"Alien" Bodies and Body Parts Allegedly Uncovered in Peru (Again)

​Many of you will likely have seen that tour guide and fringe history advocate Brien Foerster posted information recently about the discovery of an alleged “alien” hand on his Hidden Inca Tours website. He discussed the three-fingered anomaly briefly, and then concluded with an advertisement for his own tours of the Andes. The evidence provided was a bit underwhelming, and my first instinct would be to suspect a hoax along the lines of the taxidermy “demon-fairy” that fooled L. A. Marzulli last year.

​The supposed alien hand is roughly twice as long as a human hand and has only three fingers, covered in what seems to be a brittle white clay, as though sculpted. Foerster admits that it would be “easy” to call the hand a “fake,” but he says not to make such a hasty judgment because the hand was shown to him personally in Cuzco by a “local,” along with what he said was a miniature mummified elongated skull. Foerster said that unnamed physicians x-rayed the “skull” and determined that it was made of skin and bone and was not human. Foerster declined to share the x-ray of the skull, and instead claimed it would be DNA tested this year. An accompanying YouTube video shows the skull being x-rayed, and it does appear to have internal features consistent with a skull (if it is actually the same object being x-rayed). However, contrary to Foerster’s claims that the skull was “clearly was not a human,” the medical professional (we assume from the lab coat) examining the x-ray said that the skull is indeed human. Based on its size, it might be a mummified fetus, like other known examples from the region.

Mummified fetus of Peru in a nineteenth century illustration.

​Foerster provided an x-ray of the “alien” hand, which reveals a series of bones in roughly the same anatomical position as a human hand, but with more bones per finger (5 or 6 vs. 3 for a human finger). These bones differ from their human counterparts in unexpected ways. First, the number of bones per finger differs. Second, unlike human bones, the bones in each finger are also different in shape and size. A human hand is much more balanced. The bones in the “palm” of the hand seem to be a jumbled array that to my inexpert eye don’t all seem to go together. In short, it looks like what you would expect from a hoax assembled from spare parts. That said, since I am not an anatomist, I can’t exclude the possibility that we are looking at an animal limb from a species I’m not familiar with.
 
The same unnamed physicians also declared this hand to be made of skin and bone, and of unknown anatomy. 

​Foerster reported that the skull and hand were found in a “secret location, in a tunnel in the southern desert of Peru,” and their owner does not wish to sell them. Foerster, of course, chose not to question this claim or to seek out the location of their discovery. The accompanying videos feature the current owner telling the story of their discovery, which sounds like a fairy tale. According to him, two friends of his were walking in the desert when they found a small door. Opening it, they found two sarcophagi, of which they managed to take only blurry photos in what seems to be forced perspective to make them look larger. The owner also displays a third object, supposedly a very tiny alien corpse, but which looks even more fake than the other two by dint of being whole. He says that the creature cannot be a mammal because it lacks “mammary glands.”
 
It is not particularly encouraging that the owner says that the alien hand is proof that the Giants existed, as told in the Bible and then quotes Genesis 6:4. (In a later video, he denied that the hand belongs to a Nephilim after doubling down on the ancient astronaut theory.) It is even less encouraging that the owner is able to pick up and manipulate the supposedly ancient and brittle objects as though they were toys. The latest video, posted this morning, uses clips from the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens to suggest that these objects will cause all of civilization and religion to “crumble” before their paradigm-busting power. He concluded his latest video by stating that he will do media interviews about the objects, but only if they are the cover story for a magazine, and he will invite scientific testing, provided that the researchers pay for all the expenses.