It is Indiana Jones, but you would think it is Don Quichote. Like The Da Vinci Code, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull got a lot of mainstream media attention, with specifically the magazines and newspapers decided to launch a crusade against crystal skulls.
Archaeology published a particularly bad article (no doubt because it had to be rushed into print) by Jane Walsh of the Smithsonian. Specifically, Jane Walsh called Mitchell-Hedges a “yarn-spinner extraordinaire” – not the most scientific of wording, and an allegation that is not supported by any examples or details.
Despite the officialdom of archaeology claiming all skulls are fake, the Paris and British Museum skulls were nevertheless pushed forward as museum flagships, hoping they would bring extra visitors.

On April 18, 2008, the Quai Branly museum felt it had to release a press statement that the skull was “probably” made in the 19th century. In the statement, the museum said that results of an analysis of its skull in 2007-2008 by the country’s C2RMF research and restoration centre “seem to indicate that it was made late in the 19th century.” Note the word “seem”.
Another article, on the British Museum skull, read: “The London skull was examined twice, in 1996 and 2004, and both studies tended to prove it was a fake, though the final conclusions have not been made public.” What are we to make of statements like “tended to prove”? There is either proof, or there isn’t. Everything else is evidence, and up for interpretation.
All of the articles sang from the same hymn-sheet: how evidence of wheels “proved” they are not pre-Columbian; the Boban connection; the speculation about possible German origins. All of this “evidence” has been countered in the rebuttal article and the “German connection” is so unsubstantiated that even the newspaper and magazine articles used words like “may”, “probably” or “could” – but there is no evidence for it. It is purely a theory by Jane Walsh, unsupported by any evidence.

The various stories that have been published highlight how badly one-sided the debate has become, but this is typical of the mainstream media’s approach to “news” in general. And what are we to make of the “Skull of Doom” – also known as the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull – being labelled the “skull of destiny”?
AFP even decided it would invent its own variation of the “gathering of the skulls” legend, highlighting it either got that from a new age webpage, or just invented it altogether. Note no-one is quoted: “Each skull was supposed to correspond to 12 worlds in which human life was present. They were brought by the Itza, the ancient people of Atlantis, to their civilisation in order to pass on their knowledge to man. The 13th world, the land, also had its own crystal skull, and all 13 skulls were kept in a great pyramid by the Olmecs, the Mayas and ultimately the Aztecs. The Aztecs are said to have been responsible for the dispersal and loss of the skulls, which when brought together possessed great powers, including being lined up on the last day of the Maya calendar - December 21, 2012 - to prevent the earth from tipping over.” And one wonders why no-one is buying newspapers anymore!

This “crystal skulls war” has brought about another divide, which only few journalists seem to have noticed: that between archaeologists and their claims/interpretations, and that of anthropology/living traditions. For example: archaeologists stick around Jane Walsh, who almost single-handedly leads the archaeologists’ assault, claiming that all crystal skulls are 19th century fabrications. Yet it is clear that Mayans in Middle America have a living tradition about a gathering of the skulls. Indeed, social beliefs change over time, but the Guatemalan shamans were uttering these beliefs before the crystal skulls achieved any notoriety whatsoever, suggesting their opinions were genuinely their own – which implies also that archaeologists have it dead wrong.
For example, in the jungles of southern Mexico, the Lacandon, the last unassimilated Mayas, still have communities that worship crystal skulls. In the shadow of the Palenque ruins, Lacandon priest K’in Garcia fans copal incense and holds a heavy crystal skull above his head during ceremonies for Hacha’kyum, the Mayan god of creation. Garcia, the son of the Lancandon’s most respected elder, Chan Kin, believes the skull has special powers, including the ability to stave off sickness and deforestation in the rain forest where the last Lacandon still live. “When I am alone at night, at about 2 a.m., it starts to glow, it emits light, and it stays like that for about a minute,” says Garcia, underlining that in his eyes, the skull has otherworldy, if not supernatural, connotations.

As we head towards 2012, there is one clear new development, which is that the Mayans, after centuries of oppression, are now becoming ever stronger, ever more socially sure about their self-identity, and their desire to have social respect. A most remarkable change for the better occurred on April 23, 2008, when a television station that once was the voice of the Guatemalan military dictatorship that had massacred thousands of Mayans, showed the glyph of the day from the millennial Mayan calendar and announced itself as ”TV Maya: Guatemala’s multi-cultural station.”
The station, funded by the Guatemalan Academy of Mayan Languages (ALMG), broadcasts for 30 minutes, three times a day, showing programs that teach Mayan culture, worldview and language. Its programs are broadcast in indigenous languages with Spanish subtitles.
The station will be of particular importance in healing the wounds of the past and creating unity in Guatemala, a country that is sixty percent indigenous, with 22 different linguistic groups of Maya, as well as Garifuna and Xinca. It continues the country’s commitment to peace accords made in 1996, after the Guatemalan military adopted a ‘’scorched earth” policy in its efforts to fight leftist guerillas. That policy left more than 200,000 people dead, most of them rural Mayans. It is a massacre that has, as is usual for Central and Southern America, hardly received any attention from the international media – not even from those who claim to help Mayan knowledge enter the West.

With the rise of the Maya, there might be an interest clash on the horizon, once they have the self-assurance to “pick a fight” with the archaeologists who, from their ivory towers in “Colonial Headquarters” seem to continue to dictate what the truth should be – rather than could be, or is.

Philip Coppens is a journalist and researcher. He has been writing on the crystal skulls since 1995. His website is www.philipcoppens.com.

Posted: 04|21|08 at 7:54 am. Category: The Skull: Controversy.
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