By Cassandra Garrison
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – For Jaime Maussan, a Mexican journalist and longtime UFO fanatic, they’re probably the most essential discoveries within the historical past of humankind.
However for a lot of scientists these two tiny mummified our bodies with elongated heads and three fingers on every hand, photos of which have been beamed world wide this week after they have been offered to Mexico’s Congress, are an already-debunked – maybe felony – stunt.
At Maussan’s workplace, within the Mexico Metropolis enterprise district of Santa Fe, workers members fastidiously carry the 2 closed bins with glass lids containing the our bodies right into a green-screened studio, the place Reuters had unique entry on Friday.
Everybody huddles round to get a greater look. The our bodies seem historical and share traits with people: two eyes, a mouth, two arms, two legs. Maussan claims they have been discovered round 2017 in Peru, close to the pre-Columbian Nazca Traces.
He says he can show they’re not like something identified on Earth. On social media and within the listening to, he shared scientific evaluation and examine outcomes he argues proves the our bodies are about 1,000 years previous and never associated to any identified Earthly species.
One in every of them, described by Maussan as a feminine, was found to have eggs inside, he mentioned.
“It’s an important factor that has occurred to humanity,” Maussan, 70, mentioned of his campaign to deliver consciousness to the findings, sitting in his workplace that’s closely adorned with colourful alien-themed paintings and paraphernalia.
“I imagine that this phenomenon is the one one that provides us the chance to unite,” he added.
Elsa Tomasto-Cagigao, a revered Peruvian bio-anthropologist, is pissed off such claims are nonetheless being given publicity, citing related alleged finds that have been discovered to be frauds.
“What we mentioned earlier than nonetheless stands, they’re presenting the identical rehash as at all times and if there are folks that maintain believing that, what can we do?,” she mentioned by telephone. “It’s so crass and so easy that there’s nothing extra so as to add.”
Earlier such finds have been dismissed by the scientific neighborhood as mutilated mummies of pre-Hispanic youngsters, typically mixed with bits of animal components.
David Spergel, former head of Princeton College’s astrophysics division and chair of a NASA report into unidentified anomalous phenomena, mentioned on Thursday that such samples must be made obtainable for testing by the world’s scientific neighborhood.
TESTING CONUNDRUM
Maussan shared on social media and in his presentation the outcomes of DNA and carbon courting assessments that he mentioned he commissioned on “the beings.”
A Mexican scientist, on the request of Reuters, reviewed the outcomes and concluded they indicated regular life on Earth.
Maussan informed Reuters on Friday that the check outcomes weren’t straight associated to the 2 our bodies that he confirmed Congress this week, nonetheless. In reality, he mentioned, they have been performed on a completely completely different physique, often known as Victoria, that is still in Peru.
“They have been present in the identical place. They’ve the identical bodily look, they’re the identical,” Maussan mentioned of Victoria and the 2 our bodies he offered in Mexico. Testing was not carried out on these two our bodies so as to keep away from damaging them, he mentioned.
Maussan is not any stranger to controversy. He has made claims about different stays up to now which were extensively criticized. He participated in a 2017 TV documentary about different stays discovered close to the Nazca Traces, which specialists like Tomasto-Cagigao and paleontologist Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi have mentioned appeared to characteristic doctored mummies.
Now, he has angered Peruvian officers.
Peruvian Tradition Minister Leslie Urteaga has questioned how the specimens, which she mentioned have been pre-Hispanic objects, left Peru and says a felony criticism has been filed.
“I am not anxious. I’ve carried out completely nothing unlawful,” Maussan mentioned.
How the our bodies arrived in Mexico is a query he says he can not reply. Borrowed by Maussan for the listening to, they’re within the possession of a Mexican man, who was in Maussan’s workplace on Friday and who declined to be recognized.
When requested how the our bodies – whom he known as Clara and Mauricio – got here to be in his possession, the person replied solely that he would reveal all “on the acceptable time.”
Jose de Jesus Zalce Benitez, Director of the Well being Sciences Analysis Institute of the Secretary of the Navy, participated within the congressional listening to, bolstering Maussan’s claims. Now becoming a member of him at his workplace, he calmly defined his interpretation of the science.
“Primarily based on the DNA assessments, which have been in contrast with a couple of million species … they aren’t associated to what’s identified or described as much as this second by science or by human information,” he mentioned.
Julieta Fierro, the scientist at Mexico’s Nationwide Autonomous College’s (UNAM) Institute of Astronomy who reviewed Maussan’s check outcomes for Reuters, sees far much less thriller within the information.
She mentioned that the presence of carbon-14 in research carried out by UNAM proves that the samples have been associated to mind and pores and skin tissues from completely different mummies who died at completely different occasions.
The proportion of the radioactive carbon-14 isotope that’s absorbed by residing organisms into their tissue decays over time, which permits scientists to find out the approximate yr of demise of the specimen.
On different planets, the quantity of carbon-14 of their atmospheres wouldn’t essentially be the identical as on Earth, she mentioned.
All in all, the outcomes “don’t present something mysterious that might point out life compounds that don’t exist on Earth,” Fierro mentioned.
(Reporting by Cassandra Garrison in Mexico Metropolis; extra reporting by Marco Aquino in Lima; enhancing by Stephen Eisenhammer and Rosalba O’Brien)