In the new Indiana Jones movie "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal
Skull", the hero, will of course, be on a quest for an ancient crystal skull
yielding mysterious powers. As an consumer of adventure cinema, I have
traveled through time with Indiana Jones, from his first movie to the present,
and I am pleased to see his return. As an archaeologist though, these
movies serve to highlight the worst possible impressions about the science of
studying our collective past, and this movie will no doubt, continue to create
stereotypes and misinformation about the real science of archaeology.
Worse, now that we finally have closure on the scientifically debunked crystal
skulls - it will not only re-open this subject, but fan the flames to the point
of wild fire.
Here we go again, with the fanciful
exploitation of what appears to have been nothing but a series of 19th
Century frauds.
I hope that the fans of the film will enjoy its
fantasy fully (as I will!), but spend a moment to explore the validity of the
central object in this movie - the crystal skull - and the simple fact that
there are no pre-Columbian crystal skulls. The only two reputed authentic
skulls (namely the British Museum Skull and the Mitchell Hedges Skull) have been
either unequivocally proven to be a fraud, or not allowed to be examined by
modern methods for fear of the same. The result is simply: there are no
real Ancient American Crystal Skulls - they are all of modern manufacture (after
1850).
In the process of exploring the subject of
Crystal Skulls, I hope that the public will encounter vast mysteries which are
real, profound, and as yet unexplained. These include the
geoglyphs of Peru, the Mound Builder cultures of North America that appear to have
build gigantic cities and pyramids, the oldest city in the Americas in
Caral Peru
dating back over 4,500 years. There are mysteries galore in our ancient
past, and well worth exploring.
In truth, Indiana Jones helped fuel my zeal for
the subject. I still have my Indy hat, whip, leather jacket, and revolver
that I used to carry with me in the field (secret revealed). But just as
Doc Savage was a similar hero of a previous generation, the fantasy was so over
the top, that it was somewhat easy to keep fact from fiction. But today's
audience is far more willing to buy into frauds and fantasies (just look at the
2008 Presidential Race for an example). So it is important to know what is
real and what is not.
In the upcoming months, I shall endeavor to
detail the facts and the fantasy in the film on this page after the film is
released. I hope you will come back for an Archaeologist's View of Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull!
Dr. Tim McGuinness
March 2008
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