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Crystals have been regarded as magical talismans since the Middle Ages, and are today the sine qua non of the New Age movement. Skulls, meanwhile, are humanity's foremost symbol of death, and a powerful icon in the visual vocabularies of cultures all over the globe.

Put the two together, and you get one heck of a semiotically loaded artifact. Crystal skulls of apparently ancient origin have been found in parts of Mexico, Central America and South America, comprising one of the most fascinating subjects of 20th Century archaeology.

Part of the attraction of crystal skulls is their tangibility. We have no Bigfoots to dissect or alien spacecraft to take for a test spin, but crystals skulls are undeniably real. Many believe the objects possess extraordinary powers, and scientists are at a loss to explain how they could have been created. This report examines the known history of crystal skulls, various viewpoints on where they might have came from, and the secrets they may reveal.

The Mitchell-Hedges Skull:
King of the Crystal Skulls

"The story of the Mitchell-Hedges skull's discovery
was a hoax, but its origins remain a mystery."

The most widely celebrated and mysterious crystal skull is the Mitchell-Hedges Skull, for at least two good reasons. First, it is very similar in form to an actual human skull, even featuring a fitted removable jawbone. Most known crystal skulls are of a more stylized structure, often with unrealistic features and teeth that are simply etched onto a single skull piece.

Second, it is impossible to say how the Mitchell-Hedges skull was constructed. From a technical standpoint, it appears to be an impossible object which today's most talented sculptors and engineers would be unable to duplicate.

The discovery of this baffling artifact is a controversial matter. It was brought into prominence by British explorer F. A. Mitchell-Hedges, who claimed that his daughter unearthed it in 1924. Mitchell-Hedges led an expedition in the ancient Mayan ruins of Lubaantun, in Belize (then British Honduras), searching for evidence of Atlantis.

The story goes that his daughter, Anna, was rummaging inside a structure believed to have once been a temple, when she found the beautifully carved cranium of the crystal skull. It was lacking its jawbone, but the matching mandible was found three months later, some 25 feet away from the first discovery. Mitchell-Hedges claimed that he refused to take the skull away, and offered it to the local priests, but the Mayans gave the skull back to him as a gift upon his departure.

It now appears that this tale of the skull's discovery was entirely fabricated. Mitchell-Hedges apparently purchased the skull at an auction at Sothebys in London, in 1943. This has been verified by documents at the British Museum, which had bid against Mitchell-Hedges for the crystal artifact.

This revelation is consistent with the known history of Mitchell-Hedges's involvement with the skull. There are no photographs of the skull among those that were taken during his Lubaatun expedition, and there is no documentation of Mitchell-Hedges displaying or even acknowledging the skull prior to 1943.

The skull remains in the possession of the octogenarian Anna Mitchell-Hedges. She resides in Canada and displays the skull on frequent tours. Anna has maintained for all these years that she discovered the skull, even though there is reason to doubt that she was present at the Lubaatun expedition at all.

The Mitchell-Hedges skull is made of clear quartz crystal, and both cranium and mandible are believed to have come from the same solid block. It weighs 11.7 pounds and is about five inches high, five inches wide, and seven inches long. Except for slight anomalies in the temples and cheekbones, it is a virtually anatomically correct replica of a human skull. Because of its small size and other characteristics, it is thought more closely to resemble a female skull -- and this has led some to refer to the Mitchell-Hedges skull as a "she."

The Mitchell-Hedges family loaned the skull to Hewlett-Packard Laboratories for extensive study in 1970. Art restorer Frank Dorland oversaw the testing at the Santa Clara, California, computer equipment manufacturer, a leading facility for crystal research. The HP examinations yielded some startling results.

Researchers found that the skull had been carved against the natural axis of the crystal. Modern crystal sculptors always take into account the axis, or orientation of the crystal's molecular symmetry, because if they carve "against the grain," the piece is bound to shatter -- even with the use of lasers and other high-tech cutting methods.

To compound the strangeness, HP could find no microscopic scratches on the crystal which would indicate it had been carved with metal instruments. Dorland's best hypothesis for the skull's construction is that it was roughly hewn out with diamonds, and then the detail work was meticulously done with a gentle solution of silicon sand and water. The exhausting job -- assuming it could possibly be done in this way -- would have required man-hours adding up to 300 years to complete.

Under these circumstances, experts believe that successfully crafting a shape as complex as the Mitchell-Hedges skull is impossible; as one HP researcher is said to have remarked, "The damned thing simply shouldn't be."

More Crystal Skulls:
A Boneyard of Precious Stone

"The British crystal skull was brought to Europe by
mercenaries from Mexico during the 1890s."
 

The Mitchell-Hedges skull is the quintessential crystal skull, but there are many others. Much of the crystal skull lore speaks of there being a total of thirteen in existence, all of them linked together in some mystical way. A strange kinship among crystal skulls is often noted, and not just because of mineral or structural similarities -- some who claim sensitivity to the skulls' energies have observed that skulls seem to interact as if they "know each other" when gathered at one place.

Whether they may be scattered cousins belonging to one big skull family, there are far more than thirteen crystal skulls in the world. The following is a listing of a few of them, drawing from Joshua Shapiro's informative crystal skulls Web site (editor's note: the website no longer published).

There is a pair of similar skulls known as the British Crystal Skull and the Paris Crystal Skull. Both are said to have been bought by mercenaries in Mexico in the 1890s, possibly at the same time. They are so similar in size and shape that some have guessed that one was copied to produce the other. In comparison to the Mitchell-Hedges skull, they are made of cloudier clear crystal and are not nearly as finely sculpted. The features are superficially etched and appear incomplete, without discretely formed jawbones. The British Crystal Skull is on display at London's Museum of Mankind, and the Trocadero Museum of Paris houses the Paris Crystal Skull.

Further examples of primitively sculpted skulls are a couple called the Mayan Crystal Skull and the Amethyst Skull. They were discovered in the early 1900s in Guatemala and Mexico, respectively, and were brought to the U.S. by a Mayan priest. 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 of them were studied at Hewlett-Packard, and they too were found to be inexplicably cut against the axis of the crystal.

A skull known as "Max," or the Texas Crystal Skull, is a single-piece, clear skull weighing 18 pounds. It reportedly originated in Guatemala, then passed from a Tibetan spiritualist to JoAnn Parks of Houston, Texas. The Parks family allows visitors to observe Max and they display the skull at various exhibitions across the U.S.

"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 make it look like the skull of an alien being. ET is part of the private collection of Joke Van Dietan, who tours with her skulls to share the healing powers she believes they possess.

The only known crystal skull that comes close to resembling the Mitchell-Hedges skull is one called the Rose Quartz Crystal Skull, which was reported near the border of Honduras and Guatemala. It is not clear in color and is slightly larger than the Mitchell-Hedges, but boasts a comparable level of craftsmanship, including a removable mandible.

Powers and Visions:
Through a Glass Skull, Darkly

Many believe that crystal is an inherently powerful substance, capable of transmitting and absorbing "vibrations" and acting as conduits of psychic energy. Such enthusiasts avoid the question of scientific explanation for this phenomenon by asserting that crystal vibrations cannot be detected or recorded.

These vibrations and psychic emanations are said to be particularly pronounced in crystal skulls. People who claim to be sensitive report powerful visions and sensations of well-being in the presence of the artifacts. At exhibitions and in owner's homes, the public is often permitted to have private meditations sessions with the skulls. Some are even able to commune with only a photograph or a plastic mold cast from a crystal skull.

The healing properties often associated with crystals have also been made in conjunction with crystal skulls. Visitors of the Mitchell-Hedges skull have reported subsequent healing experiences, and Joke Van Dietan credits a skull in her collection, the one called ET, with helping her fully recover from a brain tumor.

Another recurring claim about the crystal skulls is that they are repositories of hidden information of some kind. The idea is that the advanced race that created the skulls encoded them with vast quantities of data, whether a record of their lost people, prophecies of future events, or a complete history of Earth. The problem is figuring out how to unlock these secrets.

Some claim to "read" the skulls' information through simple meditation. Psychic visions come to them, or they even see images flickering inside the skull. A process called "activation" involves a group gathering around a skull and conducting a seance-style exploration. Using their collective energies to journey within the skull's spiritual dimensions, the activation team sometimes speak in tongues and share common visions.

There are other methods of decoding the skulls by physical manipulation. One recurring notion is that they were designed to reveal their secrets when light is shined on them in a particular way. While studying the Mitchell-Hedges skull at Hewlett-Packard, Frank Dorland discovered that its interior contained a well-formed prism and tunnels for the passage of light, and the eye sockets were perfectly placed concave lenses. When Dorland shone a beam of light up from beneath the skull, he observed that it lit up "like it was on fire." Dorland also reported that the skull sometimes spontaneously changed color, and that hallucinatory images and sounds emanated from inside it.

J.W. Voakes of Seattle claims to decipher meaning from crystal skulls by means of a process he terms "4th Dimensional Mirror Imaging." Using a graphics program on his personal computer, Voakes selects a small area of surface detail from a skull or other artifact, copies it, and pastes a reverse of the selection alongside the original, creating a new, symmetrical image. Voakes discerns forms such as faces and alien-type bodies amid the patterns he creates, and is convinced that they were placed there by whatever intelligence created the crystals.

It should be noted, though, that the human mind tends to impose order on any pattern that is random but symmetrical. Any two blobs and a line can become a face. Voakes could conceivably be onto something, but his findings are likely little more than a self-administered Rorschach test.

Origin Theories:
Celestial Gifts or Skullduggery?

"Unlike the Mayan art, skulls are common in Aztec art --
suggesting Aztec origins for the crystal skulls."

Regardless of any unearthly properties the crystal skulls may or may not possess, the question remains: where did they come from? There are countless hypotheses that they are the legacy of some higher intelligence. Many believe they were created by extraterrestrials or beings in Atlantis or Lemuria. One elaborate theory maintains that the skulls were left behind by a sophisticated Inner Earth society which lives at the hollow center of our planet, and there are thirteen "master skulls" which contain the history of these people.

The most obvious answer to the mystery is that native artisans <CrystallSkulls.us Editor's Note:  New evidence demonstrates that most, if not all are modern fakes!> in Latin America or elsewhere crafted the skulls themselves. The Mayans are most often associated with them, although some doubt that they could have made the skulls, and not simply because of the technical conundrum the job poses. One theory holds the Aztecs as a more likely candidate to have created them. Skull imagery figures prominently in Aztec art and religious symbols, and not in that of the Mayans. The Aztecs were also more highly skilled in sculpting with crystal. It could be that the skulls found in Mayan ruins are actually displaced Aztec relics... or, as some suspect, this incongruity may indicate that some accounts of the skulls' origins are phony.

Many skeptics feel that the crystal skulls are probably of a much more recent vintage than their accompanying stories suggest. This, they believe, is the best way to explain their existence, since no one could have created them without technologies available only within the past century. Since carbon-dating only works on organic substances, it is impossible to determine just how old a crystal skull is. But one recent study found reasonable signs of some skulls' relative youth.

A May broadcast of the BBC documentary series "Everyman" reported on studies of a number of crystal skulls and other artifacts of supposedly ancient origin conducted at the British Museum. Using electron microscopes, the researchers found that two of the skulls possessed straight, perfectly-spaced surface markings, indicating the use of a modern polishing wheel. Genuine ancient objects would show haphazard tiny scratches from the hand-polishing process. The report speculated that these skulls were actually made in Germany within the past 150 years.

Even the regal Mitchell-Hedges skull is not without scandalous accusations of fraud. Some believe that F.A. Mitchell-Hedges had the piece commissioned by a sculptor, and planted it in the Lubaantun ruins for his daughter to find as a spectacular birthday present.

The validity of this charge is uncertain, but even if the Mitchell-Hedges skull is of modern origin, its structure is no less extraordinary. In all likelihood, every crystal skull in the world was fashioned by plain old human beings of some sort, and regardless of whether the work was carried out five years ago or five hundred years ago, we still don't have any idea how they did it.

Original Copyright Acknowledged