What do you think about this?
There is a legend that refuses to die. It says that scattered across the earth are thirteen ancient skulls, each one carved from a single block of solid crystal, and that when all thirteen are finally reunited, at humanity’s hour of greatest need, they will release knowledge that could save our species.
It sounds like pure fantasy, until you remember how the people of ancient Mexico actually felt about skulls. To the Aztec and the Maya, a skull was not only a symbol of death. It was a symbol of life and rebirth. Beneath modern Mexico City, archaeologists uncovered the Huey Tzompantli, a great rack of more than six hundred human skulls mortared together at the Templo Mayor, built to keep the gods alive and hold the universe together. Skulls sat at the very center of their world.
The most famous crystal skull, the Mitchell-Hedges, was said to be lifted from a Maya ruin in Belize in 1924. The official verdict today is that it is a fake, carved with rotary tools that did not exist before the 1800s and traced back to a London auction.
But here is the question that nags at me. Is it possible that branding these skulls as modern fakes is exactly how you stop the world from hunting for the real ones still out there, and how much should we really trust the institutions that keep them locked in their vaults?
A clever hoax, or an old secret buried under an official stamp of doubt? What do you think the thirteen skulls really are?
What do you think about this? On January 20, 1996, three young women in Varginha, Brazil, saw a four foot creature with oily skin and red eyes crouched by a wall. The army was in town that morning. A policeman said to have handled it died a month later. Cover story, or Brazil’s Roswell?
What do you think about this? In 1800 settlers at Conneaut, Ohio, opened a four acre burial ground in rows and reported skeletons over seven feet, jaws that fit over a man’s face, double rows of teeth. The graves were plowed under within a generation. Tall tale, or a people buried twice?
What do you think about this? The Iron Pillar of Delhi is six tons of forged iron from around 400 AD. It has stood outside through 1,600 years of monsoons and never rusted, thanks to a protective film from phosphorus rich iron nobody made again. Lucky recipe, or knowledge lost on purpose?
What do you think about this? North Sea trawlers pull up mammoth teeth, flint tools and a carved harpoon from 120 feet deep. Until 8,000 years ago that seabed was Doggerland, a forested land the size of Britain, drowned by rising seas and a tsunami. The lost land of every old story?
What do you think about this? In 1974 a Florida family found a polished 22 pound steel ball in burned brush. It hummed when a guitar played, rolled across rooms on its own and changed direction. Navy X rays showed objects inside, origin unknown. Valve ball, or something that landed?
What do you think about this? The Whaley House in San Diego was built in 1857 where a man was slowly hanged five years earlier. A baby and a daughter later died inside. Visitors report footsteps in empty rooms and a pressure on the throat where the gallows stood. Old house, or long memory?
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