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? Over five months from late 1989, more than 13,000 people in Belgium reported a silent black triangle with three corner lights. In March 1990 two F sixteen jets locked radar on it, and it made moves no pilot could survive. Secret aircraft, or a genuine visitor?
What do you think about this? The Abenaki spoke of something in Lake Champlain long before Europeans arrived, and Port Henry still keeps a sign counting sightings. In 1977 Sandra Mansi photographed a long neck and a dark hump, and no hoax was ever found in it. Log, or a real animal?
What do you think about this? In 1579 Francis Drake beached the Golden Hind somewhere on the northern California coast and claimed the land for England. Nobody can say which beach. A brass plate found in 1936 was celebrated for decades, then proved a hoax. Point Reyes, or somewhere else?
What do you think about this? Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, one is engraved on copper instead of parchment, and it is a treasure map. It lists 64 hiding places holding tons of gold and silver. Not one has ever been found. Real temple gold, or an ancient legend set in metal?
What do you think about this? On August 15, 1977, an Ohio telescope caught a 72 second burst from Sagittarius, 30 times stronger than background, right on the hydrogen frequency. The astronomer circled it and wrote Wow. It never came back. Fluke, or one word of a conversation?
What do you think about this? The Shroud of Turin carries a full length image of a man that behaves like a photographic negative, which nobody noticed until it was first photographed in 1898. Carbon dating said medieval. Nobody can explain how the image formed. Artwork, or something else?
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