Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries by Brian Haughton (beginner reading books for adults txt) 📕

an anatomically correct model of a human skull. The origins and discovery of this enigmatic artifact are shrouded in mystery, and as a result, the MitchellHedges Skull has no confirmed provenance. The story goes that in 1927 (or possibly 1924) English explorer and adventurer F.A. Mitchell-Hedges (1882-1959) was investigating the ruins of a Mayan ceremonial center at Lubaantun, Belize, as part of his search for the lost site of Atlantis. With Mitchell-Hedges on this expedition was his adopted daughter Anna Mitchell-Hedges. On Anna's 17th birthday she was wandering around the site, when she found the top part of the rock crystal skull, underneath what appeared to be an altar. Only three months later, in the same room, the jaw part of the skull was discovered. After seeing the reaction of the locals to this strange discovery, Mitchell-Hedges apparently offered this skull to them. But later, as he and his party were about to depart from the area, the local high priest gave the skull to Mitchell-Hedges as a gift, in gratitude for the food, medicine, and clothing the explorer had given to his people.

Doubts were cast on this romantic story with the discovery that MitchellHedges had, in fact, bought the skull for £400 at Sotheby's, London, in 1943, from Sidney Burney, the owner of an

art gallery. This would tie in with the fact that Mitchell-Hedges inexplicably makes no mention of the skull in the various newspaper articles on Atlantis which he authored in the 1930s, and the lack of photographs of the exotic artifact among those taken on his Lubaatun expedition. In fact, MitchellHedges did not write anything about the skull until 1954, when he devoted only a few vague lines to it in his book Danger My Ally, the first time he mentions the crystal skull since its alleged discovery in 1927. Perhaps this was why Hedges wrote about the Skull of Doom "how it came to be in my possession I have reason for not revealing." Further evidence against Hedges discovering the artifact in Belize is provided in the July 1936 issue of Man, the journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. This issue of the journal contains an article about a study carried out of two crystal skulls, one from the British Museum, and the other called the Burney Skull. This latter artifact is none other than Hedges' Skull of Doom, obviously then the property of art dealer Sidney Burney. Nowhere in the article is there mention of its discovery at the Mayan ruins of Lubaatun, or of F.A. Mitchell-Hedges. In his book Secrets of the Supernatural, author Joe Nickell makes reference to a letter from Burney to the American Museum of Natural History, written in 1933. In the letter Burney states "the Rockcrystal Skull was for several years in the possession of the collector from whom I bought it and he in his turn had it from an Englishman in whose collection it had been also for several years, but beyond that I have not been able to go." Troubling evidence indeed, though it merely casts doubt on Hedges' story, not on the authenticity of the skull itself. Whatever reason Hedges had for concocting the exotic tale, it was not his first, and he seems to have had a reputation for tall stories (which included sharing a room with Leon Trotsky and fighting with Pancho Villa).

Many of the allegedly supernatural properties and sinister legends now associated with the Crystal Skull can be traced back to Mitchell-Hedges 1954 autobiography Danger My Ally, where the artifact first acquired its title the Skull of Doom. In this book, Hedges describes the skull as being used by a Mayan High Priest when performing magic rites involving a death curse, which invariably produced the demise of the intended victim. Such was the horrifying power of the skull that, even if left alone, it still had the ability to cause instant death. Mitchell-Hedges also stated in his book that the skull had taken an incredible 150 years to manufacture and was at least 3,600 years old. Though he provided no evidence to back up these assertions, it has become part of the folklore attached the the Skull of Doom that it must have taken hundreds of years to manufacture, the makers rubbing and polishing every day of their lives to achieve the perfect shape.

On the death of Mitchell-Hedges in 1959, the skull was passed on to his adopted daughter Anna, and it remained in her possession until 1964, when she loaned it to family friends and art conservators Frank and Mabel Dorland to make a detailed scientific study. When not being studied, the skull was kept in a bank vault for

security, but on one occasion when the couple took the object home and placed it close to the fire, they noticed the amazing optical effects produced by the skull when light was shone through it. Some stories also mention poltergeist activity taking place while the skull remained in the house. In 1970, Frank Dorland took the skull to the Hewlett-Packard Laboratories at Santa Clara, California (at that time one of the world leaders in electronics, computers, and electronic quartz technology). After testing the skull, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories stated that they could find no microscopic marks on the crystal which would indicate it had been worked with metal instruments. Apparently the lab also stated that the skull had been carved against the natural grain of the crystal, and were at a loss to know why it hadn't shattered during manufacture. From this, Dorland concluded that the original quartz block must have been first chiselled into a rough shape, possibly using diamonds, before grinding and polishing with water and sand. This painstakingly slow job would, according to Dorland, have required up to 300 years to complete, doubling the already exaggerated claims for the creation of the object, and involving manufacture over several generations.

The mystery surrounding the provenance of the Skull of Doom and how it was manufactured have convinced many that