Watching the film "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" did not even assume that the adventure story filmed in Hollywood had a real prototype. However, nevertheless, crystal products reunited by Indiana exist on Earth as clearly as air and water).
Historical facts:
The expedition of an eccentric English archaeologist and traveler obsessed with the idea of finding the lost Atlantis, Sir Frederick Albert Mitchell-Hedges, began work on clearing the ancient Mayan city in Central America in what was then British Honduras in the jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula, in 1924. Thirty-three hectares of forest, which swallowed up hardly guessed old buildings, were simply burned to facilitate excavations. When the smoke cleared, the stone ruins of pyramids, city walls and a huge amphitheater for hundreds of spectators appeared before the expedition. Mitchell-Hedges named the settlement Lubaantum - "City of Fallen Stones".
On his second trip three years later, he took his adopted daughter Anna (adopted at the age of 10), who, exactly at her 17th birthday, discovered under the rubble of an ancient altar a life-size polished human skull made of the most transparent quartz, called the “Skull from Lubaantum” (also known by the pseudonyms "Skull of Doom", "Mitchell-Hedges"). Its weight was 5.13 kg with a very decent size - 124 mm wide, 147 mm high, 197 mm long and had a hardness index of 7 on the Mohs scale (mineral hardness scale from 0 to 10). The age of the find assured Mitchell-Hedges - about 3600 years. The lower jaw was missing, but after three months it was found nearby in 8 measures. It was suspended on perfectly smooth hinges and set in motion at the slightest touch, creating an eerie impression that the skull was telling you something. Mitchell-Hedges showed the find to the local Indians. They treated it with apprehension, saying that this object served as a container of evil, which the priests kept in obedience with the help of magic tricks.
The hexagonal crystal is carefully polished in such a way that, under certain conditions, the intended optical effect is obtained. At the back of the skull is an elaborately polished lens that collects the rays of light falling on it and directs them into the eye sockets. Even under a microscope, there are no traces of a cutter or other tool on it, without the use of the latest technology, by hand, it would have to be polished continuously for 300 years, 24 hours a day.
Structure research:
For more than 30 years, Ann did not part with the crystal skull, and only in the early 60s, after the death of her father, having yielded to the insistent requests of the art critic and restorer Frank Dorland, she allowed to investigate the mysterious find. The researcher of the crystal skulls, Frank Joseph, instructed two independent groups: the York Police Laboratory, which specializes in facial reconstruction from skulls, and a group of psychics who "connected" to the skull in a trance state to determine what the owner of this skull looked like. Both of them independently stated that
that "the prototype of the crystal skull was the skull of a young girl." The portraits obtained by both groups turned out to be very similar. Before returning the mysterious object to its rightful owner, Dorland decided to seek advice from his friend Barre at the well-known Hewlett-Packard firm in Santa Clara, California, whose experts were considered the most authoritative experts on quartz. Having studied the skull along three optical axes, the engineer L. Barre discovered that it consists of three or four intergrowths and is cut from one piece of crystal along with the lower jaw and hinges. As a result, scientists came to the conclusion that in no other country in the world, taking into account the most modern technologies, it is impossible to create such a masterpiece today. "This damn thing simply should not exist," Barre threw up his hands. They have no idea about crystallography and fiber optics. They completely ignored the axes of symmetry, and this thing would inevitably fall apart during primary processing. Why this did not happen is impossible to imagine. "Someone using three different abrasives made this skull from one piece of crystal so carefully, as if he had not touched it at all during the cutting process. A kind of prism carved into the back of the skull, at its base, allows the beam of light entering the eye sockets to be reflected back into them. Look into his eye sockets and you can see the whole room in them.
Finds:
Their search began, yielding results. Similar skulls have been found in the vaults of some museums and private individuals in America, Mexico, Brazil, the USA, Europe (France) and Asia (Mongolia, Tibet). There were significantly more than thirteen skulls. But not all were as perfect as the one discovered by the Mitchell Hedges expedition. They looked much rougher. It seems that these were later attempts and not very skillful attempts to create something similar to the ideal skulls, which, it is believed, were once given to people by the gods.
It turned out that Midgel-Hedges and his daughter were not the first authors of such finds:
The second was found back in 1889 in Mexico by one of the soldiers of Emperor Maximilian, now exhibited in the British Museum in London, belongs to the Museum of Mankind. In 1898, the London Museum of Human History purchased the British Crystal Skull from the New York jeweler Tiffany for £120. This specimen was significantly different from the Lubaantum one - despite the similarity in size, it is less transparent, less detailed, and the lower jaw is fused to the skull.
The third "Mach" is a rough "copy", according to rumors, the Parisian crystal skull was once part of the collection of the Austrian Archduke Maximilian (Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph, 1832-1867), who was named Emperor of Mexico in 1864. It was stolen from the tomb, then the gravediggers were robbed, in turn, the robbers were caught by a French officer, who already handed the relic to the emperor. In the spring of 1867, the emperor was arrested by the rebels and on June 19, 1867, he was shot along with his military leaders. Apparently, the skull punished those who did not deserve to own it. This is a very simple looking skull, made from clear, but slightly hazy, quartz. Once upon a time, a hole was drilled in the skull, into which a Christian cross was inserted. Since 1878 it has been in the Trocadero Museum, Paris, France. It appears under the name - "the skull of the Aztec god of the underworld and death - Mictlantecuhtli."
The fourth and fifth are the "Ami" Amethyst Skull and the "Maya Skull". Like the Mitchell-Hedges skull, they were both examined in the Hewlett-Packard laboratory, where it was recognized that these skulls were inexplicably cut against the axis of the crystal. "Ami", as it is sometimes called diminutively, is made of a crystal cluster of an incredibly deep amethyst color, a seam runs almost along its entire circumference, practically dividing the skull in half. Some scientists believe that the amethyst skull is actually older than the Aztec and Mayan civilizations.
It is said to have been found in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, and was passed down from generation to generation by the priests of the ancient Mayan cults. According to other sources, the skull was part of the collection of crystal skulls of Mexican President Díaz (1876-1910). It is not known where the skull disappeared after the death of Diaz, it reappeared only somewhere in 1982-83. It is currently kept in the Tokyo Museum.
The fifth "Mayan skull" of transparent, only slightly cloudy quartz. 20.48 cm long, 12.54 cm wide, 10.79 cm high and weighs 3.95 kg. , was found in Guatemala in 1912. Local workers hid it from the head of an archaeological expedition and used it to stop a plague in a local village, then the skull was hidden by a Mexican brotherhood worshiping ancient Maya cults. In the early 1980s, the "Mayan skull" showed up in Texas, USA - it was brought for sale by the same Native American shaman from the history of the Amethyst Skull. And again he gave the skull on bail, after which he disappeared without a trace.
Sixth - "E.T." , or "alien skull", - a crystal skull made of smoky quartz, weighing about five kilograms, found in 1906 in Guatemala, has healing properties. He got his nickname because the pointed crown and exaggerated bite make him look like the skull of an unearthly creature. In 1991, E.T. ended up in Holland, in the private collection of Joke Van Dieten, which contains at least eight more ancient crystal skulls. "E.T." was examined by shamans who remember the ancient rituals of the Maya. They recognized it as a lost Mayan relic, which, according to legend, arrived on Earth from the Pleiades star cluster.
The Viennese professor R. Distelberger, who examined the E.T. skull, determined its age at 500 years. According to Distelberger, the skull is certainly not of European origin: “It makes no sense for a forger to do such a difficult job - for many years to manually polish the stone. I cannot explain why it looks so natural, almost like a real skull of a European man, although it is narrower and polished by means that are not known to us. It is hardly possible to find out from this object what it was processed with, besides, it lay in the ground for quite a long time.
The seventh human skull "Max", or the Texas Crystal Skull, belongs to Joan Parks, made from an 8.2 kilogram solid piece of clear quartz, discovered in a Mayan tomb in Guatemala between 1924-1926. Gifted by a Mayan shaman to a Tibetan lama in 1970. It was used to heal patients with all kinds of physical problems and illnesses in downtown Houston, Texas After the death of Lama Norbu Chen, the crystal skull was given to his close friends Carl and Joanne Parks. Currently, Ms. Parkov is touring (primarily in the US) showing it to people.
The eighth is a very large skull made of misty quartz, at least about 25 centimeters high, in 1995 was donated to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, USA, by an anonymous source. The skull was sent in the most ordinary package with a short handwritten note inside. It said that the skull allegedly belonged to the collection of the Mexican President Diaz, the anonymous person himself bought it in Mexico City in 1960, and now gives it away, wanting to remain anonymous. When the skull was first examined, one of the technicians working at the museum said that the skull was cursed and should not be seen in the eyes. The skull is completely hollow and you can look inside through the eye sockets.
In 1990, in Las Vegas, Jose Indiquez, a respectable and very wealthy gentleman, reported that in his youth, in the ruins of an ancient Mayan city, he found a crystal skull with incomprehensible symbols carved on it. Indikez accidentally discovered an amazing property of the skull: if you squeeze it in your hands and clearly formulate a desire, it will come true, so Indikez achieved everything he wanted in life. Three years after this conversation, Indikez died, and the miraculous skull mysteriously disappeared.
The ninth "Rainbow" - D. Walker, director of the Institute of Crystallography, bought in 1995 from one of his students. The student claimed to have inherited the skull from his grandfather, who, in turn, inherited it from two shamans from Guatemala. The "Rainbow" skull is made of slightly hazy crystal, in which small rainbows constantly play.
"Rainbow" is different from other crystal skulls. At its bottom there is a depression of five centimeters, moreover, left unpolished, like the eye sockets of the "Rainbow". It is possible that there was something in these unpolished areas.
The tenth "Sha-Na-Ra" - Nick Noserino was able to find with the help, as he put it, "psychic archeology." Apparently, a psychic force led him (or as Nick says, it was the skull that brought him to itself) to a yellowish skull of transparent quartz. Sha-Na-Ra was found when Nocerino was invited to the supposed location of the ancient city, somewhere in the state of Guerrero, Mexico.
Eleventh "Darth Vader" - deserves special attention. This is a stunningly crafted black skull, carved from a single piece of obsidian, which has been stored since 1926 in the Joky's collection in the German city of Idar-Oberstein. Probably, for its sinister beauty, he received the name "Darth Vader" - "Black Lord" , according to its name, the on-screen Darts Vader was created.
At the beginning of the 18th century, the twelfth flawless skull was found, made of rose quartz (Baby Luv), which weighed 7.5 kg. The find was discovered by a Russian monk in 1710 on an ancient mound near the ancient Ukrainian city of Luv. Presumably, the remains found along with the skull date back to the Scythian-Sarmatian era. The mysterious find becomes known again only in 1993. This skull was included in the collection of the famous German auctioneer Hans Van Duyten.
The thirteenth Jade skull was found in Mongolia, then taken to China, after which it ended up in a Vietnamese family - its origin is still unknown. The age of the jade skull is estimated at 2,500 years or more. "Jade" is larger than a human skull and is hollow inside. Two symbols are carved into the top of it, and what appears to be a seal is carved into the base. Since 2001, Jade has been kept in the UK by Kathleen Murray, Director of the Academy of Herbal and Mineral Healing.
The fourteenth is the "Rose Quartz Crystal Skull", the "Rose Quartz" having the closest resemblance to Mitchell-Hedges' skull. It is said to have been found near the border between Honduras and Guatemala. This skull is not as translucent and slightly larger than Mitchell-Hedges' skull, but boasts the same fine cut and removable lower jaw.
In the region of China/Mongolia, a whole skeleton of the green mineral jadeite (Shui Ting Er) was discovered, made approximately in 3500-2200 BC on a smaller scale than a human one.
The exact origin of the fifteenth Synergy Crystal Skull is unknown. It is said that around 1986-87, a certain European businessman was traveling in Central and South America. Once, somewhere on the border between Peru, Bolivia and Chile, he came across a tiny village at the foot of the Andes, where the locals greeted him with smiles and invited him to share a meal with them. After spending the night by the fire in the old Indian's dwelling, and sharing a simple breakfast with him, he began to get ready for the journey when the Indian called him to the old chest. The Indian took out a crystal skull from the chest and handed it to our businessman. The businessman immediately realized that it was a very old and revered relic and tried to give the skull back, but the Indian was firm.
He said that at the beginning of the 19th century, in Peru, the skull fell into the possession of an elderly Catholic nun. Before her death, she gave the skull to the boy - the future father of the Indian - and said that this is the legacy of a lost civilization, which should be preserved and passed on only to those whom the heart tells, until the “right person” appears who can reveal the knowledge of the crystal skull the world.
In 2001, the businessman obeyed the dictates of his heart and handed over the skull to Sherry Whitfield, who is the protector and guardian of Synergy to this day.
Versions about turtles:
The skulls themselves have different effects on different people. Some experience discomfort and incomprehensible fears. Some faint and lose their memory for a while. Others, on the contrary, strangely calm down, falling into a blissful state.
Absolutely incredible assumptions were made: the crystal skull in some fantastic way was processed not like a crystal, but like plasticine or clay. In favor of such a seemingly ridiculous version, one more, more than strange find speaks. In the winter of 1994, the owner of the ranch, near Creston (Colorado, USA), riding around her property on a horse, found a human skull made of transparent glass or crystal on the ground. However, the solid crystal was crumpled and twisted as if it had previously been made of clay, and then solidified. Where he came from and why he was so mutilated remains a mystery to this day, 16 years later.
Meticulous researchers found out that in ancient Indian legends, as many as thirteen crystal skulls of the "Goddess of Death" are mentioned, kept separately from each other under the watchful eye of priests - specially trained warriors of the "goddess". Native American legend says: crystal skulls contain all the knowledge, all the wisdom of the world, from its inception to the moment when the highest spiritual harmony is achieved. And if the time comes for a great crisis for humanity,
all thirteen skulls will show up on their own and be put together to show people the information they need to survive. According to legend, the “Skull of Destiny” was used by the Mayan High Priest during esoteric rites, when the priest wished death on someone, looking at the skull, the person would inevitably die soon.
Psychics are convinced, and many scientists do not deny, that crystals, due to their rigid structure, have the ability to remember everything that happens around them, that is, they are a kind of chroniclers, a sort of memory banks. If you believe the stories of eyewitnesses, crystals are able not only to remember, but also to share the information stored in them. It is no coincidence that an invariable attribute of any clairvoyant and fortune teller is a well-polished crystal ball, pyramid or just a crystal.
There is a strong opinion that crystal skulls also have mystical properties. Psychics and highly sensitive people unanimously assure (but this has never been proven) that skulls evoke special, almost hypnotic states, accompanied by unusual smells, sounds and vivid visual hallucinations. However, not only especially sensitive, but also ordinary people claim that at times they saw how the skull in the dark began to glow or fill with “white fog”, and then “mysterious images of people, as well as mountains, forests, temples and darkness” appeared in it. .
Another version suggests that the skulls were intended to immortalize the knowledge of the priests, being a kind of carriers and conductors of information, the old priest and his appointed successor simultaneously put their hands on the crystal skull, and all the information stored in the brain of the old priest moved to the brain of his successor.
The optical properties of the skulls and the lenses and prisms contained in them also lead to the idea of the possible use of holographic technologies. It is easy to check this: it is enough to irradiate the skull with a laser beam at different angles with a variation in the laser frequency and analyze the output signal. If the skull plays the role of an information carrier, then for some directions of the laser beam, this information can appear in the output signal. Although it is not at all necessary that this information will be in the form of a holographic image. It is quite possible that the analysis of the output signal will require additional decryption efforts.
A commission of specialists consisting of 40 people carefully studied the exhibit for several months, subjecting it to all methods of research available at that time - X-ray transmission, ECG, and observation under a microscope. A real ancient skull, they concluded, must react in a special way to light and sound. For example, when irradiated through different light filters, he "himself" begins to suggest a sequence of colors. And the Maya responds to the music of the Indians with a powerful release of energy.
Revelations:
The crystal skull "ET" is kept in the British Museum. It is known that back in 1881, it was exhibited in the shop of the Parisian antiquary Eugene Boban, a collector of antiquities and archaeological adviser to the Mexican emperor Maximilian (it was believed that the skull was found by one of the emperor’s warriors) and was equipped with a plate “Aztec crystal skull”. Interestingly, this character (Eugene Boban) was known in collectors' circles for collecting not only objects of culture and art with a "clean" reputation (in terms of authenticity), but also "fake fanned with secrets and legends." It was soon bought by the jewelry firm Tiffany and Co. for 950 dollars. And in 1897 she sold it to the British Museum. Twice - in 1996 and 2004 - the British Museum, together with scientists from the universities of Cardiff and Kingston, conducted large-scale studies of the "mystical artifact" using an electron microscope and X-ray spectroscopy. The conclusion was disappointing: the skull was sharpened with the help of jewelry tools of the late 19th century. And its surface was treated with a rotating circle with diamond and corundum chips. Fine details were drawn with a high-speed drill.
The skull can still be found in the British Museum. But the label underneath is different. On it is written: “The end of the 19th century A.D. e. It was originally believed to be of Aztec origin, but recent research has proven that it was made in Europe.”
Another crystal skull, obtained somewhere by Eugène Boban, was sold to the ethnographer Alphonse Pinard. And now it is in the Branly Museum in Paris. In 2007, the skull was studied by the Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France. Scientists worked for three months and proved that the surface of rock crystal was processed by no means with ancient tools. As if through a microscope you can see that this skull was also carved in the 19th century.
In May 2008, the Journal of Archaeological Science published the results of research on the third skull, stored at the Smithsonian Institution (USA). It was sent in 1992 by an anonymous donor who wrote: "The Aztec crystal skull from the collection of Porfirio Díaz was acquired in Mexico in 1960." Most likely, it was so. Only the skull was not carved by the Aztecs. Scientists have found traces of carborundum, a synthetic abrasive material discovered in 1892, on its surface.
The truth of the "Mitchell-Hedges skull" was also quite commonplace. Mitchell-Hedges simply bought it in 1943 at Sotheby's for £400. The skull was very similar to the one acquired by the British Museum. Except for one detail: his lower jaw moved easily, like a person (think of an alien with a crystal skeleton). The skull was put up for auction by antique dealer Sidney Burney, who has owned it since 1933.
Archaeologist Norman Hammond, who studied the "Mitchell-Hedges skull", found that the holes in its lower part were clearly made by a metal drill with a high speed of rotation. Professor Distelberger of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna came to the same conclusion. And anthropologist Jane McLaren Walsh emphasizes that neither this nor other known skulls have the characteristic features of the sculptural images common among the Aztecs, Mayans, or their predecessors, the Toltecs and Mixtecs. Upon learning of this, Anna Mitchell-Hedges stopped giving the skull to scientists.
Anna died on April 11, 2007 at the age of one hundred. Now the skull is with her husband, who is also not eager to show the family heirloom.
Frederick Mitchell-Hedges, an eccentric Englishman, was a lover of thrill and adventure. He was gripped by an "adrenaline fever" that often took him from poverty to wealth and back again. Hedges traveled all over the world, made a fortune several times and lost it again. In Canada, he met Anna, a ten-year-old orphan, and adopted her. He was obsessed with finding the vanished ancient city of Atlantis, which he believed had once been off the coast of Honduras.
The search for the disappeared Atlantis led Hedges in 1924 to South America, to the jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula (at that time British Honduras, now Belize).
The expedition began work on clearing the ancient Mayan city in the humid tropical jungle. Thirty-three hectares of forest, which swallowed up hardly guessed old buildings, were simply burned to facilitate excavations. When the smoke finally dissipated, an amazing sight opened up to the expedition members: the stone ruins of the pyramid, city walls and a huge amphitheater for thousands of spectators. With the light hand of Mitchell-Hedges, the name Lubaantun was assigned to the ancient settlement, which means “City of Fallen Stones” in the Mayan language. Lubaantun stretched for six miles. In the center stood a huge temple, or rather what was left of it.
Three years passed, and Mitchell-Hedges took his young daughter Anna on his next expedition. In April 1927, on her seventeenth birthday, Anna discovered an amazing object under the rubble of an ancient altar.
Having picked up the find and cleaned it of sand, the girl was surprised: it was made of the most transparent quartz and beautifully polished life-size human skull. Its weight was 5.13 kg with a very decent size - 124 mm wide, 147 mm high, 197 mm long. True, he did not have enough lower jaw, but after three months, literally eight meters from the place where the skull was found, she was also found. It turned out that this crystal detail is suspended on perfectly smooth hinges and sets in motion at the slightest touch. The skull feature is a well-fitted detachable jaw that can move as if the head is talking. Despite small cracks on the temples and cheekbones, this is an anatomically correct model of the human skull.
But there is another version of the appearance of the crystal skull. Although Anna claims to have found the skull herself, according to the British Museum, F. Mitchell-Hedges bought it at an auction in London and insured it in 1943. Evidence for this version is the absence of any photographs from the Belize expedition or insurance documentation prior to 1943. It is still unknown whether there was an expedition at all, and who owned the skull before the Mitchell-Hedges. The origin of the mysterious artifact is hidden under a veil of mystery - the skull of Mitchell-Hedges has no evidence in documentary sources.
The romantic story of the Mitchell-Hedges discovery has been questioned. In fact, he bought the skull for £400 at Sotheby's in London in 1943 from art gallery owner Sidney Barney. It is with this that the inexplicable fact that Mitchell-Hedges does not mention the skull in his newspaper publications about Atlantis, written by him in the 30s of the XX century, may be connected. This version is also supported by the absence of photographs of an unusual artifact among the photographs taken during the expedition to Lubaantun. Mitchell-Hedges did not write anything about the skull until 1954, when the first mention of the crystal skull since its alleged discovery in 1927 appeared. Only a few lines were devoted to the find in Mitchell-Hedges' book, My Friend Danger. Perhaps that is why Hedges writes about the skull of fate like this: "I have reasons not to say how I got it." Further evidence that Hedges did not find the artifact in Belize is found in the July issue of The Maine (1936), the printed edition of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. It contained an article about the study of two crystal skulls. One of them was mentioned as an exhibit of the British Museum, the second was called Barney's skull. The latter was nothing more than the skull of Hedges' fate and apparently belonged to art dealer Sydney Barney. Nowhere in the article was F.A. Mitchell-Hedges mentioned, nor was it mentioned that the skull was discovered in the ruins of the Mayan city of Lubaantun. In his book Secrets of the Supernatural, Joe Nickel refers to a 1933 letter from Barney to the American Museum of Natural History. It says: "The rock crystal skull was for several years the property of the collector from whom I bought it, who in turn received it from the Englishman, in whose collection it was also for several years: I could not look further." The data mentioned cast doubt on Hedges' story, but not on the authenticity of the skull itself, for whatever reasons Hedges came up with this unusual story. However, he was used to it. He had a reputation for telling tall tales (among them stories about how he shared a room with Leon Trotsky and fought with Pancho Villa).
Many of the supernatural properties and sinister legends associated with the crystal skull have their origins in Mitchell-Hedges' autobiographical book My Friend Danger. It was in it that the artifact was first called the skull of fate. Hedges writes that the skull was used by the Maya high priests in magical rites involving curses that sent a painful death to the intended victims. The power of the skull was so great that it alone could cause instant death. Mitchell-Hedges also reports that the skull, which took a whopping 150 years to complete, is at least 3,600 years old. Although he did not provide any evidence to back up his claims, Mitchell-Hedges' claims have become part of the Skull of Destiny legend. It was said that it had been carved for hundreds of years to achieve the perfect shape: craftsmen grinded and polished it every day for their entire lives.
After some time, the researchers drew attention to the fact that in ancient Indian legends, as many as thirteen crystal skulls of the “Goddess of Death” were mentioned, which were kept separately from each other under the watchful eye of priests and special warriors. Naturally, their search began, which soon yielded results. Similar skulls were found in the vaults of some museums and in private individuals. And not only in America (in Mexico, Brazil, USA), but also in Europe (in France), and in Asia (in Mongolia, Tibet). There were significantly more than thirteen skulls. But not all were as perfect as the Mitchell-Hedges. Most of the skulls looked much rougher. It seems that these were later and not very skillful attempts to create something similar to the ideal skulls, which, it is believed, were once given to people by the gods.
Ancient legends told of strange rituals associated with crystal skulls. Thirteen priests had to peer into "their" skull at the same time. Tradition reports that in this way the priests could see any secrets - not only what is happening in other places, but also the past and the future, up to the end of the world. Legends also said that the initiates could see in the skulls the day of the return of the gods...
Today, some researchers suggest that the found crystal skulls were made in Atlantis and only miraculously survived during the disaster. And supporters of the hypothesis of cosmic paleocontacts consider the skull to be the creation of aliens.
It is believed that if you manage to find 13 ancient skulls and arrange them in a circle, one of them will be the main one and will “collect” the knowledge of all the others. So what is this knowledge?
It turned out that Mitchell-Hedges was not the first author of such finds: back in the late 80s of the last century in Mexico, one of the soldiers of Emperor Maximilian found a crystal skull, now on display in the British Museum. This specimen differs significantly from the Lubaatun specimen - despite the similarity in size, it is less transparent, less detailed, and the lower jaw is fused to the skull.
Another crude "copy" of the crystal skull is in the Museum of Man in Paris. It appears under the name - "the skull of the Aztec god of the underworld and death."
Of interest is another completely human skull ("Max"). Owner Joan Parks inherited it from a Tibetan monk who used it to heal people.
And finally, one of the latest finds, which was reported in August 1996 by FATE magazine. In the winter of 1994, a rancher near Creston (Colorado, USA), riding around her property on a horse, noticed some kind of shiny object on the ground. Picked him up. It was a human skull made of transparent glass or crystal. However, the extremely hard material is crumpled and twisted as if it had previously been very ductile. Where he came from and why he was so mutilated remains a mystery to this day.
The manufacture of crystal skulls or balls has been widespread in many countries of Asia and Europe since ancient times. The size of the ball did not play a special role, but still - "the bigger the better." Crystal skulls were also made in different sizes, down to the smallest talismans that could easily be hung on a string around the neck. Such magic tricks were especially popular in Italy, France and other European countries in the 15th-16th centuries among fortune-tellers, soothsayers, fairground magicians and similar personalities. Even some aristocrats kept such “decorations” at home. For beauty or in case you want to know your fate.
Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull
At the beginning of the last century, skulls were sold at auctions. The demand of collectors for strange objects of no one knows what civilization grew by leaps and bounds. The scammers did not sleep either. Soon began to appear and "multiply" "pirated" copies. A modern crystal skull costs between $10,000 and $50,000.
Sha-Na-Ra
Max
Skulls were found and found, collected and collected all over the globe. There were more than thirteen of them. Only 49 were recognized as truly ancient. The rest looked more rude and uncouth - inept (and sometimes skillful) attempts to create their own ideal skull. But it is unlikely that such an object would have any magical effect, in contrast to the true "gift of the gods." Two authentic skulls - "Max" and "Sha-Na-Ra" - are on public display in US museums. There are eight in the largest collection of rare skulls.
Nick Nocerino
In 1945, the International Society of Crystal Skulls was founded in New York. Founder - Nick Nocerino. The main task of the society is the study and thorough study of all the found skulls, besides - "checking for antiquity."
All skulls are described and registered, but the information is kept in strict confidence.
An unusual exhibit is being examined for several months by 40 specialists, subjecting it to X-rays, ECG, and observation under a microscope. Psychics retire with the skull, following the instructions of one of the Indian shamans.
Ami is an amethyst skull.
A real ancient skull must also react in a special way to light and sound. For example, when the skull was irradiated through different light filters, it "self" began to suggest a sequence of colors. And the Maya responded to the music of the Indians with a powerful release of energy.
One of the found skulls is kept in Japan and is made of solid amethyst. Mach skull is made of pure quartz, known as the crystal skull of Texas. Presumably found in Guatemala. Stored in Texas (USA) in a private collection. The crystal skull, kept in the Museum of Man in Paris, is rather crude and depicts the Aztec god of death.
In 1889, their "brother" was found - the skull "ET", now stored in London, in the British Museum. It is made of smoky quartz. By the way, the skull "ET" is not like any race that lives on Earth today. His upper jaw and eye sockets have a completely unusual shape. However, it is very similar to styling.
Crystal skull "ET", found in Mexico in 1889. Stored in the ethnographic department of the British Museum (London). The Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull was transferred to the Museum of American Indian History in New York (USA) in 1972, where it is now kept.
The quartz from which all the skulls are made is known as a mineral that has the natural property of amplifying electrical energy and is widely used in modern science and technology. Since our body has an electromagnetic field, quartz is able to amplify this field. Therefore, a number of inexplicable phenomena are associated with crystal skulls. Many people feel a surge of energy emanating from them. For some, this energy has an exceptional effect, causing vivid unusual states of consciousness, increasing spiritual abilities.
In the seemingly enlightened 20th century, a whole cult of worship of these crystal artifacts arose, hiding the ancient secrets and magic of the civilizations of pre-Columbian America.
Findings of crystal skulls continue to this day (the last dated August 1996), and the mystery has not been solved.
british skull
Crystal skull number 2. British skull. Appeared in 1881 in an antique shop. This skull was on display in New York at the end of the 19th century, after which it ended up in Tiffany and Co., and then it was sold to the British Museum.
Studies that have been made quite recently (May 2008) using an electron microscope and X-ray crystallography have shown that the British skull was processed with Al 2 O 3 abrasive and diamond using a rotor disk.
Rock crystal is a colorless crystalline quartz. Back in the Middle Ages, Europeans thought that a transparent solid stone was obtained from ordinary ice, which had lain under the thickness of earth rocks for a long time. Rock crystal is found in nature quite often, but it is difficult to process it, since it is a very hard mineral. On the Mohs scale of hardness, it corresponds to the number 7. Only topaz (8), corundum (9) and diamond (10) are even harder than rock crystal. Nowadays, rock crystal is processed on special high-tech equipment, but the basic rules for working with crystals have remained the same. To preserve the integrity of the crystal, it is necessary to direct the movement of the cutter along the growth axes. The creators of crystal skulls managed to manually process rock crystal without observing this rule, and it is not clear why their crystals did not crumble into small fragments.
The Crystal Skulls International was founded in 1945 by Nick Nocerino. It is neither an archaeological nor a commercial organization. The main task of the society, as its founder, Mr. Nick Nocherino, said, is the special study and research of these unique objects, as well as "testing for antiquity." The Nocerino and the Society became the main authorities in determining the age of skulls - in particular, which of them can be considered ancient and which are not. He himself devoted almost fifty years of his life to trying to understand the nature of the crystal skulls. For many years, the Society has been collecting information to distinguish between crystal skulls and assign them to one group or another. Members of the Society used various testing systems, including mental methods. Unfortunately, much of the information collected by the Society is not available to the general public. The archives of the Crystal Skull Society are classified, and collectors do not intend to share "their treasure" with anyone. And since Nocerino died in 2004, it is unlikely that the papers will be published anytime soon. One thing is certain: these masterpieces of ancient art and thought are one of the most mysterious riches of our planet.
Below is an excerpt from Nocerino's research report, which was recently made available to the general public.
“Autumn 1991. The skull was with me. From time to time I made myself known, as on the evening when I stopped at one of the roadside motels. In order for the experiment to succeed, I had to retire for a long time and stare into the ancient crystal.
I sat in front of the skull for perhaps more than an hour, when suddenly its smoky surface began to dissipate, and what appeared after gradually took on a clear outline. After that, it seemed to me that the skull itself disappeared, and I, sitting on a cloud, watched the vast world stretching below.
I saw the earth - the whole continent, which sank into the water. Living beings moved along it in three directions. One of the groups disappeared into numerous caves, the other into burrows dug in the ground. A smaller group hid in strange-looking aircraft and immediately took to the skies. The largest ship was shaped like a cigar. Other types of apparatus resembled plates, and still others looked like giant dishes with a turret on top.
The most amazing sight was the inhabitants of this planet. The shapes of their bodies were constantly changing, and the sounds with which they spoke to each other were similar to the voices of whales and dolphins.
I saw meadows that turned into hills. Deserts became seas. Mountains sank into the water. The masses of the earth shifted, split and sank.
This happened four times, and each time, as the ocean retreated, the creatures spread over the land. Their bodies were becoming more and more human. True, some remained in the water, similar to fabulous mermaids. Twice the creatures did not come out of the caves. And at other times they appeared on the surface according to the signals given to them by ships and flying people.
The earth was divided into parts. Large groups of people went to the east, south and southeast. Giant battles broke out here and there between people dressed in long robes and togas, and some kind of half-human, half-animal. Often people and animals, similar to lions and lizards, flew into caves or directly into the water.
But the most grandiose and most mysterious sight was when the whole world seemed to turn and the earth moved. Jungles and deserts have changed places. And I got to know Africa.
It felt like I was looking at the Earth through a telescope. At the same time, he was involved in what was happening. No one can answer where I really was ...
The meditation, as I found out later, lasted 33 hours. Once again I decided to look into the skull after a few days. And again he spent about four hours in its depths, visiting the beautiful cities of the past. Or maybe the future?
I was no longer able to look into the unknown world. Maya's skull seemed to be grinning, showing me nothing but clouds...
Materials used
Crystal skull - a model of a human skull, made from a single piece of transparent (or smoky) rock crystal. This is one of the most amazing mysteries of history.
The most famous of the crystal skulls was found by the eccentric Englishman Mitchell-Hedges in 1924 in the jungle of the Yucatan Peninsula during the excavations of one of the Mayan cities - Lubaantun.
Experts from Hewlett-Packard remained at a loss: “This damn thing simply should not exist. Those who created it had no idea about crystallography and fiber optics. They completely ignored the axes of symmetry, and this contraption was bound to fall apart during the initial processing. Why this did not happen is impossible to imagine. In their opinion, in order to achieve such perfection, the skull (as already mentioned above) had to be polished with sand and water for three hundred years.
Determining the age of the skull turned out to be quite difficult, since the crystal does not contain carbon, according to which ancient objects are usually dated. The researchers looked for clues on the surface of the skull, such as traces of tools used to carve it. But not a single microscopic scratch from the instruments was found. They came to the conclusion that none of the known modern technologies is capable of creating an exact copy of a human skull from a single piece of quartz. They even turned down half a million dollars they were offering to anyone who could make a copy of the crystal skull.
One of the most authoritative researchers of crystal skulls, Frank Joseph studied the find from 1964 to 1970. He managed to find out that the design of the skull is balanced to such an extent relative to the center of gravity that the lower jaw of a 5-kilogram skull starts to move from a light breeze. Even more amazing properties were noticed by Dorland when he turned the stone skull to face the lit fireplace, the eye sockets flashed with ominous fire. What a gloomy impression this mysterious skull must have had on the Mayans! It is easy to imagine how the shocked people fell on their faces under the terrible fiery gaze of the crystal idol!...
"Prototype" of the crystal skull
Frank Joseph, wondered if the "Mitchell Hedges" skull had a "prototype" and what would the owner of such a skull look like? For the purity of the experiment, this task was entrusted to two independent groups: a police laboratory from New York, which specializes in the reconstruction of faces from skulls, and a group of psychics who “connected” to the skull in a state of trance ...
Both of them, independently of each other, stated that “the prototype of the crystal skull was the skull of a young girl. The portraits obtained by both groups turned out to be quite similar.
Members of the missing expeditions found ... decapitated
To this day, it has not been possible to find 16 scientists who, under the leadership of Mitchell-Hedges, excavated the ancient Mayan city.
... 1997 - Eight Italian travelers went to the Yucatan, who bought a piece of territory on it in order to search for the ancient city and Mayan treasures. To facilitate the work, the researchers set fire to a large area of the forest. When the smoke cleared, the remains of a pyramid were revealed, stone walls, a huge amphitheater with seating, designed for thousands of spectators.
However, soon the joy of the travelers was replaced by fear and anxiety, because, while examining the ruins of the pyramid, they found scattered headless skeletons, of which there were exactly 16. Remains of clothing were preserved on some skeletons. The personal belongings of the dead were scattered nearby. Among them, a sealed plastic bag was found, in which documents and diaries of Mitchell-Hedges himself were found. They described the strange phenomena observed by the professor.
The expedition was searching for the crystal skull of the sun god Kukulkan. This skull allegedly made it possible to see the past and the future, and, apparently, the British managed to find it. But then the unexpected began to happen. At first, all their products and tools disappeared, then people mysteriously began to die.
“An impenetrable wall of trees and thorny poisonous plants grew around us on all sides,” wrote Mitchell-Hedges. - Exhausted people are not able to do something. Every day we lose one member of the expedition. Truly mysterious things are happening. Someone invisible comes at night and in impenetrable darkness beheads the sleeping ones, then seats them in the amphitheater. Nothing is visible in the pitch darkness. Probably, Kukulkan, the god of the Sun, decided to take revenge on us, despite the fact that we put the skull where we took it - under the altar. There are only 5 of us left…”
The Italians immediately began to gather on the way back. But, curiosity got the better of: everyone wanted to look at the magic skull. After all, he was in the most prominent place, in a small niche under the altar. It was an exact copy of a human skull made of polished quartz covered with gold. The researchers immediately forgot about what the professor wrote in his diary, and, as if spellbound, began to examine the amazing product. The skull seemed to phosphorescent, small cells appeared on its surface, each of which displayed changing images, reminiscent of living paintings. Curiosity has become fatal for researchers. None of those who saw the mysterious crystal skull could return to their homeland - later the expedition members were found decapitated.
rituals
In ancient legends, there are references to strange rituals associated with crystal skulls. 13 clergy had to peer into “their” skull at the same time. According to legend, this way the priests could see any secrets - not only what is happening in other places, but also the past and the future, up to the end of the world. The legend also says that the initiates could see in the skulls the day of the return of the gods...
Abductions
It turned out that not only historians, but also some secret societies are interested in ancient crystal skulls. So in Honduras, literally from under the nose of archaeologists, the so-called “Rose Quartz” disappeared without a trace. The investigation found that prior to his disappearance, the priests of a secret cult tried to steal him several times. Crystal skulls aroused interest among serious state structures.
Amazing properties of skulls
It is believed that these skulls have amazing properties. Strange phenomena occurred to those who touched the skull. These people begin to have strange "historical" dreams. Many of them have visions from the distant past and the strange future. So, if someone picked up a skull that was found in the ruins of the "city of fallen stones" at the ancient Mayan altar, then such a person began to see the life of the Mayan Indians in great detail. This first happened to Anna Mitchell-Hedges. One evening, she placed the skull next to her bed, and throughout the night she had strange dreams about the life of the Indians of a thousand years ago. When the crystal skull was removed for the night, the dreams stopped.
Apart from the American continent (finds were made in America, Brazil and Mexico), crystal skulls have been found in Europe (France) and Asia (Mongolia and Tibet).
Who could create crystal skulls
The perfection of crystal processing leaves a wide scope for speculation, some believe that the crystal skull is a fake made in the 20th century, others attribute its creation to aliens, residents of the legendary Atlantis, or Satan himself.
The version about the creation of crystal skulls by Satan and his minions has to be rejected for lack of direct evidence. A version that the skulls were made in Atlantis may seem more plausible. These objects allegedly had some purpose in the culture of the people who created a high civilization 12,000 years ago. According to another version, the first terrestrial civilizations arose 36 thousand years ago, when our planet was inhabited by 12 alien races, and it was they who were able to easily polish hard crystalline quartz. The aliens had technical capabilities that we never dreamed of. With the help of these crystals, the aliens allegedly maintained "spiritual contact" with their home planets.
Other crystal skulls
At the end of the 1880s. In Mexico, one of the soldiers of Emperor Maximilian discovered a crystal skull, now exhibited in the British Museum. This specimen is largely different from the Mitchell-Hedges - despite the similarity in size, it is less transparent, less detailed, and the lower jaw is fused to the skull.
Another rough “copy” of the skull, called the “skull of the Aztec god of the underworld and death,” is kept in the Museum of Man in Paris.
Another quite human skull (“Max”) is curious. Owner Joan Parks inherited it from a Tibetan monk who used it to heal people.
And one of the latest findings, which in August 1996 was reported in the FATE magazine. 1994, winter - the owner of a ranch near Creston (US state of Colorado), driving around her property on a horse, saw a shiny object on the ground. Picked him up. It was a human skull made of transparent glass or crystal. But the extremely hard material is crumpled and twisted as if it used to be very ductile. Where he could come from and why he was so mutilated remains a mystery to this day.
Crystal Skull Mitchell-Hedges
Mayan crystal skulls have been discovered in South America and other parts of the world. and for several decades represented an unsolvable riddle for scientists. Some consider them extraterrestrial artifacts, others associated their origin with Atlantis. Later, information appeared that the skulls were fakes and were of no historical interest.
Finding on an ancient altar
Anna Mitchell-Hedges, the adopted daughter of a British archaeologist, celebrated her seventeenth birthday in 1927 not at a festive table, but at the excavations of an ancient Mayan temple in the ruins of Luaantuna in British Honduras.
On the ancient altar liberated from the earth, the girl found a crystal skull made in full size by an unknown master.
The note: "The find has received three different names - the Skull of Mitchell-Hedges, the Skull of Doom and the Skull of Destiny."
Initially, the skull was found without the lower jaw, which was discovered three months later by the same Anna, one and a half meters from the place of the original find.
The jaw was attached to the cranium on smooth hinges, and when the skull was touched, it began to move, giving the impression that the skull was talking. The skull weighed 5.13 kg and measured 197 mm long, 124 mm wide and 147 mm high.
Some archaeologists were alarmed by such a find and they repeatedly suggested that the father simply threw the skull to please his daughter. But the question arises where did Mtchell-Hedgens get it from? Did you find it during excavations or brought it from Europe?
Mysterious dreams and phenomena
With the advent of the crystal skull, according to Anna's stories, she began to have amazing dreams. One day, before going to bed, the girl examined the find and placed the skull at the head of the bed. That night, she had an unusual dream in which she saw in every detail the life of the ancient Indians.
Anna soon noticed a pattern: as soon as the skull was at the head of the bed, she had amazing dreams about the daily life of the Indians, their rituals and sacrifices, life and traditions.
There was an assumption that the skull is a storehouse of information about the life of the disappeared Maya Indians. The girl even began to keep a diary in which she described her dreams.
The mysterious phenomena of the skull were also noticed by art historian Frank Dorland. He said that sometimes the skull glowed, images of unfamiliar landscapes and buildings, stones, mountains and distorted faces appeared inside it, as well as the ringing of bells, tapping, growling of jaguars, whispering and voices of people singing strange songs in an incomprehensible language in chorus.
According to some researchers, Mayan crystal skulls are a kind of amplifiers of human psychic energy. Quartz, due to its structure, has a mysterious effect on the human brain and allows you to travel to the past and the future.
skull killer
According to the book by Mitchell-Hedges “Danger is my ally”, the found crystal skull is at least 3600 years old and, according to an ancient legend, priests could doom any person to death with its help. The skull was allegedly the embodiment of universal evil.
After the discovery of the skull, rumors arose that a number of deaths had been linked to it. Concrete facts confirming this in the literature could not be found. Perhaps the rumors were spread by Mitchell-Hedges himself to give his find a mystical touch and attract the attention of the public.
However, the owner of the skull, Anna Mitchell-Hedges, lived happily for 100 years. Here is what she said in a 1970 interview: “Sometimes I sincerely regret that I didn’t cut down my father’s wish - he wanted me to put the skull in his coffin. This would probably be the most suitable place for such a strange thing, because in the wrong hands it will begin to do evil.
Artifact study
In the 1960s, after the death of her father, art critic Frank Dorland persuaded Anna Mitchell-Hedges to allow scientists to study the crystal skull. Experts immediately determined that the prototype of the artifact was a real female skull.
Frank Joseph made an attempt to recreate the image of a lady whose skull was used to create a unique piece of rock crystal. To do this, he turned to the New York Police Laboratory, which specializes in facial reconstruction from skulls, for help.
At the same time, Joseph asked a group of psychics to determine the appearance of the owner of such a skull. Surprisingly, the scientific reconstruction and descriptions received from psychics almost coincided. It turned out that the prototype of the crystal skull was the skull of a young Indian girl.
Frank Dorland asked his friend L. Barre, who worked for the well-known firm Hewlett-Packard in Santa Clara (California, USA), to study the mysterious skull. The company's specialists, who are experts in quartz, were shocked. According to them, such a product simply could not exist in reality: a piece of rock crystal, from which the skull and jaw were cut, consisted of three or four splices and had to fall apart at the initial stage of processing. In addition, even with the availability of modern technologies, it is not yet possible to manufacture such a product. According to experts, it would take seven million hours to polish such a skull. At the same time, it is striking that no traces of mechanical processing were found on the crystal skull.
At the end of the study, engineer L. Barre made the following conclusion: “We studied the skull along three optical axes and found that it consists of three or four splices ... Analyzing the splices, we found that the skull was carved from one piece of crystal along with the lower jaw. On the Mohs scale, rock crystal has a high hardness equal to seven (second only to topaz, corundum and diamond), and it is impossible to cut it with anything other than diamond.
But the ancients somehow managed to process it. And not only the skull itself - they cut out the lower jaw and the hinges on which it was suspended from the same piece. With such a hardness of the material, this is more than mysterious, and here's why: in crystals, if they consist of more than one intergrowth, there are internal stresses. When you press on the crystal with the head of the cutter, it can break into pieces due to stress ... But someone made this skull from one piece of crystal so carefully, as if they did not touch it at all during the cutting process. We also found some sort of prism carved into the back of the skull, at the base of the skull, so that any ray of light that enters the eye sockets is reflected back into them. Look into his eye sockets and you can see the whole room through them."
Legend of the 13 Crystal Turtles
It turns out that the Nazis were well aware of the crystal turtles. There is a mention that in 1943 agents of the German society "Ahnenerbe" were captured in Brazil, who tried to enter one of the local museums. During the interrogation, it was found out that the purpose of the secret operation of the Germans was to search for and deliver crystal skulls to Germany.
There is a legend about 13 crystal skulls, according to which there were thirteen crystal skulls of the "Goddess of Death" which contained all the knowledge of the world from its origin to the distant future. These skulls were kept separately from each other, each of them was looked after by special priests who were fluent in martial arts and able to protect the relics from any encroachment. The legend said that when humanity was on the verge of death, all thirteen skulls would come together and give people saving information for them.
At first there were twelve skulls. In the spring of 2011, the news spread around the world about the thirteenth skull discovered in a cache in the attic of an old house in Bavaria (Germany). A version immediately appeared that the skull belonged to one of the Nazi leaders, Heinrich Himmler.
Artifact or fake
In addition to the skull of Anna Mitchell-Hedges, another crystal skull has been kept in the British Museum since 1898. This skull is monolithic and, unlike Anna's, does not have a separate mandible. According to the original version, this skull was brought to Europe in the 1860s by a Spanish officer from Mexico. According to experts, the skull is female and, in terms of its parameters, is practically commensurate with real skulls and is made in full size.
In 1996 and 2004, a crystal skull from the British Museum was carefully studied by scientists from the universities of Cardiff and Kingston. The results of the study of the skull using an electron microscope and X-ray spectroscopy showed that it was presumably made in Europe with jewelry tools of the late 19th century. Its surface was processed with a rotating wheel with diamond and corundum chips.
The crystal skull of Anna Mitchell-Hedges has also been criticized. According to archaeologist Norman Hammond, the holes at the bottom of the skull were made with a high-speed metal drill. This conclusion was also supported by Professor R. Distelberger from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Anthropologist Jane McLaren noted that this skull completely lacks the features characteristic of the sculptural images of the Aztecs, Mayans and the cultures that preceded them. In 1982, after careful research, Professor R. Distelberger concluded that the skull was a fake.
It is believed that Mitchell-Hedges bought the crystal skull in 1943 at Sotheby's for £400. The item was put up for auction by antique dealer Sidney Burney, who has owned it since 1933. Where the skull from the antiquarian has no information.
Crystal skulls, made with great art, are a unique phenomenon of the cultural “mystery of the Maya”. Mayan priests in ancient times used them for their mysteries as a symbol of power over otherworldly forces. In the view of the Indians, these skulls were the materialized embodiment of evil, which the priests kept in obedience with the help of magic. In the museums of the world, many sculpted skulls of various shapes and colors have been collected, ranging in size from very small to life size. Among them there is a truly legendary skull, which is considered one of the most mysterious objects of antiquity. It is known as the Mitchell-Hedges Skull, named after the English traveler and adventurer Frederick Mitchell-Hedges who found it. This skull has given rise to much speculation as to its origin, age, method of manufacture, and astounding effects on the human psyche.
Frederick Albert Mitchell-Hedges
The history of the discovery of this crystal skull, surrounded by a halo of mystery, is no less fascinating. Frederick Mitchell-Hedges, being a thrill-seeker and adventurer, traveled all over the world. His expeditions were supported by both private investors and museums, to which he donated the exhibits he found. Hedges was obsessed with finding the vanished Atlantis, which he believed had once been off the coast of Honduras. He believed that when Atlantis sank under water, a small part of the people survived and from them arose the great civilization of the Maya. The search for the vanished Atlantis led Hedges in 1924 to Central America, to the jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula, which at that time was British Honduras, and now Belize.
The expedition began work on clearing the ancient Mayan city in the humid tropical jungle. To facilitate the excavations, they burned 33 hectares of forest, which hid hardly guessed old buildings: the ruins of a stone pyramid and city walls, a huge amphitheater for thousands of spectators. With the light hand of Hedges, the name Lubaantun was assigned to the ancient settlement, which means “City of Fallen Stones” in the Mayan language. Lubaantun was almost unexplored and was potentially considered a treasure trove of ancient Maya artifacts.
Three years later, on his next expedition, Hedges took his adopted daughter Anna. In April 1927, on the day of her seventeenth birthday, Anna, under the rubble of an ancient altar, discovered a skillfully made life-size skull, which was carved from a single piece of almost perfect quartz and beautifully polished. Its weight was 5.13 kg. He was missing the lower jaw, which was found three months later, eight meters from the place where the skull was found. It turned out that this crystal piece is suspended on perfectly smooth hinges and fitted so well that it starts to move at the slightest touch and can move as if the skull is talking.
Mayan artifacts made from crystal were extremely rare, and the crystal skull was unique. But Mitchell-Hedges did not say a word about him in public, which was not typical for such a person greedy for fame.
It is said that strange things began to happen to those who came into contact with the crystal skull. This first happened to Anna. One evening she put this amazing find next to her bed, and all night she had strange dreams about the life of the Indians millennia ago. When the skull was removed for the night, the dreams stopped.
Mitchell-Hedges did not make any public statements about this unique find even when he left Lubaantuna in 1926. The skull was later secretly kept in England, where Hedges and Anna returned to live. One of the often cited reasons for the secrecy was the need to hide the skull from the sponsors who financed its excavation.
Anna told about the skull to the world and made it a worldwide sensation when she was already over fifty. After the death of her adoptive father, Anna considered selling the skull. But experts doubted its authenticity, since the find was not documented, and its history seemed suspicious to some. To certify the authenticity of the skull, Anna decided to hand it over to specialists for examination.
Art historian Frank Dordland studied the artifact. Upon careful examination, he found inside the skull a whole system of lenses, prisms and channels that create unusual optical effects. When a light beam is directed into the cranial cavity, the eye sockets begin to sparkle brightly. If you direct a beam of light into the center of the nasal cavity, the skull begins to glow completely, and a bright halo appears around it. Perhaps the skull was used by the Mayan priests during ritual ceremonies, when prismatic "eyes" focused the sun's rays, causing the sacred tongue of flame to emerge from the open jaws.
The researcher was also struck by the fact that on perfectly polished crystal, even under a microscope, no traces of processing were visible. “The polishing of Mitchell-Hedges' skull is so good it's hard to look at with an optical microscope. The light reflects into your eyes, because with such a fine polish, it is like looking into a mirror.”
He could not understand how the ancient Maya managed to achieve such a smooth surface of the crystal: “If you exclude the participation of supernatural forces, Mayan artisans would have had to polish their crystal skull by hand. For hundreds of years, no matter what changes took place during this time in social conditions and religion, artisans would continue their incredible work. We can hardly imagine that the work on one thing was passed down from generation to generation for many centuries.
In 1970, Dordland organized a test at the California Crystal Physics Laboratory of the Hewlett-Packard Company, which at that time specialized in the production of crystal oscillators. Studies have shown that both parts of the skull were made from a single monolithic piece of quartz and were machined without taking into account the molecular symmetry of the crystal and the extreme fragility of the material. And this cannot be done without crushing the crystal, even with a laser. Here is what one of the best experts of the company, engineer L. Barre, said about this:
We studied the skull along three optical axes and found that it consists of three or four intergrowths. Analyzing the joints, we found that the skull was carved from a single piece of crystal along with the lower jaw. On the Mohs scale, rock crystal has a high hardness equal to seven (second only to topaz, corundum and diamond), and it is impossible to cut it with anything other than diamond. But the ancients somehow managed to process it. And not only the skull itself - they cut out the lower jaw and the hinges on which it is suspended from the same piece. With such a hardness of the material, this is more than mysterious, and here's why: in crystals, if they consist of more than one intergrowth, there are internal stresses. When you press the crystal with the head of the chisel, the stress can cause it to break into pieces. But someone made this skull from a single piece of crystal so carefully that it was as if they had not touched it at all during the cutting process.
When examining the surface of the skull, we found evidence of exposure to three different abrasives. Its final finish is polished. We also found some sort of prism carved into the back of the skull, at the base of the skull, so that any ray of light that enters the eye sockets is reflected back into them. Look into his eye sockets and you can see the whole room in them.
Professionals from Hewlett-Packard remained at a loss: “This damn thing simply should not exist. Those who created it have no idea about crystallography and fiber optics. They completely ignored the axes of symmetry, and this thing inevitably had to fall apart during the initial processing. Why this did not happen is impossible to imagine. In their opinion, in order to achieve such perfection, the skull had to be polished with sand and water for 300 years.
It was extremely difficult to determine the age of the skull, since the crystal does not contain carbon, according to which ancient objects are usually dated. The scientists looked for clues on the surface of the skull, such as traces of the tools used to carve it. But they did not find a single microscopic scratch from the tools and came to the conclusion that none of the known modern technologies is capable of creating an exact copy of a human skull from a single piece of quartz. They even turned down half a million dollars that was offered to someone who would make a copy of the crystal skull.
The place where the skull was made turned out to be a mystery: neither in Mexico nor in all of Central America is there a single deposit of rock crystal. Its only source could be only quartz veins in California, but rock crystal of such high quality is not found in these places at all. The Crystal Skull stubbornly keeps the secret of its manufacture.
Tests at Hewlett-Packard discovered another feature of the skull - it had piezoelectric properties: if you take a quartz crystal and press on it, squeeze it very hard, then an electric charge is induced in the crystal. Frank Dordland believed that this crystal, due to its piezoelectric properties, could store consciousness.
Anna Mitchell-Hedges announced the Hewlett-Packard test as a triumphant confirmation of her skull story. She kept him and began to make startling claims about his abilities, one of them being the ability to predict global catastrophes. Anna went on tour with a crystal skull, and in 1980 she starred in an episode of the television series The Secret World of Arthur C. Clarke. Anna Hedges died in April 2007 at the age of 100 and insisted until her death that her story about finding the crystal skull was true.
But there is another version of the appearance of the crystal skull. Although Anna claimed to have found the skull herself, according to the British Museum, F. Mitchell-Hedges bought it for £400 at Sotheby's in London in 1943 from art dealer Sidney Barney.
This may be related to the fact that Mitchell-Hedges does not mention the skull in his newspaper publications about Atlantis, written by him in the 30s of the XX century. This version is also supported by the absence of photographs of an unusual artifact among the photographs taken during the expedition to Lubaantun. Further evidence that Hedges did not find the artifact in Belize was found in the July issue of The Maine (1936), the printed publication of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. It contained an article about the study of two crystal skulls. One of them was mentioned as an exhibit of the British Museum, the second was called Barney's skull. The latter was nothing more than a Mitchell-Hedges skull and apparently belonged to Sidney Barney. Nowhere in the article was Mitchell Hedges mentioned, nor was it mentioned that the skull was discovered in the ruins of the Mayan city of Lubaantun.
In his book Secrets of the Supernatural, Joe Nickel refers to a 1933 letter from Barney to the American Museum of Natural History. It says: “The rock-crystal skull was for several years the property of a collector from whom I bought it, who in turn received it from an Englishman, in whose collection it was also for several years. I couldn't look further."
The data mentioned cast doubt on Hedges' story, but not on the authenticity of the skull itself, for whatever reasons Hedges came up with this unusual story. However, he was used to it. He had a reputation for telling tall tales (among them stories about how he shared a room with Leon Trotsky and fought with Pancho Villa).
Many of the supernatural properties and sinister legends associated with the crystal skull have their origins in Mitchell-Hedges' autobiographical book, My Friend Danger. It was in it that the artifact was first called the Skull of Fate. Hedges writes that the skull was used by the Maya high priests in magical rites involving curses that sent a painful death to the intended victims. The power of the skull was so great that it alone could cause instant death. Mitchell-Hedges also reports that the skull, which took a whopping 150 years to complete, is at least 3,600 years old. Although he did not provide any evidence to support his claims, Mitchell-Hedges' claims have become part of the Skull of Doom legend. It was said that it had been carved for hundreds of years to achieve the perfect shape: craftsmen grinded and polished it every day for their entire lives.
Today, the skull is held by Bill Homann, who was a longtime companion of Anna Mitchell-Hedges in her old age.
Materials used