The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls

At the end of May this year, our cinema screens were filled with the latest blockbusting Hollywood movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This film sees the return, after a twenty year absence, of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, pitted against an evil Cate Blanchett, as a cold-war era Russian spy.

The film centers around Indiana Jones' quest for the legendary and mysterious crystal skulls. Like the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, featured in the previous Indiana Jones movies, everyone now knows about crystal skulls. But what a lot of people don’t know is that the legendary crystal skulls really do exist, and that authors and film-makers Chris Morton & Ceri Louise Thomas first made a documentary and wrote a book about them way back in the late nineties – an absolutely fascinating bestselling book about the facts and legends that have now inspired the latest Indiana Jones movie.

Chris Morton & Ceri Louise Thomas first heard about the mysterious crystal skulls over thirteen years ago. It was whilst holidaying amongst the beautiful Mayan jungle ruins in Central America that they first heard the legend of the crystal skulls.

According to an old native American legend there exist thirteen skulls, the same size and shape as human skulls, but made of pure crystal. Left behind by the earliest ancestors way back in the mists of time, these skulls were said to be the source of great knowledge and wisdom. They were said to contain important information about mankind’s origins, true purpose and future destiny. The legend also prophesied that one day, at a time of great crisis for humanity, all of these crystal skulls would be rediscovered and brought back together to reveal information vital to the very survival of the human race.

When Chris Morton and Ceri Louise Thomas first heard this legend they considered it merely a colourful story, until they found out that a real crystal skull had actually been discovered on an archaeological dig deep in the jungle interior way back in the 1920’s,by the daughter of a British explorer named Frederick Mitchell-Hedges.

Frederick Mitchell-Hedges was your archetypal and flamboyant upper class British adventurer-explorer in the dying days of the British Empire. In fact, he is widely believed to have been the role model for the original Indiana Jones character. He was a member of the Maya Committee of the British Museum but he also had some unorthodox views. He believed that Atlantis was a real civilization which had actually existed, and that its remnants could still be found somewhere in the region of Central America.And being the man he was, he was determined to prove it.

So in 1924 he gathered together a party of explorers who set sail from Liverpool bound for British Honduras (now Belize). There, one day, trekking through the rainforest, they stumbled upon some mounds of stone overgrown with moss and foliage, and they realized they had discovered a lost Mayan city. It was a place known to the locals as Lubaantun, a Mayan name meaning ‘the city of the fallen stones’, and it was here, inside one of the great temple-pyramids that his daughter Anna claimed to have found the magnificent crystal skull.

In fact, Anna Mitchell-Hedges, who was only seventeen years old when she found the crystal skull, claimed that this crystal skull had healing powers and that it kept her alive and happy and healthy all her long years until she died only last year – aged 100! But these are only some of the incredible claims that have been made about the mysterious and beautiful Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull. It is highly anatomically accurate and even has a separate lower jaw bone, just like a real human skull.

This crystal skull was loaned to Hewlett-Packard’s crystal research laboratory for scientific tests to try to establish how old it was and how it had been made. But the scientists were completely unable to carbon date it, as crystal has no carbon in it. So instead they looked for tool-markings to try to find out how, and therefore when, it might have been made. But even under extreme magnification they were stunned to find no evidence of any tool-marks on the skull, leading one member of the team to comment "This skull shouldn’t even exist!" and leading others since to speculate that perhaps the skull is of "no earthly origin!".

Since then, several other crystal skulls have come to light. All are of controversial origin and all are surrounded by tales of supernatural powers. As George Lucas has said, "True believers attribute all sorts of abilities to the crystal skulls, ranging from the skulls being psychic amplifiers to repositories of ancient knowledge." Chris Morton and Ceri Louise Thomas arranged for as many crystal skulls as possible to be brought together for further scientific tests at the British Museum, the results of which you can read more about in their book.

Perhaps one of the most interesting facts that the scientific tests have revealed is that the crystal skulls are made from precisely the same type of quartz crystal (or piezo-electric silicon dioxide) that we now use inside all our modern electronic devices. Every one of our computers and mobile phones contains a tiny quartz crystal microprocessor enabling massive amounts of information to be stored and communicated. In fact our whole society now depends on this ability of quartz crystal to store and communicate information. Without it the internet and all other electronic communications would not be possible, and our whole modern world would simply cease to exist. And if you think how much information we now store inside these tiny silicon crystal chips inside our computers, just think how much information might be stored inside a crystal skull? This has lead many to wonder if perhaps there might be some truth in the original legend which said that the crystal skulls are a source of great knowledge, wisdom and information that is yet to be discovered.

That the crystal skulls are now the subject of a major movie is no surprise to authors Chris Morton & Ceri Louise Thomas. "It’s great news," said Ceri. "There is something about the crystal skulls that needs to be out there in the consciousness of people all over the planet".

It certainly seems that the crystal skulls are reappearing now just as prophesied by the legend. In fact, authors Chris Morton & Ceri Louise Thomas attended a very special event – a sacred gathering of indigenous elders at a secret location deep in the jungles of Guatemala. The purpose was to discuss the coming earth changes and the coming to pass of the indigenous prophecies as we approach the "end of the current world" in 2012.

The indigenous elders believe the crystal skulls are reappearing now for a purpose.They believe the crystal skulls are here now not only to "warn us" but also "to awaken us". They believe the crystal skulls are here to "change the mind of humanity", to "awaken us all to a higher form of consciousness", to "help us to function at a higher level as a species", before it is too late.