Atlantic: The Racism Behind Alien Mummy Hoaxes

Pre-Columbian bodies are once again being used as evidence for extraterrestrial life (Christopher Heaney, ' The Racism Behind Alien Mummy Hoaxes', The Atlantic, August 1, 2017).

Peruvian archaeologists are tired of debunking claims of extraterrestrial influence on human history. In 1968, Swiss author Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods? introduced the mainstream to the theory that the Nazca Lines, the massive geoglyphs in Southern Peru whose shapes are fully visible only from the air, were landing strips for “ancient astronauts.” Archaeologists calmly disagree, positing that they were astronomical designs that turned the desert itself into an observatory, or counter constellations matching the dark spaces in the Milky Way, or, more abstractly, cosmological figures meant to be seen by skyward deities, of which ancient Peru had many. 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull put a new spin on this old tale, including, for good measure, the large-skulled aliens that pepper North American abduction stories.

Now, Peruvian scientists are furious at a new and possibly pernicious permutation of the “ancient astronaut” theory. A web series named Unearthing Nazca purports to depict the investigation of a pre-Columbian and “humanoid” mummy. Archaeologists, who have been denied access to the mummy, worry that it is as old as the series’ creators claim, but that it is actually indigenous and Andean — a real human individual that has been mutilated to look like an alien. They worry that Unearthing Nazca is an archaeological snuff film in disguise.

The series’ success is also of concern. Since the series’ launch in June by Gaia.com — a website specializing in “conscious media, yoga, and more” — the teaser episode of Unearthing Nazca has been viewed 2.35 million times on YouTube alone. [...] The camera orbits the mummy, revealing that it has only three long fingers on each hand and three long toes on each foot. Its elongated head has no nose, no ears, and large, heavy-lidded eyes. And its skin is an eerie, powdery white.

The video’s experts stop short of the A-word, letting a series of vest-wearing and white coat-clad “experts” claim that x-rays, CT scans, and DNA and carbon-14 tests of the mummy’s flesh reveal that this new “humanoid” or “organic creature,” whom they have dubbed “Maria,” is no fraud. To learn more, viewers were initially encouraged to watch the rest of the investigation behind Gaia’s paywall.

The English- and Spanish-language tabloids and YouTube channels that cover the “discovery” reliably fill in the blanks, guarding journalistic integrity with scare quotes: “The ‘Alien’ Mummies of Nazca,” trumpeted The Sun in mid-July, when the mummy’s most prominent promoter, a Mexican “ufologist” and TV personality named Jaime Maussan, produced photographic and x-ray “proof” of at least four additional more “reptilian” “humanoid” bodies.

Because of course: What else could they be? [...] Peruvian scientists held their fire in public until June [2016?], when Unearthing Nazca revealed the previously un-photographed “Maria,” whose dramatic resemblance to actual Peruvian mummies—down to an almost anatomically correct CT scan—suggested that she wasn’t a pastiche of animal and human bones, but an actual pre-Columbian Andean, looted and remade for the sake of a hoax. [...] To complete the package of “Maria,” her nose and ears may have been sliced away from what was either an unsurprisingly elongated head, or were left off of a recently fabricated one. Evidence of all alterations could easily be covered up with the white, plastery powder that the talking heads on Unearthing Nazca claim is a desiccant.