do is to speed up a process that would naturally take an eternity, so that it now only takes a matter of weeks. This is done by artificially creating the optimum environment for growth. In a vast ‘autoclave’, a highly sophisticated type of furnace, natural pieces of quartz scraps or ‘lascas’ are dissolved in water at highly elevated temperature and pressure. But the essential ingredient is still a natural piece of high quality quartz; without it the process cannot even begin. This carefully selected piece of natural crystal is simply suspended in the autoclave and the rest of the process is left to nature itself. The surrounding fluid quite simply grows onto the original crystal and the results are removed from the autoclave, or harvested, when the resulting crystals reach the required size. But these new crystals, even over generations and generations of man-made manufacture, can only ever be as pure as the original piece of natural quartz crystal supplied by Mother Earth.
Given all the different types of material that look exactly the same to the naked eye as natural quartz, the first task for the Hewlett-Packard scientists was to determine exactly what the crystal skull was really made of.
In one of the tests the skull was submersed in a glass chamber containing Benzyl alcohol of exactly the same density and refractive index as pure quartz. As the skull was lowered into the tank it seemed to disappear (see plate 36). This proved that it was made of the most incredibly pure type of quartz. But not only was it pure, it was also natural. Polarized light was directed at the skull in its chamber and vague shadows or ‘veils’ then appeared, which showed that the skull was of natural origin. These shadows, tiny variations in the growth pattern of the crystal, somewhat akin to the rings on a tree, are removed in the precisely controlled environment of manufactured quartz. So the skull was not made from any type of plastic or glass, nor was it made from modern synthetic crystal. It was definitely natural rock crystal supplied by the Earth.
The presence of the veils also revealed something else quite remarkable about the crystal skull. Given its size, unusually large for a natural piece of quartz, some had suspected that the skull had been made from several pieces of crystal carefully pieced together. But the polarized light test proved beyond doubt not only that the main cranium was made from only one piece of crystal, but also that the detachable jaw-bone was carved from exactly the same piece of rock. At some stage the crystal skull had been one solid block of rock crystal.
The investigating team was absolutely astonished by this. For pure quartz crystal is one of the hardest materials in the world. On the Mohs scale of hardness, used by gemologists, it is only slightly softer than diamond. This makes rock crystal an incredibly difficult material to carve, particularly given that it is also somewhat brittle and has a tendency to shatter. The workmanship on the skull was so exquisite the team estimated that even if the carvers had used today’s electrically powered tools with diamond tips, it would have taken at least a year to carve such an incredible object. But the team concluded something even more surprising than this. They felt that it would have been almost impossible to make such an exquisitely carved object using any known type of modern diamond-tipped power tool. This is because the vibration, heat and friction produced by such tools on such a delicate object as the lower jaw would actually have caused the skull to shatter – a fact which apparently led one member of the team to comment, ‘This skull shouldn’t even exist!’
But the original investigating team’s belief that the skull had not been made with modern tools was more than just a hunch. It was borne out by further tests. Even under extreme magnification of the surface of the skull there was no evidence of modern tool markings, no evidence of the usual tool ‘chatter’ or of the tell-tale pattern of repetitive parallel scratch marks. Given that any such markings would have been extremely difficult to remove, these findings seemed to confirm what the team had already begun to suspect – that the crystal skull had actually been made by hand!
This was phenomenal, as the only hand-carving techniques for crystal currently known take an incredible length of time. The scientists could only assume that the skull had been carved by slowly and patiently rubbing the original block of quartz down by hand, probably using a mixture of river sand and water. Even with the use of copper rods or hand-held carving ‘bows’, the team concluded that the crystal skull must have taken several generations of effort to carve! Whilst the precise length of time this had taken was impossible to confirm, the Hewlett-Packard staff magazine Measure put the nearest estimate at ‘300 man-years of effort’!1
As Jack and Charles explained, whoever made the skull would have had to have started with a huge chunk of angular quartz crystal around three times the size of the finished skull, and when they first started carving they would have had no way of knowing whether the inside was pure or full of fractures and holes. They would have had to carefully grade the sand by the size of each of its grains, starting with the largest grains to rough out the overall shape and gradually reducing their size as the work became more detailed, right down to a microscopically fine grain size, like powder, to finish off the final smooth polish. What is more, if they had made a mistake at any point, they would have had to start again from scratch. If even a single grain that was too large had fallen onto the surface on which they were working as they neared completion of the skull, they would have had to start again. This must have been a truly formidable task.
I explained that I had heard the rather outlandish theory, suggested by the ancient legend and also by many of those who had spent considerable time with the skull, that the skull might actually have been made by extra-terrestrials. After all, if it could not even have been made with modern tools, then how could it possibly have been made by hand? But the scientists from Hewlett-Packard, perhaps understandably, dismissed this theory. As Jack Kusters said:
‘Being a scientist, I find it very hard to believe that people, pardon me, creatures, from other universes came and dropped things off here and then disappeared and never bothered us again. These other alternatives are simply not within the realm of possibility. I do not believe in the existence of aliens, so I have to conclude that it was made by human hand.’
This finding was of course incredible enough itself. But it was one that Frederick Mitchell-Hedges had already suspected:
‘It must have taken over 150 years, generation after generation working all the days of their lives, patiently rubbing down with sand an immense block of rock crystal until finally the perfect skull emerged.’2
Likewise, in the 1936 study in Man, Adrian Digby of the British Museum had already observed that ‘Mr Burney’s [presumably Mr Mitchell-Hedges’] skull bears no traces of recent (metal age) workmanship.’3
Here, though, was what appeared to be proof positive, using the latest scientific techniques, that the skull had been made entirely by hand and without the use of any kind of modern metal age tools.
However, it was absolutely impossible for the scientists to tell exactly when this had been done. For, as Jack and Charles explained, quartz crystal does not age. It does not corrode, erode, decay or change in any way with time. This is actually one of the many unusual properties of quartz that makes it so vital to the modern electronics industry, but it also makes it impossible even to carbon date. With other materials, even if there are no visible signs of ageing, as in the case of the crystal skull, scientists can usually work out very accurately both the age of the original material and any workmanship thereon by measuring the degree of radioactive decay in the carbon atoms of which it is comprised. When you are dealing with quartz crystal, however, this is just not possible.
So, for all the team’s scientific knowledge, up-to-the-minute technology and specialist expertise, there was absolutely no way of knowing how old the crystal skull really was. It could have been hundreds or even billions of years old. For all the scientists knew it could be as old as the Earth itself, or even older. It could even date back to the very beginning of time.
But the
