The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls. Chris Morton
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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’.9
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).
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.10 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.’ 11
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.12
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.’13
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