The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls. Chris Morton
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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.’ 3
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… 4
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.‘5
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.’6
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 account7 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 countless thousands of other artefacts … was illegally removed from the country.’8
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