Mexican Aliens, huh?

 This one feels familiar...

One of the core purposes of Starfield as a concept was to spark imagination and wonderment for both exploration and space. We're far from the point of explorative space travel ourselves, but wonder for what lies out there is almost as infectious as the passion for human resilience itself, and Starfield's Bethesda must certainly be fans of the space probing organisations of our world for the reverence with which they treated them in the game's narrative. Whatsmore, Bethesda quite literally worked hand-in-hand with NASA for certain parts of the game, so I can only imagine in some part the company wanted to, maybe just subconsciously, contribute to the reignition of space-fever that NASA is trying to stoke with the steady resurrection of their moon landing program. (A prospect I must admit to be somewhat excited for myself. Would love to go see a ship launch for myself one day.) Passion for the 'final frontier' is an alluring prospect, after all.

Almost as alluring as the passion for speculating about the unknown and the unbelievable. The impossible and the ridiculous. The unexplainable and the disproven. Pseudo-Science remains the most popular, and at this point in time probably the most socially acceptable, conspiracy theory tracts in the modern consciousness, and you can hardly follow the thread of such faux-intellectual proposition before landing at the doormat of some funny-looking extra-terrestrials. Aliens are just such a fun belief to speculate on. To imagine that some bizarre unimaginable someone glides between the stars in the night sky, driven by compulsions and technology beyond guess and contemplation, just waiting to visit us and fix all our problems with the enlightenment of the beyond. No more hunger, no more poverty, no more war- a new age of prosperity. Doesn't that sound nice?

I'd imagine that's why the time of day is ever even considered when something as ludicrous as 'The Mexican Government reveals Alien corpses' scrolls along the news site Marquee, instead of universal calls of "'Scuse me, what now?" As it happens the headlines were a bit of a misnomer, the Mexican Government held no view on the legitimacy of the supposed alien cadavers, rather they merely platformed the crank- I mean 'UFO Journalist'- who wanted all the world to see these new prizes he had just discovered. Or rather, which he had discovered back in 2017 at the Nazca Lines but thought the lack of coverage was unbecoming so just decided to reveal it again on a bigger stage this time. Well done, mister; you've got a bigger stage for people to call you out on- Good job.

To be fair to the man, he doesn't seem like a snake oil merchant. He proudly displayed photographs of his bounty and extended a welcome to any expert to come and prove his corpse a fake. Only... well, I imagine his idea of 'testing for falsity' would amount to the scientist flying down to Mexico and poking the thing with a stick to make sure it wasn't made out of Papier-mâché. As it turns out, even back in 2017 no one really needed to be in the same room as his X-Rays in order to point out the many dozens of mistakes with the two 'aliens'. Most notably being a Youtuber who posted a very comprehensive breakdown on how the physiology of the bones made absolutely no sense with mismatched thigh bones which defies all established laws of natural evolution and making such a being unable to walk on it's two supporting limbs. And that's just the shot across the bow!

Further exploration into the structure of this alleged alien reveal a very high likelihood that the entire face is actually the back part of a Llama skull broken off and turned around to replicate that iconic conical skull shape from pop culture. Probably to lean into confirmation bias as well as similar Alien conspiracy theories such as the classic Crystal Skulls. (Dan Aykroyd should give these guys a call any day now.) But that seems like quite the assumption to pull out of nothing, no? Why Llama skulls? Well, as it turns out the burial sight where these bones were discovered, near the Nazca Lines, just also happened to be a Llama burial ground at some point. So whoever made this little art project wasn't getting outlandish with their materials, they worked with what was in front of them.

Now to try and play into the benefit of the doubt, we could pretend that our amateur archaeologist here is simply aghast at the sight of something he doesn't understand. If I stumbled upon bones like these I would similarly be out of my depth and would want to call on experts to ensure I hadn't just unravelled the bones of a primordial species of Dark Elves or something. So perhaps he came across these bones exactly how he presented them. Again, it's feasible that all the 'parts' were locally sourced, so maybe this is a some pre-historical child's creative arts project mistaken for a sensible creature thousands of years later. Maybe... or maybe this is the creative arts project of the 'UFO researcher' himself and this was his latest attempt to pull a fast one on the world in return for quick fame.

Heck, he did manage to drag in that American military pirate who once testified before congress about his experiences with unidentifiable flying objects during his career- pretty much only to piggy back off that man's credibility and tarnish both their reputations with silliness. To what ends? Once upon time that was a worthwhile journey of inquiry, but nowadays I just don't know anymore. I guess fame and a douse of relevance is enough to shoot into your veins. Or maybe the idea was to try and present a semi-credible Alien to shock the world so much that a nation out there that might have been holding onto their findings will quickly jump up and slam their real aliens on the newspapers so as to not be outshined. A silly prospect perhaps, but that's literally the supposed purpose behind the 'Fallout 4: Shadow of Boston' prank from a while back. People are stupid, is the moral of this story.

So to the chagrin of UFO lovers out there it would seem that the Mexican alien is nothing than a fabrication of an enthusiast probably trying to spark a new age in his interests around the world. Of course, stunts like this does have the unintended side effect of denigrating all similar lines of research, and even though most are pretty sure he's going to come back with the same bodies in 5 years, the number of UFO curious will likely have dwindled in the interim. Personally, I'd imagine that if Aliens were to ever visit us it would either be in a manner so advanced that we would never know, so pronounced that there would be no doubt, or so terrible that there would be nothing left to contemplate them in the first place. The little grey Nazca men don't quite cut it.