Wait, am I recording? You are listening to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. All right, let's bango. Hello and welcome to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. It's been so long since I've talked into a microphone. I'm really nervous. This disembodied voice that you're hearing right now belongs to me, Lindsay. Hello. For those of you who do not know me, I am an art history PhD student who talks into a microphone about once a month, which is to say, like, yeah, maybe once every six weeks, to tell you stuff about things. So, in the last episode, I said that my New Year's goal was to get back on a regular posting schedule of every four weeks. As if I ever operated on that schedule anyway. That clearly didn't happen, but that's because I was presented with a series of very exciting opportunities and possibilities that saw me traveling all over the place. So please forgive me. I am now back for the foreseeable future. I don't think I have any announcements. I don't think I do. So let's just get straight into things. The year is 1924. A group of British archaeologists and adventurers have gathered in British Honduras to explore the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Lubanton. At the head of the adventuring team is Frederick Albert Mitchell Hedges, who is supervising an excavation at the site for us. His teenage daughter Anna was also part of the exhibition for us. In fact, she would end up celebrating her birthday at the day. And what a birthday indeed for us. As any teenage girl in British Honduras would do on the day of her birthday, Anna Mitchell Hedges decided to spend the day crawling among the ruins of the ancient cities, including those of a stone pyramid that had once served as a site of cultic worship for us. It was there that Anna Mitchell Hedges made the discovery of a lifetime, a life-sized human skull carved from a single block of clear quartz crystals. As she and her father would come to learn from the Mayan people who still lived in those parts, the skull was known amongst the native people as the skull of doom. It was this skull that allowed Mayan priests to transfer knowledge between minds and, most importantly, to will death into being. There were even rumors the skull would strike down all those who mocked it, bringing death and destruction to those who did not believe in its incredible power. Guess what we're about to do? That's right, y'all. This is the part where I tell you stuff about a thing: the crystal skulls and the people who made them legends. Before I get started, I do want to give a huge, meh-hassive shout-out to Jane McLaren Walsh, an anthropologist who spent most of her career working at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Dr. Walsh, as we will talk about later, unexpectedly became one of the leading experts on the Crystal Skulls. I have read virtually everything that she and her team have published on the skulls, and I am very grateful to her and her collaborators for their materials. Also, if you are a Crystal Skull truther tuning in in the hopes of hearing me talk about the skulls as, I don't know, ancient computers and whatnot, then I'm sorry. You've come to the wrong place. All are welcome here, of course, but please don't be like the Shroud of Turinheads out there who have put me on a daily email list in an attempt to convince me of all of the ways in which I am wrong. While I am all about engaging in open dialogue, I also really like facts. So that's what we're dealing with here. Alright, on to the crystal skulls. The crystal skulls is a term used to refer to a series of skulls, you know, like the human cranium, that were carved from a white quartz crystal. These skulls are allegedly, allegedly, pre-Columbian, meaning that they originated from the Americas sometime before Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. To be more specific, it wasn't until 1519 that Europeans, namely the Spanish, made contact with the Aztec Empire, which was the empire that controlled a wide swath of Mexico, or you know, present-day Mexico, in the centuries leading up to the European invasion. Of course, the term pre-Columbian is sort of crappy, because it puts the emphasis on Columbus, who wreaked havoc and destruction on native populations. Other terms you might hear to describe this period are pre-colonial, pre-Hispanic, or even prehistoric. For those of us, including myself, who are more familiar with European terminologies, this might be confusing, because when I personally think of prehistoric times, I think of cave paintings from 30,000 BCE. But descriptors like prehistoric are variable depending on when you use them, and when applied to the Americas, it generally refers to the time before the European invasion. That was your little art historical lesson for the day, which is all to say that the crystal skulls were originally thought to be pre-Columbian, or created sometime before 1519. So about 500 years ago. Hey, almost exactly 500 years ago. Mmm. There are approximately 12 known crystal skulls in existence, though four of those are far more famous than the others. Those include the skull in the British Museum in London, that of the Museum of Man in Paris, a skull at the Smithsonian, and the fourth and arguably most famous example, the one known as the Mitchell Hedges Crystal Skull. Each of these skulls is a life-size or over-life-size representation of the human skull rendered in quartz crystal, which is an extremely hard stone that can be either clear or milky in appearance. Today, crystal skulls are famous because of the legends that have been built up around them, both in fiction and non-fiction. From Indiana Jones to ancient aliens, the crystal skulls have become a part of our pop culture. I was recently texting with my best friend Drew, and I told her the subject of this podcast episode, and she literally replied with, Oh, like Indiana Jones? And it's like, yeah, yeah, suppose so, like Indiana Jones. But like hopefully the hot Harrison Ford version. What? I mean, he's attractive all the time, but like, man, some of those early movies were peak Harrison Ford. The true story of the Crystal Skulls, however, is rooted in the mid to late 19th century, when most of these skulls were first documented. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, audiences in both Europe and the US were growing more and more interested in Mesoamerican art and artifacts, which is to say artifacts from what we would know today as Lower Mexico and a few other countries in Central America. This was the natural result of increasing tourism and adventuring to Central and South America. The growing interest, however, naturally resulted in something else: a burgeoning market for fake Mesoamerican artifacts, though the level of, you know, fakery or willful deception could and did vary. On one hand, there were people traveling to the Americas who were duped into buying objects that were not ancient, but rather recently made artifacts. These people then returned home with what they thought were authentic works of pre-Columbian art. On the other hand, there were also individuals who were knowingly purchasing or making artworks that they deliberately passed off as authentic when they were indeed not. Moreover, given that people in the US and Europe were newly enthralled with these things, there weren't that many experts who could vet what was real and what was fake. So there wasn't a surefire system of checks and balances in place when it came to what entered a museum and what didn't. That's how these things go. And spoiler alert, the crystal skulls that we know and love today were almost sightingly among the ranks of these non-authentic objects. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's go back to the beginning. The first crystal skull to ever surface is the one currently in the British Museum in London, which I will simply refer to as the British Museum Skull. This skull is a life-size representation of the human cranium. Cranium, cranium, that's a great word, cranium. That's carved from clear quartz crystal, otherwise known as rock crystal. Although this skull first entered the collection of the British Museum in 1897, its acquisition history stretches back even further. Now in art history, there is something called provenance, which essentially means the history of ownership of an object. With museum artworks or objects, provenance is important, especially with things that may have been stolen or acquired through unethical means. So think artworks looted by the Nazis or objects stolen from archaeological digs in Egypt. Determining provenance means working backwards. So let's do that now for the British Museum Skull. And by let's do that, I mean let's review the work that J. McLaren Walsh has already done to determine the provenance of the skull. Credit where credit is due, y'all. As I said, the British Museum came into the possession of the skull in 1897. In that year, the museum purchased it from an American mineralogist. Mineralogist? Mineralologist? Anywho, someone who specializes in minerals. Mr. George Frederick Coons. Now, Mr. Koons wasn't just an avid mineral collector. He was also the vice president of the greatest mineral company in the United States, maybe even the world. None other than Tiffany and Company. Yes, that's right, the jewelry titan, Tiffany Co. Tiffany had come into possession of the Crystal Skull in 1886, when Tiffany business partner J.L. Ellis purchased the skull at auction. The American painter W. H. Holmes went to this auction, and he took notes in his little auction catalog book, which remains to this day. In that catalog, the skull is described as a human skull of natural size cut from a solid block of hyaline rock crystal, that was, quote, a unique and perfect specimen, end quote, that originated from Mexico. The catalog then provided a short overview of the skull's origin and importance, which I am quoting here in full. Quote. The human skull played an important part in the religious ceremonial of the ancient Mexicans, and small specimens in terracotta, greenstone, and rock crystal are not infrequently found in museums and private collections. But the Boba specimen is by far the largest and the finest one known, and is considered by him to be one of the most curious and important, as well as one of the most valuable objects in his collection. End quote. Ellis actually had to buy the carrying case for the skull too, which put the purchase at a cool $1,000. Also, fun and super gross fact: the carrying case was covered in iguana skin. Ooh. Now, if the first and only online inflation machine that I clicked on is accurate, which let's face it, it's probably not, $1,000 in 1886 is the equivalent of about $30,000 in today's money. So Ellis pays up the big bucks, grabs his iguana skin carrying case containing the skull, and he heads off to Tiffany with his new purchase. We'll come back to him later. But first, let's return to the catalog description for just a second. Specifically, this part. Quote: The Bobin specimen is by far the largest and finest known, and is considered by him one of the most curious and important, as well as one of the most valuable objects in his collection. The Bobin specimen. Now what does that even mean? Well, Bobin is not some city in Mexico, but rather the last name, the last name, but rather the last name of Eugene Bobin, a French antiquitarian who specialized in Mesoamerican antiquities. And I don't know, I don't speak French, so this guy's last name is spelled B-O-B-A-N. Boba? Bobin? Boba? Whatever it is, it's fun to say. Now, not to spoil things for ya, but according to Jane McLaren Walsh, the anthropological expert on crystal skulls, Eugene Bobin is the man who created the legends that have fueled over a century of crystal skull hoopla. He's the guy who basically single-handedly put crystal skulls on the map. Eugene Bobin is a fascinating character because he was super smart, and he often put those smarts into somewhat diabolical uses. What's not to like? Although he was French, Bobin spent many of his formative years in Mexico, which had been invaded by the French in 1863, though that invasion didn't end well. Anywho, little Bobin fell in love with the culture and the language of Mexico. He even learned to speak not only Spanish, but Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Now that's that's massive dedication to learn an ancient language spoken only by indigenous native populations. I mean the guy clearly loved Mexico. But long story very, very short, Bobin eventually left Mexico to return to France, where he opened a shop in Paris selling Mexican antiquities. Now here's the rub. Many, perhaps even most of the antiquities that Bobin was selling were real. They were legitimate ancient Aztec artifacts, but some were not. And Bobin knew it. Among, for lack of a better word, the fake artifacts, were a series of crystal skulls. Boom bum bum. At one point, Bobin's collection in Paris contained not just um, not just deux, but trois, three crystal skulls. But Bobin was having a bit of a rough time selling these skulls. Such a rough time, in fact, that he schlepped at least one of them to Mexico, where he tried to sell it to a Mexican museum. Which was a bad idea, mi amigo. This was a bad idea because the curator, who was an individual born and raised in Mexico, working for a Mexican museum, knew that this skull was fake. And this failed transaction not only ruined Bobin's reputation with Mexican museums, but also the Mexican government. I mean, obviously, you don't get very far when you try to sell fake Mexican antiquities to actual Mexican institutions. Am I right? And thus Bobin and his crystal skull got laughed out of Mexico. But that was just water off the wing to Bobin, who knew precisely where to go next. He takes his crystal skull all the way across the border to New York City, where no one knows anything about Mexican antiquities. And that's the crux of things, really. If people don't know any better, they are so much easier to scam. You don't try to scam a Mexican curator who is an expert in Aztec antiquity. No, that's stupid. You scam the people in the US and Europe who don't know shit. Take notes, all you little forgers out there. That's what you do. You scam the people who don't know any better. This is why I don't pick up my phone calls from unregistered numbers. That all being said, the crystal skulls aren't really fakes or forgeries. Now I know what you're thinking, you're like, Lindsay, you're telling us all that these are fakes and forgeries. Why are you saying this now? Well, fakes and forgeries generally require an original, and there is no original crystal skull. Nothing even remotely like a crystal skull has ever been found on an archaeological dig anywhere in the Americas, unless you believe the accounts of people who can't keep their stories straight, which we'll get to in a little bit. That's not to say, however, that there wasn't any precedent for the crystal skulls. There were skulls made in other materials that were sold in Mexico in the 19th century, not as Mexican antiquities, but as artifacts for tourists. Souvenirs, really. But those were really small, made of rock and clay, and they certainly weren't ancient. This is all to say that Eugene Bobat certainly knew that the crystal skulls that he had in his possession were not original Mexican antiquities. We don't even really know where he got them. He could have been the mastermind behind this whole thing, or he may have had no hand at all in making these skulls. He might have simply come into possession of them. But the important thing here is that he would have absolutely known that they were modern creations. In fact, after his failed attempt to sell the Crystal Skull to a Mexican museum, after which he was chased out of the country, Boba paid an enormous sum of money to ship all of his stuff that he brought to Mexico to New York, where he planned to set up a store. Shortly after arriving, however, Boba decided to sell his entire collection to the auction house of Leavitt and Company. It is precisely this chain of events that would see J.L. Ellis buying the Crystal Skull for Tiffany in 1886. On that note, let's revisit the catalog description of Van Martaim, particularly the first bit. Quote: The human skull played an important part in the religious ceremonial of ancient Mexicans, and small specimens in terracotta, greenstone, and rock crystal were not infrequently found in museums and private collections. Okay, so this is all actually true. The skull as an artistic motif was very popular in Aztec culture and ritual. Examples of carved skulls did indeed appear in museums and private collections. The catalog, however, is intentionally leaving out key context. It's being real shady, misleading buyers to assume that this skull is an authentic example of those practices. That was Bobon's whole shtick. He'd tell you a bunch of stuff that was true, and then show you an object that seemed to meet those qualifications. Oh, you just told me that the human skull played an active role in ancient Mayan rituals, and now you're showing me a life-size crystal skull from Mexico? Those two must be connected, right? No, not at all. But part of this ruse was the fact that Boba was a noted antiquitarian of Mexican artifacts. Surely he wouldn't be selling a fake, right? Wrong! He is shady AF. And that's how you get J.L. Ellis paying $30,000 present-day dollars for a life-size crystal skull in an iguana skin box. Ooh, how that escalated quickly. I should also note at some point that J.L. Ellis's boss, George Kunz, the VP of Tiffany, he had struck up something of a friendship with Bobin, and he even toured the Frenchman's collection in New York before Bobin sold it to the auction house. So Bobin had also been doing work to sell the ruse before the auction even took place. He was a mastermind. Apart from, you know, trying to sell the skull to a Mexican museum that very clearly knew that it was fake. That was not great, but he's really good at duping rich Americans. The real irony of all of this is that the production of carved skulls in late 19th century Mexico, and I'm not necessarily talking about the massive crystal skulls, but just other skulls carved in rock and clay, were at least partially tied to the French invasion of 1863. French people freaking love skulls. I mean, skulls are like one of the most popular subjects in all of art from any civilization ever, because it's a universal symbol. In the 1860s, though, France had a popular Art form known as Diablerie, which were a series of stereograms featuring dancing skeletons. Yes, stereograms. Stereograms were a new type of photographic entertainment that was basically the 1860s equivalent of 3D photographs. There was a little contraption called a stereoscope that overlapped two images to create a three-dimensional image. Any of you listening who are over the age of 30 may remember the thing in the 80s called a Viewmaster, I think. I think it was called a Viewmaster. The Viewmaster was this handheld contraption in which you could stick a white paper disc that had little photographs embedded in it, and then you could click through it and look into this little contraption, and you'd see like 3D images of, I don't know, Disneyland and stuff. Anyone remember those? We definitely had one in our house as kids, so I'm sure that some of you know what I'm talking about. Diableries were a popular genre of stereograph that French people enjoyed looking at in the 1860s. It was supposed to be, I don't know, commentary on societal decay or something, but let's be real, they just looked really cool. I mean, they showed skeletons dancing about, drinking, and partying. Who wouldn't be into that? It's probably not a coincidence that French people were super into skeletony- things in the early 1860s, which is when you also get the first wave of skulls being produced by locals to sell to this new slew of French people that just invaded the country. The crystal skulls that we know today probably, maybe, possibly, came out of that practice, or at least have something to do with it. This is all to say that the crystal skulls are indeed an artifact of history, just not ancient Aztec history. In fact, in the 19th century, lots of crystal skulls appeared throughout Mexico and the world, though they were usually the size of a small walnut or a fist, rather than life size. And they predominantly appeared in Catholic contexts, the skull being one of the more common motifs that you see in Catholic art. Long story short, crystal skulls did exist. They just weren't ancient Aztec in origin. But luckily for Eugene Bobin, people in the US and Europe just didn't know any better. After J.L. Ellis procures this life-size crystal skull in its iguana-skinned box for Tiffany, the company holds onto the skull for a few months before Koons, the VP of Tiffany, sells the skull to a private buyer named Georges Sisson. Sison? Sison? I don't know. Sison? Maybe Sison. Sison allows Koontz, on behalf of Tiffany, to exhibit the skull around New York City for a few years. And everyone is super into it. So into it, in fact, that the skull's history had undergone a bit of a rebirth in that time. Now Koons doesn't lie. He still makes it clear that he bought the skull from a French antiquitarian. But according to Kuhnz, the skull was found in Mexico long before the French invasion of 1863, after which it was sold to an Englishman named Mr. Evans, upon whose death the skull passed into the possession of Bobin. Now you don't need to know the details of this. All you need to know is that this talk is crazy. It's loco, completely fabricated by Kuz to sell the mystique of the skull and to get more people to come and see it. And it does indeed seem like Koons was making up this story. It's not like Boba fed him this information, because from what we know from Bobin's own writings and recollections, he never claimed that the skull was found in Mexico. He just said it was Mexican in origin, which was, of course, a lie. Like literally nothing about this skull has anything to do with Mexico. It has such nothing to do with Mexico that before Bobin brought it there in the 1880s, it had never even been to Mexico. The crystal itself was probably sourced from Madagascar, off of the coast of Africa. Like that's how not Mexican it is. It has nothing to do with Mexico. So this is all just one big mess. But in the day and age before nice paper trails, people really could say whatever they wanted without incurring any kind of backlash or even being corrected. And it wasn't just New York people who were being duped. It was some of the largest museums in the world. In 1897, Tiffany sold the Crystal Skull to the British Museum for the same amount that it had paid in 1886. So about 30,000 present-day dollars or 27,000 pounds for my UK people out there, which would be like, what, 28,000 euro for my Scots and my other people? Anywho, it's a lot of money. And when things sell for a lot of money, people notice. Bobin went from being laughed out of Mexico as a fraud to having his crystal skull lauded in the New York Times as being an authentic artifact of the ancient Aztecs. And by 1897, one of those skulls had entered the collection of one of the greatest museums in the world. It was any forger's dream to have found legitimization through association with one of the world's best respected institutions. The skull in the British Museum continues to be occasionally displayed, even though it is now recognized as a modern quote-unquote fake. Which is a fascinating thing about the crystal skulls is that even though they are proven to be forgeries or fakes, they're still often exhibited in collections because they're still these incredible objects that fooled people for decades. I mean, it's a skull in quartz crystal. What's not to like? Now, this wasn't the only of Baubin's crystal skulls to make its way into a recognized museum collection. There is a skull at the Museum of Man in Paris that can also be traced back to Baubin. In fact, in 1878, the French collector Alphonse Pinard purchased a huge portion of Baubin's collection of allegedly, allegedly, pre-Columbian art, and donated it to that museum, the Museum of Man. There's also this crazy story about Pinard never paying Bobin, the agreed-upon price, and Bobin trying to have Pinard's possessions repossessed by the French government. Unlike other crystal skulls in museum collections, though, as of 2019, the curator of that museum's American collection still considers the Paris skull to be one of the most important objects in that museum's collection of pre-Columbian art. But we won't go there. Of the four primary crystal skulls, the most famous is the Mitchell Hedges Crystal Skull. As I talk about it, I think it will become increasingly obvious why it's the most famous. The Mitchell Hedges crystal skull looks a lot like the British Museum skull. It's similar in size, style, and material, as the Mitchell Hedges skull is also made from clear rock crystal. So think like crystal that looks like a clear ice cube rather than a frosty ice cube. That's rock crystal. The Mitchell Hedges Crystal Skull is named after Frederick Albert Mitchell Hedges, a British adventurer who was cocoo for Coco Puffs. Having read about him, he reminds me of the villain in the Pixar movie Up. That's who I picture when I think of Freddie Mitchell Hedges. So let's talk about him. Frederick Albert Mitchell Hedges was born in England in 1882. He grew up to be an adventurer, which was an actual job title that lots of rich people had in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mitchell Hedges focused the majority of his travels on the Americas, from places like Canada all the way to South America. To give you an idea of this guy's character, let me say this. So this dude was constantly claiming to have found the remnants of lost cities and civilizations. And that's all well and good, you know, whatever floats your boat. But the thing is, every single one of those lost cities and civilizations that Helm Fry claimed to have discovered were always well established as known places by the time he got there. He would just show up, look around, and be like, oh yes, we are the first to lay our eyes on this place in thousands of years, ha ha ha. And people would be like, dude, so-and-so discovered this place like 200 years ago. And Mitchell Hedges just didn't care. He would still write about it in his autobiographies as having discovered all of these places. He also had this rampant obsession with finding the lost city of Atlantis, which he claims to have found off of the coast of present-day Belize. But the thing that Mitchell Hedges is by far the most famous for is the discovery, the clothing club discovery, of the Mitchell Hedges crystal skull. So here's how the story goes. Frederick Mitchell Hedges had brought his daughter Anna on an expedition to the ancient Mayan city of Lubantoon, located in present-day Belize, which back in the day in the 1920s, when this was all happening, was known simply as British Honduras. On the morning of Anna's 17th birthday, she claimed that while exploring the ruins of the city, she found a fully intact crystal skull located beneath the altar of the local pyramid that her father and some workers then helped her dig out. This is the same story that I relayed to you at the top of the episode, and this skull is very similar to the one in the British Museum, with one exception. It has a detachable lower jaw. You can actually fit and unfit the lower mandible from the skull, which is super cool. According to Mitchell Hedges, the local indigenous people around Lubantun knew all about this skull. It was the one that they called the skull of doom, because it allowed the person holding it to will death onto others. The local people claimed that the ancient Mayans had once used this skull as a tool through which to transfer knowledge between old priest and new priest, after which the old priest would die, thus making room for the new priest. Later in his autobiography, entitled, Get This, Danger, My Ally, Mitchell Hedges claimed that the skull was 3,600 years old, that it took 150 years of constant polishing to create, and that the skull was, quote, the embodiment of all evil. After Frederick Mitchell Hedges died, Anna Mitchell Hedges took up the helm of this myth making, even commissioning writer Richard Garvin to write a book about the skull, including the narrative about how she found it. That book's title The Story of the Mystery, Myth, and Magic of the Mitchell Hedges Crystal Skull discovered in a lost Mayan city during the search for Atlantis. I've read the book. Now, is any of this true? No, it's not. I'm so sorry. It is one huge pile of falsehood. Doom my ass. According to documentary evidence, most of which was tracked down again by Jane McLaren Walsh, Frederick Mitchell Hedges came into the possession of this crystal skull, not in the 1920s, but in 1943, when he purchased the skull from a man named Sidney Burney. Sidney Burney owned an art gallery in London, and as of 1933, the crystal skull, now known as the Mitchell Hedges Crystal Skull, was already in his possession, which we know because he tried to sell it to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and they were like, nah, bro, we good. In 1936, Bernie lent the skull to the British Museum, so that the museum, which still thought that their own crystal skull was pre-Columbian, could compare the two, which were extremely similar. But as far as we know, nothing ever came of that partnership. In 1943, Bernie put the skull up for auction through Sotheby's, which is where Frederick Mitchell Hedges acquired it for his collection, paying the price of 400 pounds. In today's money, that'd be around 18,000 pounds or $23,000. That's a lot of money for a guy whose primary job is quote unquote adventuring. That's a lot of money. Once Mitchell Hedges got his mitts on the Crystal Skull, he started to weave this tall tale, which only became taller as the years went on. And it's very, very cool because if you look at the documentary evidence, you can actually see how this story grows over time. And it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So, for example, about a month after he acquired the skull in 1943, Mitchell Hedges wrote a letter to his brother. And that's the first place where we have any kind of confirmation that Mitchell Hedges is spinning this tall tale. In the letter, Mitchell Hedges claims that the skull is over 3,600 years old, and that it was carved over the course of hundreds of years, changing hand from father to son until it could do the priest's bidding in mine temples. Six years later, around 1950, Mitchell Hedges gave an interview with a local paper in which he claimed for the first time that he discovered the skull on a dig in the 1930s. It was in this interview that he said the following about the skull, quote, It had been taken by the high priest into the depths of the temple, where he concentrated on it and willed death. End quote. When pushed to say where exactly he got it from, Mitchell Hedges just clammed up and claimed that he couldn't give that information away, just saying that he had very, very good reasons for keeping it a secret. Which of course he did. None of it was true. This was all bananas, y'all. It was bananas with a capital B, all yellow letters, bananas. Because this guy is saying that he found this skull in a dig in the 1930s when he actually purchased it at auction in 1943. This guy is nuttier than a squirrel. If Frederick Mitchell Hedges was a bit kockoo, a bit of a squirrel, he was nothing compared to his daughter, Anna, who came into possession of the skull when her dad died in 1959. Anna Mitchell Hedges may have been bananas, but she was also super freaking smart, as evidenced by the fact that she turned this crystal skull into an entire career. In the 1960s, Anna launched an entire publicity blitz for the skull in America, teaming up with an art restorer and dealer in order to best sell her story. It was around that time that Anna started to change the story about how the skull was discovered, claiming to have found it herself while she accompanied her dad on a dig in Lubantun. But Anna could never quite keep the story straight, and she was constantly changing details about when, where, and how she came to uncover the skull, though she eventually settled on having found it in 1924, on her 17th birthday. Previously she had said that she'd found it in 1926, 1927, and 1928. So why settle on 1924 then? Well, that happened to be the only year that her dear old dad had actually been to Lubantoon, and therefore was the only reasonable time that she could have been there with him. Here's the thing though: there is absolutely no record of Anna ever having been at Lubantoon with her father in 1924. For a fairly well-documented trip, you'd think that someone would mention the presence of a girl and her discovery of a life-size crystal skull, but nope, no one did. The thing is, when everyone who was there is now either super old or super dead, you can say whatever you want, and there is no one there to contradict you. And that seemed to be Anna's scheme. For all of the presumed lying about how she came to possess the skull, Anna was actually really devious in how she approached duping people into believing that the skull was a legitimate ancient Mayan artifact. Her way of going about this was similar to Bobin's. Find a museum, willing to put it on display, and then allow that to legitimize the object. Anna did just that, exhibiting the skull at the Museum of the American Indian in New York City. Now you may be asking, why is a crystal skull from British Honduras in the Museum of the American Indian? And the truth is, I have no idea. It turns out, though, neither did other museum professionals. At one point before the skull was exhibited, a British archaeologist tried to intervene, warning the curator of the American Museum not to put the skull on display, because it was a fake purchased from a dealer, not an authentic object found on a dig site. That British archaeologist, Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson, warned the museum that the skull had been purchased from Sidney Burney, but Anna Mitchell Hedges was not having any of this backstabbing. She told anyone who was willing to listen that her father had indeed bought the skull from Sidney Bernie, but actually that everyone else had it wrong. Frederick Mitchell Hedges had given the skull to Bernie as collateral for his most recent adventure. So, really, in 1943, Frederick Mitchell Hedges was just buying the skull back. As far as the on-the-fly reasoning goes, this lie wouldn't be half bad, if not for the fact that Mitchell Hedges never mentions the skull prior to 1943. In any case, the curator of the Museum of the American Indian, Frederick J. Dockstater, decided to ignore all of those warnings and put the skull on display anyway. The rest is history, with the Mitchell Hedges Crystal Skull generating a reputation, a reputation, in the new agey sector of humanity. Anna Mitchell Hedges famously never allowed any museum other than those with which she was personally partnered to examine the skull in her lifetime, which lasted a very, very long time. Anna died in 2007 at the age of 101. Today, thanks to the unceasing insistence by the Mitchell Hedges family that this skull is an ancient Mayan, super duper powerful, death-wielding object, additional belief systems have started to spring up around the legend of the crystal skulls. Among my personal favorites are that the skulls were made by ancient aliens, and that when 13 large-scale crystal skulls are united together, they will work together to uncover the knowledge of the universe. Of those 13, one skull will be the Big Kahuna, the be all and all of crystal skulls. It is assumed, of course, that that skull is none other than the Mitchell Hedges skull. As Jane McLaren Walsh and others have noted, though, these stories about the skulls are never swayed by academic research. People wholeheartedly believe that these skulls are ancient artifacts that, if utilized correctly, will allow us to tap into ancient systems of knowledge. The truth is admittedly much, much more boring. Shortly after Anna Mitchell Hedges died in 2007, the person to whom she bequeathed the skull, Bill Hoffman, allowed the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History to study the Mitchell Hedges crystal skull. Jane McLaren Walsh, who worked at the Smithsonian, had been studying, researching, and testing crystal skulls since 1992, when, on one exceedingly random morning, a 30-pound double life-size crystal skull was delivered to the Smithsonian institutions via postal service. The letter accompanying the skull stated that it was of Aztec origins, purchased in Mexico in 1960. Walsh, an expert on Mesoamerican art, agreed to take the 30-pound skull carved in Milky Quartz crystal and study it, though she readily admits that it spent many years locked up in a cupboard in her office. This odd encounter piqued Dr. Walsh's interest in the matter, and she would go on to closely examine both the British Museum and the Paris skulls, along with that of the Smithsonian. She came away with the same opinion of all three. The markings on the surface of the crystal. Or clear signs of being made with far more modern lapidary or stone carving machinery than the ancient Aztecs would have had access to. When you look at these marks under a microscope, you can actually see these parallel lines that formed by a stone turning over and over and over again to carve these marks into the crystal. Also, there's the fact that the crystal used for the skulls had either been sourced from Brazil or Madagascar, both of which were nowhere near any Aztec trading routes. All of this evidence pointed to the fact that these crystal skulls were man-made objects of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The crystal, though likely sourced from Brazil or Madagascar, had probably been carved in, get this, Germany, where there were factories specializing in the carving of quartz crystal. As for the Mitchell Hedges skull, Walsh put it under the microscope and confirmed her own suspicions. The skull is not 3,600 years old, but likely made in the early 20th century, shortly before it passed into Sidney Burney's London collection, from whom it would be bought in 1943 by Frederick Mitchell Hedges. Now these findings may seem anticlimactic, and in a way, they are. Who doesn't want to believe that an ancient civilization once produced crystal skulls that were meant to either will death and destruction or pass on universal knowledge? That's way more fun than the truth, which is that these things are forgeries. Believe me, I get it. But just because the crystal skulls aren't authentic Aztec artifacts doesn't mean that they can't still be fascinating historical objects embedded in our own cultural history. Not only are these things testaments to the growing trade of forged Mesoamerican artifacts in the late 19th century, but the crystal skulls have become part of our popular culture. When Eugene Bobin decided to pass off a few crystal skulls as authentic Aztec artifacts, there is no way in hell that he could have anticipated what happened over the course of the coming century, culminating, I think one could argue, with the 2008 Indiana Jones reboot entitled Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, in which Harrison Ford and Shy LaBeouf, yeah, I bet you forgot he was part of the Indiana Jones reboot too, didn't you? Or maybe you never forgot. In that movie, all of the greatest fantasies about crystal skulls, including aliens, are put right up there on the silver screen. And I think that Anna Mitchell Hedges would have been proud. I myself first learned about the Crystal Skulls from a computer game, the 2007 classic Nancy Drew and the Legend of the Crystal Skull, in which Nancy Drew has to find a crystal skull hidden somewhere in New Orleans that is said to protect its owner from death with the exception of murder. Now I never saw the Indiana Jones movie, but I have played this computer game more times than I'm willing to admit. And not because I'm ashamed. The Nancy Drew computer games are awesome, but because I've lost count. In the end, the crystal skulls are not ancient Aztec artifacts, nor are they the tools of ancient aliens. Instead, they are a series of objects explicitly manufactured to dupe us into believing all of this and more. And that I think is an amazing power in and of itself. That is all I have for you today on the Crystal Skulls, a topic that I have had on my podcast episode list since the very beginning two years ago. Oh yeah, it's the two-year anniversary of the podcast. Happy two-year anniversary! I hope that you enjoyed learning about these incredible objects with me. And as always, I will post images and my source material on the podcast's website, stuffaboutthingspodcast.com. I do want to give another shout out to Jane McLaren Walsh, whose books and articles formed the bulk of the materials that I used to write today's episode, especially her book, The Man Who Invented the Aztec Crystal Skulls, and her article, The Legend of the Crystal Skulls, that appeared in Archaeology magazine. There is also an article on National Geographic by Richard A. Lovett and Scott Hoffman that I found very informative as sort of my gateway into starting to read about these objects. But of course, I will post all of those and more on the podcast's website. As for Gus Corner this week, I'm headed home in a few days to see him for the first time in about six weeks, and I'm so excited. While I was home over the winter holidays, Gus and I slowly but surely engaged in a silent war that has now gained him additional furniture privileges. So y'all better watch out. First, he'll take over the couch. Then he'll take over the world. Stay tuned to the podcast's Instagram feed where I will be posting more Gus edits and just delightful Gus pictures over the course of the next few weeks. As for me, corner, this week, I will be back shortly with another episode. I'm going to start working on it right away, I promise. And don't worry, I've gotten a lot of emails about people thinking that I've stopped making these. I haven't, I promise. It's just a matter of what's happening with my school schedule on whether or not I can make episodes as frequently as I would like. If you are so inclined, you can reach me at stuffaboutthingspodcast at gmail.com or through the contact me tab on the website. I absolutely love hearing from listeners. It makes my day. And I would also appreciate it if you would take two minutes, just two, to review the podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen to it. That is huge. It helps people find the podcast, and it also makes me smile really, really big. So thank you. The usual thank yous go out to the usual suspects, which are hooksounds.com and freemusicarchive.org, where I get all of the audio that you hear in today's episode. The first song that you hear is a version of Vox Brandenburg Concerto number four by Kevin McLeod, while the second, jauntier tune is a little ditty called Success Dreams. Alright, that's all for me today. I am signing out from St. Louis, Missouri. I hope that you are all having an awesome day, week, month, year, life, whatever. And I hope that you take the time to look at something beautiful today. Seriously. It'll make your day so much better. A la próxima Michi. This guy is nuttier than a squirrel.