One of the most exciting mysteries to this day are crystal skulls that have been found in the American jungle at various times. Someone considers them to be artifacts of an ancient powerful civilization, someone - Mayan products. Some are inclined to endow these items with a mysterious mystical power. Meanwhile, they may well hide another secret of history.
Crystal skulls are very often associated with the name of the English traveler and writer Frederick Mitchell-Hedges, who in 1927 announced a sensational find during excavations of the ancient Mayan city of Lubaantun. There he was fortunate enough to find a life-size crystal skull, which amazed with the perfection of the form and the mysterious blue light that could be seen peering into his eye sockets.
Size matters
However, similar artifacts were encountered in the history of Latin America much earlier, long before the birth of Mitchell-Hedges. From the middle of the 19th century, miniature skulls made of quartz or rock crystal began to be found in Mexico. Their sizes ranged on average from two to four centimeters in height. In addition, they were all drilled from top to bottom, so most likely they were used as beads.
However, soon the world was waiting for even more surprising news related to crystal skulls. It turned out that they are not only small, but also large - the size of a part of the skeleton of a normal person. For the first time, large skulls were found in the collection of the Frenchman Eugene Boban. He was a very remarkable man - an adventurer, traveler, antiquities dealer (he kept a whole store selling relics from all over the world).
And in the 60s of the XIX century, Boban served as an adviser on archeology to the emperor of the Second Mexican Empire Maximilian of Habsburg. This empire did not last long - about four years. But Boban came to America as a teenager and spent a significant part of his life in it.
He actively traveled around the country, communicated with the Indians, studied the mythology and language of the Maya and Aztecs. And he regularly amazed the world with news of new finds. Including turtles, several of which he sold to various collections.
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It should be noted that Boban had a rather scandalous fame. He was caught more than once for falsifying antiquities. And when in the mid-1880s he tried to sell another crystal skull to the Mexican National Museum, calling it an "Aztec artifact", the curator of the museum said bluntly that he was not going to buy a glass fake.
By order of the emperor
To date, 13 turtles are known to be kept in various museums and private collections. Only a few of them have undergone serious research. And the results obtained are extremely contradictory. Some researchers categorically declared the skulls to be forgeries made in the 19th or even 20th century for the use of antiquities hunters. Others came to the conclusion that this is indeed an extremely ancient thing, moreover, created using mysterious high technologies, which clearly could not have been with the Mayans or Aztecs.
The answer is most likely simple. Some of the skulls, apparently, really are mysterious artifacts of the past, about which science has yet to say its weighty word. But a significant number, obviously, were actually made in the Mexican workshops by the industrious descendants of the Maya.
What for? It is possible that it was ordered by the Emperor's archaeological advisor. The second half of the 19th century is the beginning of the archeology boom. Egypt and the Middle East gave the world one discovery after another. Scientists from all over the world have sought to excavate the ancient ruins of Assyria and Babylon.
Against this background, Emperor Maximilian (who was generally distinguished by a rather original thinking) might well have a desire to draw attention to Mexico. And thereby raise the prestige of your dwarf empire. An experienced forger and adventurer Eugene Boban took on this task. And, I must say, he did it perfectly!
Kirill IVANOV