Читать книгу The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls - Chris Morton - Страница 10

Every now and then in the history of mankind there comes a discovery so unique and so incredible that it cannot be explained according to our normal set of beliefs and everyday assumptions, a discovery so remarkable that it challenges our normal view of history, and therefore our whole view of the world today. Could it be that the crystal skull was just such a discovery?

After all, we had always assumed that we were more advanced and developed than our simple and primitive ancestors. Everything we had learned about human history seemed to have shown that civilization had logically evolved in a constantly improving fashion over the millennia, so that we now found ourselves, almost by definition, living at the very pinnacle of mankind’s evolutionary development.

The crystal skull appeared to challenge this view. For how could such ancient and ‘primitive’ people have made something so accomplished? Indeed, where exactly did the Maya, with their elaborate cities, their complex hieroglyphics, their mathematics and calendrics, and their knowledge of astronomy, fit in with our simple model of a constantly evolving and improving human history?

The skull was a mystery. Not only was it beautiful to look at, but it seemed that nearly everyone who had come into contact with it had some strange tale to tell of unusual experiences or inexplicable phenomena. Whatever its real powers, the skull certainly seemed to have us entranced.

Now we knew crystal skulls were not just the stuff of legend, there were other questions to consider. Were there any other skulls like Anna’s? What did her skull have to do with the ancient legend? Why did some people, including Anna’s own father, consider it evil, whilst for others, such as Anna, it was a force for good? And had the ancient Maya really made such a beautiful and sophisticated object themselves?

After our visit to Anna Mitchell-Hedges, these questions remained unanswered. But our desire to find the answers was now even more pressing. We began by trying to find out more about the ancient Mayan civilization. From the books we were now reading it seemed that archaeologists had managed to reconstruct quite a vivid picture of it from the detailed inscriptions, monuments and artwork the Maya had left behind. They had a pretty good idea of many of their ancient customs, rituals, knowledge and beliefs, and in some cases very specific information, such as the birth dates of kings and the names of their ancestors for up to seven generations.

So we now began talking to various Mayan experts and archaeologists, hoping that they might be able to tell us more about the crystal skull. Did the Mayans make it at the same time as they built their great cities, only to abandon it and perhaps others like it on their sudden departure? Could the crystal skull perhaps give us some clues as to why they left? How had it come to remain in the temple ruins?

We also wanted to see whether there were any other clues as to how the Mayans might have made the skull or how they might have used it, or even, as Frederick Mitchell-Hedges had suspected, whether it in fact dated back to some even more mysterious pre-Mayan civilization.

But as we began our further investigations it soon became apparent that these were questions to which there would be no easy answers. Despite the details archaeologists had uncovered about some aspects of Mayan history, whole chunks of knowledge seemed to be missing.

Indeed, as we continued our investigations we realized that we had unwittingly stumbled into a veritable minefield of great archaeological controversy. For not only was there heated debate about who the Maya were, where they had come from and where they had disappeared to, but one question in particular seemed to divide the archaeological establishment perhaps more than any other, and that was, where had the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull really come from?

As we were to discover, the controversy began even with the site of the skull’s original discovery – Lubaantun. Mitchell-Hedges himself was of the view that the site was really pre-Mayan in origin. He felt the evidence from the site suggested that pre-Mayan peoples were involved in its construction and that it actually dated back to a much earlier period.

What had made Mitchell-Hedges suspect that Lubaantun might have been pre-Mayan was that, as we ourselves had noticed, the building techniques used there were so very different from those used at every other Mayan site. In their Recent book The Mayan Prophecies¹ author-historians Adrian Gilbert and Maurice Cotterell point out that the style of construction was remarkably similar to the techniques used by the even more ancient Incas of what is now Peru in South America. There are certain similarities between Lubaantun and the famous ancient Inca sites such as Machu Pichu, hidden high up thousands of miles away in the Andes. Gilbert and Cotterell suggest that whoever built Lubaantun might have enlisted the help of or learnt construction techniques from the ancient Incas of South America. Or perhaps both the ancient Maya and Inca had learned their construction techniques from some other civilization even more ancient than their own. This raised the question, had the crystal skull originally come from this same mysterious pre-Mayan civilization?

Mitchell-Hedges believed this civilization to have been the legendary Atlantis. Though this struck us as rather unlikely, he did in fact later find evidence that there had been some sort of pre-Mayan civilization in this part of the world during his later excavations of the Bay Islands off the nearby coast of Honduras. He donated several specimens from these digs to the British Museum in London and the Museum of the American Indian in New York, and Captain James Joyce of the British Museum wrote to comment:

‘It is my opinion that [the samples] represent a very early type of Central American culture; probably pre-Maya. The fact that they appear to bear relations with the pre-Conquest civilisations of Costa Rica, early Maya, and archaic Mexico, suggests that this is an early centre from which various forms of culture were diffused over Central America…

‘The results [of further research] are likely to shed new light on the current ideas of the origin and development of the American aboriginal civilisations…

‘I consider that your discovery is of great importance.’ ²

George G. Heye, then Chairman and Director of the Museum of the American Indian, had also written:

‘In every way we concur with the findings of the British Museum in regard to your amazing discoveries made on a chain of islands off the coast of Central America… The specimens … are of a hitherto unknown culture…

‘[They] open up a new era in scientific thought relative to the age and history of the original inhabitants of the American 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 case that Mitchell-Hedges bought or obtained the crystal 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 which would account for why the skull’s discovery did not appear in the records of the dig held at the British Museum, as well as why Captain Joyce never saw it and why no member of the team ever publicly spoke or wrote about the find either at the time or afterwards. For Frederick Mitchell-Hedges quite clearly explained that, upon discovering the lost city of Lubaantun,

‘Our immediate purpose was to inform the Governor of our discovery, and, at a meeting of the Legislative Council of British Honduras, an act was passed granting us a sole concession valid for twenty years, to excavate over an area of seventy square miles around the ruins.’ ¹⁴

Quite how Mitchell-Hedges was able to negotiate such an agreement was revealed in George G. Heye’s press release on behalf of the Museum of the American Indian, in which he explained:

‘[Mitchell-Hedges] conducted his own expedition under an agreement that his finds were to go to the New York Institution [the Museum of the American Indian] and to The British Museum.’ ¹⁵

Given this agreement that all finds would automatically go to one or other of the museums, is it any wonder that no mention was made of the crystal skull at the time? As Anna was also keen to point out to us, ‘If we had kept the crystal skull when we first found it, it would have gone to a museum automatically like all the other things we found,’ and, ‘If Captain Joyce had seen the skull the British Museum would have got it.’ But in the actual event and whatever the real reason, by the time Captain Joyce came to inspect the dig the skull had already been given back to the Mayans. So it never did end up in the British Museum. Anna was also keen to say that if the crystal skull had not really been found at Lubaantun, then why do the Belizean government, and the British Museum on some occasions, still claim to this day that the skull is really their property and should be returned to them?

But there was one other problem for academics and archaeologists such as Elizabeth Carmichael. It was that there were two written records of a crystal skull in the British Museum’s archives from the first part of the twentieth century and neither was specifically related to Lubaantun. The first of these was the article we had already read, which appeared in the July 1936 issue of Man. This article specifically referred to the skull the British Museum themselves did not own as being ‘in the possession of Mr Sydney Burney’ and made no mention of Mitchell-Hedges. It also noted that the skull had ‘the character almost of an anatomical study in a scientific age’, though no sign of any tool markings could be found on it.

The other record was a note handwritten by one of the former museum keepers which said that a rock crystal skull had come up for auction at Sotheby’s of London on 15 September 1943, listed as ‘Lot 54’. The surprising thing about this entry was that it too referred to the skull as apparently having been sent for sale by London art dealer W. Sydney Burney, not Frederick Mitchell-Hedges. In fact the note implied that the British Museum had tried to buy the skull but in vain as it was then ‘bought in by Mr Burney’ and ‘sold subsequently by Mr Burney’ to none other than a ‘Mr Mitchell-Hedges for [only] £400’! This apparently private transaction is thought to have occurred in 1944.¹⁶

These, the oldest written records of what one can only assume to be the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull, had led some archaeologists, Elizabeth Carmichael now among them, to speculate that Frederick Mitchell-Hedges did not really find the crystal skull at Lubaantun at all but simply bought it in London in 1944 from a man called Mr Burney, who, it is assumed, was an antique dealer. Indeed, these two written records have led many to speculate that the skull is in fact not ancient at all but of far more modern, possibly European, origin, being made some time towards the end of the nineteenth century or at the beginning of the twentieth.

By now we were obviously beginning to have grave doubts about Anna Mitchell-Hedges’ story. But Anna had a simple answer even to these apparent problems. According to her, Mr Burney was a family friend who loaned her father money and the skull had actually been used as collateral. When Mr Burney proceeded to put it up for sale, her father paid him back and got his crystal skull back. This explains why the mysterious Mr Burney should have withdrawn the skull from auction and sold it privately to Mitchell-Hedges rather than simply selling it off to the highest bidder. Another interesting, perhaps coincidental, consequence of this sale, however, is that legally no one can now dispute that the Mitchell-Hedges family are the rightful and legal owners of the skull.

But was the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull a modern fake or could it really be one of the ancient skulls of legend? The suggestion that it might be modern, and possibly European, had been made by several of the archaeologists we had spoken to, and was now strongly supported by the British Museum files, whatever Anna Mitchell-Hedges might say.

So we asked Anna if she would be willing to let her skull undergo tests so that we could get an answer to this question once and for all. We were somewhat surprised when she explained that ‘he’ had already been scientifically tested. Rigorous tests had been carried out several years before by the world famous computer company and crystal experts Hewlett-Packard. Anna said we would find the results of these tests ‘most interesting’ but that if we wanted full chapter and verse on what the scientists had discovered we had better go and talk to them for ourselves.

That was it, we were off to talk to the scientists at Hewlett-Packard without further delay.