A Peruvian cave packed with hundreds of pre-Hispanic artifacts has some believing in aliens, spurring grave robbers to steal the mummies and other historical items to sell on the black market.
Leandro Rivera discovered the cavern in the Nazca region of Peru’s southern coast by change.
The area is famed for the Nazca lines, which are incisions on the desert floor forming birds and other animals visible from the air.
The ancient geoglyphs, as the lines are called, have long drawn the fascination of believers in extraterrestrials.
So when Rivera found the cave, where he found the remains of human bodies with elongated heads and what appeared to be only three fingers on each hand, he started removing and hawking them.
Now in prison for unearthing the treasures — he was convicted in 2022 for the unique crime of assault on public monuments — Rivera’s story was brought into the spotlight after two of the deformed mummies he discovered ended up in Mexico at congressional hearings on UFOs and extraterrestrial life.
Mexican journalist and UFO enthusiast Jaime Maussan exhibited them as a sign of life beyond Earth, but his claim was dismissed by scientists.
Rivera said he removed up to 200 sets of remains from the cave before he was caught, and some were smuggled to France, Spain and Russia. The scope of the sales are sparking concerns over the black market for the stolen contents of Peru’s archaeological sites.
Mummies and other pre-Hispanic artifacts, have high prices on the black market, experts explained.
“Peru has done a lot of work to try and control this trade,” said Christopher Heaney, a Latin American history professor at Penn State University and author of “Empire of the Dead,” a book on Peruvian mummies.
“But this implies that these claims for government success need to be re-examined a bit if objects like [the bodies brought to Mexico] can leave the country.”
Trafficking of cultural items significantly increased worldwide since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, according to UNESCO and the World Customs Organization, when black market peddlers took advantage of the shift to online sales, which affords them more privacy than in-person shopping.
“Social networks have become spaces for the sale of works of art and antiques of illegal origin, and unfortunately this traffic has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Enrique Lopez-Hurtado, former coordinator of the culture sector of UNESCO Peru.
It is difficult for Peru, which shares borders with five countries and has 27 border crossings, to stop looted items from exiting the country.
At Lima’s international airport, x-ray scanners are monitored for cultural material and a majority of the offenders are tourists.
“In most cases what they are going to say is that they didn’t know,” said Rolando Mallaupoma, an archeology analyst in the recovery unit of the culture ministry.
“And there will not be any criminal action.”
