The Mexican Alien Mummies, All You Need to Know

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Perhaps the biggest story in the UFO and paranormal realms in September of 2023 has been the news of the two alleged alien mummies revealed to the Mexican Congress on September 12. This episode of Mexico Unexplained is being recorded on September 23, 2023, and the story is still unfolding. Here are the facts as we know them now in rapid-fire form to be followed up with detailed background information and further data along with some speculation.

1. The mummies were not discovered on Mexican territory; rather, they were allegedly unearthed in Peru. Conflicting sources claim that they were taken from a burial either outside of Cusco or the city of Ica.
2. The mummies were not presented to the world by the Mexican Congress. They were brought before the congress in a presentation about extraterrestrial life and UFOs.
3. The Mexican Congress did not authenticate the mummies nor did they include the mummies in a UFO disclosure program. The Mexican government has no official opinion on what was presented to them and has not confirmed the existence of aliens.
4. The main personalities behind the unveiling of the mummies before the Mexican Congress were famous Mexican UFO/paranormal researcher Jaime Maussan and a physician from Mexico’s Naval Medical School named José de Jésus Zalce Benitez.
5. The mummies have been x-rayed and it has been determined that they have intact skeletons. Researchers claim they have not been pieced together.
6. The research team in possession of the mummies is refusing help from major scientific organizations who wish to aid in analysis such as NASA.
7. The government of Peru is requesting that the mummies be returned to Peru as it considers them to be pre-Hispanic artifacts and part of the national patrimony.
8. The mummies have been carbon dated by the Institute of Physics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and are said to be over a thousand years old.

The mummies have been described as “Mexican Alien Mummies,” although as stated in bullet point number one, they supposedly came from Peru. According to the official story, the mummies were found by a tomb raider who looted them from a burial site someplace near either Cusco or Ica in 2016. It is unclear how the mummies made their way from Peru to Mexico, which makes some skeptics think that they did not originate in South America at all and were manufactured in Mexico. Researchers conducted a limited analysis of the mummies in 2021 using CT scans and their findings were published in volume 6 of the International Journal of Biology and Biomedicine. Here is part of the abstract of that article describing what researchers concluded:

“The 2016 finds of Palpa, Ica, Peru, assumed to be archaeological in nature, recently received due attention by the scientific community. To help clarify the issue, the current study aims to scientifically examine, through CT-scan analysis, the skull of one of the small bodies, and compare it to the braincase of llamas and alpacas, which are common animals of Ica, Peru. To this end the skull was divided into many sections and a detailed analysis was performed for each one of them. It was shown that the head of the small body is largely made of a deteriorated llama braincase and other unidentified bones, and greatly resembles the human cranium. Specifically, the remains of the skull were shown to be of biological nature, consisting of very thin greatly deteriorated bone with parts such as the mouth plate that could not be identified and recognized. Hence, the obtained results offer a new perception of the lama deteriorated braincase physiology and its resemblance to a human-like face. An additional examination of the neck of the body was also conducted, showing that there are three cords in the neck that may either be actual veins or vegetable strings or intestines for fixing purposes. Based on the above, it seems that the finds are constructions of very high quality.”

Those in possession of the mummies challenged these findings and decided to keep the mummies out of the public eye until the opportune time presented itself.  With UFO congressional hearings and rumors of the highly anticipated government disclosure of contact with alien life happening in the United States, Jaime Maussan and his team thought it was the proper time to approach the Mexican Congress with their own supposed evidence of extraterrestrial life. So, they brought the two mummies resting peacefully in glass-faced showcases to the hallowed lower chamber of the Mexican national government.

As mentioned previously, the two main people involved with this presentation and follow-up with the public were Jaime Maussan and a medical doctor named José de Jésus Zalce Benitez.  This was not the first time that these two collaborated on making public the supposed physical proof of the existence of extraterrestrials in the form of mummies. It is the third time. At a conference in Mexico City in 2015, Maussan presented a photographic slide of an alleged alien mummy that was supposedly taken some time in the late 1940s in New Mexico.  The slide was declared by Dr. Zalce to show an authentic image of an extraterrestrial body and linked it to the Roswell Incident in 1947, hence the nickname it was given, “The Roswell Slide.”  More skeptical investigators sharpened up the image with modern technology and figured out that this supposed alien body was really the mummy of a young Anasazi boy that was removed from one of the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in 1894 and made its way to a museum at Mesa Verde National Park in 1938.  The slide was taken by someone on vacation to the park sometime in the 1940s.  Although properly dated to around the same time as the Roswell incident, the slide had nothing to do with the famous alleged New Mexico flying saucer crash of 1947.  This alien mummy story was easily debunked by anti-blurring photographic technology.  The second alien mummy presented by Maussan and Zalce came from the Nazca region of Peru.  In a permanent crouching position and much larger than the mummy shown on the Roswell Slide, this Peruvian specimen generated quite a buzz when it was shown to the world in a video that debuted on Gaia TV on June 20, 2017.  This supposed mummy had only 3 fingers and it had a large, elongated head.  While cranial deformation was common in many ancient cultures of the Americas, this mummy had an especially long skull that seemed to be more naturally occurring rather than being created by deliberate deformation in infancy or early childhood.  The discovery of this alleged mummy took place near the famous Nazca Lines, an arid area of southern Peru where complicated geometrical patterns and pictures of animals and people are carved onto the surface of the earth.  The Nazca Lines have long been associated with many “Ancient Astronauts” theories and the supposed discovery of the strange Nazca mummy played into the whole alien visitation narrative. The mummy was later declared a hoax by several scientists who claimed that it was assembled from the remains of several different ancient Peruvian human mummies and put together with a low-grade plaster substance similar to papier-mâché.  When the Nazca mummy first made its rounds, Doctor Zalce declared that “the existence of the three fingers of the mummy makes us think that this does not belong to a human species.” Others disagreed, Maussan and Zalce became laughingstocks to serious scientists, and the Peruvian mummy made of a conglomeration of various bones and papier-mâché slowly faded out of the collective memory. Critics will point out that after the first two fiascoes, it is any wonder that anyone would take these two seriously, especially if they come to the public with more supposed alien mummies.

As an aside, Maussan and Zalce had no connection with the supposed alien mummy that was found on Mexican soil near Taxco nicknamed Citlaltemini. For more information about this mummy made public in late 2022, please see Mexico Unexplained episode 323: https://mexicounexplained.com/citlaltemini-the-alien-mummy-from-guerrero/

Before x-rays had been done on the 2 mummies presented to the Mexican Congress on September 12, 2023, some claimed that the bodies were full of eggs, but that was discarded when the x-rays showed just skeletons that appeared to be intact and unaltered. Jaime Maussan and those connected with the project have stated that 30% of the DNA of the mummies has not been identified and could point to some off-world origin.  In the September 13, 2023, presentation before Congress Maussan stated, “These are non-human entities that are not part of our terrestrial evolution.” If you notice, this somewhat ambiguous statement is not a direct claim that the mummies are aliens. For example, a papier-mâché arts and crafts project of a 12-year-old kid could be considered, “not part of our terrestrial evolution.”

To most, this all seems like a poorly done hoax. There are very few people who believe that these mummies are genuine extraterrestrials, but then again, testing and analysis are ongoing. Some people are wondering who would believe such a poorly crafted story and that this obvious hoax could have been done much better.  Some believe that this was done in such a bad way on purpose and that there is an agenda or several agendas behind this charade. What those reasons are is anyone’s guess. Unless you are in on it, it is hard to come to any conclusions.

The way the internet is, these mummies have been responsible for the generation of more than their share of funny memes. One of the most popular ones which surfaced around September 16, is showing one of the alien mummies as a cake, with someone taking a knife and slicing off a piece of its head. Whether this video is of a real cake or if it is just clever CGI is unknown. Another popular meme involves Ripley, the character played by Sigourney Weaver in the “Aliens” movie franchise. This meme is taken from one of the “Aliens” movie posters where Ripley is up against a wall, sweaty and panicky as the alien comes within inches of her face. In this meme, however, the terrifying, slimy mouthed, sharp toothed xenomorph is substituted with a photoshopped version of one of the Mexican alien mummies.  Yet another funny picture shows a photoshopped mummified version of a head of US President Joe Biden serving as the alien mummy’s head.  Memes pop up seemingly spontaneously, so it is a good idea to scan social media daily to get the latest side-splitters.

The final chapter has yet to be written on the alleged Mexican alien mummies and it will be interesting to see what becomes of this story in the coming weeks, months or even years.

REFERENCES

De La Cruz Ríos López, José; Georgios A. Florides and Paul Christodoulides. “Applying CΤ-scanning for the Identification of a Skull of an Unknown Archaeological Find in Peru.” International Journal of Biology and Biomedicine, 6, 46-65, 2021.

Romero, Simon. “Mummies from Outer Space? Mexico’s Congress Gets a Firsthand Look.” In, The New York Times (online version), 13 Sep. 2023.

Tingley, Brett. “Alien Mummies in Mexico? NASA’s UFO Study Team Says Don’t Bet on it.” In Space.com, 15 Sep. 2023.