Skull and Bones

Lloyd Pye. The Starchild Skull: Genetic Enigma or Human-Alien Hybrid? Bell Lap Books, 2007.

This unusual skull surfaced in 1998 in the hands of a couple of members of MUFON, with a most dubious provenance which we shall come to later. It then passed into the hands of Lloyd Pye, who turns out to be a dedicated Sitchinist. First its original owners, then Pye and his friends have hawked it round various 'experts' who have come to varying conclusions. It is clear that Pye and company are not genuinely interested in the opinions of these people, what they are looking for is some 'expert' who will validate their predetermined conclusion that this is an alien-human hybrid. We, of course, only have Pye's version of what these various people say.

From the photographs reproduced here the skull certainly looks unusual, and their is apparent disagreement among various 'experts' as to whether or not it is the skull of a hydrocephalic child, whose skull has been further distorted by the process of headboarding, a technique used by some native American cultures to support a baby's head while carried on its mother's back. Perhaps if the child was severely disabled it may have been carried and hence head-boarded by the mother for a longer than usual period of time.

In cases like this one should adopt the Sherlock Holmes position of 'when you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth'. Being totally open minded, and assuming for the moment that this is a genuine unretouched skull here are the possibilities:

(1) It is indeed an alien-human hybrid; (2) It is an alien skull; (3) It is the skull of some new quasi-human terrestrial primate; (4) It is the skull of a human-3 hybrid; (5) It is an unusual human skull.

Option 1 we can eliminate straight away as biological nonsense, a genuine alien-human hybrid makes as much sense as a bicycle-human hybrid. The skull is now conceded to have ordinary Native American mitrochonrial DNA, so that's 2 and 3 down the drain.

We are left with 4 and 5, but as there is no separate evidence for the existence of any other human line having characteristics similar to this skull anywhere, or any non-homo sapiens human lineage of any kind in the Americans, we should rule out 3 as massively improbable. Which leaves us with 5, it is just an unusual human skull. It is made of human bone, has human mtDNA, and everything else is superficial.

If this was a well-provenanced skull we could probably conclude that is likely to the that of a hydrocephalic child, possibly with other genetic and developmental problems. But the provenance here is very dodgy, it is allegedly found by a Mexican-American woman 70 years ago, along with other bones which have conveniently been lost. She revealed the truth when dying, but did not allow her name to be used, because her husband worked for the US government. She passed this skull and another said to have been found with it (but which turns out to be unrelated) to another couple, who guess what, will not allow their names to be used, because, you've guessed it, the husband works for the US government.

Dodgy provenance suggests something dodgy, something to hide. Maybe it is just that this is skull from a looted grave, or maybe it suggests that something is not quite right at all with this skull. Could some of the various oddities with the skull mean it has been subject to some form of post mortem treatment and sculpting? Could it be even be an artefact made out of human bone? Only one of the experts suggests a hoax, and withdraws that suggestion, but would they necessarily be looking?

Of course, if it is a hoax it must be a really sophisticated one, streets ahead of the average UFO hoax, up to the UMMO level at least. One requiring money, time and expertise. I will make a guess that if this is a hoax then maybe the people behind it are the same as those behind the Australian alien hair episode. If you ask who has the time, money, possible expertise and ideological commitment, then it boils down to a short list of two, the Sitchinists or the Raelians. We all know that according to Lynne Picknett, there are some pretty big guns behind the former, but her views are controversial to say the least, and I am not quite convinced that they are organised enough for this. That leaves the Raelians.

So that leaves two answers, either this is an unretouched skull of a deformed human child, a sophisticated hoax, most probably by the Raelians, but possibly by the Sitchinists. Only much more detailed analysis by non-ufologists will resolve the matter further. - Reviewed by Peter Rogerson.