The Starchild Project formally began in early March of 1999. In the six months since, certain
information has stood the test of time as true and accurate, so it forms
the core of this updated text. However, much information in it is new.
Some enhances what we assumed to be true from the beginning, some
challenges those assumptions, and some totally supplants what we thought
we knew. For all readers, the text has been made as concise as possible
without losing clarity.
Because the Starchild Project is so unprecedented, there has been no
blueprint to follow. We have been left to our own devices, doing our
best to make sense of the data we have gathered. In addition, our policy
from Day One has been to conduct an open, honest, straightforward
pursuit of the truth - and nothing but the truth - regarding the Starchild
skull's reality and origins. Therefore, to facilitate
comparisons between old and new information, the reduced version of the
prior text will be kept on the website. Anyone wishing to evaluate the
progress we have made, or to explore the blind alleys we have gone down,
will be able to contrast what we thought we knew then with what we think
we know now.
Discovery:
Sixty to seventy years ago an American girl of Mexican heritage in her
late teens (15 to 18) was taken by her parents to visit relatives living
in a small rural village 100 miles southwest of Chihuahua, Mexico. Upon
arrival, the girl was told local taboos forbade entering any of the
area's numerous caves and mine tunnels. Like many teenagers might do in
such a situation, she soon found an excuse to slip away from the village
to explore the forbidden places.
At the back of a mine tunnel she found a complete human skeleton lying
supine (face up) on the ground's surface. Beside it, sticking up out of
the ground, was a malformed skeletal hand wrapped around one of the
human skeleton's upper arm bones. The girl proceeded to scrape the dirt
off a shallow grave to reveal a buried skeleton, also malformed, and
smaller than the human one. She did not specify the type or degree of
any of the "malformations."
The girl recovered both skulls and kept them for the remainder of her
life. As her death neared, she passed them to an American man who
maintained possession for five years before passing them to the American
couple who now own and control them. That couple found both skulls show
a staining pattern consistent with the discovery story as told by the
now-deceased woman.
Only the rear part of the human's (lying on its back) is stained, while
all of the malformed skull (the buried one) is stained to varying
degrees.
Motivation:
As reported by its discoverer, the Starchild skull is "malformed" in
many key ways. In fact, little about it compares to a normal human. It
does possess the same number and kind of cranial bones: a frontal, two sphenoids, two temporals, two parietals, and an occipital. However, none
are shaped or positioned as in humans. There are also other similarities,
including certain bone extrusions and contours, muscle attachments, and
openings for veins and arteries that correspond to humans. Despite those
and other recognizable conformities, an overwhelming majority of
comparisons show deviation from the human norm.
Sometimes those deviations are slight, but most times they are extensive,
to a degree that should have produced afetal "monster" incompatible with
life as we know it. Instead, they seamlessly combined to form a cranial
outline hauntingly similar to the "Gray" alien type exemplified on the
cover of Whitley Streiber's book "Communion." Indeed, apart from a
marked difference in the eye sockets (more about that later), the Starchild skull looks very much as if it might fit inside that
Gray
alien's head. If that were not so compelling, we also would have assumed
it was a deformity.
Because the Starchild skull shows so much deviation from the human norm,
we can confidently expect DNA testing to prove it is one of three things:
(1) a pure alien Gray type;
(2) a Gray-human hybrid; or
(3) the most
bizarre human deformity since The Elephant Man.
Either of the first two
would be historic at a level never seen before, while the last would be
merely historic. However, even the last outcome would warrant the effort
being put into the determination process. History is history, and it is
a rare occurrence in anyone's life to get an opportunity to make it.
Inflicted Deformity:
Upon seeing the Starchild skull, the first question most people ask is
whether it could have resulted from some kind of human deformity.
Because that is such an obvious consideration, we will address it before
beginning a detailed description of the skull. There are two basic kinds
of human deformity: natural and inflicted. Inflicted deformities result
from a practice of certain primitive societies known as "head binding,"
in which an infant's head is bracketed by any of a variety of flattening
or shaping devices, usually boards, then tightly swathed in rags to hold
those devices in the desired shape. When applied to the back of a human
head, no shaping device can go beyond the bump at the lower middle rear
of it known as the inion.
The inion is where the neck begins, so the muscles that attach there
prevent any shaping device from affecting anything below it. In the
Starchild skull the flattening goes well below the inion (which in its
case is not even present!), and the bone itself is not actually flat,
which is invariably a product of both head binding and cradle boarding
(a means of flattening only the back of the head). In both binding and
boarding, the affected bones are pressed smooth, but the rear of the
Starchild skull is subtly but clearly convoluted, with no true
flattening in any part. Therefore, it is virtually impossible that
binding could have been the
cause of its unusual shape. Lastly, if a skull is truly bound into some
other-than-ordinary shape, the cranial bones will never be able to
suture at the top of the head, so a person thus afflicted will always
have a "soft spot" on the top of their reshaped cranium.
Natural Deformity:
Natural deformities also come in two kinds: genetic and congenital.
Genetic deformities occur regularly as a result of cumulative defects in
humanity's gene pool. They produce consistent characteristics and have
names like Apert's Disease, Crouzon's, Treacher-Collins, Progeria (premature
aging) Trisomy 18 (a type of Mongolism), and Hydrocephaly (water on the
brain), to name a few. One of their hallmarks is asymmetry (lopsidedness)
caused by "synostosis," which is a premature closing of one or more
cranial sutures, forcing a skull to grow in unusual ways. The Starchild
skull exhibits a very high degree of overall symmetry, which is
difficult to reconcile with the marked asymmetries produced by most
cranial pathologies. Also, a CAT scan reveals that all of its cranial
sutures were healthy and open at its time of death.
In our efforts to determine the truth about the Starchild, we have asked
over 50 experts to personally examine the skull and tell us what they
thought might have caused it to look as it does. Several others have
sent unsolicited opinions after viewing the photographs on the website.
With predictable consistency they have pronounced the skull the result
of some kind of human "pathology" (a scientific phrase for "something
went wrong"), often combined with the cranial binding discussed above.
When we ask what kind of pathology, specifically, they suggest one or
another of the genetic disorders as the most likely cause. If we offer
reasons why their diagnosis cannot be correct (its symmetry, no synostosis, no inion, etc.), they will change to another disorder, or
fall back on the safety net provided by congenital deformity.
Unlike genetic deformities, which are consistently repeated generation
after generation, congenital deformity is a one-time event caused by a
sperm-egg misconnect at conception, or by varying degrees of mutation
during gestation. They can be slight or they can be horrific, producing
ghastly "monsters" that give neonatologists nightmares. In theory and in
practice, congenital deformities are capable of producing virtually
anything, which means the Starchild skull can be labeled as congenital
and the label will stick. Unless, that is, you know the rules governing
congenital deformities at the level the Starchild exhibits.
In the head area one deformity at a time is the general rule because
sperm-egg misconnects and mutations tend to strike only one gene or a
localized suite of genes. For example, if the face is affected, the rear
and side of the head will be unaffected. If the rear is damaged, the
face and sides should be okay. Etc. If two severe deformities occur, say
the back and side are affected, life will be tenuous at best because the
head area controls so much of early life processes (breathing and eating
being the two most prominent). Three major deformities, like three
strikes, will almost certainly mean you are out, with no chance to live.
You are DOA.
How this relates to the Starchild skull is that no expert yet consulted
has provided a credible, sustainable link to any of the known genetic
disorders. Nor have they explained how the Starchild could legitimately
be classified as a congenital deformity because its skull shows massive
reconfiguration in EIGHT different areas of cranial morphology. In other
words, the Starchild should have been DOA several times over, yet it
thrived until its death.
Note:
Occasionally we are asked to name some or all of the experts who have
examined the Starchild skull. We do not do that for three reasons. First,
in most cases they provided their opinions after only cursory
examinations. Consequently, they are not anxious to put their
reputations on the line for an opinion not based on careful observation
and consideration. Second, for the few who have undertaken careful
observation, they will allow use of their names on a selective basis to
other experts and qualified media (several have already been quoted in
newspapers and magazines). However, they do not want a general
disbursement of their names because it might lead to unnecessary
pestering. Lastly, nearly all (if not all) of them will ultimately be
proven wrong about whatever opinion they offered. They all suggest one
or another of the various types of deformities, only one of which can be
correct if the Starchild proves to be entirely human. If not, then they
are all embarrassingly wrong, and we are in this to find truth, not
embarrass those who freely grant us help with honest intentions.
General Morphology:
As mentioned above, the Starchild skull has most (but not all) of the
parts of a normal human skull, all of which are thoroughly reconfigured
to somehow produce a living entity never seen (or at least recorded)
before. Now we will analyze the skull piece by piece and area by area,
pointing out similarities and differences between it and human skulls,
normal and deformed.
To begin, the overall configuration bears closest comparison to an alien
"Gray" type. Grays are entities alleged to have vaguely heart-shaped
heads with two high, expanded rear lobes forming the upper arcs of the
heart, and a reduced and narrowed lower face area combining with an
almost pointed chin to form the bottom of the heart. With that front
outline goes a flattened, sloping-inward rear area, and a thin neck
positioned forward relative to a human neck. The Starchild skull
has all
of these physical attributes, plus others that may or may not be part of
Gray morphology, such as no frontal sinuses and an apparent lack of a
cerebellum (which may or may not be related to the lack of an inion
discussed above).
Specifically, the Starchild's complete lack of frontal sinuses (revealed
in a fluoroscopic study) first indicated to us it might indeed be of
alien origin. However, we have since learned that a lack of frontal
sinuses is not impossible either in humans or in primates. It is an
extremely rare condition, but does not alone indicate the Starchild
might be alien, especially since a maxillary sinus is apparent in a
detached piece of maxilla (upper jaw and palate) that the woman who
discovered the Starchild skull stated is an integral part of it.
That detached piece of maxilla has a stain pattern similar to the Starchild,
so we accept the discoverer's assertion that they were once
connected. Our initial belief was that the Starchild skull was indeed
that of a child (hence its name) because the detached piece of maxilla
has two visible teeth still embedded in it: a right rear bicuspid
adjacent to a right rear molar. By their small size and the small size
of the maxilla itself, both appear at first glance to be primary (baby)
teeth. In addition, a fluoroscope exam indicated two teeth impacted
above them, apparently waiting to emerge, while visual inspection showed
an
incisor apparently moving into the first of the empty front holes. To
the dentists initially consulted, three front teeth missing (usually
lost at five or six) and a replacement on its way, indicated a child in
its fifth or sixth year,assuming it aged as humans normally age and
that the teeth had been lost naturally (there is no sign of bone
breaking away in any of the three empty holes).
Now we have more information to go on, and the picture is far less clear.
It turns out the piece of maxilla seems to be entirely without the space
where another bicuspid should go. Also, the extant bicuspid has three
fair-sized roots, two outer and one inner, when only one outer and one
inner is normal. Lastly, both teeth show much more than usual wear on
the crown areas, and both show clear signs of crazing, which is cracking
and fissuring of their enamel. Crazing is not likely to have occurred in
5-6 year-old baby teeth, no matter how coarse or gritty the child's diet
might be. Significant crown erosion is not likely, either.
What might the above mean? One possibility is that the missing front
teeth could have been secondary teeth removed after recovery of the
skull, with the incisor that seems to be moving down not moving down at
all, merely holding a place like the two impacted molars. This could
mean the visible pair are primary teeth in the last stage before
replacement by the impacted molars. This could move the Starchild's age
to around 10 or 12 years old, when primary molars are typically lost.
This is a barely more plausible accounting for the wear on the crowns
and the crazing, because both normally require decades of hard use.
Unfortunately, the discoverer left no word at all about the status of
the missing front teeth, and since she is now deceased and we do not
know how to contact any of her surviving family members, we cannot
follow this line of inquiry any further.
Another less likely possibility is that the visible teeth might be
secondary (permanent) teeth in an extraordinarily small mouth (not
unlike what a Gray might have), and the impacted teeth are not from a
second but a THIRD set waiting to come down. Like a complete lack of
frontal sinuses, three sets of teeth are extremely rare but not unheard
of in humans or in primates, so it remains a possibility. Therefore, it
could be that the Starchild simply did not age the way we do, and its
primary teeth lasted much longer than the dozen years human primary
molars and bicuspids usually last. Indeed, the Starchildcould have been
a fully grown adult utilizing what appears to us now to be primary teeth
but which were in fact secondary.
Age and Sex:
Something else that complicates aging the Starchild is the extensive
degree of high- quality suturing (combining of bone plates) found all
over its skull, especially along the border between the left parietal (upper
left crown) and the upper left part of the
occipital (rear of the head). There it has many of what are called "islands,"
which are small but separate pieces of bone that fill in gaps that
sometimes appear when the sutures are growing rapidly and pulling apart
too fast for the edges to fill in properly. Those islands have caused
several experts to question our description of the Starchild as being
about five years old. They feel its suturing indicates no less than late
teen and/or early adult, and perhaps even more adult than that.
Taken all together, the new information about the maxilla and the
persistent doubting that the Starchild is in fact a "child" has caused
us to rethink our position, which was based in large part on what are
called the "Star Being Legends" of South America.
Those legends state that Star Beingsregularly come down to Earth from
the heavens to impregnate certain women -usually barren - in isolated,
rural villages. The impregnation is done artificially because the Star
Beings described are consistently Grays. The resulting hybrids, called"Starchildren,"
are bestowed on women as a great "gift from the gods," and are to be
raised by the entire village until the age of five or six or seven or
even eight, when they are taken away by the Star Beings and removed to
whatever place and/or purpose they have been created for.
Furthermore, the positions in which the two skeletons were reportedly
found, with the human lying on the ground and the smaller misshapen one
buried in a shallow grave beside it, one hand sticking up out of the
dirt so it could be wrapped around the upper arm of the human, indicated
to us that a murder-suicide had taken place, with the human killing and
burying the small one, then lying down beside it and committing suicide
in some way. That led us to further conclude the human might have been a
Starchild's mother who, for whatever sane or insane reason, determined
that her child would not be taken away to meet its fate, one she might
have viewed as worse than death. So she killed it - again, sanely or
insanely - and then took her own life for failing to fulfill the "sacred
duty" entrusted to her by "the gods."
Given what we know now about the new information regarding the maxilla,
and the persistent doubts about a young age for a skull with such
complex suturing, we realize our initial "read" on the Starchild is
probably in error and it is not a child after all. We should emphasize
that this, too, could be wrong; it might turn out to have been a child
after all. But based on what we know at this point, we feel the skull
stands a better chance of being a late teen to adult.
Another point that has led us to reevaluate the age of the Starchild (a
name it will keep until and unless a new one emerges) is a similar
reevaluation of the human skull's age. The same dentists who initially
examined the Starchild also examined the human and calculated that the
extreme wear shown on all its tooth crowns (they are worn almost totally
flat) indicated an age no less than in the late twenties, probably
pushing toward thirty. They based that guess on the knowledge we
provided that the skull was ancient and came from northern Mexico, where
the diet would have been based on corn smashed and ground to a pulp on
grinding stones, which would have added highly abrasive grit to the mix.
Not being knowledgeable about the wear caused by such a diet (extremely
foreign to their experience), they guessed it would take approximately
twenty-five years
of such a diet to cause such extensive wear.
We have since been informed by experts with better knowledge of wear
patterns on dental enamel that a high-grit diet would not cause such
extensive flattening of the cusps until at least the 40th year and more
likely closer to the 45th year. Furthermore,
a handful of experts have now cast serious doubt on whether or not the
human skull is that of a female, which was the initial assessment of
other experts because of its relatively small size and certain gracile
(fine, slender) features. Others feel that the mastoid process (the
triangular bone extending downward from behind the ear hole) slants
straight down too much to be that of a female. Female mastoids are
attached to a significantly lighter neck muscle than males have, so they
tend to curve inward somewhat, a curve seen clearly in the Starchild's
smaller mastoid bone. Unfortunately, the Starchild's potential young age
and much smaller neck (more about that later) does not allow us to make
the otherwise logical inference that it was a female.
Given all of the above, we now hold in abeyance everything regarding the
age and sex of the two skulls. As best we can determine, rather than
being a female in the prime of life, capable of bearing and raising a
hybrid child, the human skull might well represent a male about 45 years
old at time of death. And rather than being a child of about five, the
Starchild skull could be that of a late teen or even a seasoned adult.
However, this does not change our original scenario to explain how the
bodies were found. It still appears the human buried the Starchild and
then committed suicide. Whether that followed a murder or
a natural death is now open to question, but absent any other evidence,
the best explanation for how they were found still seems to be that the Starchild expired first, it was buried by the human in the shallow grave
with its misshapen hand sticking up, then the human deliberately died
alongside it.
Whether a young female mother or a middle-aged male caretaker, the human
seemed to care a very great deal about the Starchild and help it enough to
join it on its journey into eternity.
Specific Comparisons:
The Starchild is substantially different from a normal human in just
about every comparison that can be made. For example, normal human
skulls weigh in the two pound range, children proportionally less. The
complete Starchild, with missing mandible and maxilla, would weigh about
one pound. Not only is it lighter by half, its bone density seems to be
much higher. Testing has not yet quantified the difference, but normal
human bone has a surface pitted with tiny indentations visible under
magnification. The Starchild's pitting is much less obvious, indicating
its bone cells are packed together much tighter. This is also supported
by viewing its bone cells under high magnification through polarized
light. The "bundling" of its cells appears to be many times (perhaps
five to ten) the bundling rate of a normal human.
Another example is brain volume, which in a normal human is around 1400
cubic centimeters (cc). The Starchild's brain volume, contained inside a
cranium the size of a smallish human's, is 1600 cc. How can this be
possible? Because it has no frontal sinuses to take up room, its eye
sockets barely indent its face, and its bone is thinner all around,
taking up less space. In
short, the Starchild had wall-to-wall brain. Also, in anthropology a
brain gain of 200 cc in any prehuman fossil entitles it to be classified
as a new species. Homo Habilis to Homo Erectus is 200 cc; Homo Erectus
to Homo Archaic is 200 cc; Homo Archaic to Neanderthal is 200 cc. So at
a minimum, perhaps the Starchild represents a rare, possibly extinct
hominid species.
Normal human eye sockets have a conical shape recessed about 2 inches (5
centimeters) into the skull. The Starchild's sockets have a scalloped
shape (like an upside down teardrop) only about 1 inch (2-3 centimeters)
deep. The outer edges of human sockets, called "orbits," have a vaguely
rectangular shape and are rounded along the brows. The Starchild's
orbits are
separated by a nose width of normal dimension (though not of normal
shape, having no "dip" from midbrow to bridge), and the brows have a
clearly definable edge. Also, in a normal human socket the optic nerves
and optic fissures are found at the inner rear quadrant of the cone. In
the Starchild the optic nerves and fissures are moved down and away to
the inner bottom. In anatomical terms such differences in depth and
shape are enormous.
Though they appear to be quite smooth, the inner surfaces of the
Starchild's eye sockets possess incredibly subtle shifts of terrain that
are exactly the same in both. This astonishing symmetry virtually
removes the possibility that they could have gained their unusual shape
by deformity. Furthermore, ophthalmologists have assured us that if
those sockets contained eyeballs as we know them, they would have to be
positioned low in the sockets, opposite the middle of the nose rather
than at the top of it. There is also a strong possibility the Starchild
had significantly less eyeball mobility than normal humans enjoy, and it
is a virtual certainty that its eyes would have "bulged out" to some
degree relative to normal human eyes.
[Alien abductees and contactees often state that the eyes of
Grays are
large black teardrop shapes that wrap horizontally across the middle of
their faces. If those large orbs are indeed their visual mechanisms, it
would argue against the Starchild's eyes being related to them. However,
it could also be that those dark "wraparounds" are protective lenses or
lenses that
allow them to see at night (when most encounters occur). Since many
other abductees and contactees claim to see Gray type aliens with eyes (usually
large and bulging), we have to assume their natural visual mechanism
functions at least somewhat similarly to humans.]
Switching from eyes to ears,
the Starchild's ear canals are clearly
visible on both sides of its skull. They seem normal in shape and size
and angle of entry, but a CAT scan revealed that they are slightly
larger and have somewhat more depth than normal human inner ears. There
is no way to know if an external ear was present or what it may have
looked like. It is also fair to mention that even though the Starchild
seems to have teeth, abductees and contactees rarely see teeth in the
mouths of Grays. Of course, this might be due to the fact that they
seldom open their mouths, apparently being able to communicate
telepathically.
The foramen magnum is the hole at the base of the skull where the spinal
column connects with the brain. In normal humans the foramen is
positioned slightly rear of center to balance the hollow-filled front
face against the brain-filled occipital (lower rear) area. The extensive
reconfiguration of the Starchild's skull has somehow caused its foramen
magnum to be shifted to a central point directly under the cranium,
which provides much better balance between its rear brain area, and its
face and forebrain, which are both filled to capacity.
Inside the foramen magnum along the center of the inner wall of the
occipital is a raised ridge of bone called the "internal occipital
protuberance." It extends from the inner area of the inion (called the "external
occipital protuberance") down to the edge of the foramen's opening, a
distance of about two inches. This inner ridge of bone is flanked by two
sets of lower flanges that sweep away from it with quarter-inch spacing.
This lattice of elevated bone helps hold the cerebellum securely in
place. (The cerebellum is the lower rear part of the brain which
functions as the coordinating center for muscular movement.) The Starchildcompletely lacks any sign of an inner occipital protuberance, meaning it
might also lack a cerebellum as we know it. If that is true, the Starchild may well have had a brain very unlike a human brain, which
supports the argument that it might have been an alien or an alien-
human hybrid.
Typical human neck muscle attachments begin at the inion, the bump in
the middle of the occipital bone, and sweep out in a semicircle that
reaches to the mastoid bones just behind the ears and converges at the
foramen magnum. The distance from any part of the semicircle to the
foramen opening averages a little over 2 inches (5 to 6 centimeters). In
the Starchild's skull a shallow arc of muscle attachments extends about
one inch (2-3 centimeters) from the foramen hole, while the inion has
disappeared and been replaced by a slight depression in the occipital
bone. Such a drastic reduction in muscle attachment area means the
Starchild's neck must have been from 1/2 to 1/3 that of a normal human.
Not surprisingly, such thin necks are consistently described as
hallmarks of Grays and Gray-human hybrids.
In humans the area for chewing muscle attachments is the entire side of
the head, from just behind the eye orbits up to the line where the skull
stops being vertical and begins arcing over to become the crown, all the
way back and down to above and behind the ears. It is quite an extensive
area. The Starchild, on the other hand, has an area for chewing muscle
attachments that is every bit as reduced as the attachment area for its
neck muscles, about 1/2 to 1/3 that of a normal human. And though they
are called "chewing" muscles, they also connect and hold the lower jaw (mandible)
to the skull. Based on such a greatly reduced attachment area, the
mandible size these muscles could have secured would be equally reduced,
and such a reduced lower face area is also a hallmark of Grays and their
hybrids.
