The Mitchell-Hedges : The Crystal Skull

Something about history

The Maya are one of the oldest and most important Mesoamerican pre-Columbian civilizations.
The main areas can be placed in what is now Guatemala, extending to the whole of Belize and part of southern Mexico.
Historians have identified three major historic periods:

  * The Preclassic period from 1800 BC to 250 AD 
  * The Classic period from 250 AD to 987 AD 
  * The Postclassic period from 987 AD to 1530 AD

Mayan civilization reached its zenith in the classic period, corresponding with the development of Christianity in Europe. During these centuries the cities and with them the arts, religion and politics were at the peak of their splendor; indeed, we find conurbations counting as many as 60,000 inhabitants.

SOCIETY

The Maya were above all a farming people; the most important activity for citizens was to cultivate their corn fields to ensure that they and their families had enough food.
Education was the reserve of the priestly caste, which included skilled mathematicians and astronomers, and their thorough knowledge of the motions of the planets – especially Venus – is a source of wonder to this day. The priests were the sole keepers of knowledge regarding agriculture and sowing. According to the well-known and highly sophisticated Mayan Calendar, the current cycle, which began in 3114 BC, is drawing to a close. The precise date on which it will end is December 21st, 2012. There is a highly important and extensive corpus of writings, originally given in hieroglyphics, and later transliterated into letters, following the Spanish invasion and subsequent evangelization. These texts offer us a unique insight into pre-Columbian civilization, since the Maya are the only ones to have left us any written evidence.

RELIGION

The Mayan religion was polytheistic, referring constantly to the forces of nature such as the moon, sun and rain. The Maya had a deity for every circumstance, and all were duly feared, revered and celebrated. It is important to note the spiritual significance of duality for these people. Their sacred texts often speak of twin deities and set the day in opposition to the night, death to life and masculine to feminine. In the human world the divine component is essential, but humans too are essential to the divinities, thus creating a harmonious and unified whole.
The symbol of the skull bore particular significance, although its meaning was very different to what it represents in our culture.
For the Maya, rather than a symbol of death, the skull stood for rebirth.
It was a powerful symbol of ‘crystal-clear thought’.
The skull shape was sacred for the Maya, because it represented the form chosen by the deities to contain the human brain and its mysterious ability to think.