the skull beneath the skin

"Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures underground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin."
-- T.S. Eliot, "Whispers of Immortality"

Eliot's classic poem alludes to the great Jacobean tragedian, John Webster (of Duchess of Malfi fame), who did indeed have a predilection for the macabre, but the Indiana Jones film series arguably has an element of that as well. The Spousal Unit and I finally went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Sunday night (he was decidedly underwhelmed, I was moderately entertained). All the usual tropes were present: the mystical objects (loosely based on historical artifacts and legend), the drawn-out chase scenes, inventive stunt work, sly witticisms (this installment is less witty than others), attacks by creepy-crawlies, the double-crossing "ally", the power-mad villain(ess), and the almost laughably absurd supernatural climax -- in this case, bringing in shades of The X-Files. (The Spousal Unit bemoaned the silliness of the ending; it was silly, but not any sillier than any of the previous three installments.) Of course, there's also loads of mucking about underground in ancient archaeological sites, strewn with dusty cobwebs, booby traps, and lots and lots of decaying corpses grossing out delighted filmgoers with their "lipless grins."

Admittedly, the film suffers from a formula that's getting a wee bit tired, and what appears to be laziness on the part of the filmmakers in terms of character development, dialogue, and pacing. Everyone's in such a hurry to get to the next stunt or special effect, hurtling towards the climax, that they forget to let the audience savor those little throw-away moments that made the first and most successful Indy film so much fun. The cheesy props don't help matters -- could the crystal skull of the title look any sillier? paging CGI! -- but really, when has Indiana Jones ever been about anything except far-out fun? Cue my usual mantra about how it's unrealistic to expect film and television to be very true to life when it comes to facts about science, history, blah, blah, blah. (NOTE: There may be a few unintentional spoilers below for those who haven't yet seen the film.)

Except in this case, I'm starting to think the thin line between fiction and reality really might be getting a bit too blurred. Last month the Archaeological Institute of America -- the oldest and largest nonprofit organization in the US devoted to archaeology -- elected actor Harrison Ford to its Board of Directors in recognition of his role in "stimulating the public's interest in archaeological exploration," according to AIA president Brian Rose. I'm happy for Ford, who does seem to have an genuine interest in the field; any celebrities who care to lend their name in support of science get mega-points with me. But, well, Dr. Jones is a pretty glamorized version of your typical archaeologist. The National Science Foundation was sufficiently concerned to issue a special report highlighting the differences and similarities between the worlds of science and Indiana Jones. Per the press release accompanying its release:

NSF-supported archaeologists do discover "lost cities." They try to figure out what happened to "vanished civilizations" and whether what caused their collapse may have relevance to contemporary problems. They seek rare and precious artifacts that tell important stories about the past, even if those artifacts are minute snails and the scrapings of ancient teeth and not golden idols. They "deal with Native peoples," though with respect, as partners in the process of learning about the past, rather than with weapons. And certainly, as jokingly noted in the latest Indiana Jones adventure, teaching is an important part of what they do.

Being tall is also an important part of what archaeologists do, not to mention breaking into song when locating ancient Sumerian artifacts from the 3rd dynasty -- at least according to Monty Python (h/t: Afarensis). Harrison Ford's got the tall part down, at least, even if the NSF report failed to mention it.

Most of the press related to the new film, however, has focused on the legends and myths surrounding the crystal skulls. Yes, Virginia, there really are crystal skulls -- 13 of them, to be exact -- and the film even identifies the most famous one by name: the infamous Mitchell-Hedges skull, a.k.a., "the skull of doom." It was supposedly discovered by 17-year-old Anna Mitchell Hedges and her father in either 1924 or 1927 (they never did get their stories straight on the year) under the altar of a Mayan temple in a ruined city in Belize, although there is documentary evidence that in fact, Anna's father bought the skull at a Sotheby's sale in 1943.  (Anna herself later came up with an "explanation" for that bill of sale.") Her father, a British "adventurer" named F.A. Mitchell-Hedges, claimed the clear quartz crystal skull was "at least 3600 years old, and according to legend was used by the High Priest of the Maya when performing esoteric rites. It is said that when he willed death with the help of the skull, death inevitably followed. It has been described as the embodiment of all evil."

The other skulls include "Max," the "Texas crystal skull," supposedly from Guatemala; "ET", supposedly discovered in 1900 (notable for its pronounced overbite); "Ami," an amethyst crystal skull, supposed to be Mayan; "Sha-na-ra," a clear crystal skull that moonlights as a member of an a capella doo-wop group whose owner claims to have found it in Mexico; the British Museum crystal skull (also mentioned in the film), made of cloudy quartz; the Paris Skull, thought to be Aztec, currently housed in the Musee de l'Homme in Paris; and an Aztec crystal skull anonymously sent to the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History in 1992, which also had a smaller crystal skull in its possession for many years.

The real crystal skulls look nothing like the hulking prop used in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. For starters, they're a lot smaller; some of them measure as little as an inch across, most likely having been carved out of authentic pre-Colombian beads in the 19th century, when museums first began collecting crystal skulls. There are exceptions: the one in the British Museum is life-sized, and  the crystal skull mysteriously mailed to the Smithsonian in 1992 weighs a whopping 30 pounds; the anonymous sender claimed it was of Aztec origin.

Not so, sez Jane MacLaren Walsh, a Smithsonian anthropologist who has studied several of the skulls extensively, including the most recent acquisition. In a recent cover story in Archaeology magazine, she insists, "These exotic carvings are usually attributed to pre-Colombian Mesoamerican cultures, but not a single crystal skull in a museum comes from a documented excavation, and they have little stylistic or technical relationship with any genuine pre-Colombian depictions of skulls, which are an important motif in Mesoamerican iconography." (You can find a preliminary report on her study of both the Smithsonian and British Museum crystal skulls here.)

Walsh is featured in an upcoming documentary for the Smithsonian Channel, The Legend of the Crystal Skulls, airing July 10th. (You can see clips/video footage, and find quite a bit of background information about the skulls, here. And if you want to own your very own crystal skull, you can buy one here, although many of the most popular models are currently sold out -- no doubt boosted by the current Indiana Jones craze. They also offer clear stone phalluses, which if nothing else would make for an interesting conversation piece at dinner parties.)

There are some wacky sorts out there who attribute the crystal skulls with special psychic powers, and even some murmurings of possible alien provenance (rumors that started with F.A. Mitchell-Hedges). An art restorer named Frank Dorland claimed to hear ringing bells and the sound of a choir singing and could see images when he gazed into the Mitchell-Hedges skull -- which he studied for about six years, becoming one of its staunchest devotees. Anna claims her skull has been used for healing -- disputing her own father's characterization of the artifact as "the embodiment of evil." The owner of "ET", a smoky crystal skull, believed it healed her brain tumor. These claims have been handily debunked, of course, but certainly the notion that the skulls have special powers captures the imagination: an episode of Stargate SG-1 memorably featured a crystal skull that enabled characters to travel between worlds.

The most popular legend has it that when all 13 of the crystal skulls are brought together in a certain configuration -- and no doubt at a specific place and time, just to make it as unlikely as possible -- they will "divulge their secret and prevent a terrible calamity." LucasFilms Ltd. picked up that premise and ran with it in their latest blockbuster, although they got a bit confused at the end about what calamity, exactly, the skulls were supposed to prevent. (The destruction of an entire Mayan city might strike some as a calamity.)

So where did the skulls come from? The consensus seems to be that they emerged in the late 19th century, part of a wave of pre-Colombian fakes that found their way into various museums around the world. While visiting Mexico City in 1884, the Smithsonian archaeologist W.H. Holmes warned about the burgeoning number of "relic shops" on every street corned filled with fakes, prompting him to write an article for Science on "The Trade in Spurious Mexican Antiquities." One wonders, then, how the Institute was taken in a mere two years later, when, in 1996, the Smithsonian purchased a small crystal skull from a man who had been Emperor Maximilian's secretary in Mexico at the time. In part, museums began collecting rock-crystal skulls at this time because existing knowledge about real artifacts was pretty scarce, making it easy to pass off fakes as the real deal.

Walsh tracked down several of the skulls to one Eugene Boban, a French art dealer in the late 19th century. At least three of the 13 famed crystal skulls can be traced directly back to Boban, who served as the official "archaeologist" in the Mexican court of Maximilian, as well as being a member of the French Scientific Commission in Mexico. After Maximilian's execution by the army of Benito Juarez, Boban found himself back in Paris, where he opened an antiquities shop. Even at the time (1885), one of his second-generation crystal skulls was denounced as a fake when he tried to sell it to Mexico's national museum as a bona fide Aztec artifact. Eventually he found himself in New York City, where he managed to sell the skull at auction to Tiffany's for $950. (This skull is the one that was later sold to the British Museum.)

As scientific knowledge advanced in the 20th century, the crystal skulls lost quite a bit of their mystic luster, and almost all of their credibility as bona fide antiquities. Based on her research, Walsh concludes that "all of the smaller crystal skulls that constitute the first generation of fakes were made in Mexico around the time they were sold, between 1856 and 1880. This 24-year period may represent the output of a single artisan, or perhaps a single workshop."

In the 1950s, a Smithsonian mineralogist named William Foshag realized that the crystal skull it had acquired in the 1800s had been carved with a modern lapidary wheel. From then until it mysteriously disappeared in 1973, the skull was displayed in an exhibit of archaeological fakes.

Using high-end instruments like Scanning Electron Microscopy, Walsh concluded that the Mitchell-Hedges skull, for instance, shows evidence of tool marks, casting serious doubt on claims the skulls are pre-Colombian in origin, since the Maya, Aztecs or other pre-Colombian peoples just didn't have the tools to make those kinds of marks. (Aliens, though, would most certainly have had advanced tools, claim the True Believers.) Heck, even Frank Dorland said that the Mitchell-Hedges skull showed signs of "mechanical grinding on the faces of the teeth," although he was a proponent of the alien origin theory, the better to bolster his delusions about the skull's power. The Paris Skull -- which Walsh believes to be a "transitional piece," larger but similar in style to the first generation of crystal skulls -- will be undergoing extensive scientific testing with such advanced elemental testing techniques as particle induced X-ray emission and Raman spectroscopy, to determine its exact age/composition once and for all.

As for attributing special mystical powers to the crystal skulls -- or any kind of crystal, for that matter -- no doubt True Believers would say that scientists are close-minded and refuse to consider the possibility. Um, nice try, but actually, scientists know a great deal about the properties of crystals. There's an entire field of material physics (crystallography) devoted to studying those properties, and crystals -- unlike, say, soft condensed matter (amorphous solids and the like) -- are among the best understood materials today. Crystals get their properties from their atomic structure; the definition of a crystal is a solid in which the atoms, molecules and/or ions are arranged in regularly ordered, repeating patterns in all three spatial directions. It's a naturally occurring structure, wondrous in and of itself, but that's not enough for crystal aficionados, who feel the need to attribute mystical properties to these materials as well.

According to crystal skull sycophant Frank Dorland, "The crystal stimulates an unknown part of the brain, opening a psychic door to the absolute." It's a common type of argument. For instance, True Believers have been known to cite the natural piezoelectric properties of quartz crystals as evidence of their power. Now, piezoelectricity is pretty nifty: in 1880, Pierre and Jacques Curie discovered that squeezing a quartz crystal produced an electrical charge, which is why quartz is used in watches, those old car lighters, all kinds of sensors, and so forth. Granted, this is energy of a sort, but it's certainly not psychic energy, just plain old electricity. Crystals are very pretty, though, which might explain why there's so much wishful thinking surrounding the issue of whether they have healing or psychic powers.

So there you have it: the lowdown on the real-life crystal skulls, which are nothing like that depicted in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull -- but nonetheless, I think they're still pretty darn cool. And science could offer some useful fodder for future installments in the Indiana Jones saga, should Hollywood decide to build a similar series around Indy's son, Henry Jones III (Shia LeBoeuf). Over at Twisted Physics, I mentioned the use of cosmic ray detectors by archaeologists, using muons to map out archaeological sites and detect hidden tombs or chambers. I think it would make an excellent premise for the first Son of Indy flick. After all, Crystal Skulls takes place in 1957. Luis Alvarez first used cosmic ray detectors to study Egyptian pyramids around 1967, when Indy 2.0 would be around 30 (give or take a couple of years), hopefully having completed some semblance of an education at long last.

Can't you just see Alvarez teaming up with a rebel archaeologist to foil some nefarious plot or another? Ancient Egypt certainly has enough myth, legend, and mystical artifacts to fuel another wacky plotline, and Alvarez really is the sort of physicist who should be better known among the general populace. I think he'd get a kick out it, frankly. So, George Lucas, feel free to use the above suggestion as you see fit -- in exchange for just a teensy percentage of the profits from the inevitable Son of Indy franchise. Then I should be able to keep the Spousal Unit and Resident Feline in the manner to which they would like to become accustomed.

Comments

[ZZMike]

There is [was] a British archaeologist who was in fact a spy. I can't remember the name - maybe Search will help - yep, there it is:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0826329373/citeulike00-21

The Archaeologist Was a Spy: Sylvanus G. Morley and the Office of Naval Intelligence (Hardcover)

Sylvanus G Morley (1883-1948) is widely known as an influential Mayan archaeologist. This intriguing book shows that he was arguably the greatest American spy of World War I. Morley came to the attention of the Office of Naval Intelligence in 1916, when reports that German agents were establishing a Central American base for submarine warfare first surfaced.....

Another article I read was about "the real Indiana Jones" - another Search - (I just love the Web) - turns out there are a few. If I ignore the impostors and the self-appointed, we get

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2007-09-16-obit-savoy_N.htm

RENO (AP) — Douglas Eugene "Gene" Savoy, an explorer who discovered more than 40 lost cities in Peru and led long-distance sailing adventures to learn more about ancient cultures, has died. He was 80.

http://www.entertainmentworldnews.tv/episodes/survivor.html

"John Goddard, one of the world's most famous explorers and adventurers, led the first expedition in history down the entire 4,200 mile-long Nile, the world's longest river. The Los Angeles Times called it "the most remarkable adventure of this generation."

Neither of them, however, fought Nazi or Russian villians, or discovered Biblical relics. My vote still goes to Morley.

[Dave]

I hate to bash you, but your arithmetic is a little, umm, unusual:

> While visiting Mexico City in 1884, the Smithsonian
> archaeologist W.H. Holmes warned about the burgeoning
> number of "relic shops" on every street corned filled
> with fakes, prompting him to write an article for
> Science on "The Trade in Spurious Mexican
> Antiquities." One wonders, then, how the Institute
> was taken in a mere two years later, when, in 1996,

Let's see, 1996-1884 = 112 by my calculations, not 2.
:-)

Dave

[Jennifer Ouellette]

It's a typo. Should read 1886.

[Lab Lemming]

One of the tricks with quartz piezoelectricity is that natural quartz crystals usually show little to none of this effect. This is because in natural crystals, the direction is oscilliatory as a result of Brazil (optical) twinning. That is why synthetic quartz is used for electronics- engineers can grow untwinned quartz (dunno how, but I'd love to know), so they know it will work.

Back when people were still trying to use natural quartz, in WWII, a lot of research went into finding sources of untwinned quartz. A review paper from the late 40's on the subject is freely available here:
http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/collectors_corner/arc/qtztwin.htm
From the writing standpoint, the article is transitional between the old school narrative style and modern methods-results-interpretation. Worth a read for anyone interested.

[jongleur]

Where does Damian Hirst's 'Love of God' fit in with this?