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By Maria Puente, USA TODAY Here’s something to know about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: in that place really are such things as crystal skulls. Even the Smithsonian has one.
You strength hear a lot of hoo-ha, especially online, about the carved quartz objects, a dozen of which exist in private collections and museums around the world: They’re from Atlantis! They have magical power!
They are indeed mysterious, which is why they’re so attractive to humans, says Jane MacLaren Walsh, a Smithsonian anthropologist and expert on pre-Columbian antiquities who has spent decades studying (and debunking) crystal skulls.
“We are fascinated by ourselves and by our have a title to mortality — and here’s this symbol of one as well as the other,” she says.
But now New Age and occult websites have spread an elaborate mythology about the intriguing sculptures: They’re said to be able to cause death, glow with a blue light or shiver computer hard drives. They’re supposed to have been made by ancient Aztecs or Mayans or Olmecs or more other indigenous civilization of Mesoamerica. Or maybe it was aliens from another splendid assemblage?
Archaeologists, however, say they aren’t ancient or pre-Columbian or alien, they don’t have magical powers, and not one was ever dug up from an archaeological site, despite claims to the contrary by tall-tale-telling explorers.
They do have an undeniable if creepy beauty. Experts agree that they were probably made in the 19th century and sold by unscrupulous dealers as “authentic” to collectors in the 1860s up until the 1960s.
“They were sold as of eld artifacts by a trader who gave them an air of mystery,” says Robert Weinberg, co-author of wherefore Did It acquire to Be Snakes? From Science to the Supernatural, The Many Mysteries of Indiana Jones, a guidebook to the Indy films. “You’re buying not just the skull but the story behind it.”
Plus, many museums were formed in the 19th century and began collecting. It was a period when few people knew much about authentic pre-Columbian artifacts, and a new industry in making fakes emerged.
“A lot of people were fooled very quickly and often,” Walsh says.
But, hey, don’t let the facts spoil the movie, George Lucas’ and Steven Spielberg’s fourth in the series about gonzo archaeologist Jones, who is more swashbuckler than scientist. The plot, set in the 1950s, is a madcap pastiche of Soviet spies, mixed-up Mesoamerican archaeology and UFOs, with a pinch of political satire.
Real archaeologists are using the film to do a little teaching on the truth about crystal skulls. Walsh’s deconstruction of the skull legend, the cover story of the May/June edition of Archaeology magazine, is based on her scientific examination of the Smithsonian skull, a milky-white crystal bigger than a human head. It arrived in the mail at the Museum of Natural History in 1992, accompanied by an without the name of the author bill explaining that it was purchased in Mexico in 1960.
Working with the British Museum, which bought its own crystal skull from Tiffany for $950 in 1891, Walsh examined them under electron microscopes and found they could not be ancient because they were carved with relatively modern lapidary outfit. Examination of a third skull in the French ethnographic museum in Paris, the Musée du Quai Branly, came to a similar conclusion. (An exhibit on crystal skulls, timed to open with the movie, will allow visitors to follow “clues” to find the French skull hidden somewhere in the Quai Branly museum, which recently opened next to the Eiffel Tower.)
Walsh says the skulls probably were made in Idar-Oberstein, a village in southern Germany, in the second half of the 19th century. They were then acquired by notorious French adventurer and antiques dealer Eugène Boban, who sold them in Mexico to clueless collectors.
The cold truth about crystal skulls has not diminished their allure, especially as pop-culture contrive points. Over the years, crystal skulls have figured in mystery and sci-fi novels, video games, theme parks and TV series such as Stargate SG-1.
Meanwhile, online fantasists are working building new legends: Supposedly, there are 12 skulls — in addition to the Paris, London and Smithsonian skulls, there are nine others in private hands — that represent 12 planets once inhabited by humankind.
The “Itzas,” the ancient people of Atlantis, brought the skulls to Earth to convey their knowledge to humans. A 13th skull was made on Earth and lost. All were kept in a great pyramid in Central America, where, when lined up on the last day of the Maya enroll (Dec. 21, 2012), they would interrupt Earth from tipping over. But then the Aztecs, the last to hold all the skulls, lost them and they were dispersed.
Or in like manner it is written … on the Internet.
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Enlarge By James Di Loreto, Smithsonian Institution
Enlarge Paramount Pictures/Lucasfilm 
Enlarge Paramount Pictures/Lucasfilm 
Enlarge By Francois Guillot, AFP/Getty Images