Crystal Skulls

January 26th, 2006 7

Crystal Skulls have been fascinating me for ages: The fact that they exist at all is enough to keep me interested, but a little digging uncovers an amazing history of the skulls…

In 1924 British explorer F.A. Mitchell-Hedges and his daughter Anna were on an expedition to the ancient Mayan ruins of Lubaantun, in Belize (then British Honduras), searching for evidence of Atlantis. One day Anna had walked off from her father and was rummaging inside a structure believed to have once been a temple when she found the cranium of a beautifully crafted crystal skull. It was lacking it’s jawbone, but this was found a few months later by another team in the area. Weather this story is true or not; later evidence showed that F.A. Mitchell-Hedges may have brought the skull at an auction in London in 1943, the skull is certainly real.

In 1970 the skull was given to Hewlett-Packard Laboratories for extensive study, what they found was quite startling. The artifact appears to have be carved from one solid piece of quartz crystal, a difficult task in itself, but this one is carved against the natural grain of the crystal. Even using modern techniques such as laser carving it would be virtually impossible to create such an object without shattering the crystal.

Even more bizarrely further tests on the skull revealed no microscopic scratches anywhere on it’s surface, which would have been present if it had been carved with metal instruments. Experts theorise that the skull may have been roughly hewn out with diamonds then meticulously worn away to create the detailed features using a solution of silicon, sand and water. The same experts also calculated that to create the skull in this way (if possible at all) would have taken work amounting to over 2.5 million man hours (around 300 years of work).

One researcher for HP is renowned to have said “The damned thing just shouldn’t be”.

This is perhaps the most mysterious of the skulls, there are others but none of them match the amazing detail displayed in the Mitchell-Hedges Skull. There are those that dedicate themselves to the research of the skulls, and the “history” of the skulls origins. Have a look if your interested, I’m not going to go into too much detail here.

Things like the crystal skulls remind me that the world can turn up many surprises: There is still so much we don’t know about the world. By our very nature we are inquizative creatures, and thank God we are. I really can’t imagine living in a world where we could explain everything, what would be the fun in that?

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