The Legend of Crystal Skulls Emerges From the Mayan Jungle
Fighting the jungle heat, insects, oppressing humidity, and twisted vines, British adventurer Frederick Mitchell-Hedges wended through the Yucatan in 1924, with the rest of his expedition trailing behind, headed for an ancient Mayan city in what is now modern-day Belize.
Suddenly, the team stopped dead in its tracks and beheld an ancient Mayan pyramid. The adventurers slowly made their way inside. What came next is reminiscent of a scene from an Indiana Jones movie: Mitchell-Hedges’ daughter, Anna, came across a gleaming crystal skull, reflecting the sparsity of light.
The skull seemed so out of place, so advanced in its design and craftsmanship, juxtaposed against the Mayan ruins of ancient stone and earth. Fashioned out of a single solid piece of clear quartz, the adventurer and his daughter immediately realized that they had stumbled upon one of the most mysterious objects in the history of archaeology.
This was how the legend of the crystal skull began.
Capturing the Minds of Speculators
Mitchell-Hedges’ discovery seems like a once-in-a-lifetime find, and yet it was but one of many crystal skulls now on display in private and public collections worldwide. While all vary in size and are carved from either clear, cloudy, or colored quartz, somehow the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull remains the most romantic in the minds of those who first hear of it.
Reporting on this story, Daniel Rennie noted that Mitchell-Hedges had written about the crystal skull in his 1954 memoir Danger My Ally, in which he claimed it was a relic of the Mayan ruins. He called it the “skull of doom” and made the outrageous, yet unprovable, claims that “several people who have cynically laughed at it have died, others have been stricken and become seriously ill.” Mitchell-Hedges then wrote that he had no reason for revealing how it came into his possession (even though he did so in a private letter to his brother).
The Great British Adventurer
Unfortunately, Frederick Mitchell-Hedges lost some credibility when he cast doubt upon his own claims. While he fit the image of a heroic character one might see in a silent 1920s movie, his stories were a combination of truths, partial truths, and unverified exploits.
In one of his real-life adventures in Central America, Mitchell-Hedges reported that he had been captured by the famous Mexican revolutionary general Pancho Villa, and that he had spent some time as a spy. Whether true or not, these sorts of claims added more mystery and panache to his self-promoted persona. And when he recounted his adventures on his weekly Sunday evening radio show, over the sound of rhythmic jungle drums, he told of narrow escapes from death at the hands of so-called savages or from exotic, man-eating animals.
The explorer boasted of discovering Indian tribes and lost cities, despite the fact that they had been documented years or centuries before. In 1925, a year after he and his daughter supposedly presented their find of the crystal skull, the Daily Mail sponsored Mitchell-Hedges’ expedition to the Mayan city of Lubaantun. There he discovered a stone-built amphitheater — the first ever found on the American continent — as well as an aboriginal stone building covering nearly eight acres.
There were so many stories of his exploits that his integrity was brought into question — and for good reason, because the explorer’s accounts were often overexaggerated or found to be completely fabricated. And this brings into question the veracity of his claims about the crystal skull.
Was the Famed Explorer Authentic?
The deeper one looks into the life and times of Frederick Mitchell-Hedges, the shadier a character he seems.
Curiously though, Mitchell-Hedges said he had stumbled upon his crystal artifact in 1924, it wasn’t until 1936 that the skull was made public. This discrepancy has been explained by researchers quite plainly.
Enter a London art dealer named Sydney Burney, who obtained the skull in early 1933. There are no details on how this came about, but Burney appeared as an item of interest, along with a photo of his artifact in the journal “Man.” This was just after he brought the crystal skull to the British Museum for study.
The Archaeological Institute of America reported that experts in the museum photographed, measured, and compared the artifact with a similar, Aztec crystal skull that they had in their possession. For 10 years, Burney struggled to find a buyer, and in 1943, the skull was finally sold at Sotheby’s in London on October 15 — to Frederick A. Mitchell-Hedges, who possessed it until 1959. After he died, his daughter Anna kept it until her death in 2007.
And this leads to the next question: Since it appears that Mitchell-Hedges fabricated the story about finding the ancient crystal skull, does this mean it was a fake?
The Authenticity of the Artifact
In December 1943, Frederick Mitchell-Hedges wrote a letter to his brother, mentioning a date for the skull’s manufacture. And then he contradicted his own account of how he had gotten hold of it.
His letter announced, “You possibly saw in the papers that I acquired that amazing Crystal Skull that was formerly in the ‘Sydney Burney Collection.’ It is fashioned from a single block of transparent rock crystal, exactly life-size; scientists put the date at pre-1800 B.C., and they estimate it took five generations passing from Father to son, to complete. It is anthropologically perfect in every detail, a superb piece of craftsmanship. There is only one other in the world known like it, which is in the British Museum and it is acknowledged to be not so fine as this.”
The explorer’s letter shows that, although he did not discover the Mayan crystal skull in the way he had claimed to, he did have scientists verify that it was quite ancient.
Dan Akroyd’s Take on the Crystal Skull Legend
Actor and UFO enthusiast Dan Akroyd speaks eagerly of the mystery and supernatural powers of the crystal skull artifacts.
Akroyd, who has apparently studied the legend of crystal skulls around the world, repeated Mitchell-Hedges’ contentious story and then suggested that the explorer’s crystal skull had been tested by engineers at Hewlett-Packard in the 1960s.
The result, according to Akroyd, showed that the skull “could not have been carved by a lapidary, by tools…It had to have been polished over hundreds of years…to get to the shape it was [in].” Akroyd then discussed that eight crystal skulls have been found around the world, with five that had gone missing over the decades. The question, suggested Akroyd, is whether all the various skulls are of tribal ancestry and whether they were polished or carved.
Few Definitive Conclusions on the Crystal Skulls
Legends of crystal skulls have persisted for nearly a century. And there has been a stream of curious claims as to how some of them ended up in the hands of adventurists notorious for dominating headlines.
National Geographic reported, “many believe these skulls were carved thousands or even tens of thousands of years ago by an ancient Mesoamerican civilization. Others think they may be relics from the legendary island of Atlantis or proof that extraterrestrials visited the Aztec sometime before the Spanish conquest.”
But in stark opposition to the claims of Frederick Mitchell-Hedges, the British Museum and Smithsonian Institution state that electron microscope analyses have revealed markings that could only have been made with high-tech modern carving implements. And both museums estimate that the skulls in their possession were created sometime between the mid- to late-1800s when there was a peak in public interest in spiritualism, ancient cultures, and world travel. This was a time when museums were eager for pieces to display to those who wanted to feed their supernatural and adventurous spirit.
Yet there is no resolution to the mystery. Even National Geographic admits that no one still knows for certain who carved these skulls and when. “And since there is currently no way to accurately determine the age of such inorganic objects, the mystery will likely continue.”
Out of Place Artifacts; Who Really Discovered America?
There are a number of details that run counter to Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the Americas glossed over in our society’s dominant narrative. The fact that he wasn’t the first old world explorer to discover the Americas is often met with strong resistance, despite numerous out of place artifacts and unexplained archeology telling a different story. So, who discovered the Americas?
Did Columbus Discover America?
The actual discovery of the Americas comes down to a matter of perspective. Obviously, the indigenous people already living in the Americas are the true discoverers, but from a European or old-world context the credit is mostly given to Columbus. But if the definition of making a discovery means understanding what you’ve found, did Columbus really discover America?
Columbus believed he had arrived in Asia and was interacting with the denizens of India, hence the name he gave them. He never understood that he had actually landed on an entirely different continent. But this is why America was named after Vespucci rather than being called Columbia, with his realized discovery a decade later.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that it became nationally recognized that a Norse explorer discovered the continent before these two Italian explorers. Leif Erikson and a small group of Icelanders landed in what is now modern-day Canada on the tip of Newfoundland. Erikson and company established a small settlement in a site called L’Anse aux Meadows, nearly 500 years before Columbus, in the year 1000.
The Vinland Map
For a long time, this Norse presence was disputed as myth, until there was so much conclusive archeological evidence that history had to be reconsidered. One of these artifacts, the Vinland Map, showed cartographic evidence of the Norse discovery, though its legitimacy is still debated, despite carbon dating placing it at least 50 years before Columbus’ discovery.
Out of Place Artifacts
There have been a number of anomalous finds suggesting that the Norse weren’t the only ones to have predated Columbus in discovering the new world, making it possible that even Erikson’s landing was predated.
A number of discoveries involving Roman artifacts have raised archeologists’ eyebrows throughout both of the Americas. Unsurprisingly, these too have experienced dismissal and cover-up.
In Brazil’s Guanabara Bay a sunken shipwreck was discovered appearing to be the remains of an ancient Roman ship. Among the submerged ruins were a number of large terracotta amphorae, tall jars that were made during the Roman empire.
The jars were dated between the 1st century BC and 3rd century AD, definitively proving their origin from the Roman Empire. This type of pottery was used to transport anything from wine, to olive oil, and grains.
Their discovery was made by marine archeologist and treasure hunter, Robert Marx, who turned over the jars to the Brazilian government, under the assumption that he would have the opportunity to return to the site and explore further. When he returned however, he found that the Brazilian Navy had dumped silt over the wreckage, literally covering up his discovery.
When Marx confronted the Brazilian government, he said he was told that Brazilians don’t care about the past and they don’t want to replace Pedro Alvares Cabral as the official European discoverer of the country.
Marx was also given a bizarre story by a Brazilian businessman who said that he had ordered a potter in Portugal to recreate the jars and had sunk them in the bay to “age” them, but had only recovered a few. This absurd story was less than convincing to Marx, while the government’s response added to his skepticism.
There is other evidence of a Roman presence in the Americas further north at the Calixtlahuaca Temple in the Toluca Valley just outside of Mexico City. There, archeologist Jose Garcia Payón found another terracotta artifact that appeared to come from the ancient Roman Empire.
Payon found the carved head of what experts say is a depiction of a Roman during the Hellenistic period, around 200 AD. The head was found underneath two cemented floors inside a pyramidal structure, that had remained intact since before the Calixtlahuaca civilization.
Though no one has definitively answered the question of how the terracotta head made it there, a study by Romeo Hristov and Santiago Genovés proved its antiquity through the use of thermoluminescence dating. The authors used the most conservative timespan in their paper, dating the head between 870 B.C. – 1270 A.D.
This broad range still went counter to the arguments of detractors who believed the head to have been created during colonial times, while lending to the argument that it must have been of Roman provenance. But how did this out of place artifact get there?
Roman Coin in North America
Several caches of Roman coins have been found buried throughout North America, dating back to the 16th century. This has led many to believe that it could be evidence of a pre-Columbian European presence. While numismatists and archeologists are often skeptical, it has led them to at least examine whether there could be any credibility to this theory.
A study conducted by Jeremiah Epstein, details 40 reports of anomalous coins found throughout the United States, with some appearing in Native American burial mounds.
Roman Bronze Coin
Epstein noticed that the majority of coins found in excavations of land during construction or in backyards came from collectors or were deliberately placed as hoaxes. The discovery of several ancient Israeli shekels, known as Bar Kokhba coins, were one of the more intriguing findings as they were discovered in disparate locations throughout Kentucky.
These coins originally marked an Israeli rebellion against the Roman Empire and were only produced during a three-year period, from 132-135 AD. The coins turned out to be fraudulent or commemorative tokens given to Jewish immigrants, despite newspapers from the time of their discovery heralding them as being authentic.
Overall Epstein concluded that most of the coins were either lost in more modern times by numismatists or forged, but he was criticized by some colleagues for his negative and dismissive tone and that it was only a beginning for future study. What he did conclude was that there was a possibility that Roman ships may have drifted accidentally to the new world, but couldn’t necessarily be considered a probable explanation.
Though there was one man who set out to prove it was highly probable that old world explorers could make the journey across the ocean to the new world, whether accidentally or intentionally.
Thor Heyerdahl embarked on the Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947 to prove the possibility of a pre-Columbian journey, by constructing a raft made of materials only available during pre-Columbian times. Heyerdahl believed that pre-Columbian South Americans sailed and populated Polynesia, particularly Easter Island.
His expeditions proved that this would have been possible when the Kon-Tiki successfully sailed over 4,000 miles from Peru to French Polynesia. Heyerdahl’s success inspired similar expeditions between South America and Polynesia as well as another trip of his own from northern Africa to Barbados, to prove the ancient Egyptians might have had contact with pre-Columbian South American cultures.
With the physical feasibility proven and a plethora of evidence that pre-Columbian voyages were made, it seems that there may be more to the story than we’ve been told. This, combined with the number of out of place artifacts that have ben found in the Americas beg to ask who truly discovered the Americas. Is it just a matter of historical inconvenience or is there another reason that new world countries have trouble entertaining alternative timelines?
