supposed “alien mummies” have a completely terrestrial origin, according to an analysis revealed on Friday (12).

The two small objects were described as humanoid dolls by experts at a press conference in Lima. Analysis shows that they were probably made from animal parts. A separate three-fingered hand was also analyzed, with experts ruling out any connection to alien life.

“They are not extraterrestrials. They are dolls made from the bones of animals from this planet held together with modern synthetic glue,” said Flavio Estrada, an archaeologist at Peru’s Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences. “It’s a completely made-up story.”

The two figures appeared in October last year at the offices of the transport company DHL at Lima airport, in a cardboard box. According to the Peruvian newspaper Gestion, the destination would be Mexico. The figures in question resemble other objects that attracted attention last year.

In September 2023, two alleged tiny mummified bodies with elongated heads and three-fingered hands were presented at a hearing in the Mexican Congress. The presentation sparked criticism and derision. UFO enthusiast Jaime Maussan claimed that these bodies were around 1,000 years old and were recovered from Peru in 2017, but were not related to any known species.

At the time, Peru’s Minister of Culture, Leslie Urteaga, said that no scientific institution in the South American country had identified the remains as non-human and questioned how the specimens had left Peru. “There is a criminal complaint from the Ministry of Culture against some people who had a relationship with these gentlemen,” Urteaga said at the time, referring to Maussan and his associates.

In the past, some finds of this type were later revealed to be the remains of mummified children.

In the case of October, at the airport, according to a report in the newspaper Gestion, initially, the case was treated as a possible illicit sending abroad of bone remains of pre-Hispanic origin. Thus, the Peruvian Ministry of Culture was involved in the case.

At the press conference in Lima on Friday, organized by Peru’s Ministry of Culture, experts did not associate the dolls found at the DHL office with the alleged bodies presented in Mexico. However, they emphasized that the remains in Mexico are not extraterrestrial either.

According to Estrada, what “a group of pseudoscientists” exhibited at the Mexican Congress in September 2023 were not even mummies.

The story dates back to 2017, when employees at the San Luis Gonzaga University in Ica, where Nazca is located, announced “the great archaeological discovery of the 21st century” after finding the bodies amid accusations of having altered them to present them as extraterrestrials. .