NAZCA MUMMIES

Opening

On 12 September 2023, Mexican journalist and ufologist Jaime Maussan opened two glass cases in front of Mexico's Congress. Inside were two small, mummified bodies with long skulls and three-fingered hands, which he said were about 1,000 years old, came from near Nazca, Peru, and were "not part of our terrestrial evolution." The hearing made headlines around the world. Peruvian forensic experts say bodies from the same source are assembled from human and animal bones. Maussan and the doctors working with him say they are single, whole organisms. The argument is still going.

Timeline

2015 to 2017. Grave robbers, known only through intermediaries, say they found the bodies in a desert cave near Nazca. A large, white-powdered body nicknamed "Maria" and several smaller ones reach researchers through the Gaia streaming service and a group calling itself the Inkari Institute.

2017. Peruvian prosecutors and the Ministry of Culture open an inquiry into trafficking of human remains. A Peruvian forensic team says the small bodies it examined were dolls made from human and animal bones.

2018 to 2023. Maussan presents scans and samples at events in Peru and Mexico. Radiocarbon tests arranged through the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) date samples to roughly 1,000 years ago.

12 September 2023. Maussan testifies at a hearing on UAP in Mexico's Chamber of Deputies, with the two small bodies, nicknamed Clara and Mauricio, on display. UNAM says its lab dated only the samples it was given and draws no conclusion about what they came from.

November 2023. At a second hearing, Mexican doctors, including Navy surgeon José de Jesús Zalce Benítez, present CT and X-ray findings and say the bodies show no sign of assembly.

January 2024. Peruvian forensic specialists, led by archaeologist Flavio Estrada, show two other small figures seized from a courier in Lima and say they are made of human and animal bones held together with modern synthetic glue.

Key figures

Jaime Maussan has promoted UFO cases on Mexican television for decades. In 2015 he presented the "Roswell slides" as an alien body; the placard in the photo was later read and identified the body as a mummified human child. His supporters point out that he has kept the Nazca bodies open to examination.

Ryan Graves, the former Navy pilot who testified alongside David Grusch in Washington, also spoke at the first Mexico hearing, on UAP sightings rather than the bodies. Rogan discussed the bodies at length when Grusch appeared on his show on 30 September 2026, raising the foot bones critics say are wrong and the CT scans supporters say show natural joints.

On the paper

There are two sets of scans, read in opposite ways. Maussan's teams say the small bodies have complete skeletons with joints, eggs inside one of them, metal implants, and no glue lines. Peruvian experts say the joints and limbs are mismatched pieces, that some fingers are animal bones, and that the "skin" is a paste of bone powder and glue. Most of the analysis on both sides has been shown at press conferences and in documentaries rather than in peer-reviewed journals.

Radiocarbon dating of real ancient bone does not settle the question either way: old human and animal remains are easy to find in Peruvian graves, and both sides agree the materials are old.

Competing explanations

Genuine non-human bodies. The case is the scans: some medical specialists who examined them say the skeletons are coherent and continuous in a way that would be extremely hard to fake, and that they would not stake their names on something they thought was assembled.

Assembled from ancient remains. The case is the Peruvian forensic work, the anatomical mismatches in the hands and feet, the seized figures with synthetic glue, and the trail back to looted graves. Under this reading, someone used real ancient material, which is why the dates come back old.

Both. The small figures may be fakes while the larger bodies remain open, which is roughly where the most cautious researchers sit.

Finding

The small figures shown in Lima in 2024 look like modern constructions from old bones, and the experts who examined them make a strong case. The larger bodies, and the ones shown in Mexico's Congress, have not been settled in the same way: the people on each side are examining different specimens and publishing in different places.

What still will not resolve: an open, independent study of the Congress bodies, with full DNA sequencing published where other scientists can check it. Until that happens, the scans will keep being read both ways.