The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls

‘Remember Melissa,’ said Jimmy.

‘Oh, that little girl who had the bone marrow trouble,’ replied Anna. ‘She came to stay with us for a few weeks, and I gave her a photograph of the skull and she carries that photograph with her everywhere. Anyway, she came back to tell me that her bone marrow is fine and she can walk now. That’s the biggest joy of my life really. Another lady, only last month, she had an operation but she wasn’t doing very well. So she came and she saw the skull and sat with him for a very long time. She sent me a letter the other day to say that she is now healed.’

I was puzzled. If the skull really had the power to heal, why had Anna’s father even in his written account referred to it as ‘the Skull of Doom’ and claimed that the ancient Maya had used it ‘to will death’?

Anna explained, ‘The Maya told us that it was a healing skull. It was actually used for many, many things, but particularly for healing. But, you see, for the Maya, death itself was sometimes seen as a form of healing.’

‘The way I understand it,’ added Jimmy, ‘is that for the Maya death was the ultimate way to access the other dimensions they believed in and the skull was used to help this final transition to the other world.’

‘I can tell you exactly how the Maya used it during the willing death ceremony,’ said Anna. ‘This came about when an old medicine man or priest was getting too old to carry on their work and a young person was chosen to carry on the work of the elder. When the day came, the old one would lie down and the young one would kneel down beside them and they would both put their hands on the crystal skull. Then a high priest would perform a ceremony and during the ceremony all the knowledge and wisdom of the old one would pass on into the young one through the skull and the old one would pass away during the ceremony and go to sleep forever. And that was the willing death ceremony.’

Anna went on to explain that she had been looking after the skull for many years now and letting people come to her house and experience its power for themselves. She said the Mayan people knew what she was doing with the skull and that they were very happy about it. She said that before she died she wanted to ensure that the work she had been doing would be carried on. ‘This is what my father would have wished and it is the wish of the Maya people too.’ She added, ‘I think I have someone in mind already to take over the care of the skull when I’m gone.’ She said she was also planning a final visit to Lubaantun. We wondered whether Anna was planning to give the skull back to the Mayan people, but she said the skull would not be going with her.

In Annas opinion, the crystal skull was bequeathed to her and her father for a reason, a reason whose time would come. ‘The Mayans told me that the skull is important to mankind. It is a gift from the Mayan people to the rest of the world.’ She added, ‘The Mayans have a lot of knowledge. They gave us the skull for a definite reason and a purpose. I am not exactly sure what that reason is, but I know that this skull is part of something very, very important.’

We of course wanted to know more, but all Anna would say was, ‘You will just have to ask the Mayans.’

4. THE MYSTERY (#ulink_50bbebb6-74a6-5915-a47e-578b3f144e1b)

Every now and then in the history of mankind there comes a discovery so unique and so incredible that it cannot be explained according to our normal set of beliefs and everyday assumptions, a discovery so remarkable that it challenges our normal view of history, and therefore our whole view of the world today. Could it be that the crystal skull was just such a discovery?

After all, we had always assumed that we were more advanced and developed than our simple and primitive ancestors. Everything we had learned about human history seemed to have shown that civilization had logically evolved in a constantly improving fashion over the millennia, so that we now found ourselves, almost by definition, living at the very pinnacle of mankind’s evolutionary development.

The crystal skull appeared to challenge this view. For how could such ancient and ‘primitive’ people have made something so accomplished? Indeed, where exactly did the Maya, with their elaborate cities, their complex hieroglyphics, their mathematics and calendrics, and their knowledge of astronomy, fit in with our simple model of a constantly evolving and improving human history?

The skull was a mystery. Not only was it beautiful to look at, but it seemed that nearly everyone who had come into contact with it had some strange tale to tell of unusual experiences or inexplicable phenomena. Whatever its real powers, the skull certainly seemed to have us entranced.

Now we knew crystal skulls were not just the stuff of legend, there were other questions to consider. Were there any other skulls like Anna’s? What did her skull have to do with the ancient legend? Why did some people, including Anna’s own father, consider it evil, whilst for others, such as Anna, it was a force for good? And had the ancient Maya really made such a beautiful and sophisticated object themselves?

After our visit to Anna Mitchell-Hedges, these questions remained unanswered. But our desire to find the answers was now even more pressing. We began by trying to find out more about the ancient Mayan civilization. From the books we were now reading it seemed that archaeologists had managed to reconstruct quite a vivid picture of it from the detailed inscriptions, monuments and artwork the Maya had left behind. They had a pretty good idea of many of their ancient customs, rituals, knowledge and beliefs, and in some cases very specific information, such as the birth dates of kings and the names of their ancestors for up to seven generations.

So we now began talking to various Mayan experts and archaeologists, hoping that they might be able to tell us more about the crystal skull. Did the Mayans make it at the same time as they built their great cities, only to abandon it and perhaps others like it on their sudden departure? Could the crystal skull perhaps give us some clues as to why they left? How had it come to remain in the temple ruins?

We also wanted to see whether there were any other clues as to how the Mayans might have made the skull or how they might have used it, or even, as Frederick Mitchell-Hedges had suspected, whether it in fact dated back to some even more mysterious pre-Mayan civilization.

But as we began our further investigations it soon became apparent that these were questions to which there would be no easy answers. Despite the details archaeologists had uncovered about some aspects of Mayan history, whole chunks of knowledge seemed to be missing.

Indeed, as we continued our investigations we realized that we had unwittingly stumbled into a veritable minefield of great archaeological controversy. For not only was there heated debate about who the Maya were, where they had come from and where they had disappeared to, but one question in particular seemed to divide the archaeological establishment perhaps more than any other, and that was, where had the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull really come from?

As we were to discover, the controversy began even with the site of the skull’s original discovery – Lubaantun. Mitchell-Hedges himself was of the view that the site was really pre-Mayan in origin. He felt the evidence from the site suggested that pre-Mayan peoples were involved in its construction and that it actually dated back to a much earlier period.

What had made Mitchell-Hedges suspect that Lubaantun might have been pre-Mayan was that, as we ourselves had noticed, the building techniques used there were so very different from those used at every other Mayan site. In their Recent book The Mayan Prophecies

author-historians Adrian Gilbert and Maurice Cotterell point out that the style of construction was remarkably similar to the techniques used by the even more ancient Incas of what is now Peru in South America. There are certain similarities between Lubaantun and the famous ancient Inca sites such as Machu Pichu, hidden high up thousands of miles away in the Andes. Gilbert and Cotterell suggest that whoever built Lubaantun might have enlisted the help of or learnt construction techniques from the ancient Incas of South America. Or perhaps both the ancient Maya and Inca had learned their construction techniques from some other civilization even more ancient than their own. This raised the question, had the crystal skull originally come from this same mysterious pre-Mayan civilization?

Mitchell-Hedges believed this civilization to have been the legendary Atlantis. Though this struck us as rather unlikely, he did in fact later find evidence that there had been some sort of pre-Mayan civilization in this part of the world during his later excavations of the Bay Islands off the nearby coast of Honduras. He donated several specimens from these digs to the British Museum in London and the Museum of the American Indian in New York, and Captain James Joyce of the British Museum wrote to comment:

‘It is my opinion that [the samples] represent a very early type of Central American culture; probably pre-Maya. The fact that they appear to bear relations with the pre-Conquest civilisations of Costa Rica, early Maya, and archaic Mexico, suggests that this is an early centre from which various forms of culture were diffused over Central America…

‘The results [of further research] are likely to shed new light on the current ideas of the origin and development of the American aboriginal civilisations…

‘I consider that your discovery is of great importance.’

George G. Heye, then Chairman and Director of the Museum of the American Indian, had also written:

‘In every way we concur with the findings of the British Museum in regard to your amazing discoveries made on a chain of islands off the coast of Central America… The specimens … are of a hitherto unknown culture…

‘[They] open up a new era in scientific thought relative to the age and history of the original inhabitants of the American continent…

‘Your discoveries open up an entirely new vista in regard to the ancient civilisations of the American continent, and must compel archaeologists to reconstruct their present scientific theories in regard to the riddle which has existed for so many years in Central and South America. In fact as further work is done and more knowledge gained, in my judgment it will make fresh history, and open up a reconstruction of thought on the antiquity of cultural civilisations of a world-wide character.’

We managed to track down an archaeologist, Dr Norman Hammond of Boston University, who had spent some time at Lubaantun during the 1970s carrying out further excavations of the site. Chris called Dr Hammond to ask him who he thought had really built the city. Dr Hammond was quite happy to talk about this and said that he believed it was the Mayans and the Mayans alone, without any external assistance, who had built Lubaantun. In his opinion the site had been built around AD 700 and abandoned around AD 850. It did not bother him at all that the buildings were constructed so differently from those at most other Mayan sites, as there were even examples of sites in the Mayan area that were built from red bricks and mortar like many modern homes, instead of from the usual blocks of cut white limestone. In Dr Hammond’s opinion, Lubaantun, like these other sites, was entirely Mayan and he would not countenance the view that any other people, whether Incas, Atlanteans or whoever, had been in any way involved.

But it was when we turned to the question of the crystal skull itself that we discovered that Dr Hammond’s views were about to drop a real bombshell onto our investigations. The minute Chris raised the subject of the skull Dr Hammond stated quite clearly and categorically that in his opinion, the crystal skull was irrelevant to Lubaantun, that it had never really been found there at all! He said that there was no evidence that Anna Mitchell-Hedges had ever even been to Lubaantun in the first place and that the story of the skull having been found there had only surfaced after her father died. He said that Anna Mitchell-Hedges’ own claim was the only evidence of the find.

By now we knew the crystal skull’s discovery had been controversial, but we didn’t know it had been quite as controversial as that. Norman Hammond said, in no uncertain terms, that he didn’t want anything more to do with the subject. We were horrified. We were about to make a film telling Anna Mitchell-Hedges’ fascinating story, when a respected archaeologist suddenly claimed the whole thing was pure invention. What were we to do?

As we were fast finding out, it was one thing trying to get our film off the ground but quite another trying to determine the truth about the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull. The truth seemed to be slipping through our fingers like grains of sand on a beach. If Anna Mitchell-Hedges had never really been to Lubaantun, how was it that she appeared to have all the photos to prove it? If the party had not really found the crystal skull there at all, why would Anna have invented such an incredible story?

It seemed that what had really got people wondering about the true origins of the skull was a series of puzzling discrepancies that appeared to exist between Anna’s detailed account of the skull’s discovery and her own father’s virtual silence on the issue. Even in his own autobiography, Frederick Mitchell-Hedges said very little about the skull. In fact, in a later American edition, published in 1955, he makes no mention of it at all. In the original edition he refers to it only briefly and somewhat enigmatically as follows, in a section of his autobiography mostly devoted to a later trip to Africa:

‘We took with us the sinister Skull of Doom of which much has been written…

If much had been written on the skull we certainly hadn’t been able to find it. But the plot thickened further when we read the remaining scant details Frederick Mitchell-Hedges offered about the skull:

‘How it came into my possession I have reason for not revealing.

…It is at least 3,600 years old and according to legend was used by the High Priest of the Maya when performing esoteric rites. It is said that when he willed death with the help of the skull, death invariably followed. It has been described as the embodiment of all evil. I do not wish to try and explain this phenomena.‘

However, he did add, at the end of the same chapter, ‘Much more of what we discovered [is] to be told in a book which Sammy will write.’

This lack of information in Frederick Mitchell-Hedges’ own account of the discovery, perhaps more than anything else, perhaps more even than the incredible claims made about the skull’s magical and healing powers, was why it had stirred up such incredible controversy, particularly amongst those in the archaeological establishment. In the light of his secrecy, some degree of scepticism was now completely understandable. But it had led to some pretty wild speculation.

Dr David Pendergast, Mayan specialist at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, wondered whether it was perhaps possible that Frederick Mitchell-Hedges had even planted the crystal skull himself for Anna to discover. The fact that she had found the skull on her seventeenth birthday made him slightly suspicious. Could it really have been an incredible present from her father, which he had painstakingly planted with the intention that she might discover it apparently quite by accident on her birthday?

The problem was that even if this were the case, it still begged the question as to where Frederick Mitchell-Hedges got the crystal skull from himself. David wondered whether it was possible that he might have found the skull somewhere else or bought it previously, presumably at vast expense. But the question then would be, how had he managed to transport it without anyone knowing all the way to Lubaantun through the rainforest?

A possible origin for the skull emerged when we took another look at the writings of Sibley Morrill. It appeared from his account

that Morrill also had some doubts about the Lubaantun discovery story. He had his own theory as to how Mitchell-Hedges might have obtained the crystal skull.

It was apparently widely rumoured towards the end of the nineteenth century that the Mexican President, at the time Porfirio Díaz, owned a secret cache of treasures thought to include one or more crystal skulls. These treasures were said to have been handed down from one Emperor to the next and to have given the owner the powers necessary to rule.

The end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth was a time of great turmoil, citizen unrest and civil war in Mexico, and ultimately the President was deposed. It was rumoured that his treasures were ransacked and divided up amongst the rebels as their spoils of war. One of these rebels was none other than the bandit turned national hero Pancho Villa, at whose side Frederick Mitchell-Hedges claimed to have been forced to fight back in 1913-14. This led some to speculate that Mitchell-Hedges’ crystal skull might actually be one that originally belonged to the line of Mexican Emperors and that Mitchell-Hedges might have obtained it from Pancho Villa’s men, who in turn may have stolen it from the Mexican President.

Certainly Sibley Morrill was keen to point out:

‘It is important to know that some high officials of the Mexican Government are of the unofficial opinion that the skull was acquired by Mitchell-Hedges in Mexico, and that it, like countlessthousands of other artefacts … was illegally removed from the country.’