CRYSTAL SKULLS

A Tale of Fascinating Fakes

- BY STEVE VOYNICK

Frontal view of the British Museum skull, described by famed gemologist George Frederick Kunz as an authentic Aztec artifact. Wikimedia Commons

The late 1800s were heady years in Mesoamerica for a colorful and often shady mix of pseudo-archaeologists, grave robbers, treasure hunters, and antiquities dealers. Lured by an insatiable appetite for pre-Columbian relics on the part of museums and wealthy collectors in the United States and Europe, they sweated their way through the jungles of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and British Honduras (now Belize), acquiring and selling the material legacy of the ancient Toltec, Maya, and Aztec civilizations. Of all these objects, the public was most intrigued by crystal skulls.

Cut from rock crystal and supposedly of ancient origin, these crystal skulls were near-life-sized carvings of human skulls. They would be investigated by scientists, sought by metaphysical practitioners, acquired by leading museums, celebrated in popular culture and, along the way, ingrained into the public imagination.

This two-foot-long museum specimen of colorless, transparent rock crystal is about the size that would have been needed to carve a life-sized human skull. Wikimedia Commons

EUGÈNE BOBAN

Of the 13 existing examples of crystal skulls, four—the British Museum, Paris, Mitchell-Hedges and Smithsonian skulls—are the most widely known. The origin of many of the 13 known skulls can be traced to a French antiquarian named Eugène Boban. The 23-year-old Boban arrived in Mexico in 1857, learned to speak Spanish and indigenous Nahuatl, and went into the antiquities business.