The Story Of The Crystal Skulls

As archeology has progressed throughout the years

, there has seemingly always been a vocal fringe community of pseudo-archaeologists and New Age practitioners who claim that there are some objects which directly contradict the established historical record. The mysteries of ancient civilizations become even more mystical when one can tout that they held the secret, lost knowledge of space flight or had been visited by aliens. Of course, scientific testing has proven pretty much all of these out-of-place artifacts to either be fakes or just misunderstood. One of the most popular myths surrounding the pre-Columbian Aztecs and Mayans is that of the crystal skulls: they were even a central plot point in the 2008 Indiana Jones film.

Claimed as artifacts from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, the crystal skulls are carved crania, created out of milky or clear quartz.. The Smithsonian has a large head on display and so do three other museums around the world. The glassy artifacts have been proven to be fake, even though there are plenty of real pieces of skeletal imagery in Aztec, Mixtec, and Olmec art.

None of the skulls have ever been documented as coming from an excavation; Anna Le Guillon Mitchell-Hedges claimed she found her (possibly most famous) piece buried under a collapsed temple in Belize in 1924. However, no other writings from that expedition made mention of the find and examination of the structure determined that some of the holes in the cranium had to have been made using metal drills, and the grooves of the teeth had to have been carved using rotor tools (which were only developed in the 19th century). Modern studies concluded that the crystal had been carved in the 1800s in Germany.

Despite this, Mitchell-Hedges claimed for the rest of her life that her prized find had been verified as an ancient Mayan artifact of death by living indigenous tribespeople. She claimed she had foreseen the assassination of John F Kennedy, that she had used it's magical properties to kill someone, and that it could also cure cancer.. Kennedy in a prophetic vision caused by the skull. The New Age group has claimed that the skulls were used by shamans to access alien and other knowledge, and that they are linked in some way to the 2012 Mayan Calender; views that have been quickly embraced by many.

Modern stone-cutting tools have been used in the creation of the skulls, as determined by every scientific study, and so they can not possibly be from pre-Columbian times. The sample in the Musee du quasi Branly in Paris was examined using a scanning electron microscope in 2009, which indicated that it had been carved in the 18th century at the earliest. Fiction, video games and films often make use of the magical realism that stories surrounding fake artifacts can provide and so the mythology surrounding the artifacts lives on.

by: Robert Nickel

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