Data skull: weighs 5 pounds and 19 ounces, is just as high 13 cm wide and 18 long. It is carved from a single piece of pure quartz crystal clear with beautiful grain and has shaped eyes prism. Looking at it inspires a certain fear but also a solemn admiration for people who have been able to create it. This is the skull of destiny (a name that derives from the negative dall'accezione bad reputation of this item be accursed), a work of fine art from the point of view but that remains a mystery to archaeologists who can not attribute a source or nor a manufacturing date certain. The skull is in possession of Mrs. Ann Mitchell-Edges that guards it jealously, and shows it in public only rarely. It was she to see him back in 1927, among the ruins of an ancient Mayan city located in the current Belize ...
Mitchell-Edges adventurer FA Mitchell-Edges, said Mike, was a well-known in the Twenties. Explorer, archaeologist, gambling ... in a word adventurer. Eviscerated had a passion for ancient civilizations, particularly those pre-Columbian and early twenties across America in a perilous journey that led him to visit many unexplored areas of that continent. In that time he met Ann Le Guillon, an orphan originally from France who decided to legally adopt and carry on his travels. The orphan brought him luck because in 1923, during an expedition in search of a lost city of Atlantis (Mitchell-Edges was a staunch supporter of the existence the lost continent, South America and sought the traces of Atlantis), he discovered, in the then British Honduras (now Belize) Lubaantum the ruins of a great Mayan city. A few years later, in 1927, the seventeenth day of the birthday of Ann, was found the crystal skull.
The girl, as she had to tell many years later, was walking on the spot where the excavations took place when he was attracted by something shiny peeping from the ground, near a stone altar.
Taking care not to damage the object and Ann began to dig in less than no time he found himself in the hands of a beautiful crystal skull that gleamed in the light of the sun. But it lacked the jaw to the skull that was brought to light only a few months later a few feet away, after the area within which the skull was found, was sifted carefully, inch by inch. According to the story of Ann's father, after the discovery, the object would then be delivered into the hands of the natives of the place, direct descendants of the Mayas. They recognized him as an ancient god that had a dual power: that of healing from sickness and to unleash a powerful curse. Later, when the Mitchell-Edges finally departed from Lubaantum, the natives returned their skulls, as a token of friendship.
Ann's story ends here, and for it may be a plausible story, however, leaves a bad taste in the mouth of those who wish to learn more. But from that moment father and daughter are locked in an unusual silence in regard to the skull and refused to add more details about his discovery. This aroused much suspicion about the genuineness of the discovery and poses many questions to which I was not given an answer. There were those who thought that the skull had been put there deliberately to why Ann found him on the very day of his birthday. And there were some who considered it absurd that the Indians had sold to Mitchell-Edges so easy a product is so important for their
culture.
But there was no confirmation or denial from the two travelers. Even in the biography of Mike (Danger My Ally - trad. Com. Hidden treasures and sea monsters Milan 1957), which was released in 1954, five years before his death, we find a full explanation. Just a few lines, referring to a voyage to South Africa in 1947, so settle the matter: "We took with us the sinister Skull of Doom on which much has been written. I have good reasons not to reveal how this object was in my possession. The Skull of Doom is made of pure rock crystal and according to the scientists took the work of one hundred fifty years of work to be completed; generations after generations have dedicated all the days of their life to patiently grind the huge block of crystal from which it was made a perfect skull.
The piece dates from at least three thousand and six hundred years ago. According to legend, was used by the high priest of the Maya to perform esoteric rites. It seems that when the priest called for the death through the skull, there was no doubt that the death came. It has been described as the representation of evil, but I do not want to explain this phenomenon. "
Some of these statements were then cut in later editions of the book, why no one knows.
skulls twins The mystery deepens even more if we add that there is another skull similar to that of Mitchell-Edges. A skull that everyone can admire in the Museum of Mankind in London (a section of the British Museum). Work equally valuable, is attributed (at least according to the entry on this case) to the Aztec culture of the early colonial period. In fact the origin of the skull is even more mysterious than the previous year. The only thing known is that the British Museum bought the piece in 1898, Tiffany's, the famed New York jeweler. Like latter 'came into possession of it is remains a mystery. Some argue that the skull was part of the spoils of an unnamed mercenary of the nineteenth century, but unfortunately lack of further details on this story.
What is certain is that the skull of the British Museum has gained a sinister reputation. It is said that the attendants will feel uncomfortable when they are in the presence of the object and some say that his stare at the orbits are able to see horrific pictures on the move ... simple suggestion? A game of reflexes? Probably. The fact remains that even the skull of the Mitchell-Edges has such negative connotations, so that Ann keeps it wrapped in a purple cloth to avoid being forced to fix it too often.
experts, most notably Dr. Morant, an anthropologist, have found interesting similarities between the two skulls. Despite some slight differences (the Mitchell-Edges has a movable jaw, while the British Museum has the fixed jaw), the two skulls seem manufactured by the same technique and perhaps the same hand.
The mystery of the dating of objects On October 1, 1995 was released the following press release in England, taken by some agencies in Italy and also appeared on Teletext that it brought him back: British Museum: "Maybe Aztec crystal skull of the false: It could be a sensational fake skull of rock crystal from which
1898 arouses amazement and admiration of visitors to the British Museum in London. The work was attributed to the Aztecs, but the tests carried out by experts at the University of Kingston it has been established that the type of quartz used does not exist in Mexico. Further, he had not been able to understand tool that had been polished with the sculpture. According to the researchers, identified by signs on
teeth, you might think of steel tools. Indeed, even in this case the caution is in order. Having established that quartz is not of Mexican origin must identify the true origin of raw material, which could also have been imported from elsewhere. "
the Venus-faced skull But while the hypothesis the fake is carried out by archeology official, there are other assumptions made by scholars less canonical. Strangely enough, in fact, both the Mayan culture in the Aztec, uses the figure of a monstrous deity, rightly dubbed by archaeologists god of death, which reproduces the features of an impressive Mitchel-Hedges skull. To find her, should be worn in southeastern Mexico, in Oaxaca, where they were discovered the spectacular ruins of Monte Alban, one of the richest archaeological sites in Central America. In the tomb
signed with the number seven excavations have unearthed a strange jewel in gold, twelve centimeters tall, depicting a god with the face of the skeleton, richly decorated. This chest, kept in the Regional Museum of Oaxaca, has an interesting peculiarity: engraved with strange symbols and glyphs of Mixtec origin composed of circles and serpentines. Archaeologists agree, this is a kind of Rosetta stone, in this case a half Zapotec Mixtec calendar half. The symbols indicate a date.
a different opinion and instead the Swiss writer Erich Von Daenichen (one of the staunchest advocates the extraterrestrial hypothesis) that, by observing the object, just beyond the archaeological interpretation, could not help but wonder who or what may have inspired those symbols. "It's unbelievable said .- - hoops and these coils really describe a modern integrated circuit! But who could have given this knowledge to the primitive?" For Von Daeniken, the gods descended from heaven, or extraterrestrials. For the English adviser Raymond Drake, however, these memories would be a memory technology makes a myth of ancient civilizations lost ground, tied to the mythical Atlantis. "In Central America the colonies of Lemuria thrived for thousands of years and maintained the culture of the motherland for a long time after the destruction of Mu," writes in our book "The extraterrestrials and lost civilizations" (Armenia, 1974). And
Atlantis could have been a priest, the god with the face of the skull which were dedicated to the bloody sacrificial rites practiced in the Yucatan Peninsula. The population of this ancient settlement, where he alternated Maya and Toltecs, is expanding its sphere of influence in Peru, Guatemala and Mexico, where archaeological remains are no precise references to the cult of the skull, and in Belize, where Ann Mitchel Hedges claims have found the crystal skull.
The largest building dedicated to the god of Atlantis is the temple of the tigers, a pyramid-shaped building surrounded by tzompatli, or rack of skulls, a belt covered with bas-reliefs obsessively repeat the same macabre reason, a lacerated head in profile. The portrait of the Crystal Skull. In this unusual
divinity, which the Mayans believed to come from Venus, is dedicated to the impressive Mexican Oaxaca, an area whose construction megalithic remains an enigma. In that regard, Raymond Drake ever wrote: "In the area veiled in mystery are the remains of five distinct periods, a challenge for archaeologists, surprised not to find traces of primitive man. The pyramids and courtyards of the temples seem have arrived here from another planet. Olmec manufacturers would cut the top of a mountain, forests uprooted, moved massive blocks of stone from far away, removing hundreds of thousands of tons of rock ... An engineering feat not surpassed even today. Archaeologist Hyatt Verrill does not believe that this colossal undertaking carried out without tools, vehicles and wheels can be performed by simple slaves ... "