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In
1992, this hollow rock-crystal skull was sent to the Smithsonian
anonymously. A letter accompanying the 30-pound, 10-inch-high artifact
suggested it was of Aztec origin. (James Di Loreto & Donald
Hurlburt/Courtesy Smithsonian Institution)
Sixteen years ago, a heavy package addressed to the nonexistent
"Smithsonian Inst. Curator, MezoAmerican Museum, Washington, D.C." was
delivered to the National Museum of American History. It was accompanied
by an unsigned letter stating: "This Aztec crystal skull, purported to
be part of the Porfirio DÃaz collection, was purchased in Mexico in
1960.... I am offering it to the Smithsonian without consideration."
Richard Ahlborn, then curator of the Hispanic-American collections, knew
of my expertise in Mexican archaeology and called me to ask whether I
knew anything about the object--an eerie, milky-white crystal skull
considerably larger than a human head.
I told him I knew of a life-sized crystal skull on display at the
British Museum, and had seen a smaller version the Smithsonian had once
exhibited as a fake. After we spent a few minutes puzzling over the
meaning and significance of this unusual artifact, he asked whether the
department of anthropology would be interested in accepting it for the
national collections. I said yes without hesitation. If the skull turned
out to be a genuine pre-Columbian Mesoamerican artifact, such a rare
object should definitely become part of the national collections.
I couldn't have imagined then that this unsolicited donation would open
an entirely new avenue of research for me. In the years since the
package arrived, my investigation of this single skull has led me to
research the history of pre-Columbian collections in museums around the
world, and I have collaborated with a broad range of international
scientists and museum curators who have also crossed paths with crystal
skulls. Studying these artifacts has prompted new research into
pre-Columbian lapidary (or stone-working) technology, particularly the
carving of hard stones like jadeite and quartz.
Crystal skulls have undergone serious scholarly scrutiny, but they also
excite the popular imagination because they seem so mysterious. Theories
about their origins abound. Some believe the skulls are the handiwork
of the Maya or Aztecs, but they have also become the subject of constant
discussion on occult websites. Some insist that they originated on a
sunken continent or in a far-away galaxy. And now they are poised to
become archaeological superstars thanks to our celluloid colleague
Indiana Jones, who will tackle the subject of our research in
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Details about the movie's plot are being closely guarded by the film's
producers as I write this, but the Internet rumor mill has it that the
crystal skull of the title is the creation of aliens.
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The author and Scott Whittaker,
director of the Smithsonian's Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM)
Facility, examine the "Mitchell-Hedges Skull." Silicone molds of the
skull's carved features were analyzed by SEM for evidence of tool marks.
(James Di Loreto/Courtesy Smithsonian Institution) |
These exotic carvings are usually attributed to pre-Columbian
Mesoamerican cultures, but not a single crystal skull in a museum
collection comes from a documented excavation, and they have little
stylistic or technical relationship with any genuine pre-Columbian
depictions of skulls, which are an important motif in Mesoamerican
iconography.
They are intensely loved today by a large coterie of aging hippies and
New Age devotees, but what is the truth behind the crystal skulls? Where
did they come from, and why were they made?
Museums began collecting rock-crystal skulls during the second half of
the nineteenth century, when no scientific archaeological excavations
had been undertaken in Mexico and knowledge of real pre-Columbian
artifacts was scarce. It was also a period that saw a burgeoning
industry in faking pre-Columbian objects. When Smithsonian archaeologist
W. H. Holmes visited Mexico City in 1884, he saw "relic shops" on every
corner filled with fake ceramic vessels, whistles, and figurines. Two
years later, Holmes warned about the abundance of fake pre-Columbian
artifacts in museum collections in an article for the journal
Science titled "The Trade in Spurious Mexican Antiquities."
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French
antiquarian Eugène Boban with his collection of Mesoamerican artifacts
at an 1867 Paris exposition. Among the objects on display were two
crystal skulls. At his feet rest a pot and a battleaxe Boban exhibited
as Aztec. Both are fakes. (Courtesy Jane Walsh/Museo Nacional de
Historia, Mexico City)
The first Mexican crystal skulls made their debut just before the 1863
French intervention, when Louis Napoleon's army invaded the country and
installed Maximilian von Hapsburg of Austria as emperor. Usually they
are small, not taller than 1.5 inches. The earliest specimen seems to be
a British Museum crystal skull about an inch high that may have been
acquired in 1856 by British banker Henry Christy.
Two other examples were exhibited in 1867 at the Exposition Universelle
in Paris as part of the collection of Eugène Boban, perhaps the most
mysterious figure in the history of the crystal skulls. A Frenchman who
served as the official "archaeologist" of the Mexican court of
Maximilian, Boban was also a member of the French Scientific Commission
in Mexico, whose work the Paris Exposition was designed to highlight.
(The exhibition was not entirely successful in showcasing Louis
Napoleon's second empire, since its opening coincided with the execution
of Maximilian by the forces of Mexican president Benito Juárez.)
One small crystal skull was purchased in 1874 for 28 pesos by Mexico
City's national museum from the Mexican collector Luis Costantino, and
another for 30 pesos in 1880. In 1886, the Smithsonian bought a small
crystal skull, this one from the collection of Augustin Fischer, who had
been Emperor Maximilian's secretary in Mexico. But it disappeared
mysteriously from the collection some time after 1973. It had been on
display in an exhibit of archaeological fakes after William Foshag, a
Smithsonian mineralogist, realized in the 1950s that it had been carved
with a modern lapidary wheel.
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In
1886, the Smithsonian acquired a crystal skull that may have been a
pre-Columbian bead re-carved in the 19th century. This catalogue entry
shows the object at close to its actual size, and with a vertical drill
hole through its center. (Courtesy of Paula Fleming Collection)
These small objects represent the "first generation" of crystal skulls,
and they are all drilled through from top to bottom. The drill holes may
in fact be pre-Columbian in origin, and the skulls may have been simple
Mesoamerican quartz crystal beads, later re-carved for the European
market as little mementos mori, or objects meant to remind their owners
of the eventuality of death.
In my research into the provenance of crystal skulls, I kept
encountering Boban's name. He arrived in Mexico in his teens and spent
an idyllic youth conducting his own archaeological expeditions and
collecting exotic birds. Boban fell in love with Mexican
culture--becoming fluent in Spanish and Nahuatl, the Aztec language--and
began to make his living selling archaeological artifacts and natural
history specimens through a family business in Mexico City.
After returning to France, he opened an antiquities shop in Paris in the
1870s and sold a large part of his original Mexican archaeological
collection to Alphonse Pinart, a French explorer and ethnographer. In
1878, Pinart donated the collection, which included three crystal
skulls, to the Trocadero, the precursor of the Musée de l'Homme. Boban
had acquired the third skull in the Pinart collection sometime after his
return to Paris; it is several times larger than any of the others from
this early period, measuring about 4 inches high. This skull, now in
the Musée du Quai Branly, has a large hole drilled vertically through
its center. There is a comparable, though smaller, skull (about 2.5
inches high) in a private collection. It serves as the base for a
crucifix; the somewhat larger Quai Branly skull may have had a similar
use.
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Macabre Obsession
The 19th century was a period of keen fascination with skulls and
skeletons in Europe. During the reign of Louis Napoleon (1852-1870),
French artists created stereoscopic photographs, called Diableries, of
miniature dioramas of skeletons at dress balls, libraries (below),
conferences with the devil, and in amorous trysts. Wicked lampoons of
corruption at Napoleon's court, they illustrate how popular skeletal
imagery was when the first crystal skulls made their appearance.
(Courtesy of Paula Fleming Collection)
A second-generation skull--life-size and without a vertical hole--first
appeared in 1881 in the Paris shop of none other than Boban. This skull
is just under 6 inches high. The description in the catalogue he
published provided no findspot for the object and it is listed
separately from his Mexican antiquities. Boban called it a "masterpiece"
of lapidary technology, and noted that it was "unique in the world."
Despite being one of a kind, the skull failed to sell, so when Boban
returned to Mexico City in 1885, after a 16-year absence, he took it
with him. He exhibited it alongside a collection of actual human skulls
in his shop, which he dubbed the "Museo Cientifico." According to local
gossip, Boban tried to sell it to Mexico's national museum as an Aztec
artifact, in partnership with Leopoldo Batres, whose official government
title was protector of pre-Hispanic monuments. But the museum's curator
assumed the skull was a glass fake and refused to purchase it. Then
Batres denounced Boban as a fraud and accused him of smuggling
antiquities.
In July 1886, the French antiquarian moved his museum business and
collection to New York City and later held an auction of several
thousand archaeological artifacts, colonial Mexican manuscripts, and a
large library of books. Tiffany & Co. bought the crystal skull at
this auction for $950. A decade later, Tiffany's sold it to the British
Museum for the original purchase price.
Interestingly, Boban's 1886 catalogue for the New York auction lists yet
another crystal skull. Of the smaller variety, it is described as being
from the "Valley of Mexico" and is listed with a crystal hand, which is
described as Aztec. Neither of these objects can now be accounted for.
A third generation of skulls appeared some time before 1934, when Sidney
Burney, a London art dealer, purchased a crystal skull of proportions
almost identical to the specimen the British Museum bought from
Tiffany's. There is no information about where he got it, but it is very
nearly a replica of the British Museum skull--almost exactly the same
shape, but with more detailed modeling of the eyes and the teeth. It
also has a separate mandible, which puts it in a class by itself. In
1943, it was sold at Sotheby's in London to Frederick Arthur (Mike)
Mitchell-Hedges, a well-to-do English deep-sea fisherman, explorer, and
yarn-spinner extraordinaire.
Since the 1954 publication of Mitchell-Hedges's memoir,
Danger My Ally,
this third-generation, twentieth-century skull has acquired a Maya
origin, as well as a number of fantastic, Indiana Jones-like tall tales.
His adopted daughter, Anna Mitchell-Hedges, who died last year at the
age of 100, cared for it for 60 years, occasionally exhibiting the skull
privately for a fee. It is currently in the possession of her widower,
but 10 nieces and nephews have also laid claim to it. Known as the Skull
of Doom, the Skull of Love, or simply the Mitchell-Hedges Skull, it is
said to emit blue lights from its eyes, and has reputedly crashed
computer hard drives.
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The Mitchell-Hedges skull, top, and
the British Museum skull were the subject of a series of 1936 articles
in which British Museum curator Adrian Digby and physical anthropologist
G. M. Morant debated whether the two were based on the same original
skull, which Digby posited was perhaps revered as a Mesoamerican "death
god." |
Although nearly all of the crystal skulls have at times been identified
as Aztec, Toltec, Mixtec, or occasionally Maya, they do not reflect the
artistic or stylistic characteristics of any of these cultures. The
Aztec and Toltec versions of death heads were nearly always carved in
basalt, occasionally were covered with stucco, and were probably all
painted. They were usually either attached to walls or altars, or
depicted in bas reliefs of deities as ornaments worn on belts. They are
comparatively crudely carved, but are more naturalistic than the crystal
skulls, particularly in the depiction of the teeth. The Mixtec
occasionally fabricated skulls in gold, but these representations are
more precisely described as skull-like faces with intact eyes, noses,
and ears. The Maya also carved skulls, but in relief on limestone. Often
these skulls, depicted in profile, represent days of their calendars.
French and other European buyers imagined they were buying skillful
pre-Columbian carvings, partially convinced perhaps by their own
fascinated horror with Aztec human sacrifice. But the Aztecs didn't hang
crystal skulls around their necks. Instead, they displayed the skulls
of sacrificial victims on racks, impaling them horizontally through the
sides (the parietal-temporal region), not vertically.
I believe that all of the smaller crystal skulls that constitute the
first generation of fakes were made in Mexico around the time they were
sold, between 1856 and 1880. This 24-year period may represent the
output of a single artisan, or perhaps a single workshop. The larger
1878 Paris skull seems to be some sort of transitional piece, as it
follows the vertical drilling of the smaller pieces, but its size
precludes it being a bead, or being worn in any way. This skull now
resides in the basement laboratories of the Louvre, and the Musée du
Quai Branly has begun a program of scientific testing on the piece that
will include advanced elemental analysis techniques like particle
induced X-ray emission and Raman spectroscopy, so we may know more about
its material and age in the near future.
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South American Idol?
In the opening scenes of Raiders of the Lost Ark
(1981), Indiana Jones is hot on the trail of an extremely valuable
golden idol created by an unidentified ancient South American culture.
The goddess's image, which Jones deftly snatches from an altar (setting
off a series of booby traps that culminate with an enormous boulder
nearly crushing our hero), is of a woman in the act of giving birth. The
golden figure was modeled on a purportedly Aztec greenstone carving
called Tlazolteotl, considered to be a masterpiece by the Dumbarton Oaks
Museum in Washington, D.C.
In my research into the object's acquisition history, I discovered that
a Chinese dealer in Paris sold the figure in 1883 to a famous French
mineralogist, Augustin Damour. His friend, Eugene Boban, advised Damour
on the purchase. In examining the artifact's iconography, I found that
the birthing position is unknown in documented pre-Columbian artifacts
or depictions in codices. I have also used scanning electron microscopy
to analyze the manufacture of the idol and have found there is ample
evidence of the use of modern rotary cutting tools on the object's
surface. In my opinion, the Tlazolteotl idol, like the crystal skulls,
is a nineteenth-century fake.
The 1878 Paris skull and the Boban-Tiffany-British Museum skull that
appeared in 1881 are perhaps nineteenth-century European inventions.
There is no direct tie to Mexico for either of these two larger skulls,
except through Boban; they simply appear in Paris long after his initial
return from Mexico in 1869.
The Mitchell-Hedges skull, which appears after 1934, is a veritable copy
of the British Museum skull, with stylistic and technical flourishes
that only an accomplished faker would devise. In fact, in 1936 British
Museum scholar Adrian Digby first raised the possibility that the
Mitchell-Hedges skull could be a copy of the British Museum skull since
it showed "a perverted ingenuity such as one would expect to find in a
forger." However, Digby, then a young curator, did not suggest it was a
modern forgery and also dismissed the possibility that his museum's own
crystal skull was a fraud, as early twentieth-century microscopic
examination did not reveal the presence of modern tool marks.
The skull that arrived at the Smithsonian 16 years ago represents yet
another generation of these hoaxes. According to its anonymous donor, it
was purchased in Mexico in 1960, and its size perhaps reflects the
exuberance of the time. In comparison with the original
nineteenth-century skulls, the Smithsonian skull is enormous; at 31
pounds and nearly 10 inches high, it dwarfs all others. I believe it was
probably manufactured in Mexico shortly before it was sold. (The skull
is now part of the Smithsonian's national collections and even has its
own catalogue number: 409954. At the moment it is stored in a locked
cabinet in my office.)
There are now fifth- and probably sixth-generation skulls, and I have
been asked to examine quite a number of them. Collectors have brought me
skulls purportedly from Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, and even Tibet. Some
of these "crystal" skulls have turned out to be glass; a few are made
of resin.
British Museum scientist Margaret Sax and I examined the British Museum
and Smithsonian skulls under light and scanning electron microscope and
conclusively determined that they were carved with relatively modern
lapidary equipment, which were unavailable to pre-Columbian Mesoamerican
carvers. (A preliminary report on our research is on the British Museum
website, www.britishmuseum.ac.uk/compass). So why have crystal skulls
had such a long and successful run, and why do some museums continue to
exhibit them, despite their lack of archaeological context and obvious
iconographic, stylistic, and technical problems? Though the British
Museum exhibits its skulls as examples of fakes, others still offer them
up as the genuine article. Mexico's national museum, for example,
identifies its skulls as the work of Aztec and Mixtec artisans. Perhaps
it is because, like the Indiana Jones movies, these macabre objects are
reliable crowd-pleasers.
Impressed by their technical excellence and gleaming polish, generations
of museum curators and private collectors have been taken in by these
objects. But they are too good to be true. If we consider that
pre-Columbian lapidaries used stone, bone, wooden, and possibly copper
tools with abrasive sand to carve stone, crystal skulls are much too
perfectly carved and highly polished to be believed.
Ultimately, the truth behind the skulls may have gone to the grave with
Boban, a masterful dealer of many thousands of pre-Columbian
artifacts--including at least five different crystal skulls--now safely
ensconced in museums worldwide. He managed to confound a great many
people for a very long time and has left an intriguing legacy, one that
continues to puzzle us a century after his death. Boban confidently sold
museums and private collectors some of the most intriguing fakes known,
and perhaps many more yet to be recognized.
It sounds like a great premise for a movie.
Jane MacLaren Walsh is an anthropologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
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