by The Ghosty Gal

Created on: March 31, 2007   Last Updated: April 30, 2007

The crystal skulls are replicas of human skulls that have been carved out of quartz, a clear (when pure) crystal of silicon dioxide. There are hundreds of them in circulation; some of them very modern and others carved thousands of years ago. Some have been traced to ancient Mayan and Aztec civilizations. The one, which has received the greatest amount of attention, is the Mitchell-Hedges skull, also known as the "Skull of Doom".

Adventurer-explorer F. A. Mitchell-Hedges claimed that his seventeen-year-old daughter, Anna, found the skull while they were both searching in a ruined temple in the ancient Mayan city of Lubaantun in British Honduras in 1924. The jaw was missing, but she located it in the vicinity several weeks later. It is highly likely that the details of its "discovery" were fabricated and that Mitchell-Hedges purchased the skull at an auction at Sotheby's in London in 1943. However, the skull is, without doubt, very old and has mysterious properties that modern technology cannot replicate.

The skull was made from a single piece of clear quartz and is a near perfect sculpture of a female human skull. Here we encounter the first anomaly. It has been carved without taking into account the natural grain of the crystal. That alone ought to have made it impossible to cut, even with modern precision power tools and lasers, without cracking or even shattering the crystal.

In 1970 art conservator Frank Dorland convinced Mitchell-Hedges to allow him to conduct tests on the skull at the Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Santa Clara, California. Even under the microscope, Dorland could find no evidence that metal tools had been used to carve the skull, despite the fact that the crystal skull showed a Mohs hardness reading of seven, which makes it likely that it was carved into its rough shape using diamonds, then painstakingly polished using sand and water. But without modern polishing techniques and machinery Dorland estimated that this would have taken three centuries to achieve.

The mystery doesn't end there. The skull has been designed to act as a fine calibrated optical device to channel and magnify light. The bone arches at the front of the skull channel light from the bottom of the skull to the eye sockets, which are concave lenses. Inside the skull is a prism that magnifies and brightens objects placed below it. When Dorland placed the skull over a beam of light the eyes glowed brightly.

Some observers have reported mysterious changes of color. The frontal cranium becomes opaque, and a dark spot forms on the right side and spreads to the rest of the skull, then gradually fades away again.

Dorland believed the skull was used in a sacred context, maybe as an oracle, and that whichever shamans controlled it would have been able to perform some impressive tricks to inspire awe in their community. But he felt that such an impressive piece of equipment could not just have been made for such tawdry purposes, and he suggested a deeper purpose-that with deep meditation, the skull could be used to focus and amplify psychic abilities.

The skull is an incredible piece of engineering. The story of its discovery might have been faked, but the mystery of its construction and its optical properties continues to baffle scientists.

Richard Garvin, Author of The Crystal Skull, aptly sums up this enigma when he writes, "It is virtually impossible today-in the time when men have climbed mountains on the moon-to duplicate this achievementit would not be a question of skill, patience and time. It would simple be impossible."

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