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how the skull could have been made. two prisms within the crystal. He argued that the artist made full One test revealed that the skull was made out of one piece of _ use of this and that the skull was therefore perfectly suited for quartz, with the separate jawbone coming from the same piece. oracular utterances. He made a series of photographs looking into The lab technicians stated that they were unable to create a skull the skull; these were able to capture the series of "visions" that like that with the technology available to them in 1970. Their others have had. In some, he distinguished truncated pyramids; in analysis showed that the skull exhibited three different types of others, a structure like the US Capitol Building, which has a workmanship, and hence they suggested that work on it was contemporary equivalent in Chichén Itza in the Caracol; while in carried out over three generations, or a period of 60 to 70 years— still other images, several little skull shapes manifested about half the time Mitchell-Hedges argued it would have taken to themselves. Dorland added that these images only materialised make: 70 versus 150 years, a small difference nevertheless. when looking through the right eye socket and that no such shapes That three generations would have worked, day in, day out, on could be seen when staring into the left eye socket. creating one skull was an unlikely scenario, and thus the skull was Such information, however interesting, does not provide any proposed to have been created with "unknown technology"— firm evidence of the crystal skull's true purpose. For this, we need which soon became interpreted as being of alien origin or from a a clear frame of reference—and this has to be the Mayan previous civilisation that was technologically superior to ours, civilisation, which existed until a mere four centuries before these which quickly got linked with Atlantis. This was, of course, what skulls were discovered in Mexico. Mitchell-Hedges had always claimed: that this skull was physical One proposition came from American archaeologist Professor evidence of a lost, advanced civilisation. Sylvanus G. Morley, who argued that within the Mayan world the Larry LaBarre was one of the testers at Hewlett-Packard and a skull was the symbol for the number 10: "the head-variant for 10 decade after the 1970 tests he added to his previous observations: is the death's head, or skull, and in forming the head-variants for namely, that the quartz is very hard, measuring nine out of a the numbers from 14 to 19 inclusive, the fleshless lower jaw of possible 10 on the Mohs scale, meaning that only a diamond the death's head was the part used to represent the value of 10 in would be able to cut it. The quartz, these composite heads for the six though of one piece, was furthermore higher numbers". composed a thee orate growth The shaman led him to Though once again inleresting, this phases, each with a different axis. . . proposition does not bring us any Cutting it would have been extremely a Mayan priest who said he closer to an understanding as to the iret as hitting upon a new axis was authorised to sell crystal sKull's real purpose. weer i might shatter the crystal if the cutter . loes show that in the Mayan wor was not careful. (This is one of the skulls because the village the symbology of the skull was main reasons why larger diamonds needed money for food. indeed important. ‘There are stone are more valuable; it is not solely the . se skulls throughout the ancient Mayan stone but the workmanship involved Nocerino didn t buy them, kingdom. One such skull stands at that makes large diamonds but he did study them the Temple of the Inscriptions in expensive.) As for the origin of the quartz, LaBarre suggested Calaveras County Palenque and another in Tikal. Both skulls are carved at the top of a row of steps leading into a room that in California. However, gem expert Allan Jobbins, who seems to have been a shrine. A stone skull is also found at the researched the skulls for the Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World entrance to the cave beneath the Pyramid of the Sun in TV program, thought the likely origin of the crystal was Brazil. Teotihuacan. But most skulls are to be found on the Tzompantli ("Platform/Place of Skulls"), one of the most famous of which is Skull Visions and Mayan Symbolism at Chichén Itza. a Mayan priest who said he was authorised to sell crystal skulls because the village needed money for food. Nocerino didn't buy them, but he did study them. Skull Visions and Mayan Symbolism In recent years, controversy has raged around the creation of the skulls. With unknown provenances for them all, there are legitimate questions to pose. One of the problems is that if they are archaeological treasures, their purpose seems difficult to ascertain. Indeed, archaeologists have failed to look towards the crystal skulls as items of archaeological interest, and hence this blank canvas has been used by many people to put forward their own speculations, some more outlandish than others. As noted, Mitchell-Hedges believed that if a Mayan priest held the "Skull of Doom" while killing someone in his thoughts, that person would die. He also believed that, equally, those not convinced of the power of the skull would die. Anna Mitchell- Hedges said that the skull "spoke" to her. In recent times, many people have used the skulls for scrying, or visual meditation sessions. Many have reported visions, often scenes from an ancient or foreign civilisation. The scenes witnessed vary strikingly, however. Some people have reported observing scenes from Mayan history, while others have reported receiving knowledge from Atlantis. Such landscapes might actually be due to the technological aptitude of its creator(s). Frank Dorland noted the presence of The Skull in Mayan Creation Mythology That the skulls were discovered in the Mayan heartland is evidence which accords with the few facts that we know of their provenance. The Mayan Skull and the Amethyst Skull were allegedly found in Guatemala early in the 20th century. The Amethyst Skull is made of purple quartz and the Mayan Skull is clear, but the two are otherwise very alike. Like the Mitchell- Hedges Skull, both were studied at Hewlett-Packard and they, too, were found to be cut against the axis of the crystal, making the craftsmanship all the more difficult and the crystal all the more likely to crack or shatter during the fashioning process. Of more direct relevance is that Nick Nocerino claims that he met a shaman in 1949 while travelling in Mexico. The shaman led him to a Mayan priest who said he was authorised to sell crystal skulls because the village needed money for food. Nocerino didn't buy them, but he did study them. However, it was clear that someone was putting these skulls on sale in Central America. What happened then had happened before, and entire Mayan villages are known to have been "financially supported" by the sale of archaeological goods that at one point they had APRIL — MAY 2008 NEXUS = 55 The shaman led him to www.nexusmagazine.com