Yesterday we all trooped off to see the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull at the Hub. These skulls are associated with endless speculation about their origin, the odd movie, and a fair amount of woo, including Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World (Youtube of that episode). Is it a fake? I don't know. But the next visitor from America will have to bring me one of these. They're definitely real, I know, as the Mitchell-Hedges crowd were raffling one.
Update: a reliable and level-headed friend and reader sends me the following story.
"I was part of a university expedition to Belize and Guatemala in 1974. Our team leader, a universally respected American anthropology prof, who spent many years exploring the jungle and Mayan temples round Tikal, told us about a crystal skull which he had been shown by a local tribesman. It was at the back of an underground cave, protected by bone bars jammed into rock, and reached by a tunnel."
"He had sworn not to divulge the location, and never did. But (one might say) the fates intervened for added protection: earthquakes devastated the Tikal area a short while later, and when he went back to check damage to an adjacent site, he was sadly at the top of the Temple of the Sun when lightning struck, and was killed instantly. His small son was uninjured but severely traumatized. So somewhere one of those crystal skulls is quietly resting, now probably forever."
