All of those interested in PaleoBabble should be aware of the work of Jason Colavito. Jason has done a lot of work tracing the common ancient astronaut motifs back through science fiction of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His primary focus is H.P. Lovecraft. You can read a fairly lengthy overview on his site, entitled, “From Cthulhu to Cloning.” It’s fascinating stuff. Check out his book: The Cult of Alien Gods: H.P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestial Pop Culture.
The Fictional Roots of the Ancient Astronaut Myth
im just an average joe off the street….what is the latest regarding the dna proof for ancient alien humanoids beleived to be found in ‘the star-child’ skull.
I am actually sitting on my own correspondence with a geneticist on this … waiting till the next silly announcement.
For those who read the comments and are unfamiliar with this, here’s the short explanation.
A guy named Lloyd Pye claims to have the skull of an alien-human hybrid child and its human mother. Pye has been attempting to get genetic tests done since 1999. He got some preliminary testing done on both the “Starchild” skull and the second (mother) skull between 1999-2003 from the BOLD forensic lab in Canada. The results are summarized at the link below. it is a brief report entitled, “Report On The DNA Analysis From Skeletal Remains From Two Skulls Conducted By Trace Genetics,” by Dr. J.A. Eshleman and Dr. R.S. Malhi, 2003. Here is the link:
http://www.starchildproject.com/dna1999-2003.htm
Pye recently (2010) had more genetic testing done. Here is the claim on his website:
“A modified ‘shotgun’ DNA recovery technique has been successfully used to recover coherent segments of the Starchild Skull’s nuclear DNA. Of the (approx.) 3 billion base pairs in the skull’s genome, many thousands have been recovered. These nuclear DNA fragments have been analyzed by the National Institutes of Health BLAST program, and a substantial percentage of that DNA has ‘no significant similarity’ to any DNA previously found on Earth.”
The link to the page reporting on these tests is here: http://www.starchildproject.com/dna.htm
My own geneticist go-to person has written some notes of response. Here’s one (likely the most important for Pye’s claim):
“The description of the “shotgun” sequencing is very crude, obviously written by someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
Assuming that they’re describing real sequences from the abnormal skull, the conclusions they reach do not follow. In particular, this statement
is totally false:
‘To have recovered a string of base pairs 342 nucleotides long with NO reference in the NIH database is astounding because it means there is NO known earthly corollary for what has been analyzed!”
All it means is that we haven’t encountered that particular nucleotide sequence yet. It happens all the time. Usually, with every genome of a
new genus or species that we sequence, some measurable fraction (10-30%) is DNA sequence we’ve never seen before (i.e., has no match in the
public database). In the case of the skull, the novel DNA is probably just contamination from bacteria or fungi or some other critter that
participated in the decomposition of the body.”
The part I want to draw readers’ attention to is my source’s note that what Pye thinks is anomalous “happens all the time.”
My source has a PhD in genetics, so he knows bunkum in this area when he sees it. Beyond that, I’m sitting on the correspondence for a more entertaining and appropriate time.