Importing skeletal mesh separates the mesh

so I have this mesh


this is supposed to be one mesh, right? the problem is UE4 automatically seperates it into the palm, then the lower arm and fingers, then the upper arm. its weird. then it does it for both the right and left. how do I prevent this from happening, either through blender or UE4?

I don’t know the particulars for Blender, but for skeletal meshes in UE4 you need to make sure that the bones all have the same root bone/object that they are linked to, otherwise it will separate them out to multiple skeletal meshes based on each root bone.

Thank you. im an idiot so I cant even work on this right now, because while deleting the mesh that failed to import I deleted my player controller, my hud, my game mode, my game state, and maybe other things. Who knows?!? kill me.