Chris Morton - The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls

Work began in earnest as the party and local Mayan helpers toiled in the jungle heat to clear the site. It was back-breaking, seemingly relentless work, hacking away at the undergrowth and felling huge trees which piled themselves high on top of the ancient stones below. It took over a year to clear most of the undergrowth. When they had finished, the trees lay fallen before them in a great mountain of twisted branches. It was time to set fire to the what was left of the forest. The fire raged hot and high for days beneath the blistering sun. It burned ‘like a mighty blast furnace’, spewing out white hot ash and burning red embers all around. It dried the lips, reddened the eyes and almost choked the very life breath from the parry of explorers. But as the flames subsided the ruins of a once great city slowly emerged from amidst the smoke and burning ashes. As Frederick Mitchell-Hedges recounts in his autobiography, published in 1954:

‘We were amazed at the immensity of the ruins. Walls, terraces and mounds came into view as the holocaust swept onwards … in its centre had stood a mighty Citadel .

…The Citadel was raised above the level of the surrounding countryside and when it was first built it must have stood out like a glittering snow-white island, one hundred and fifty feet high. Around it spread the lesser dwellings and burial mounds of the common people and, further out, the thousands of acres of green, waving maize that must have been necessary to feed and support the large population.’ 3

When the blaze had died away Mitchell-Hedges and his team were able to explore the great city:

‘It covered …a total area of six square miles with pyramids, palaces, terraces, mounds, walls, houses, subterranean chambers, [even] a huge amphitheatre designed to hold more than 10,000 people and appreached by two great stairways. The Citadel was built over seven and a half acres and originally every foot had been covered with cut white stone… ‘ 4

Mitchell-Hedges was amazed at the workmanship that had gone into the construction:

‘The magnitude of the labour required is almost beyond computation for their only tools were flint axes and chisels. I tried to square a similar block of stone with one of these implements, of which we found many. The task took an entire day.’ 5

Frederick Mitchell-Hedges was to spend several years uncovering the secrets of the past that lay hidden in this lost city. During the long excavation of the site he was joined by Anna, or ‘Sammy’ as she was affectionately known to her father (see plates 32 and 33) . She settled instantly to life in the jungle, as if she had been born to it. Anna shared something of the same rebellious spirit of adventure as her father and had a strong, inquisitive nature. It was this that led her to make her dramatic discovery.

It was a particularly hot day, an afternoon when the air itself seemed to stand still in the drowsy heat. The archaeological site, which was usually very busy, was strangely silent. ‘Everyone had gone to sleep. They had been worn out by the heat,’ remembers Anna. It was a few weeks before her seventeenth birthday. She was alone in her hut and feeling restless. Suddenly it occurred to her there was something she had been wanting to do for a while.

‘I thought this was my chance to go up and see how far I could see from the top of the highest building. Of course, I was strictly forbidden to climb up there because the stones were very loose and dangerous. But I had heard that you could see for miles around from the top of one of the pyramids and that intrigued me.’

So Anna headed towards the site, knowing that the excavation team were sleeping soundly in their beds.

She began to climb the tallest pyramid. Monkeys chattered in the distant trees and insects buzzed noisily around her as she picked her way carefully over the loose stones until, at last, she reached the top. It had been worth it:

‘Once I was up there I could see for miles around and it was very beautiful. I felt that I could have stayed there for a very long time. But the sun was very, very strong and there was something shining in my face. Way way down below through a crack I could see something shining back at me and I got very, very excited. How I got down from that building so quickly I don’t know, but when I got back I woke my father up and told him I’d seen something. Then, of course, I got a very bad scolding because I shouldn’t have gone up there.’

Anna’s father was disinclined to believe she had seen anything at all:

‘ “You imagined it,” he said .

‘But the following morning my father got all his men together. Before I got up he had everybody moving the stones from the top of the pyramid, because there was no way we could get in from the bottom. It took several weeks of carefully removing stones before a big enough hole was created.’

It was the day of Anna’s birthday when she volunteered to go down. She was lowered slowly by her father and his helpers into the narrow gap between the stones:

‘I had two ropes tied around my body and a light strapped to my head and I was let down into the opening. As I descended into the dark, I became very nervous, because there could be snakes and scorpions down there. When I got down I could still see something shining, reflecting the light on my head back at me. So I picked it up and I wrapped it in my shirt so it wouldn’t be hurt and I told them to pull me up as fast as they could.’

As Anna emerged from the temple into the bright daylight she wiped the dirt from the surface of the object and stared at it in wonder. ‘It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.’ The object was truly remarkable. It was life-size and looked almost exactly the same as a real human skull, and yet it was almost completely transparent. It was a real crystal skull. She held it up to the light. It was carved from a magnificent piece of clear rock crystal and caught and reflected the light in devastatingly beautiful, captivating and complex ways. And, miraculously, it appeared to have survived completely unscathed.

There was a moment of stunned silence as the small crowd of excavators gazed at this strange object, mesmerized by the way in which it captured and reflected the sunlight, sending it forth in a dazzle of light. Anna’s father took the skull from her and held it high for all to see. Then all at once everyone went wild with joy. ‘All the Maya helpers on the dig started laughing and crying. They kissed the ground and started hugging each other,’ Anna said. It was a magical moment, she recalled, perhaps the greatest moment in her long life. It was ‘as if an ancient and powerful force had returned to the lives of those present’.

As evening fell and the first stars appeared in the skies, Frederick Mitchell-Hedges placed the skull with great ceremony upon a makeshift altar the Mayans had built. As he and Anna looked on, fires were lit all around the skull and in the light of the blaze they could see the Mayans blessing it. Then the sound of drumming began. Mayan dancers appeared from the shadows, decorated with the plumes of jungle birds and the skins of jaguars. They moved with agility and grace to the rhythm of the drum. There was chanting and singing. It was a night of celebration, as Anna recalls. ‘They performed ceremonies, rituals and dances in front of the skull in the firelight.’

From the depths of the jungle people appeared, as if something had called to them across the forest.

‘It was as though a message of joy had been sent out across the Mayan lands. A lot of Maya came that we never even knew, and they came so quickly and from so far afield that I don’t know how they could possibly have heard of the skull in such a short space of time. But they knew.’