The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls

Indeed, Sibley Morrill devotes virtually an entire book to the elaborate theory that Mitchell-Hedges was actually acting as a spy for the British government in the period before the First World War and that he was fighting alongside Pancho Villa accompanied by the legendary literary figure Ambrose Bierce, who mysteriously disappeared in Mexico at around the same time. Morrill believed Bierce was there spying on behalf of the US government. Both Britain and the United States did have valuable oil, gas and mineral interests in the area at the time. In 1913 Mexican oilfields were the main source of oil for the British naval fleet, and the US government was concerned at rumours that both the Japanese and the Germans were providing arms and training to the Mexican rebels with a view to helping them ultimately invade the United States. Morrill believes Mitchell-Hedges’ and Bierce’s job was to infiltrate Pancho Villa’s army to obtain vital information in what was then considered the likely event that Pancho Villa would become President of Mexico.

If it were the case that Mitchell-Hedges bought or obtained the crystal skull on some sort of spying mission, he would certainly have had good reason for not revealing how he came by it. But if he had come by the crystal skull on some previous visit to Mexico, how on Earth could he have managed to hide it in the intervening years? Furthermore, is it not likely that a crystal skull would be so expensive that no one would possibly buy one just for their daughter’s birthday, particularly given the unusual risks, such as capsized boats and the like, faced by Mitchell-Hedges along the way? Indeed, Anna’s response to the suggestion that her father had planted the skull for her to find was ‘Absolute nonsense.’ She said he would not have spent thousands of pounds on an expedition just ‘so that he could bury a crystal skull’.

So where exactly had the crystal skull come from? Was it Mayan, as Anna believed? Was it a relic of a pre-Mayan civilization? Was it the prized but stolen possession of a Mexican Emperor?

But now we made another interesting discovery, a discovery that would lead us even further into the enigma of the legendary crystal skulls. In an attempt to find out more about the Mitchell-Hedges skull we put in a call to Elizabeth Carmichael, assistant keeper at the British Museum’s Museum of Mankind in London. To our great surprise she informed us that there really was more than one crystal skull, just as the original legend had suggested, and that in fact the British Museum had one of their own!

Chris and I set off without further delay to find out more. The British Museum’s Museum of Mankind is tucked away behind Piccadilly Circus in central London. The second mysterious crystal skull was housed in a glass case at the top of the stairs on the first floor of the museum, looking somewhat out of place amidst the totem poles and wooden artefacts of Papua New Guinea.

This skull too looked incredibly clear and anatomically accurate. Again it seemed to be around the same size and shape as a small adult’s head, but the quality of the crystal was a little more cloudy and the way it was carved appeared to be more stylized than the Mitchell-Hedges skull. Though this skull also appeared to be cut from a single piece of crystal, it was not nearly as life-like as the Mitchell-Hedges skull. Though in many ways similar in overall size and shape, the eye sockets were merely indicated by deep, totally circular holes, the teeth had little detail and there was no detachable jaw-bone. None the less this skull was also very attractive to look at (see plate no. 8 (#litres_trial_promo)).

Underneath the skull’s glass case was a small label which read:

‘Aztec Sculpture.

‘Skull of rock crystal. Mexico. Probably Aztec.

c. AD 1300–1500. The style of this piece suggests that it dates from the Aztec period. If however, as one line of the carving suggests, a jeweller’s wheel was used to make the cut, the piece would date from after the Spanish Conquest.

‘Length 21cm. 1898.1.’

There was no hint of any possibility that this skull might be Mayan. Indeed, it might not even be ancient.

After examining the skull we went down to the oak-panelled research library to meet Elizabeth Carmichael. She had a professional, brisk, no nonsense manner. She explained that she often came out of her office to find all sorts of people staring at the skull for hours on end. She said she could not understand why people came in to the museum just to gaze at the skull when there were so many beautiful objects there, adding she personally did not find the skull aesthetically pleasing at all.

But she also explained that this all probably had something to do with the rumours that had once been reported in the tabloid press. Much to her distaste, some staff were supposed to have claimed that the skull had started moving around by itself in its sealed glass case! The papers had even said that there were cleaners in the museum who insisted that the skull was covered with a cloth at night because they were so scared of it.

I asked if there were any truth in these rumours. Elizabeth Carmichael simply said that if the skull really had been moving around by itself then it was probably due to the vibrations of lorries passing on the road outside or some equally normal phenomenon. She went on to comment that there were an awful lot of ridiculous superstitious beliefs surrounding the skull and all kinds of incredible claims had been made about it, but in her opinion it was all nonsense. She did, however, confess that she herself would not want to be left alone in a room with it.

It soon became clear that the origins of the British Museum crystal skull were almost as mysterious and controversial as those of the Mitchell-Hedges. The museum records showed only that the skull had been purchased from Tiffany’s in New York in 1898. It was said to have been brought by a Spanish soldier of fortune from Mexico and had always been considered Aztec. The Aztecs, who lived several hundreds of miles further north-west than the Mayans, and several centuries later, in what is now central Mexico, were known to have been even more obsessed with the image of the skull than the Mayans.

Elizabeth Carmichael, however, explained that there was no real evidence as to exactly where the British Museum skull had come from. She said that whilst it was indeed possible that it might really be Aztec, there was also a strong possibility that it was actually a modern fake.

She also informed us that the British Museum skull had in fact once been examined alongside the Mitchell-Hedges skull back in 1936 and that an article had been published about this comparative study in Man, the journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

She even had a copy of this article in her office.

As we read through the details of this comparison it seemed that there had been some debate at the time about the marked similarity between the two artefacts. One of the experts carrying out the study suggested that the British Museum skull was a copy of the original Mitchell-Hedges skull, which is more detailed and anatomically accurate, whilst the other believed the reverse to be the case. Either way, the article reached the conclusion that the two skulls had probably come from the same source.

But this article could not answer the question of how old the skulls really were, stating simply:

‘The technique will not help us to settle their relative ages for in neither case is there any trace of identifiable tool marks, and it is certain that neither specimen was made with steel [i.e. modern] tools.’

I asked Elizabeth Carmichael how we could find out whether either of the skulls was really a ‘modern fake’ or not. She told us there were scientific tests which could now be done, which might prove the matter once and for all. When we asked whether we might be able to film such tests, she offered to suggest this to her head of department. She explained that it might take some time to get official approval, but in the meantime we might like to look through the other records the British Museum had in their files about their own skull or the Mitchell-Hedges skull as an aid to our investigations.

As we went through the records, it transpired that there was another problem with Anna Mitchell-Hedges’ story of her discovery. For there was apparently no written record of the discovery of the Mitchell-Hedges skull in the British Museum files relating to Lubaantun, although these files contained detailed records of all the other thousands of artefacts found there. We also discovered that when Captain James Joyce of the British Museum had visited Mitchell-Hedges’ party in Lubaantun to inspect their excavations, back in the twenties, it appeared that no mention had been made to him about the discovery of the crystal skull. Neither had the other members of the Mitchell-Hedges expedition, notably Dr Thomas Gann or Lady Richmond Brown, ever spoken publicly or written about the skull’s discovery.

Anna Mitchell-Hedges, however, explained, ‘My father allocated the account of the various finds and incidents at Lubaantun to the member of the team that found the object, and was scrupulous in observing their right to give the facts first.’

Hence the comment in his autobiography that Anna herself would explain ‘much more of what we discovered’.

We went back and had another look at Frederick Mitchell-Hedges’ autobiography. In it we found one very strong hint of a particularly straightforward explanation as to why Mitchell-Hedges had been reluctant to reveal exactly how he got the skull, an explanation which would account for why the skull’s discovery did not appear in the records of the dig held at the British Museum, as well as why Captain Joyce never saw it and why no member of the team ever publicly spoke or wrote about the find either at the time or afterwards. For Frederick Mitchell-Hedges quite clearly explained that, upon discovering the lost city of Lubaantun,

‘Our immediate purpose was to inform the Governor of our discovery, and, at a meeting of the Legislative Council of British Honduras, an act was passed granting us a sole concession valid for twenty years, to excavate over an area of seventy square miles around the ruins.’

Quite how Mitchell-Hedges was able to negotiate such an agreement was revealed in George G. Heye’s press release on behalf of the Museum of the American Indian, in which he explained:

‘[Mitchell-Hedges] conducted his own expedition under an agreement that his finds were to go to the New York Institution [the Museum of the American Indian] and to The British Museum.’

Given this agreement that all finds would automatically go to one or other of the museums, is it any wonder that no mention was made of the crystal skull at the time? As Anna was also keen to point out to us, ‘If we had kept the crystal skull when we first found it, it would have gone to a museum automatically like all the other things we found,’ and, ‘If Captain Joyce had seen the skull the British Museum would have got it.’ But in the actual event and whatever the real reason, by the time Captain Joyce came to inspect the dig the skull had already been given back to the Mayans. So it never did end up in the British Museum. Anna was also keen to say that if the crystal skull had not really been found at Lubaantun, then why do the Belizean government, and the British Museum on some occasions, still claim to this day that the skull is really their property and should be returned to them?

But there was one other problem for academics and archaeologists such as Elizabeth Carmichael. It was that there were two written records of a crystal skull in the British Museum’s archives from the first part of the twentieth century and neither was specifically related to Lubaantun. The first of these was the article we had already read, which appeared in the July 1936 issue of Man. This article specifically referred to the skull the British Museum themselves did not own as being ‘in the possession of Mr Sydney Burney’ and made no mention of Mitchell-Hedges. It also noted that the skull had ‘the character almost of an anatomical study in a scientific age’, though no sign of any tool markings could be found on it.

The other record was a note handwritten by one of the former museum keepers which said that a rock crystal skull had come up for auction at Sotheby’s of London on 15 September 1943, listed as ‘Lot 54’. The surprising thing about this entry was that it too referred to the skull as apparently having been sent for sale by London art dealer W. Sydney Burney, not Frederick Mitchell-Hedges. In fact the note implied that the British Museum had tried to buy the skull but in vain as it was then ‘bought in by Mr Burney’ and ‘sold subsequently by Mr Burney’ to none other than a ‘Mr Mitchell-Hedges for [only] £400’! This apparently private transaction is thought to have occurred in 1944.

These, the oldest written records of what one can only assume to be the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull, had led some archaeologists, Elizabeth Carmichael now among them, to speculate that Frederick Mitchell-Hedges did not really find the crystal skull at Lubaantun at all but simply bought it in London in 1944 from a man called Mr Burney, who, it is assumed, was an antique dealer. Indeed, these two written records have led many to speculate that the skull is in fact not ancient at all but of far more modern, possibly European, origin, being made some time towards the end of the nineteenth century or at the beginning of the twentieth.

By now we were obviously beginning to have grave doubts about Anna Mitchell-Hedges’ story. But Anna had a simple answer even to these apparent problems. According to her, Mr Burney was a family friend who loaned her father money and the skull had actually been used as collateral. When Mr Burney proceeded to put it up for sale, her father paid him back and got his crystal skull back. This explains why the mysterious Mr Burney should have withdrawn the skull from auction and sold it privately to Mitchell-Hedges rather than simply selling it off to the highest bidder. Another interesting, perhaps coincidental, consequence of this sale, however, is that legally no one can now dispute that the Mitchell-Hedges family are the rightful and legal owners of the skull.

But was the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull a modern fake or could it really be one of the ancient skulls of legend? The suggestion that it might be modern, and possibly European, had been made by several of the archaeologists we had spoken to, and was now strongly supported by the British Museum files, whatever Anna Mitchell-Hedges might say.

So we asked Anna if she would be willing to let her skull undergo tests so that we could get an answer to this question once and for all. We were somewhat surprised when she explained that ‘he’ had already been scientifically tested. Rigorous tests had been carried out several years before by the world famous computer company and crystal experts Hewlett-Packard. Anna said we would find the results of these tests ‘most interesting’ but that if we wanted full chapter and verse on what the scientists had discovered we had better go and talk to them for ourselves.

That was it, we were off to talk to the scientists at Hewlett-Packard without further delay.

5. THE SCIENTISTS (#ulink_10547fca-c2ac-5987-bce5-a096bebc36ce)

The crystal skull had not only attracted the attention of archaeologists. Scientists too had been fascinated, intrigued by the skull’s mysterious history and all the incredible possibilities it seemed to represent. When Anna Mitchell-Hedges agreed to loan her skull to a team of scientists at state-of-the-art computer and electronics company Hewlett-Packard, they had the chance to examine the skull in detail.

Hewlett-Packard is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of computers and other electronic equipment. They use crystals in a whole range of electronic devices. Their scientists therefore are experts not only on computers but also on the physical, technical and scientific properties of crystal.

The tests on the crystal skull took place in late 1970 in Hewlett-Packard’s crystal laboratories in Santa Clara, California (see plates 34–6 (#litres_trial_promo)). We visited these laboratories, deep in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, to try to find out what the scientists had discovered.

The tests had been overseen by Jim Pruett, components manager of the frequency standards team. By the time we arrived in California, he was long gone, but Ceri and I were able to speak to the current principal scientist at the lab, Jack Kusters, and the former engineering manager for quartz devices, Charles Adams, who had been present during the tests. Between them these two men have over 50 years’ experience of working with crystal.

As Jack and Charles explained, initially the team was not even convinced that the crystal skull was really made of proper quartz. There are in fact several other materials that look almost exactly the same as quartz crystal to the naked eye, including various types of plastics and glass. Even lead crystal, the material from which most glasses, decanters and other decorative objects are now made, is actually a type of glass and not crystal at all. Also, there is a lot of artificially manufactured or ‘synthetic’ quartz crystal around today.

Natural quartz, or rock crystal, on the other hand, is entirely a product of Mother Nature. It actually grows in the ground, taking sometimes billions of years to form. Crystals grow deep within the Earth’s crust, usually around volcanic and earthquake activity. The process requires immense heat and pressure and always a ‘seed’ crystal is needed to start it off. This seed is created when a single silicon atom, under intense heat and pressure, fuses with two oxygen atoms from superheated water or steam trapped in the same space. The atoms fuse to form a single crystalline cell of silicon dioxide, the substance from which all quartz crystal is made. (The by-product is hydrogen.) Over the millennia, if conditions are right, this seed starts to grow. But the surrounding fluid must contain just the right proportions of silicon and water, or pressurized steam, maintained at a phenomenal intensity of heat and pressure for a sufficiently long period of time. As the primordial fluid oozes over the first cell of silicon dioxide, the cell starts to replicate itself, laying down its complex crystalline structure one atom at a time. Every cell in the crystal repeats the same pattern. Each cell is a tiny little crystal in and of itself, and each cell repeats the same pattern as the one before. In this way the crystal builds up a complex three-dimensional network structure, known as a ‘crystal lattice’, with absolute geometric regularity, where every cell is exactly symmetrical and precisely repeated throughout the whole. And so little by little, over the years, a piece of pure, transparent natural quartz crystal comes into being. In its natural state it is highly angular in shape, always with six sides, tapering at either end to a fine point.

Of course, not every piece of natural quartz crystal is perfect. Impurities can creep in, traces of iron or aluminium or any number of other substances can get trapped in the network. Such traces of other elements show up as discoloration, aluminium for example turning the crystal smoky grey, known as ‘smoky quartz’, or iron adding a tint of pink, known as ‘rose quartz’, to name but two. High levels of radioactivity can also affect growth and cause discoloration. Only if there is no radio-activity and there are no other trace elements in the area is a totally pure and transparent crystal formed.

Quartz, however, is one of the most common naturally occurring materials. As Jack told us, current estimates are that around 80 per cent of the Earth’s crust contains quartz. But much of this is too full of impurities or too small to be of any practical use, other than as sand. And, whilst some of the less pure varieties of quartz are still beautiful, they are of relatively little use to the electronics industry. In fact a problem for the industry has been that large and pure pieces of natural quartz are actually very rare.

Recently this problem has been solved to some extent by the manufacture, or rather growth, of man-made or synthetic quartz. The first experiments in manufacturing or growing synthetic quartz began in 1851, but it was not until the latter part of the twentieth century that the technique was sufficiently perfected for manufactured quartz to be of practical use in electronics. In fact at the time that the tests on the crystal skull were performed at Hewlett-Packard, carefully selected natural quartz was still the main source of crystal for electronic devices, but since then scientists have become so successful at growing their own quartz that synthetic quartz has now all but completely replaced natural quartz as the essential ingredient for most electronic equipment.

The point about manufactured quartz is that the purity and size of the crystal can be absolutely guaranteed. But this is not to say that the process no longer requires the help of Mother Nature. On the contrary, it is only possible to manufacture quartz by growing it from natural pieces. What the scientists do is to speed up a process that would naturally take an eternity, so that it now only takes a matter of weeks. This is done by artificially creating the optimum environment for growth. In a vast ‘autoclave’, a highly sophisticated type of furnace, natural pieces of quartz scraps or ‘lascas’ are dissolved in water at highly elevated temperature and pressure. But the essential ingredient is still a natural piece of high quality quartz; without it the process cannot even begin. This carefully selected piece of natural crystal is simply suspended in the autoclave and the rest of the process is left to nature itself. The surrounding fluid quite simply grows onto the original crystal and the results are removed from the autoclave, or harvested, when the resulting crystals reach the required size. But these new crystals, even over generations and generations of man-made manufacture, can only ever be as pure as the original piece of natural quartz crystal supplied by Mother Earth.

Given all the different types of material that look exactly the same to the naked eye as natural quartz, the first task for the Hewlett-Packard scientists was to determine exactly what the crystal skull was really made of.