The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls [Title unknown...] Written and Directed by Peter Minns BBC North MCMXCVI Narrated by Emma Freud This is a transcript from a video tape of an interesting British TV programme about those mysterious crystal skulls. Prof. Paula Gunn-Allen University of California ... they act as transceivers --- What they enable you to do is talk with the other quadrants of the galaxy --- you might think of them as telephones to connect you with Galactic Central. And enable us to therefore to stay in touch with the other parts of consciousness - civilisation if you will. That's beyond our modern little-bitty world. F.R. Nick Nocernio Parapsychologist People make up stories about them, how they come from UFOs, how they come from Atlantis and Lemuria, when, these people know less about them, than those who have been working with them for years. And they tell you they were made from a Princess's head - her head when she died, was moulded into a metamorphsis - something into a crystal skull, the truth is - you don't know anything. Narrator ... one of the reasons why we don't know anything is no crystal skull have ever been found at an official archelogical dig. In was in the Gurala province of Central Mexico that Nick Nocernio used his paranormal powers to find the skull that he calls Shannara - a skull that changed his life. [Shannara is a white opague crystal skull that has a rough-cut look to it. It is of standard normal size. It is not of the normal human variety but of some early? man/homid type?] Nick Nocernio ... Some diggers who were digging in some old ruins up along Rio Bassa, they really wanted to do, was see if I would perform some pyschometry where I would touch an area and say 'hey there's something here or something there', which we did and I went along and we did some touching, and I said 'Dig there', and we came across a terracotta basket and we found Shannara. Narrator ...Nick Nocernio claims he can see within the skull a record of it's entire history and it's given him a special power - the power to heal. Nick ...In my mind I am 5 or 6 healers with odd names and Shannara has always been there when I talked to my mind - let's say you're sick in LA or London and I'm trying to work on you and send you energy. Shannara always shows up. An American Indian/European [plain] lady with long hair and big build, wearing an indian necklace speaks ... The skulls contain the ability to show us how to heal ourselves, that we can move beyond the present limitation of physicality, or disease and into immortal thought or spiritual content as beings of consciousness. Houston, Texas Narrator The healing powers of crystals seem evident whenever and whereever, the skulls appear. Joan Ann Parks Our child, who was 12 years old, was dying of bone cancer. And they gave my daughter 3 months to live. We met a healer, a Red At lama, through our family medical doctor in 1973, and at the time we did not know who the lama was and what he did - and took my daughter to him and through his work she lived very well for 3 years. The healer died in 1980 and before he died he gifted us the crystal skull - telling us nothing about it - he said, take this, one of these days you will know what it's for and what it's about. We really didn't know what it was for and what it was about. We brought it home and we placed it in a box in the closet for the next 7 years. Then I was having dreams about it and I'll go to the closet, talking and communicating with this rock, so I thought - am I going crazy, what's going on here. Why is this rock speaking to me. I would tell it - would you get out of my life, would you leave me alone, I don't want anything to do with you - he says, no - I'm important to man. He said - I'll be remembered - he said, by the way, my name isn't skull, my name is Max. [Max is an white crystal skull of rough cut. It has very simple sockets for eyes, teeth are simply defined. Overall it's a very simple design. Seen from 3/4 view, it's longish shaped. Close-up it's a classic simple skull shape of normal size.] The Mayans and the native Indians who've been here to do ceremony at my home, with the crystal skull - they believe that he came from Pleiades, which is a distant star system, and that it went down to Atlantis, and it's an Atlantean crystal, Atlantean tablet and it is encoded with it's past history of the planet, the past history of mankind, mother earth - so it's got all this history, it's like a living library, like a computer. Narrator That idea that the skulls have a celestial origin is common to many of the legends. According to the ancient Greeks, the continent of Atlantis lost beneath the waves, really did exist. Adrian Gilbert : Author and Historian The story of Atlantis appears first of all in the writings of Plato. Who was writing about 350 B.C. and he recalls a story there was a great island civilization beyond the pillars of Hercules and that beyond this island there was another continent at the end of the Atlantic ocean. In the Plato story, Atlantis, the Atlanteans invade Africa and invade Europe and are driven back by the Atheans and Egyptians, and there is a great catacylsm, and their island home is destroyed, and sinks without trace. And it's very interesting that in the 1960s, there's been evidence found for this, off the coast of Florida. There was large blocks, laid in straight lines - sea wall that looks like - has been found off the coast, some 20 metres below sea level. And, this looks man-made. It looks as though these people were trying to keep the sea out. And that ties in closely with what we know about the Ice Ages. The last Ice Age ended about 10,000 B.C. as the ice caps now are quite small compared to how they were then... tape change here, so some 30? seconds lost... Ea Orgo - Gemologist ...amplifier, that we can help other people, first ourselves and then other people become clear in the way that we treat this mother earth, where the quartz crystal comes from. First it is water, then it looks for the mother, which is silica and it always in geothermalic activity - volcanoes, where's there's pressure and a lot of heat, this creates and forms a quartz crystal in six sides. It grows right handed and left handed according to it's largest face, it has positive and negative qualities on each of it's faces, and so that's why we can have modern radios, televisions, computers, watches, sonar, radar, everything that is communication comes from, now - quartz crystal. Jack Kusters, Hewlett Packard We use quartz in the electronic sense, primarily because it has a property called piezlo electricity, it comes from the Greek, piezlo meaning - to squeeze, electros meaning to get a charge from it. And the property was discovered by Madame Currie in the 1890s' and was one of the things that she got a noble prize for it. And it turns out, that what piezlo electric means is that if we took a piece of material and we squeeze it - we can get an electric charge, so we have a device which allows us to couple electronic circuitry to mechanical properties of the quartz. Narrator The 20th Century is just beginning to explore the scientific qualities of crystal - but psychics have always used the crystal ball to see into the future and the crystal skulls are claimed to contain very different messages. Juiette Hanaver Psychic healer I see that each crystal skull is very unique. It feels different, and it has different kinds of properties, and when I asked Max what it was he wanted to do at this time - he said what he wanted to do, was to be re-united with all the other skulls. He said that there was 12 skulls that he liked to see in a circle with one in the centre. And that imagery would be used for healing the planet. Not just healing individuals but also like maybe tackling the problem of pollution, of like purifying big bodies of water, and changing global thinking in terms of leadership. Arvydas Daskus Psychic healer Oh yes, you have very beautiful vision. I have the same feeling. More, I want to pay attention to one detail. I see that crystal skull this, another crystal skull, are not only gifts to us like toys, they are instruments, for changing our mind, for changing mind of humanity, through him comes instance of program accelerating of formula. Narrator The idea that crystal skulls were gifts from the gods did not seem extraordinary to the Mayans of central America. Over 2000 years ago the Maya created one of the world's most advanced civilizations. There were expert astronomers, mathematicians, and architects. They believed that their gods came from the stars, and they built cities with palaces and observatories accurately aligned with the planets. The ceremonial city of Pelankcay lay undisturbed in the jungles of the rain forest for over a thousand years. When archeolgists finally uncovered the site, the hieorglypic inscriptions which tell the history and rituals of the sky god Itzinar. The Maya had a rich mythology, in their language the word for bone is the same as the word for seed. The skull was a symbol for death but also of rebirth. Dr David Pendergast - Royal Ontario Museum The Maya looked at death in a totally different way, from the way in which we see it - for them death was part of a continuity, and when a person died, of course all the trauma that attended that event that attends for us, they knew that the individual was going on to become part of the great group of ancestors. I suspect that if they'd seen a flag with skull and crossbones flying out, they would have seen it as a very positive image, rather than a negative image that we perceive. Narrator Amid the ruins of Pelankcay, the archeologists found a temple, a pyramid built by one of the greatest Mayan rulers - Percal. Inside the pyramid, he designed an immense sarcogpagus, in which he was enshrined after his death. To the Maya, it was probable that Parcal like Itzinar, was a sky god. Prof. Linda Schele - University of Texas In 1974, I was one of the people, who helped decipher his name in the inscriptions associated with him. We found his birth, his death. We were able to figure out what the great deeds of his life were. We found his ancestors for ten generations before him, and yet at the time, when I first went to Pelankcay, the most popular way of talking about him, was that he was an astronaut from another world, who had come to help the Maya learn how to create a stone age civilization. Narrator There is very little left of the once great Mayan civilization. All that remains are ruins and a romantic notion of a once forgotten tribe. Linda Schele The Maya are sexy. They are one of those civilizations that has fascinated people, both in Europe and in the United States and Canada since the middle of the 19th Century. It was a particular kind of love affair that hasn't happened with any other native American civilization. So if you want a crystal skull to be really, really neat, it's better to have it Mayan than some of the lesser known groups. Narrator Indeed, the most beautiful of all the crystal skulls, is said to be Mayan. The story of it's discovery is, as always is shrouded in mystery. Anna Mitchell-Hedges Kitchner, Ontario My father was a British explorer, Mitchell Hedges and we went on an expedition to Central America. I was 10 and 1/2 when I arrived there, and from Panama we got a boat, we went down to Belieze where we heard there was a lost city of Atlantis. And that was what my father was looking for, anything to do with Atlantis. We arrived at Belieze, and we organised all of our supplies and got it, and went into the jungle - which was very difficult, and we arrived near Le Bangton and my father tumbled on a stone there, and he shouted to the world - we can't be very far from this lost city. Le Bangton was like a jungle, we had to cut all the trees down, burn it as we went so we would have no accidents or anybody hurt. Just before my seventeen birthday I went for a climb and the sun was very very strong and I saw something shining back in my face and I got very very excited, so I went and told my father and the following morning, before I got up he had everybody getting to move the stones from the top of the building. And when the hole was big enough, I was let down with two ropes and the light on my head and on my shoulder and that's where I had found the crystal skull. I picked it up and I told them to pull me up as fast as they could and I wrapped it up in my shirt so he wouldn't be hurt and when I gave it to my father, all the Maya sort of, stooped down, kissed the ground, cried. The Maya priests from Gateulama say it is over 100,000 years and this is what my father thought also, because he said that was definitely Atlantis time. Some Prof? There are many difficulties in any circumstances in which there aren't solid records for a discovery and the Mitchell-Hedges story could be true. We can't prove that it is, we can't prove that it isn't. There is no real purpose in trying to prove it one way or another. What is curious though, is first of all, of course she found on her seventeenth birthday - that's a wonderful coincidence - if it actually occurred in that way, and the other problem with the find site is that it doesn't seem a likely spot in which to place something so important - the ancient Maya would have seen that piece which must have come into the Maya area from central Mexico. They would have seen it as so important - that the idea they would place it in the ruins of a building, which was already abandoned for several centuries, is a little hard to accept. Dr John Pohl University of California What I find very peculiar about the Mitchell-Hedges find is that Mitchell-Hedges went to Le Bangton, found the skull and then left. As if he knew, there was nothing more to find, and if he knew there was nothing more to find - then, how did he know that was the only skull. I mean, why did he leave - is it possible, that he knew it was the only skull because he planted it there. Anna Mitchell-Hedges The skull is the most beautiful skull I have ever seen. It gives you a joy of life. Definitely the skull protects me, all through my life. I am protected. Narrator In the 1970s' Anna Mitchell allowed scientists at Hewlett Packard, one of the world's authorities on crystals and computers to carry out tests. Jack Kusters - Hewlette Packard There are only 3 places, in Brazil, in Madagascar and in the former Soviet Union, where material of that quality exists. You cannot carbon date this stuff - so we have no idea how long it took, who actually did it, when it was actually ground - that's always the question that comes up over and over again. We were able to determine that indeed the Mitchell-Hedges skull and it's jaw were carved from a single piece of quartz rock. Not only does the jaw separate but the dentation on all the molars and all the teeth are just absolutely great. As a piece of art. It's fantastic. If we used conventional techniques that exist today, with high-speed diamond tooling, and to polish it all out as the Mitchell-Hedges skull was polished. It would take the better part of a year, at least, I would guess. If they were using traditional methods, they would have to have used something of the order of heat, sand and water. All I can say is, it looks like as if there's about 3 different styles of workmanship, that went in on the crystal skull. If it was a single person, the useful life of a person in those days probably was no more than 20 years, so we're probably talking of 60 to 70 years. Narrator The Hewlett-Packard team found no evidence of any modern tool marks. They couldn't state categorically when the crystal skull had been made. This was to be the last time Anna Mitchell would allow scientific tests, but she allowed investigations of a different nature. "In this receptacle, the minds of 7 of those minds linked to that state which you have given name Atlantis we would..." Narrator Carol Wilson is apparently in a state of deep trance, what she is doing is called channelling, communicating with the spirits of the skull. "... it was polished to this state with human hair and sound which also produces a vibration and therefore is compatible with this substance." Narrator Carol Wilson is no ordinary psychic, the Toronto Police Department enlisted her services in a famous unsolved murder case. Her descriptions of the crime scene and the murderers were so vivid that the killers were caught and convicted. She also went on to marry the Detective in charge of the investigation. "... 3 that bear this shape, we will direct you further..." Narrator Messages Carol Wilson received through this spirit are consistent with Anna Mitchell-Hedge's belief that the skull is over 100,000 years old. But some pychics have received other messages, one believes that the spirit in the skull is a woman called Jenchin. Prof Paula Gunn-Allen University of California She told me how she came into being and she told me some things about where they came from - they've been several - I call them people, I think they're not humans like we are, they're a different kind of humans. They lived for a very long time, hundreds of years, and they came from somewhere that had collapsed, perhaps Atlantis, and there was a number of them, maybe 12, maybe 24, they left their remains in a cavern under the mountain spirit. In the bones of the corpses that they left behind, contained every iota of cosmic knowledge, spread throughout the entire universe, not our galaxy alone but many, and through many time frames, including the one that we're presently occupying. Narrator If the Mitchell-Hedges skull is the skull of an ancient life form, what might they have looked like. Forensic artists have successfully identified missing persons from real skulls, so why not with the crystal skull. Richard Neave University of Manchester [drawing on top of a photograph of the Mitchell-Hodges skull] We'll just use this photograph of the skull as the basis of what we're going to do, and just let it grow of it's own accord. There's a lot more soft tissue, flesh over the skull than what people imagine. The nasal opening is about 3/5ths of the overall width across the nose itself. So giving quite a wide nose and the mouth slit itself is 1/2 way up the upper incisors. The manible is rounded at the front and that tends to be associated with a female. From an actual specimen, an anthropoligist would be able to ascertain the sex to a fair degree of accuracy, and so I say it is a matter of what comes up of the skull. It will tell us in it's own good time. The hair style we don't know about. And the other thing we don't know about is the age. There's no indication of age and if we take the photograph of the skull away and there's the finished face. Certainly not European and it's not inconsistant with the sort of face you see on some of the indigneous population from the Americas. {The finished drawing does look like a South American female with a broad nose} Narrator The Mayan civilization lasted for 1500 years before it's collapse in 900 AD but there were other civilizations in Central America which span over 4,000 years, but were more accomplished in lapidry or stonework carving. The Mistecs made elaborate objects and jewellry, in obsidian, jade and crystal. Dr Karl Taube University of California Crystal skulls are a wonderful achievement of lapidry art, but the question remains whether they make sense in terms of the native cultures they are said to derive from. For example, the Maya we almost have no evidence of the use of crystal. We have a few beads but nothing elaborately carved. For the Aztec however, we have some very fine pieces of stonework done with crystal. Narrator In 1932 one of Mexico's most oustanding and significant archeological discoveries was made by Alphonsa Carso as he excavated the ruins of Monte el Barne in the Mexican highlands. What Senora Carso found was the Mistec tombs that remained undisturbed for 800 years. Inside tomb no.7 was a rich collection of gold necklaces and bracelets. But most important was a carved from rock crystal. The goblet could be a vital clue in unravelling the mystery of the crystal skull. ? I think the crystal skulls are primarily made by Aztec and Mistec crafts people, just shortly before the arrival of the Spaniards in 1521. The Aztec civilization was the great civilization of Mexico at that time. A great empire, they had an entire class of crafts people that made exotic goods of crystal, gold, turquoise. The Aztecs thought that when one died, the soul went to a kind of netherworld, a world of mist, a world of eternity where the soul resided in a kingdom ruled by a great death god, a god with a skull for a head, named Mickland de Coutley, lord of hell. The Aztec used the image of the skull as an artistic motif in almost every creation they made, in their architecture, their costumes, their dress. They made equisite objects of jade, obsidian, crystal skulls. ? The Aztecs had a series of gods who demanded constant human scarifice. There was one of their major gods, they believed if he wasn't fed human hearts daily, that the sun wouldn't come up the following day. So they were under this constant pressure to supply sacrificial victims. After they cut their hearts out, they often times divided up the body and sort of handed them out for ritualistic cannabalistic meals. The head was cut off and impaled on long sticks that were kept in racks, which the Spaniards first saw in 1519, when they entered the city. Bernardaires, one of Cortez's soldiers counted the skulls on one of the skull racks, and I think it was something in the 200,000 range. Narrator The arrival of the Spaniards in the imposition of Christianity, the native American beliefs infiltrated the Spanish faith, and the skull remains an important symbol. Mexican people are very superstitious, they believe in forces that will influence them during their lives. They are always holding in their religious belief that there's something will help them do better in life. Narrator Spanish orders like the Franciscans were fascinated by the skull and it became a powerful image in the catholic nations of Europe. Perhaps not surprisingly, a relic cross which was combined with the carved crystal skull, was being used at this time in Mexico city. Norma Redo The skull entered my family last century, during the time the church had to get rid of their objects because the government took over the properties of the church. I believe it has magical powers - it has, it's very difficult to explain because I have gone through different cycles of being very rational, very scientific in my way of thinking but I don't know. I hope, I wish you could share the holding with me of the skull. When I feel the skull I feel protected. I feel like very energetic, very positive, very strong, very - my will becomes stronger. This I feel naturally just by holding it. It has magnetism, it has - it makes the energy of my whole body flow with a - I can feel my blood flow all over my body and give me the oxygen I need. Narrator Whatever the effect of the crystal skulls, most of them didn't appear until the middle of the nineteenth century when the rich art museums of Europe and America were getting started. Pioneering collectors came to Central America, among them was French antiquarian who tried to sell the Mexican National museum a crystal skull which they believed to be a fake. The antiquarian's name was Eugene Boban, in 1886 he left Mexico for New York where most of his collection was auctioned. One of the items, a crystal skull was bought by Tiffany's whose customers included the British Museum. Dr Ian Freestone British Museum Research Laboratory The British Museum skull is one of the most clear and attractive of the crystal skulls. It came into the museum in about 1898. It was bought from Tiffany's in New York by Augustus vonlangston Franks. It's reputed to have come to New York from Mexico, it was suppose to have been brought by a soldier of fortune, but that's just a story. We have no evidence of that. The skull has been here since the last century and it's always assumed to be Aztec. Dr Jane Walsh Smithsonian Institution The skull was originally offered to the Smithonian in 1884, 1885. There's an earlier auction catalogue that I found where he offered the skull in France, for I think, 3000 francs - but it didn't sell. And at that time it wasn't described as being Mexican or pre-Colombian, it was simply rock crystal skull. So I spoke to a number of people in our minerology department about where something like this could have been made or where they carved crystal and two people told me, almost at the same time - Edor Olvastein, which is a small town in Eastern Germany. Narrator Edor Olgastein has been the major stone carving centre of Europe ever since the middle ages. It produced agate, jaspar and quartz from it's own quarries. In the nineteenth centuries the quarries were worked out and the young carvers sent sail to South America. In Brazil they discovered vast quantities of rock crystal. Hans Jurgen-Henn Master Craftsman Really important it all became when we got the new import material from the new world. Particularly from Brazil which has opened a totally horizon. The cutters and carvers improved their own knowledge and really carved items they've never seen before. Their dealers came from the major cities in the world, in the last century, of course Paris, was a very important city for these kinds of objects. Where rich people go to purchase such luxury items. Narrator The dealers protected their trade by keeping their clients away from their carvers. The artists' names were never mentioned, and no records were ever kept. The only link to the mystery of the crystal skulls is the human skull in the town museum which was used in the rock carving school. And even here the rock carvers have a sense of the spirit within rock crystal. Hans Jurgen-Henn The stones tells us how he want to be carved and cut. So this makes things more difficult. So this stone, my guest was sleeping for a while before he told us what he want to be. Narrator In 1993 another crystal skull was created in Germany and there is little doubt that Edor Olgastein was producing carvings in rock crystal in the late 1800s' exactly the time that Eugene Bobans trying to sell crystal skulls in Mexico. But without records there can be no proof. So was the mystery of the crystal skulls to remain unsolved. The Ancient Mayan legend foretold that great wisdom would be revealed when all the crystal skulls were collected together. Ironically that legend began to come true when Max, Shenara, the reliclary cross skull and the Smithonian were brought before enquiring minds to test the British Museum alongside their own skulls. At last it seems that the skulls were about to reveal their secrets. Narrator What the British Museum needed was an artifact known to be ancient. So with the help of the Mexican government, the Monte anban crystal goblet was flown over. We know that's at least 1000 years old. So we're hoping to use that as a kind of base for our study to examine how it was made and the kinds of tool marks that are still apparent under microscopic examination. Magaret Sax British Museum Research Laboratory There are two basic approaches to stone carving, polishing and engraving. By hand or by rotary wheel. And Pre-Colombian methods were very simple, involving hand-held tools. I can see down the microscope here, there's lots of tool marks, polished marks left from the final polishing of this goblet and I'm going to mould it with silicone moulding so that we can look at these marks in more detail in the scanning electron microscope. This is actually the surface of the Mistec goblet showing it's been polished with hand held tools. There's no even grooving on this at all. In contrast when a wheel is used with abrasive, usually a harder abrasive like emery or diamond and it's rotated on a spindle, you get regular, even grooving, parallel grooves - as we have on the large British Museum skull. You can see the scratch marks, this is on very high magnification. Scratch marks are very evenly parallel. Wheel cutting was not practised in the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in the early 16th Century. So we have to say they postdate European arrival. The relicaly cross skull goes under the video microscope. The tiny gas bubbles may tell at what temperature the crystal was formed. And more importantly where it comes from. ... we see an inclusion that's large and it's from an environment where you got copper mineralisation and we know there's quite a bit of that in Mexico. Not too much in Brazil, or not at least of this type. The relicaly cross has a hallmark dating to 1571 on the base, it has some evidence of use of the wheel on the crystal skull. There again, the skull itself is made of a crystal which is really very similar to that of the Mexican goblet. Margaret's tests on the large British Museum skull and the Smithsonian skull show that these skulls may very well be late 19th century. Narrator The museum tests reveal that the Smithsonian skull is a fake. But even more interesting haven't found their own skull to also be a fake. The British Museum chose not to comment on Max, the healing skull of Houston, or Shanara the skull, found in the deep mountains of Mexico. They did find that our skulls were very genuine because when we took them out of their box - they were in amazement, they said, this is just fantastic. They were all just over the skulls - they know they're genuine, and I think maybe they found something they didn't want the public to know, so in my opinion it still makes the crystal skulls very very mysterious indeed. Narrator Anna Mitchell-Hedges would not come to London with the crystal skull she found in Bangton as she said, it already had been tested. Perhaps the British Museum would have chosen not to comment anyway. What's certain, is that the mystery of the crystal skulls continues. THE END