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I recently had the pleasure of watching the latest installment in the Indiana Jones saga: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  I am the first to admit it was a good adventure movie in the tradition of past Indiana Jones movies from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

The irony in this for me was that I was contacted by a staffer at Lucas a couple of years back about my expertise on the subject of Crystal Skulls, and on Peru.  However, I am left to guess at the reasons why they did not use credible archaeologists in the conceptualization of this movie.  I assume that they knew they were going to go way over the top, and that if they shared the plot line, no one would have helped them.

But as I sat there, in a packed cinema, with hundreds of other movie goers taking in the unimaginable number of modern myths, from Area 51 to Roswell to Nazca Lines to Crystal Skulls, I had to wonder what idiot was responsible for the hodgepodge of farce, false tales, urban legends, and out right lies.

Unfortunately, I didn't make a copy of the movie for reference, but I will go over the main falsehoods in the film.

1. Alien Bodies in the Nevada desert
   Does any one really believe that the government would keep the corpses of extraterrestrials in an unairconditioned hanger in the middle of the Nevada desert?  Assuming there were alien bodies to be kept?

2. Archaeology Professors examine Aliens
   Here again, would an archaeologist examine alien remains?  No.  I can't think of a single case where an archaeologist was called in for a crash site.  This is the equivalent of asking a paleontologist to examine a lizard that was caught in the landing gear of an airliner.

3. Mitchell-Hedges Skull
   Indy makes a statement about the Mitchell-Hedges Skull, and how it had fascinated him before he became an archaeologist, but there is evidence that Mitchell-Hedges bought the skull in the 1940s!  Indy became an Archaeologist in the early thirties (per the story line).  He also mentioned that the two skulls were Mesoamerican - they are neither.  The British Museum skull is a fraud, and so too most likely is the Mitchell-Hedges skull, since there is no proof that it also is not of modern manufacture.  So in short, neither is Mesoamerican (however, I will be happy to be PROVED wrong about the Mitchell-Hedges skull).

4. Indi gets a letter
   A letter is delivered to Indy by his estranged son.  The letter is supposedly written in the written language of an Eastern Peruvian / Amazonian culture, that Jones knows well enough to translate it (through Mayan, no less!).  The problem is that the South American cultures produced no such written language, based upon the fact that there are NO RECORDS of such a language.

5. Flying To Peru
   This is not an archaeological issue, but none the less... In the scene when Indy and Mutt are flying to Peru, a Pan American Aircraft is shown. It is an Antonov AN-2. Pan Am never flew this Russian aircraft! Also, the shot is backwards; the writing on the aircraft (airline name and registration) read backwards.

6. Indy and Mutt fly to Nazca, Peru
   Nazca is only 4 hours away on bus from the capital Lima, yet the city they show on the movie is Cuzco, which is 24 hours away from Lima. Cuzco is on the east side of the country, Nazca is on the west coast right next to Lima. Also, back in 1957 only Lima had an airport, yet they show a Nazca airport that didn't exist.  For more history of Nazca and the lines visit www.NazcaMystery.com

7. The NAZCA Airport
   Indy arrives in Peru at the Nazca airport.  Only problem is the sign says NAZCA, Nazca is the English spelling, NASCA is the Spanish spelling.

8. Nazca Lines Location
   In simple fact, the Nazca Lines are near Nazca, not at Nazca.  They are actually spread out over several nearby valleys and pampas.

9. The NAZCA Lines
   On the scene where they are at the cemetery in Nazca, they show the Nazca lines right off the cemetery. The lines are not so close that you can see the grouping pictured, plus there are no cliffs like the one dipicted north of the lines.  Also, the lines are just a shade different than the surrounding soil, those in the movie almost appeared painted white.  Visit www.NazcaMystery.com for the reality of the Nazca Lines.

10. Speaking Maya In Peru
    Professor Ox is talking Mayan in the temple in Peru. In the Peruvian jungle, they speak Aymara (today).  At no time did Peruvians speak Maya.  Mayan was spoken in Mexico, Guatemala and elsewhere in Central America.

11. Off The Wall
    As the group passes through the tunnels, the local protectors come out of the walls.  Since they could be killed easily, they were humans.  Yet we see them breaking through stone carvings and walls to emerge.  In the process, they do a good job of destroying the iconography they seem to be protecting.

12. Hodgepodge of Cultures
    Regardless of Aliens playing tourists and collecting knickknacks, the temple and pyramid would have to have been constructed by locals.  You see design elements from every Central American and Mexican culture represented, yet almost none of the native Peruvian, Ecuadorian, Columbian, or Chilean cultural motifs represented well.  Not a Tumi knife to be found!  Clearly the set designers failed to do their home work.  Regardless, it became a meaningless mess, and just served to increase the impossibility of the story line.

13. Pre-Columbian Skull Deformation
    Indy got that part right.  From Mexico to Peru, parents bound the skulls of their children of cause massive deformities in the skulls of their children, to mold them into shape of a cone (click here for an example).  However, it should have been pointed out that there remains a mystery surrounding this practice - how the style and methods were communicated from Peru to Mexico?

14. Looters And Grave Robbers
    One of the great harms of this and all such movies is the way it portrays archaeologists.  Indy IS a GRAVE ROBBER.  AND he uses NO scientific methods in his discoveries.  Archaeology is about systematic painstaking methods to do the least harm, and recover as close to 100% as is possible.  Indy leaves nothing behind.  Ironically, this was the tradition of the likes of Mitchell-Hedges too (per his own words), and his contemporaries.

Hopefully, if nothing else comes from this movie, it will be a deeper interest in the hard science of archaeology and our ancient cultural heritage.  However, I suspect that Lucas and company have permanently stamped the nonsense of crystal skull worship into the global psyche.

May 26, 2008
Tim McGuinness, Ph.D., MA, MBA, MPE, BSEE