Sacred Relics or Alien Artefacts?

Although researchers have written dozens of books and hundreds of articles about crystal skulls, few have attempted to explain the origin and purpose of these sculptures. For some, the crystal skulls are 19th-century “hoaxes”; for others, they are extraterrestrial artefacts, while yet others believe they are remnants of a lost civilisation.
Perhaps the most likely explanation is that they are part and parcel of the ancient cultures, particularly the Mayan, that existed in the area of Central America where they were found. Could it be that these skulls were one of the most important relics in the sacred temple complexes? Crystal skulls speak to the imagination, but are some of these skulls and their stories too good to be true?
The English artist Damien Hirst focused his 2007 exposition “Beyond Belief” around a platinum skull completely covered by 8,601 diamonds weighing 1,106 carats. “For the Love of God” is a life-sized cast of a human skull containing a single large diamond in the middle of the forehead, reportedly worth US$4.2 million alone. Hirst financed the project himself, and estimated its cost as between £10 and £15 million (approx. US$20–US$30 million). It is the most expensive piece of contemporary art ever created. He later sold the skull to an unnamed investment group for £100 million (approx. US$200 million).
The fourth instalment of the Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, has Indy in a race against Soviet agents to find a crystal skull. In an early episode of the television series Stargate SG-1, a crystal skull was used as an artefact, left behind by an ancient extraterrestrial civilisation, which transported people between Earth and the aliens’ home world. Crystal skulls have therefore served Hollywood and the entertainment industry well. But Tinseltown’s plotlines are very much copied from existing theories about crystal skulls – one of which was insured for US$500,000, and this was 30 years ago. But what are they?
The crystal skulls began their slow climb to fame in the 1980s, largely through researcher Joshua Shapiro’s meeting Sandra Bowen and Nick Nocerino, who had a crystal skull named Sha-Na-Ra in their possession. Slowly, Shapiro became exposed to a number of other skulls, with names such as the Mayan Crystal Skull, the Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull and the Texas Crystal Skull (also known as Max, supposedly given to the people of Guatemala by a Tibetan healer).
In March 1989, Bowen, Shapiro and Nocerino’s Mysteries of the Crystal Skulls Revealed was released. The book created a vehicle through which the authors were able to “meet” several more skulls, with names such as Windsong, Rainbow, Madre, Synergy and even ones named Skully and ET. ET is a smoky quartz skull found in the early 20th century in Central America. It was given its nickname because its pointed cranium and exaggerated overbite resemble those of an alien being (and the skull is somewhat similar to the alien-looking one that Indiana Jones needs to find). ET is part of the private collection of Joke (pronounced “Yo-kay”) Van Dieten, who tours with her skulls to share the healing powers she believes they possess.
Today, there are dozens of crystal skulls in circulation. The majority of these are what are perhaps best called “second-generation” skulls – modern fabrications, owned or “worked” by people who use the skulls for healing, meditation, channelling, etc. But there are also a dozen or so skulls that appear to be older and from unknown provenance. These crystal skulls have largely appeared out of nowhere, often going straight into private collections. Only two skulls sit in museums – one in London, the other in Paris.

Controversy over Fabrication Claims

The British Museum Skull is part of the exhibit at the Museum of Mankind in London, where it is one of the most popular items on display. The label on its case reads “originally thought to have been Aztec, but recent research proves it to be European”, of late 19th-century fabrication. The museum obtained the skull for £120 in 1897 from Tiffany & Co., the New York-based jewellers. As to how Tiffany’s had acquired it, speculation was that it originated from a soldier of fortune in Mexico.
In 2004, Professor Ian Freestone, of the University of Wales at Cardiff, examined the skull and concluded that it was cut and polished with a wheeled instrument, which he said was not used by the Aztecs (see http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/9582.html). Freestone argued that the sculpture was therefore of modern, post- Columbian origin, further noting that the crystal used was common in Brazil but not Mexico – the Aztec homeland – and that “the surface of the skull, which contains tiny bubbles that glint in the light, is more sharply defined than softer-looking Aztec crystal relics with which it has been compared”. However, Freestone said that even though there was strong circumstantial evidence suggesting the artefact was 19th-century European in origin, this did not amount to cast-iron proof.
In recent years, the story of how the British Museum acquired the crystal was investigated by Dr Jane MacLaren Walsh of the US Smithsonian Institution. She concluded that the British Museum Skull and the one at Musée de l’Homme (Museum of Man) in Paris were both sold by Eugène Boban. Boban was a controversial collector of pre-Columbian artefacts and an antiques dealer who ran his business in Mexico City between around 1860 and 1880. Though it is indeed likely that Boban placed the skull at Tiffany’s for auction, there is no hard evidence. However, such evidence does exist for the Musée de l’Homme Crystal Skull, which in 1878 was donated by collector Alphonse Pinart who had bought it from Boban. Boban’s 1881 catalogue does list another crystal skull, “in rock crystal of natural human size”, selling for 3,500 French francs – the most expensive item in the catalogue. It is possible it was never sold, and hence was offered to Tiffany’s to sell at auction.
Having established these facts, however, Walsh then argued that the skulls are not genuine artefacts but instead were manufactured between 1867 and 1886 in Germany, as German craftsmen were deemed to be the only people with the skills to be able to carve these skulls.
Though Boban was indeed a controversial figure, he was, of course, no different from all the other operators on the antiquities markets in those days – some of whom made deals for treasures such as the Rosetta Stone or the Elgin Marbles that continue to upset entire nations from which they were “exported”.
However, there is no evidence – not even circumstantial – that Boban sourced these skulls from Germany. It is logical to conclude that, as Boban operated in Mexico, he may have acquired the skulls in Mexico. It would be completely logical to assume that, if they are Aztec in origin, they were offered on the Mexico City antiques market where Boban picked them up. It is the most logical scenario, yet academics seem to prefer the modern German fabrication theory for which there is no evidence. Why? Perhaps they prefer to label them as fakes so as to evade potential claims from Mexican authorities?
As to the fact that the skulls were polished with a wheeled instrument, Professor Freestone himself argued that this in itself does not mean they are modern fabrications (he examined the Paris as well as the London skull in 2004). Though Freestone, Walsh and others suggested this overturns the likelihood that the skulls are pre-Columbian, other experts like Professor Michael D. Coe of Yale University stated that evidence of wheel markings in no way proves that the skulls are modern. He actually said that although it has long been accepted that no pre-Columbian civilisation used the rotary wheel, new evidence contradicts this scientific dogma. Wafer-thin obsidian ear-spools are now known to have been made using some rotary carving equipment and to be dated to the Aztec/Mixtec period. According to Chris Morton and Ceri Louise Thomas in The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls, Coe concluded (p. 226): “People who sit in scientific laboratories don’t know the full range of the culture they’re dealing with. We really don’t know half as much about these early cultures as we think we do. People need to re-examine their beliefs.”
Walsh and some of her colleagues have largely presented Boban as a charlatan, but they’ve failed to report that Boban was known to have owned genuinely ancient artefacts as well as a collection of rare books and early Mexican manuscripts. He had even written a scientific study, “Documents pour server à l’histoire du Mexique” (”Documents to serve the history of Mexico”) (1891). Furthermore, he personally crusaded against frauds and fakes, such as in 1881 when he spoke out against forgeries that were being made in the suburbs of Mexico City. Would he shoot himself in the foot that same year by listing a fraudulent crystal skull in his catalogue?
Mentions of the German connection and claims of Boban’s dishonesty come from a single letter from one of Boban’s competitors, Wilson Wilberforce Blake. He wrote how they should buy from him, not Boban, who was “not honest”, and he made accusations that the skull Boban had sold was a forgery, insinuating that the skull had been made in Germany instead. However, no evidence was ever produced for any of these claims, and it is clear that Blake had an obvious motive as to why he wanted to smear Boban’s character: he was specifically after Boban’s share of the market.
In short, Walsh has uncovered good indications that Boban had skulls and sold them; but as to a German connection, she has relied on the words of a man who almost openly stated that he was out to smudge Boban’s ethics. As such, the story of how the crystal skulls have been treated by academics has – alas – all the usual hallmarks of how the scientific establishment treats such anomalous finds and pushes them aside, labelling them fakes. And afficionados of the genre will know that involvement of the Smithsonian Institution and the British Museum in such a controversy is not a unique event.

Archaeological Speculation

Could these skulls be genuine archaeological finds? As Morton and Thomas pointed out, Boban’s artefacts went on sale at a time when Teotihuacán, just north of Mexico City, was being excavated. Teotihuacán is one of the most important sites in the Americas, with pyramids – and a pyramid layout – on par with the pyramids of the Giza Plateau.
Boban is known to have visited the excavations; in fact, he did so in the company of Leopoldo Batres, the Inspector of Monuments. Interestingly, Blake claimed that Batres, too, was “not only a fraud but a swindler”. Even if these allegations were true, did Boban get the skull from Teotihuacán? If so, the finger of guilt should not point to Batres. In those days, half of the finds the excavators made ended up on the black market, while the other half became part of the “archaeological record”. It is known that even the great Howard Carter, in his exploration of the Tutankhamun tomb – heralded as the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century – fell victim to this.
Either way, concluding that the skulls are genuine archaeological treasures is more logical – and better documented – than speculating about a theoretical German connection. However, it is a fact that none of the skulls was found during an archaeological excavation – that is, apart from the so-called Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull, named after its discoverer, the adventurer F. A. (Mike) Mitchell-Hedges, if we believe the “official” version of its find. This skull is by far the most beautiful, detailed and complex, and consists of two parts: the skull itself and a separate jawbone which allows for movement, as if the head is speaking. Famed science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke used an image of this skull as the logo for his popular television series Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World.
The official version goes that the skull was found in the ruins of Lubantuun in Belize (then British Honduras) in 1924 during an archaeological survey of the site, though controversy reigns over this conclusion. This “Skull of Doom”, as Mitchell-Hedges himself labelled it, was not referenced until 1931 as being in existence.
In his autobiography Danger My Ally (1954), Mitchell-Hedges stated that “the Skull of Doom is made of pure rock crystal and according to scientists it must have taken 150 years, generation after generation working all days of their lives, patiently rubbing down with sand an immense block of rock crystal until the perfect skull emerged”. He continued: “It is at least 3,600 years old and according to legend was used by the High Priest of the Maya when performing esoteric rites. It is said that when he willed death with the help of the skull, death invariably followed. It has been described as the embodiment of all evil.” For a man who had “danger” as his “ally”, he obviously tried to frighten his readers with the power of this object.
So, Mitchell-Hedges associated the crystal skull with the Maya in 1600 BC – when the Maya were not yet around. Noting Mitchell-Hedges’s interest in finding evidence for Atlantis, many people have argued that the skull is therefore a relic of this earlier civilisation. What the sceptics have made of this can be easily divined…

A Crystal Legacy

Today, three main theories exist about what crystal skulls are and where they come from. One argument states that they are an extraterrestrial legacy; another that they are remnants of a lost civilisation (often to be read as Atlantis), both of which are favoured on the New Age circuit. For the sceptics, they are “obviously” late-19th-century fabrications from Germany. A fourth theory, however, might be closer to the truth.
The problem of the crystal skulls is that they are made of crystal. Quartz crystal does not age; it does not corrode, erode, decay or change in any way with time. It cannot be carbon dated. A skull could be hundreds if not thousands of years old, yet still look as if it was made yesterday – and vice versa. Hence, other means of dating had to be devised, and so evidence of skulls having been polished with wheels has become the key determinant of whether they are modern/post-Columbian or “genuine” archaeological artefacts.
As mentioned, Michael Coe has scorned those laboratory scientists who have preached against the authenticity of the skulls. And rightfully so, as one skull, owned by Mexican Norma Redo, is mostly notorious, at least for some, as the skull that supports a large crucifix on its top. The skull shows similar “evidence” of wheelwork, but from his analysis archaeologist Dr Andrew Rankin argued that the skull was sculpted from the same crystal as that of the crystal goblet from tomb no. 7 at Monte Albán, which is an uncontested archaeological find. Furthermore, the 1571 hallmark on the crucifix is also deemed to be genuine, thus in general excluding the likelihood that this skull is of 19th century European fabrication. In short, this hard evidence confirms what Michael Coe has argued: that the Maya apparently do seem to have been able to work with crystal… and thus may have made the crystal skulls after all.
However, the Maya would not have been the only ancient civilisation to have mastered working with crystal. Robert Temple’s The Crystal Sun (2000), subtitled Rediscovering a lost technology of the ancient world, was promoted thus: “Based upon 33 years of research all over the world, in museums from Stockholm to Shanghai, from Athens to Cairo, and in thousands of books in several languages, Robert Temple has reconstructed a wholly forgotten story: the story of light technology in ancient civilisation. It goes back at least to 2600 BC in Old Kingdom Egypt, and continues throughout Western antiquity.”
Temple’s quest began when he spoke to Arthur C. Clarke about the Mitchell-Hedges Skull, whereby British science historian Derek Price, who is most famous for his study of the Antikythera device (another anomalous archaeological discovery that only recently has received serious academic attention), then spoke to him about the Layard Lens as another example of our forefathers having worked with crystal.
In the mid-19th century, English archaeologist Sir John Layard excavated the remains of Babylon and Nineveh. In 1850, during the excavation of the throne room of the Assyrian King Sargon II’s palace, he discovered a lens. It is dated to 721–705 BC and is currently – also – in the British Museum. It is considered to be the first used (or found) plano-convex lens.
Temple notes on his website: “…this rock crystal lens, now cracked and considerably damaged, was originally a perfect convex lens with a flat (’plane’) base, which was ground in a special way known to opticians as ‘toroidal’ – a technique only available for the public since about 1900. Such grinding produces lenses to correct for individual cases of astigmatism. It would be possible to go out into the street today and find someone whose astigmatism was perfectly corrected by the Layard Lens… It is most extraordinary that such a high technology existed in the 8th century BC. And not a single Assyriologist has acknowledged the publication of my study of this important object except for the one who encouraged me in the first place; he was curious as to what the results would be. So it appears that the community of Assyriologists find it convenient not to ’see’ my book.”
Why? Largely because, as with the crystal skulls, the establishment believes – for that is what it is – that only from the 19th century were “we” able to do such things.
However, archaeologists are not totally denying the existence of lenses in antiquity, as evidenced in a study by George Sines and Yannis A. Sakellarakis (American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 91, no. 2, April 1987), reporting how “…a recent find in the Idaean Cave in Crete of two rock crystal lenses of unusually good optical quality led to this investigation of other lenses from antiquity. The evidence indicates that the use of lenses was widespread throughout the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin over several millennia.” They added: “The use of lenses as burning glasses in Classical Greece is noted, as is the need for magnifying lenses to authenticate seal impressions.”

Scientific Scrutiny of the “Skull of Doom”

In 1936, eminent anthropologist G. M. Morant and Adrian Digby, a future Keeper of the Department of Ethnology at the British Museum, analysed the Mitchell-Hedges Skull and argued that it is not of modern workmanship. Digby wrote: “… in neither case [they analysed the British Museum Skull as well] is there any trace of identifiable tool marks, and it is certain that neither specimen was made with steel tools. On the teeth there is no trace of a lapidary’s wheel which would betray one or both specimens as being of comparatively recent origin.” Writing in the journal Man in July 1936 (vol. 36), they both commented that the skull’s detachable lower jaw would have taken the creator – whoever he was – many hundreds if not thousands of hours of extra work, and that thus there would have to have been an important reason why the jaw had to be detached – more so than for purely artistic reasons. In 1964, Anna “Sammy” Mitchell-Hedges – the adventurer’s adopted daughter and custodian of the Skull of Doom – lent the skull to Frank and Mabel Dorland, famous art experts and restorers. Dorland commenced his study by taking many photographs from various angles. He also used a binocular microscope to create a three-dimensional image of the skull.
During this scientific analysis, the skull also seemed to reveal a magical dimension. One evening, Dorland finished his work too late for the skull to be returned to its vault in the Mill Valley Bank. So he took the skull home, placing it next to the fire he had lit for the evening. He then noticed how the light of the fire was reflected through the eyes of the skull. This made him realise that the skull allowed certain optical effects to be produced – though other stories state that throughout the entire evening the house was also a hive of poltergeist activity.
Dorland discovered that the optical effects were the result of how the skull had been carved, which gave him even further insights into the precision of the workmanship. He observed that there was a type of “layering” on top of the skull, which made the skull behave like an amplifying glass. The back of the skull channelled the light through the eye sockets at the front of the head. While no one would be able to see what was happening from behind the skull, anyone looking at the face would perceive a spectacular series of images that would appear to come from within the skull itself.
Finally, Dorland discovered two holes at the bottom of the skull that are invisible when the skull is positioned upright. The holes can be used so that the skull can be swung without falling over. Together with the detachable jaw, this was a further indication that this skull was not a mere display object but had been created to perform certain functions: to move, if not pretend to speak (via the detachable jaw), and to “project” certain images to the observer standing in front of it.
In December 1970, Dorland took the skull to the laboratories of Hewlett-Packard in Santa Clara, California, at the time one of the world’s most advanced centres for computers and electronics. The lab technicians were specialists in the production of precision quartz crystals, which were used in various high-tech instruments. It meant that they were perfectly suited for trying to figure out how the skull could have been made.
One test revealed that the skull was made out of one piece of quartz, with the separate jawbone coming from the same piece. The lab technicians stated that they were unable to create a skull like that with the technology available to them in 1970. Their analysis showed that the skull exhibited three different types of workmanship, and hence they suggested that work on it was carried out over three generations, or a period of 60 to 70 years – about half the time Mitchell-Hedges argued it would have taken to make: 70 versus 150 years, a small difference nevertheless.
That three generations would have worked, day in, day out, on creating one skull was an unlikely scenario, and thus the skull was proposed to have been created with “unknown technology” – which soon became interpreted as being of alien origin or from a previous civilisation that was technologically superior to ours, which quickly got linked with Atlantis. This was, of course, what Mitchell-Hedges had always claimed: that this skull was physical evidence of a lost, advanced civilisation.
Larry LaBarre was one of the testers at Hewlett-Packard and a decade after the 1970 tests he added to his previous observations: namely, that the quartz is very hard, measuring nine out of a possible 10 on Moh’s scale, meaning that only a diamond would be able to cut it. The quartz, though of one piece, was furthermore composed of three or four growth phases, each with a different axis. Cutting it would have been extremely difficult, as hitting upon a new axis might shatter the crystal if the cutter was not careful. (This is one of the main reasons why larger diamonds are more valuable; it is not solely the stone but the workmanship involved that makes large diamonds expensive.)
As for the origin of the quartz, LaBarre suggested Calaveras County in California. However, gem expert Allan Jobbins, who researched the skulls for the Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World TV program, thought the likely origin of the crystal was Brazil.

Skull Visions and Mayan Symbolism

In recent years, controversy has raged around the creation of the skulls. With unknown provenances for them all, there are legitimate questions to pose. One of the problems is that if they are archaeological treasures, their purpose seems difficult to ascertain. Indeed, archaeologists have failed to look towards the crystal skulls as items of archaeological interest, and hence this blank canvas has been used by many people to put forward their own speculations, some more outlandish than others.
As noted, Mitchell-Hedges believed that if a Mayan priest held the “Skull of Doom” while killing someone in his thoughts, that person would die. He also believed that, equally, those not convinced of the power of the skull would die. Anna Mitchell- Hedges said that the skull “spoke” to her.
In recent times, many people have used the skulls for scrying, or visual meditation sessions. Many have reported visions, often scenes from an ancient or foreign civilisation. The scenes witnessed vary strikingly, however. Some people have reported observing scenes from Mayan history, while others have reported receiving knowledge from Atlantis.
Such landscapes might actually be due to the technological aptitude of its creator(s). Frank Dorland noted the presence of two prisms within the crystal. He argued that the artist made full use of this and that the skull was therefore perfectly suited for oracular utterances. He made a series of photographs looking into the skull; these were able to capture the series of “visions” that others have had. In some, he distinguished truncated pyramids; in others, a structure like the US Capitol Building, which has a contemporary equivalent in Chichén Itzá in the Caracol; while in still other images, several little skull shapes manifested themselves. Dorland added that these images only materialised when looking through the right eye socket and that no such shapes could be seen when staring into the left eye socket.
Such information, however interesting, does not provide any firm evidence of the crystal skull’s true purpose. For this, we need a clear frame of reference – and this has to be the Mayan civilisation, which existed until a mere four centuries before these skulls were discovered in Mexico.
One proposition came from American archaeologist Professor Sylvanus G. Morley, who argued that within the Mayan world the skull was the symbol for the number 10: “the head-variant for 10 is the death’s head, or skull, and in forming the head-variants for the numbers from 14 to 19 inclusive, the fleshless lower jaw of the death’s head was the part used to represent the value of 10 in these composite heads for the six higher numbers”.
Though once again interesting, this proposition does not bring us any closer to an understanding as to the skull’s real purpose. However, it does show that in the Mayan world the symbology of the skull was indeed important. There are stone skulls throughout the ancient Mayan kingdom. One such skull stands at the Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque and another in Tikal. Both skulls are carved at the top of a row of steps leading into a room that seems to have been a shrine. A stone skull is also found at the entrance to the cave beneath the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán. But most skulls are to be found on the Tzompantli (”Platform/Place of Skulls”), one of the most famous of which is at Chichén Itzá.

The Skull in Mayan Creation Mythology

That the skulls were discovered in the Mayan heartland is evidence which accords with the few facts that we know of their provenance. The Mayan Skull and the Amethyst Skull were allegedly found in Guatemala early in the 20th century. The Amethyst Skull is made of purple quartz and the Mayan Skull is clear, but the two are otherwise very alike. Like the Mitchell- Hedges Skull, both were studied at Hewlett-Packard and they, too, were found to be cut against the axis of the crystal, making the craftsmanship all the more difficult and the crystal all the more likely to crack or shatter during the fashioning process.
Of more direct relevance is that Nick Nocerino claims that he met a shaman in 1949 while travelling in Mexico. The shaman led him to a Mayan priest who said he was authorised to sell crystal skulls because the village needed money for food. Nocerino didn’t buy them, but he did study them. However, it was clear that someone was putting these skulls on sale in Central America. What happened then had happened before, and entire Mayan villages are known to have been “financially supported” by the sale of archaeological goods that at one point they had placed on the black market. With all that on offer, why would Boban need to source a German crystal skull, pay for it and then actually have great difficulty selling it?
Thus there is one likely and logical conclusion, which is that the skulls came from somewhere in Central America. It suggests that these skulls were acquired by certain people through “some” means that did not see the light of day, and that some time later they ended up at auction, the traceability of their origin largely erased.
But if they are of Central American origin, what purpose did the skulls serve, assuming they are archaeological treasures? It is a fact that all the sacred centres, including Lubantuun where Mitchell-Hedges allegedly discovered his crystal skull, had a Tzompantli which formed part of the sacred layout of the temple complex, which itself was a three-dimensional rendering of the Mayan creation myth.
This myth states that when playing ball, the twin maize gods disturbed the lords of Xibalba, the Mayan underworld. The Xibalbans summoned the two maize gods to the underworld to answer for their disrespectful behaviour, where they were subjected to a series of trials. When they failed these tests, they were killed and buried in the ball court of Xibalba. The elder twin was decapitated, and his head was hung in the tree next to the ball court as a warning to anyone who might repeat their offence. Later, and despite this warning, the daughter of a Xibalban lord went to visit the skull, which spoke to her, spitting in her hand and thus making her pregnant.
The site where the skull was hung was the Tzompantli, and in sites such as Chichén Itzá it is still a clearly identifiable part of the temple complex.
One of the tasks of the Mayan high priests was, of course, to “perform” the creation myth. The skull in Mayan mythology was linked with the hero’s death, but also with rebirth. It is therefore intriguing to note that the explanation of the crystal skull serving as part of the Mayan creation myth does conform roughly with Mitchell-Hedges’s interpretation of the skull’s use.
This creation story has clear parallels with the technical capabilities of the Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull. A skull made of crystal would indeed leave the impression that this was the skull of a deity, not of a mere mortal. It should be noted that the Mitchell-Hedges Skull has no suture marks on the pate. Though experts agree that adding such an effect to the skull would have been very easy to do, the absence of such marks has several connotations. It suggests the skull, though human looking, is not that of an ordinary being. It suggests that the skull’s “owner” either was born as an adult or/and was somehow a divinity, a perfect being. Furthermore, the detachable jaw would have allowed the skull to “speak”, as the hero’s skull is known to have done in the creation myth. Noting that the skull in this myth spat, the Mayans might have engineered that effect, too, through the use of the movable jaw that the Mitchell-Hedges Skull possesses.
Dorland demonstrated that, in order to give it the illusion of speaking, the skull could be moved by using the two holes in its base. A rod, thrust up through another hole in the altar and into the larger hole in the base of the skull, would provide the means whereby motion could be given to the crystal. The smaller hole in the skull’s base would serve as the receiver for a pivot point on which the skull would move. The skull’s ability to portray images would furthermore have helped the person standing in front of it to have visions or at least be able to dream away…

A New Era and the “Gathering of the Skulls”

This brings us to another often overlooked question which few people have asked: why crystal? As already mentioned, crystal skulls are now frequently used for scrying, and the use of crystal balls in mediaeval Europe was very similar to the modern use of crystal skulls in the New Age community. However, within a Mayan framework, we can go much further.
Part of the Mayan creation myth was the lighting of a New Fire, in a so-called New Fire Ceremony which also signalled the start of a new era. The New Fire, made by the gods, was a key aspect of the “esoteric rites” – to quote Mitchell-Hedges.
Today, this type of ceremony is best known in the lighting of the Olympic Flame which occurs in the run-up to a new era – the Olympiad – in the Greek temple of Olympia. Here, 11 women, playing the roles of the priestesses who were originally responsible for keeping the temple’s sacred fires alight, perform a ceremony in which the torch is kindled by the light of the Sun, its rays concentrated by a parabolic mirror. As already noted, lenses were used in antiquity to concentrate light. In Greece, fire had divine connotations, and legends state that it had been stolen from the god Zeus by Prometheus. But Greece was but one of dozens of civilisations, whether in the Old or the New World, in which fire played an important and sacred role. The Mayan civilisation was another.
It is therefore of great interest to know that the Mitchell-Hedges Skull is able to start a fire if the Sun’s rays fall at a particular angle on the back of the skull. Visually, it would mean that the bright sunlight coming out of the nose, mouth and eyes would start a fire, very much like the sacred fire in Olympia. Rather than use a parabolic mirror, did the ancient Mayans use a crystal skull to light the New Fire, the core ingredient that marked the start of a new era?
If this interpretation is the correct one, then there would have been one skull per religious site. This would make them very rare – but we already know that these skulls are indeed extremely rare. Though at present there is no hard evidence to prove it, this theory has the advantage of fitting with all the available evidence – unlike some more “academic” theories. If correct, it does make the crystal skulls powerful symbols: the residence of gods. And it is perhaps not a coincidence that the crystal from which the Mitchell-Hedges Skull was made is the same material used in modern technological appliances to store information.
It is clear that some of the “psychic communications” between some people and the skulls make for “extravagant” and at best unlikely claims. Sceptics have had a field day with tales of how the skulls are of alien origin, perhaps from such star systems as the Pleiades or Orion, and claims that they may be hundreds of thousands of years old.
But someone listening to a record with a broken needle will hear a very distorted communication. He is likely to conclude that the needle needs replacing and that this will thus allow him to hear the record correctly. In the case of the crystal skulls – made out of a material that is known to be able to store information and to be an electrical conduit – could it be that we have the record but we are still in search of the correct record-player?
For their book, Morton and Thomas interviewed several North, Central and South American Indians. Time and again, the authors were confronted with stories of how these crystal skulls are important. They were told that the Maya had a total of 13 such skulls – 13 being an important number for them and, interestingly, derived from the number of joints in the human body (ankles, knees, hips, wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck). We can only speculate on whether there were 13 primary temple complexes in the Mayan world, that each had a crystal skull, and that somehow these skulls formed a network. Either way, the Native Americans argue that these 13 skulls should be reunited, with 12 skulls in a circle and a 13th in the centre. Though this imagery has become very popular within the New Age community as a “Gathering of the Skulls”, believed to signal a New Age of Enlightenment, it may be nothing more – or less – than the Native Americans remembering their common heritage and what the crystal skulls originally represented.

Philip Coppens
This article appeared in NEXUS Magazine, April-May 2008 edition

History or hokum?

Santa Clara’s crystal lab helps tackle the case of the hard-headed Honduran…

Let the doors squeak, the shutters rattle, the curtains shake, the cats run, the dogs whimper, the bats flutter, the mists swirl and the moon blaze. Ignore the heavy footsteps in the hall, the creaking stairs, the labored breathing beyond the door. Listen, instead, to a tale of true mystery involving prehistoric cults, lost civilizations, the “granddaddy of all crystal skulls,” and some scientific sleuthing by members of the HP crystal lab at Santa Clara Division. Centerpiece of this tantalizing tale is a clear quartz crystal sculpture the size and shape of a human skull estimated to be as much as 120 centuries old. Known as the Mitchell-Hedges Skull, after the name of its discoverer, it is an object of fantastic sculptural perfection. No other quartz crystal sculpture approaches its quality; even the British Museum’s crystal skull, discovered in Mexico in 1889, is classed as a “rough cut” in comparison.
The now-elderly owner, Anna Mitchell-Hedges, discovered the mysterious skull in 1927 on an expedition with her explorer father to the ruins of a Mayan Temple in British Honduras. The two-part sculpture – head and detached jaw – lay under a collapsed altar. Since then, it has alternately been under study or in safe keeping, most recently in a house on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais to the north of San Francisco. Here, in the temporary custody of a free-lance art conservator and restorer named Frank Dorland, it came to the attention of Dick Garvin, writer and supervisor of the Hewlett-Packard advertising account at the San Francisco office of Lennen & Newell. In a co-authored new book titled “The world of the twilight believers”, Garvin discussed the other-worldly aspects of the skull in one of the chapters on far-out phenomena. Then he arranged for Dorland to bring the skull to the HP Santa Clara lab in order to test certain theories and speculations about its composition.
The lab, of course, is exactly the right place for testing quartz crystal. That is one of its day-to-day occupations. Its major mission, according to Jim Pruett, components manager for the Frequency Standards team, is the production of precision quartz oscillator crystals used in HP oscillators and quartz crystal thermometers. The lab purchases raw one-pound Brazilian crystals and, with the aid of many skills, converts them into gold-plated wafers that vibrate at a precise frequency.
For the Mitchell-Hedges skull the lab performed two significant tests. Submerging the sculpture in a bath of index-matching fluid, and viewing it under polarized light, the lab people first determined that it was almost certainly a single crystal of quartz, rather than a composite of three crystals as Dorland had suspected. Next, they probed the lower-jaw question. Was it originally an integral part of the crystal? The orientation of its X-Y axis and the “veils” revealed by the polarized light showed that it had indeed come from the same crystal.
These findings raise again many of the same questions that have followed the skull-shaped rock crystal since its discovery – or rediscovery – in the ruins of Lubaantun. Where did it come from? Is it phony or for real? Some experts assign its origin to various Central American civilizations including the Aztecs, Mixtecs or the Olmecs. Dorland suggests it may have come from Egypt, Tibet or China, and may have been roughed out as much as 12,000 years ago. How then did it come to British Honduras?
Dorland believes the skull originally was used in prehistoric religious ceremonies. At that time it resembled the British Museum work, its jaw attached, its workmanship less finished. Later, sea-going Phoenicians brought it to Central America, perhaps even by way of the lost city of Atlantis. Mayan or Aztec craftsmen then detached the jaw so that it could be animated and made to serve as an oracle, dispensing judgments from atop a trick alter. This fateful role was enhanced by the prismatic qualities of the skull; flames or light placed under or behind the skull are projected eerily through the eye sockets.
If it is phony, it’s a very artistic one. Quartz crystal is an extremely hard material – hard in the sense that a diamond is hard, and hard to work with. The size and clarity of the 11-pound, 7-ounce Mitchell-Hedges skull made it a rarity. The workmanship is exquisite, a compound of patient hand crafting (using sand and water to smoothly abrade the rock) and technical precision requiring an estimated 300 man-years of effort.
“One of our guys kidded that he might be able to duplicate it if you gave him a year and $100,000″, said Jim Pruett.
“There’s no way of proving its age. A lot of the occult aura – tales of mystery and evil – that have sprung up around it could easily come from its eyes. By shifting a light source or when an observer moves his view even slightly, an infinite variety of refraction patterns can be seen. They could be quite hypnotic.
“I look on it as a very beautiful work of art irrespective of its age or authenticity. There’s no denying that!’

Photo captions

Frank Dorland, keeper of the Mitchell-Hedges skull for a number of years, demonstrates its prismatic qualities. Dorland has advanced many of the far-ranging theories concerning the skull, including the belief that it originated in China, Tibet or Egypt, then was transported by ancient sea-goers to South America by way of Atlantis. The skull is now back in possession of Miss Mitchell-Hedges who discovered it under a ruined altar in an abandoned Mayan temple in British Honduras in 1927. Its sale price to museums is said to be $250,000 but it also is described as “priceless”.

The Mayan mystery head attracted lively attention among Santa Clarans during its two-day stay there last December [1970]. Tests run in the division’s crystal lab help establish its composition. It was found to be a single quartz crystal. It was also determined that the detached jaw came from the same crystal. But other mysteries surrounding its origin remain unsolved.

Jim Pruett, components manager on Santa Clara’s Frequency Standards team, reviews one of the polarized-light setups used to the test the skull. Later, the quartz crystal object was immersed in an index-matching fluid that allowed polarized light to reveal veils and crystalline structure.

Published in Hewlett-Packard’s Measure, February 1971.

[Show as slideshow]

The article is published here conform to the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107, specifically to allow verification for researchers that the Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull was indeed subjected to an analysis at Hewlett-Packard.

Nothing revealed: the skull on British TV & the Smithsonian Channel

The (channel) five documentary “Revealed” that ran on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 (repeated on June 29), as well as on the Smithsonian Channel on July 10, 2008, titled “Legend of The Crystal Skulls” was – alas – another documentary trying to offer bogus revelations, in obvious efforts to make the documentary more than it was. At a time when dozens of documentaries are done on the skull, it is hard for lower-budget productions to get sold and hype is often the preferred method of the sales pitch. Alas, it is a sign of our times that television makers feel their documentaries need to be the absolute this, or absolute that – when it isn’t by a long shot.
We feel particularly aggrieved by the documentary makers’ depiction of Anna Mitchell-Hedges as a liar, which they somehow felt necessary to hammer home the point they hoped to make. But it is particularly annoying to see how throughout the length of the documentary, there were dozens of inaccuracies and false claims. Jane Walsh herself is probably not all too pleased either by the words put in her mouth, namely that she was the one that uncovered the 1943 Sotheby sale records for the skull, or the implied references to the MAN 1936 article discovery.

The gravest of errors committed by the documentary is that it accepted the false premise that pre-Columbian cultures did not have any tools to make the skulls. It is none other than Michael Coe who has said this statement should not be taken as dogma, yet it is precisely that which several researchers, whether Jane Walsh, Margaret Sax, or television producers such as those making this documentary, hold. It is similar to the stance archaeologists have held – and largely continue to hold – that earthquakes have never been responsible for the demise of cities or civilisations, whereas there is overwhelming scientific evidence that they are. But denial…
Furthermore, the full verdict of the Hewlett-Packard and British Museum claims – both of whom did extensive testing on the skulls, unlike the few hours Walsh has spent with the skull – were not all fully put together and explained, as if they did not matter.

However, there is worse. This picture shows to what length a director or editor will go to support arguments by false imagery.

They who accuse Mike and Anna Mitchell-Hedges of falsifying their evidence have fallen into their own trap. Thomas Gann has been airbrushed out of the original picture and it was actually he, not Mitchell-Hedges, who used the dynamite. Mitchell-Hedges favoured the method of burning back the vegetation as it was so dense… Dynamite was – however much modern archaeologists seem to hate it – a method their predecessors used to excavate with.
Unless we are accused of inventing these claims, we quote what was said about Gann: “He couldn’t get into the temples very easily and was wondering what was in the centre and the easiest thing was to blow it up,” says Mas. “Perhaps that’s why they named the site the falling stones. Everything collapsed and he didn’t find anything. It’s a shame.”
www.atlanticcallcentres.ca/comment/columnists/article/196456
Then there is Harvard University’s R.E. Merwin who visited the site in 1914 and made off with three priceless ball-court markers, which are now on display in Harvard’s Peabody Museum. It seems Mitchell-Hedges was an amateur – derived from the Latin word for “love” – in the true sense of the word, and no other sense.

The end conclusion is therefore simple: the producers have tampered with copyrighted material to suit their own case, in the most circumspect of manners: in this case the villain was airbrushed out and the one man left standing was to blame alongside his so called “bankroll”!
Furthermore, Lady Richmond-Brown was not twisted into coming on the trip; she was diagnosed with cancer and in that respect, as Mitchell-Hedges put it, “had nothing to loose”. She did return for a second visit, but was too ill for the third. She wrote her own book (Unknown Tribes Uncharted Seas), as did Jane Harvey Houlson (Blue Blaze). Both were ecstatic from their experiences with Mitchell-Hedges, but such supportive evidence was not used in the documentary.

Though we understand that documentaries want to provide a lot of airtime to scientists, in the case of Jane Walsh, we need to underline she is not an expert on Mitchell-Hedges, nor has she ever met Anna. Many of her statements as made in this documentary are personal assumptions and not firm facts themselves. Walsh gets the meeting of Sammy & Mitchell-Hedges off track and makes a yea or nay “assumption” that she had been adopted by Mitchell-Hedges. She was adopted and the papers were filed in Panama. While Mitchell Hedges retuned to the UK he “sometimes” left Anna with an English family on the island of Taboga in the Bay of Panama.
Jane Walsh also says the Anna was short of money after her father died. The man was a millionaire and was very good at pirating and hiding his wealth, as he did most of his personal information! We need to remember that the 1920s were far different than today, and jungle tribes did not accept VISA, nor could one quickly transfer money from England to Mexico or elsewhere, if needed as a matter of urgency.
It has taken years to piece together most of his life from archive material that has lain around in old trunks for many a dusty year. In a letter dated May 1944 (i.e. during World War II) he tells one of his brothers that he has the largest single collection of silver in the UK… one hundred and fifty thousands ounces of silver and not a piece older than 1819. That is 4.18 tonnes, with the majority dated to between 1600 and 1780.
The 1960 B/W BBC film (a very short clip of a greater viewing of the silver was shown in the channel five documentary) showing Anna displaying all the Mitchell-Hedges silver collection was in itself a mass of brilliant display of opulence and wealth. When you add it up it comes to over £200,000, which is a lot of money in those days. Anna broke? Definitely not so!

The documentary also has several factual errors. The Sotheby’s sale was not reported correctly: Mitchell-Hedges did buy the Crystal Skull at auction for £400, outbidding the British Museum. It was reported in the daily newspaper of the time. Also in a letter to his brother in December 1943 he states: “‘The Collection’ grows and grows. You possibly saw in the papers that I acquired that amazing Crystal Skull that was formally in the ‘Sydney Burney collection’. It is fashioned from a single block of rock crystal, exactly life size. Scientist put it at around 1800 BC and they estimate that it took five generations passing from father to son to complete. It is anthropologically perfect in every detail. A superb piece of craftsmanship. There is only one other in the world like it which is in the British Museum, and it is acknowledge not to be as fine as this”.
In another letter he says “this is one item that no amount of money will induce me to sell and I have had three American museums trying [...] The Anthropological journal Man has nearly devoted an entire issue to it.” In the same letter he refers to the Skull as being “world famous”. So why, when he is totally open, does he write in his book “I have reasons for not revealing” … unless he wants you to look deeper?

There are two very obvious opportunities missed here that in themselves present a mystery. The Crystal Skull was in an auction that was totally out of character with its genre. Also, Mitchell-Hedges, the art collector, had no interest at all in crystals or any artefacts of that nature, but nevertheless had to go to London very early by train and bid for it. Why does a man whose sole interest is in silver suddenly switch tracks and go for a unique piece of crystal in a furniture sale where all other items are “Chinese Porcelain - Needlework & Furniture - Important Oriental Rugs”? Unless, of course, it is as Anna said, and it was because her father was greatly surprised to learn that his Skull was placed at auction and had to react quickly to get it back.
Furthermore, there is suggestion in the documentary that Mitchell-Hedges had no prior knowledge of crystal skulls. If that were the case, then what to make of the references in his only book of fiction “White Tiger”, published in 1931 (i.e. 13 years prior to the auction), where he speaks of “Crystal Heads” as part of the Treasure of the Aztecs? This information was passed to Picturefilms, the producers of this documentary, who decided not to use this evidence. If that avenue was explored, it might have been a documentary of genuine interest, rather than the bogus revelations dished up instead.

Finally, the documentary’s conclusions were muddled in the extreme. It is a known fact that the skull existed in 1934 (as indicated in the MAN 1936 article that was used in the documentary), yet the documentary seems to allege that in 1924 the technology did not exist to create this skull, when Anna said she had found the skull – begging the question what precisely changed, technology or otherwise, between 1924 and 1934. Some viewers also came away with the impression that the documentary seemed to be arguing the skull was made in the 1950s, which is of course preposterous. In short, the documentary conclusions had all the hallmarks of one-liners, strung together in a muddled manner, so that the holes in the argument might not be seen by the viewer. We hope the viewer is more intelligent…

Here are number of letters, sent to Mitchell-Hedges, showing how the major museums had nothing but positive things to say about Mitchell-Hedges. Such primary evidence is totally at odds with the unsubtantiated claims Norman Hammond has made in this and other documentaries.

[Show as slideshow]