Back in 2003, the discovery of a strange mummy sparked a debate about its origins. Could it be that the mummy was the remains of an alien? New research might now settle the argument once and for all.
The mummy, known as Ata, was found back in 2003 in the Atacama Desert in the North of Chile, Ramón Navia Osoria, a businessman from Spain bought the mummy. Almost ten years later from Ata’s discovery, Doctor Steven Greer of the Disclosure Project used x-ray and CT imagining (computer tomography) on the skeleton.
The lively debate on the origins of the mummy has been ranging since then. One side of the debate claims that there is almost certainty that Ata is not human but alien. Study after study has shown that that is indeed not the case and that Ata is human but those who believe otherwise remain unconvinced.
Ata, the Mummy
The fact that Ata is mummified is not what sparked the ongoing debate on its origins, but her strange appearance.
To begin with, Ata is just six inches tall. But what makes her so unusual is that her head is shaped like a cone (remember the Coneheads?) and her bones are way too hard for her size. It was her unusual appearance that prompted some people to claim that she was in fact alien.
However, many voices in the scientific community were raised against the idea that Ata has an extraterrestrial origin. Recently, new research has been added to disprove that Ata is an alien.
If alien visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans. – Stephen Hawking
The latest research in question has been published in the journal Genome Research. But this new study goes a bit further than just refuting that Ata could have been an alien but also offers an explanation for her unusual appearance.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Ata is that her size (or, at least, her length) seems to be close to that of a human fetus and yet her bones are as hard as those of a human child of about six years of age.
When Dr. Green gave samples of the mummy’s bone marrow to Garry Nolan, an immunologist from the Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, a medical team examined it. They concluded that the genetic material found in Ata’s bone marrow is human. But at that time no one could yet explain her strange appearance.
More research was then carried out. Doctor Nolan joined forces with a whole team of Stanford University genetic researchers and Atul Butte, a computational biologist, and her University of California team in San Francisco. Their whole was to analyze Ata’s genome.
The results of their research are what has now been published.
Ata Is Human
According to this recent study, Ata is shown to have had mutations in seven genes. It so happens that those seven genes are involved in growth. Doctor Nolan now claims that Ata’s abnormalities could be the result of the combination of all those genetic mutations, including her unusual skeleton and the rapid growth of her bones.
It is highly likely that the mummy is a baby that died soon after being born or a fetus that was stillborn. Either way, the fetus is human.
This new research as other previous studies has done nothing to convince those who have always firmly believed that Ata is a mummified alien.
There may be aliens in our Milky Way galazxy, and there are billions of other galaxies. The probability is almost certain that there is life somewhere in space. – Buzz Aldrin
Doctor Greer, whose website is devoted to disclosing “facts” about alien lifeforms, unidentified flying objects (UFOs), etc., is not convinced by this new research and still claims that Ata is “not a deformed human.”
But scientists want to move on from this controversy and hope that this new research would finally put the nail in the coffin, as it were.
One of the tallest voices against the possible alien origin of Ata is Willian Jungers, who is a paleoanthropologist and anatomist and a Stony Brook University Medical Center emeritus professor.
This study is of particular interest to medical doctors who work with children suffering from genetic bone disorders, especially rare ones. These doctors see in the debate some of the weaknesses of archeologists (and other scientists) that can make wrong assessments when confronted with the unusual physical features that can be caused by genetic disorders.
The New Study
The full name of the study is “Whole-genome sequencing of Atacama skeleton shows novel mutations linked with dysplasia.”
The authors of the study are the following:
- Sanchita Bhattacharya, Matthew J. Kan, Shann-Ching Chen, and Atul J. Butte at the Institute for Computational Health Sciences at the University of California San Francisco.
- Jian Li, Narges B. Asadi, and Hugo Y.K. Lam at the Roche Sequencing Solutions in Belmont, California.
- Alexandra Sockell and Carlos D. Bustamante at the Department of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine in California.
- Felice A. Bava and Garry P. Nolan from the Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, at Stanford University in California.
- María C. Ávila-Arcos at the International Laboratory for Human Genome Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in Santiago de Querétaro, Mexico.
- Xuhuai Ji at the Human Immune Monitoring Center and Functional Genomics Facility, Stanford University in California.
- Emery Smith from the Ultra Intelligence Corporation in Boulder, Colorado.
- Ralph S. Lachman at the Department of Pediatric Radiology, Stanford University School of Medicine in California.