Lloyd Pye

Lloyd Pye (1946-) is an American author who is famous for advocating an ancient astronaut proposal for the origin of human life by deliberate intervention by extraterrestrial life. He is the author of four books, including Everything You Know Is Wrong - Book One: Human Origins. He also gives lectures and has made television appearances in support of his ideas on The Learning Channel, National Geographic Channel, Extra, Animal Planet, and The Richard & Judy Show in the United Kingdom. Pye's ideas have been criticized for contradicting the evolutionary model of human origins currently accepted by the mainstream scientific community.

Biography

Pye was born in Houma, Louisiana, where he earned a football scholarship to Tulane University in New Orleans. After graduating in 1968 with a B.S. in psychology, he joined the U.S. Army as a military intelligence specialist.

In addition to his other works, Pye has written two novels: A Darker Shade of Red, based on his college football career at Tulane and Mismatch, a high-tech thriller about "phone phreaking", computer hacking, and submarine warfare.

Claims and beliefs

In his non-fiction books, Pye focuses on cryptozoology, especially hominoid cryptids such as Bigfoot and Yeti. In his book Everything You Know Is Wrong he claims that these animals are Earth's only indigenous bipedal primates, and that early hominids such as Neanderthals and Australopithecines are not the only intermediates in human evolution. From this premise, Pye claims that early hominids could not have been the ancestors of modern humans, denying the established scientific consensus supporting common descent. By incorporating the "ancient astronaut" ideas of Zecharia Sitchin, he proposes that deliberate genetic manipulation of existing hominid populations by alien beings produced Cro-Magnon, or early modern humans. Pye proposes that the first modern human peoples were the ancient Sumerians, whom Stichin claims had knowledge of aspects of modern astronomy such as the existence of Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto.

The "Starchild skull"

See also: Starchild skull

In the late 1990s, Pye obtained a curiously shaped human child's skull from a couple in El Paso, Texas. The skull was reportedly found in a mine tunnel in northern Mexico, buried beside a skeleton of a morphologically typical human female adult lying exposed on the floor of the mine tunnel. The unusual skull has an enlarged though symmetrical cranium, and while it contains most of the complement of normal human bones, they are greatly distorted in shape, e.g. lacking an external occipital protuberance. Carbon 14 dating shows that the skull is 900 years old + or - 40 years. Pye proposes that the abnormal skull is the product of a human/alien crossbreeding program. He refers to this being as a "Starchild" and the skull as the "Starchild skull". Pye has subsequently arranged for funding and scientific testing in an attempt to demonstrate that the skull's genetic heritage is extraterrestrial.

Several tests have been performed on the skull at different labs, most funded by Pye and his supporters. Tests have included CAT scans, X-rays, radiocarbon dating by carbon 14, bone scans, scanning electron microscope analysis, mitochondrial DNA analysis, and nuclear DNA recovery.

In 1999, a chromosomal analysis of the skull was attempted by the BOLD Laboratory in Vancouver. This analysis showed that the skull's nuclear DNA responded slightly to an amelogenin primer. At only 200 picograms of DNA recovered, it was well under the usual minimum recovery value of 1000 picograms needed to make a reliable determination. However, the BOLD lab felt sufficient confidence in their result to announce that the Starchild was a fully human male child.

Because Pye was unconvinced by the BOLD Lab analysis, he arranged for a more detailed analysis of mitochondrial DNA extracted from both the skull of the purported Starchild and the adult female skeleton found with it. The results of this analysis from Trace Genetics became available in 2003. Human mtDNA was extracted from both the skull of the purported Starchild and that of the adult female found nearby. Nuclear DNA was also extracted from the adult female in two PCR reactions. The lab reported that both the Starchild Skull and adult female had mtDNA consistent with Native American origin, haplogroup C and haplogroup A, respectively, which also excluded a "mother-offspring relationship between the two individuals". This demonstrates that the Starchild's mother was human, as mtDNA is passed to offspring maternally. Pye claims that the lack of nuclear DNA from the Starchild skull but not from the adult supports his hypothesis.

Carbon dating of the skull shows that the skull is likely to be around 900 years old. This is consistent with the remains' apparent Native American origin suggested by the DNA evidence.

Criticism

Skeptics note that the skull of a person suffering from hydrocephalus is very similar to the Starchild skull.

Pye's ideas have been subject to criticism by the scientific skepticism movement, generally citing a lack of any compelling evidence for the grander claims, and the dubious status of the smaller. One example is the unusual skull mentioned above, which Pye proposes is the product of a human/alien crossbreeding program. Steven Novella of the New England Skeptical Society suggested in 1999 that the odd shape is caused by congenital hydrocephalus, a comparatively common affliction rarely noticed in developed countries due to its ease of treatment. Pye claims that 900 years ago, when the Starchild was born, congenital hydrocephalus would very likely have caused death long before its teeth had a chance to erupt and then be heavily worn by use.

Novella points out that if a child suffered from untreated hydrocephalus until age four or five, their skull would display distortions in almost every feature. All of the proper bones, prominences, holes, and sutures would be present, as they are in the Starchild skull (except for its missing inion on the occipital), but they would be deformed and displaced, as they are in the Starchild skull. Some cases of hydrocephalus can build up over time, so a child with this disorder could survive several years, and if untreated (today hydrocephalus is treatable with surgery to drain the fluid) would probably die at several years of age.

The concept of (proto) humans interbreeding with aliens has been brought into question. All life on earth is remarkably closely related on a molecular biological scale - as demonstrated by the universal role of DNA, RNA, translation, and the genetic code. Although DNA and proteins could be supposed to be prerequisites for any form of complex organic life, the arbitrary nature of the genetic code suggests that completely independently evolved alien life would have an entirely different code. Hence, alien "genes" might not be compatible with the human protein expression apparatus, in which case cross breeding could not occur. However, in vitro conception between different species remains a possibility. On this subject, Carl Sagan has remarked that during a normal sexual encounter "humans are more likely to interbreed with a petunia" than an alien species.

Furthermore, humans and other organisms are extremely closely related on the genetic scale: for example, humans share between 97% and 99% of their genomic DNA sequence with chimpanzees, and about 30 percent of all human proteins are identical in sequence to the corresponding chimp protein (see Chimpanzee Genome Project). Phylogenetic comparisons of mitochondrial and ribosomal DNA across species ranging from humans to bacteria verify the evolutionary relationships suggested by the fossil record. Current genetic evidence therefore suggests an intimate genetic relationship between humans and other terrestrial organisms, and provides a strong contrary argument to Pye's claims of alien interbreeding. Pye counters by saying that humans have only 46 chromosomes, while all other higher primates have 48, which does not sound to him like natural evolution at work. This has recently been explained as the fusion of two ancestral chromosomes, see Ken Miller.

A comparison of mitochondrial DNA sequences from humans, Neanderthals and chimps demonstrates the relatedness of all three species, and the intermediacy of Neanderthals.

Pye's claims that Neanderthals and other early hominids were not related to humans is viewed as incorrect by the scientific community. Extraction of mitochondrial DNA from the original German Neanderthal fossil, and comparison to modern humans and chimpanzees demonstrated that the Neanderthals sequence was effectively intermediate between humans and chimps. Moreover, Neanderthals were sufficiently distinct to be recognized as a separate species.

A number of the supposedly unanswered mysteries that Pye poses in his book Everything You Know Is Wrong have also been criticized. For example:

• Pye claims "humans use only about 10% of our massively supercharged brains". This long-standing myth originated with phrenology. Brain imaging methods appear to refute the 10% brain use statement. For example, positron emission tomography (PET) scans show that much of the brain is active during many different tasks.
• Pye claims that the human genetic array as it exists today is "only 150,000 to 200,000 years old". In fact, certain human genes such as those encoding histones are common to all eukaryotes and identical to many other primates' histone genes, and are more than 1.8 billion years old.

Books

• A Darker Shade of Red
• Mismatch
• Everything You Know is Wrong - Book One: Human Evolution
• The Starchild Skull

See also

• Creation–evolution controversy

External links

Lloyd Pye's websites

• Lloyd Pye's website
• Lloyd Pye's Starchild Project
• Lloyd Pye's Official YouTube Channel

Third party sources

• Steven Novella (2006). "The NESS » The Starchild Project". New England Skeptical Society. Retrieved 2009-11-20.