Aztec Crystal Skulls Debunked

 

They may have gained fame in the Steven Spielberg adventure film “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” but those quartz-crystal skulls that once ranked as a great enigma of archaeology are certifiably fake. And the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, (C&EN) the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, recalls the details of their rise and fall.

The crystal skulls are a number of human skull hardstone carvings made of clear or milky white quartz, known in art history as “rock crystal”, claimed to be pre-Columbian Mesoamerican artifacts by their alleged finders; however, none of the specimens made available for scientific study have been authenticated as pre-Columbian in origin. The results of these studies demonstrated that those examined might have been manufactured in the mid-19th century or later, perhaps in Europe during a time when interest in ancient culture was abundant.

 Despite some claims presented in an assortment of popularizing literature, legends of crystal skulls with mystical powers do not figure in genuine Mesoamerican or other Native American mythologies and spiritual accounts. The skulls are often claimed to exhibit paranormal phenomena by some members of the New Age movement, and have often been portrayed as such in fiction.

Crystal skulls have been a popular subject appearing in numerous sci-fi television series, novels, video gamesand a brand of vodka.

Crystal skull in the British Museum similar in dimensions to the more detailed Mitchell-Hedges skull.

In the article, Sarah Everts, C&EN’s European science correspondent, delves back into history, explaining that the skull sculptures — supposedly crafted before the Spanish conquest in the 16th century — began appearing on the art market in the 1860s. They graced collections of institutions as renowned as the British Museum in London, the Quai Branly Museum in Paris and Washington, D.C.’s Smithsonian Institution.

Experts began doubting the authenticity of the skulls as long ago as the 1930s. Everts describes how experts at those three museums have used scientific instruments to show that the skulls are post-Columbian fakes. French antiquities dealer Eugène Boban played a major role in sparking public fascination with the skulls by getting some of the first fakes placed in major museums.

Eugène Boban or Boban-Duvergé (1834–1908) was a French antiquarian. He was the official archaeologist of the court of Maximillian I of Mexico, and a member of the French Scientific Commission in Mexico. At one time, he held then sold a number of crystal skulls, one which is now in the Musée du Quai Branly and another in the British Museum

Frederick Albert Mitchell-Hedges (22 October 1882 – June 1959) was an English adventurer, traveller, and writer. His name was almost always seen in print as F. A. Mitchell-Hedges; he sometimes went by the name “Mike Hedges”. Mitchell-Hedges had a talent for telling colourful stories. The veracity of much of his autobiographical writings is in question

Mitchell-Hedges repeatedly made claims of having “discovered” Indian tribes and “lost cities” that had already been documented years, sometimes centuries, before. He claimed he discovered “the cradle of civilization” in the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua, and that the Bay Islands of Honduras were remnants of the lost civilization of Atlantis. 

In 1906 he married Lillian Agnes Clarke, known as “Dolly”. Most of the time he lived apart from his wife. They had no children on their own but adopted Canadian orphan Anne Marie Le Guillon, today known as Anna Mitchell-Hedges. 

For a time in the 1930s he had a weekly radio show out of New York City on Sunday evenings. Talking over a background of “jungle drums”, Mitchell-Hedges would tell dramatic tales of his adventures, usually including narrow escapes from death at the hands of “savages” or from jungle animals ranging from a jaguar to a vicious attacking iguana. 

Mitchell-Hedges claimed to have discovered a “crystal skull” — he called it “The Skull of Doom” — at the Maya ruin of Lubaantun (which he also claimed to have discovered) on an expedition to British Honduras (present-day Belize) in the 1920s. However he published no mention of the skull until the late 1940s, not long after a crystal skull was auctioned off by Sydney Burney at Sotheby’s in 1943. Mitchell-Hedges’s crystal skull could have been the one from Sotheby’s as a skull with identical measurements was described in 1936, and its owner was Sydney BurneMartial law is the imposition of military rule by military authorities over designated regions on an emergency basis.