Nexus - 0222 - New Times Magazine-pages

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•(cid:1) Anna Mitchell-Hedges was just seventeen years old and on a dig with her adop tive father, F. A. ''Mike'' Mitchell-Hedges, in British Honduras (now known as Belize) in Central America. They were excavating at the lost city of LubaantuD in the jungles near the present capital, Belize City, when they made a momen tous discovery. The word Lubaantun means "place of the (allen stones" in the local Mayan dialect. Its existence was fIrst reported to the British colonial government in the late 19th century by inhabitants from the nearby Toledo settlement. In 1903 the Governor of British Honduras commissioned Dr Thomas Gann to investigate the site. Dr Gann explored and excavated around the central plaza area and concluded that the place must have had a large popu'lation. He publish~ OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 1994 his report in the United! Kingdom the following year. In 1915, R. Merwin of Harvard University also investigated the area. He discovered three carved stone markers depicting two men playing ball games, and also excavated a ball court. MitchelJl-Hedges arrived at the site in 1924 with an expedition including Dr Gaun, Mitchell-Hedges' daughter Anna, and Lady Richmond-Brown, his close companion and fInancier. They worked! there for three years sifting, digging and uncovering materia~ on site at Lubaantun. DISCOVERY OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL It was Anna's 17th birthday, and while helping with the digging around a collapsed altar she spied a glinting object in the earth. With a great deal of effort, the Mayan workers assisting at the site removedl the last of the debris of stone slabs that lay in the way, and then Anna managed to remove the object. To her delight, what she picked up was a gleaming life-sized crystal skull in perfect condition. According to the ac'count by Alice Bryant and Phyllis Galde in The Message of The Crystal Skull, the Mayan workers went wild with 30Y when they saw ,it. They began to dance, and some started to pay homage to the sacred relic. Within a short space of ,time they had erected an altar to support the S!cull for worshipping. As the story goes, the workers planned to suspend their digging work for severa] days due to weir celebrating. Mitchell-Hedges was in a bind about what to do, wanting them back ae work on the site, yet acknowledging that what had been found was important to them. He made the extraordinarily generous offer to present the Skull to the chief of the Mayan workers if they would return to the task. ihey readily agreed to return, and the next day were back at work. Around two months later tIley found the detachable lower jawbone. It was then that Mitchell-Hedges and his party realised what an incredible fmd they had. The crystal jaw, too, was in perfect condition. When Mitchell-Hedges' el;pedition finally was to return home in 1927, the Mayans pre sented the Skull to him in gratitude for ,the benefIts they had received. Why was this so important to Mitchell-Hedges? As a boy, he disliked school and want ed to be ani explorer. He was fascinated by tales of ancient cultures, especially of Cenrral America. The Mayans, the Aztecs and the 10ltees were his realm. Later, as an adult, he accumulated a personal fortune yet he was less interested in this than in his search for answers about ancient civilisations. He believed strongly in the leg e.nds of Atlantis and thought he would find traces of the civilisation in Central America. "Mike" Mitchell-Hedges was born in England in 1882, and by the time he turned seven teen had left for the United States. After winning a large sum of money in a card game, NEXUS • 63