I don't care if it's been debunked, this picture freaks me the fark out every time I see it.



/Pleasant dreams...

1) The skull is the result of cranial binding. This was a common practice in Peru a couple thousand years ago. People of high-ranking families bound their infants' heads tightly, and kept them that way, so that the bones of the skull fused into elongated shapes, similar in some ways to "foot binding" in China. It was an indication of the family's status that could never be taken away. Even if he lost all his wealth, people would still know he was a high-status person because of his head shape.
There is no doubt that it is a human skull, because all of the elements of a human skull (frontal, parietals, nasals, occipital, zygomatics, maxillae, mandible, etc.) are present. While it would not surprise me if "aliens" had bony skulls protecting their brains, it defies the odds that those skulls would be divided into exactly the same component parts, in the same arrangement, as ours. Not even all of the animals on earth have the same skull bones.


2) "Bundle" burials were also common in Peru, and were sometimes transported to new burial sites and re-interred in secondary burials, at which time, the bones (now mostly devoid of flesh) would be gathered up into a smaller bundle. The skull retains the shape of the head, but the bulk of the trunk and limbs is soft tissue. When bones are all that remains after decomposition, they take up very little space. It would not be difficult to cram the skeleton of a 6 foot tall man into a 20 inch long package, as long as the bones are not articulated in anatomical position.

3) That's not a complete body. In those awful, overly watermarked photos, I can identify along with the skull, only six partial ribs (out of a normal complement of 24- 12 left and 12 right), a bone that looks like a human metatarsal and one that, from the image, appears to be the metacarpal of a llama.

OMG we are being invaded!



/wankers
//it's called skull shaping

Jake Havechek: We better hope the aliens don't have hostile intent. Anything that can survive the distances of intergalactic travel can probably squash us like bugs.

Maybe. Then again, they may only come with a tiny compliment, and maybe they'd have completely overlooked some basic countermeasure against one of our weapons or tricks because it's so wildly obsolete no one bothers. Hey, geese can bring down jets. We could get lucky.

Then we could bury them in Peru for the lulz.


Oh, and yeah not even TFA believes that's an alien.

Jake Havechek: We better hope the aliens don't have hostile intent. Anything that can survive the distances of intergalactic travel can probably squash us like bugs.

Which is sort of why I don't think that we'll live to see our nearest neighbors. I don't doubt that there is other life out there. I just doubt that even in life span of our entire species that we'll ever meet them--and if we do, that we'll even be able to communicate with them. We will have more frames of reference with dolphins and dogs than our nearest cosmic neighbors.

Doesn't rule it out. Could be possible. Just don't think it likely...

Descended from these 'aliens'?

Lt. Cheese Weasel: i09, as accurate and relevant as ever. *facepalm*.

So, you couldn't detect any hint of sarcasm?

BOOM. There ya go. Four out of five faceless scientists agree that what you're looking at are mummified alien remains. Case closed.

None?

While clearly that's not alien, it may be different in one part but it's too similar in others to be alien, it should be the common stance of people that there is more intelligent life in the universe until dis-proven. It's crazy to think we're the only ones.

As far as I'm concerned it's: Other life? Definitely, other intelligence? good chance, visited earth? Almost no chance.

I won't rule anything out, and frankly I'd love to believe aliens visited, because it makes such an interesting story, but I just don't see it ever having happened.

Since that head looks like the crystal skull in Indiana Jones I'm going to take this chance to you all that an alien crystal skull is more realistic than an ark containing gods words, or a cup that caught the blood of Christ, since those things can not possibly exist as there is no god. So people saying "aliens in my Indiana Jones?!? No thanks!" are just wrong. It wasn't a great film, but not because of aliens, but because you're older and nothing can live up to previous experiences.

Fluorescent Testicle: Thankyou. Why the hell are people still debating this one?

Did certain people in this thread take stupid pills this morning, or what?

We're debating this?

PainInTheASP: /Pleasant dreams...



You shoulda gone before we left Andromeda...