in full ceremonial dress, with long flowing robes and elaborate headdresses of feathers. They appeared to be performing some kind of ceremony, as they had done many times before. It seemed to be about celebrating and respecting some greater power, but there was also an air of foreboding about what might be to come. It was almost as if I could hear two notes, a high and a low. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone.
Of course this all seemed quite crazy in the cold light of day, but this strange figment of the imagination remained with me as we went on our way.
The following morning we climbed aboard a clapped out old school bus and headed for Belize, the neighbouring country to Guatemala, amidst warnings we might get robbed by bandits en route to the coast.
Belize is a small country sandwiched between Guatemala and the Caribbean Sea, but it has great natural variety, ranging from a turquoise coral reef lined coast strewn with small islands or atolls to mangrove swamp and palm-covered shores to an interior of jungle-clad mountains. Belize is also home to a great variety of people of different races, many of them refugees from one difficult period of history or another. Until recently it was also home to many pirates.
As we sat in one of the many bars on the small island of Caye Caulker, our host behind the counter seemed to be getting immense pleasure out of recounting this part of the country’s grisly history to us. Not only did he know all about pirates, he even looked like one as he proceeded to explain that Belize had once been a veritable haven for them. The old trade routes between Africa and the New World lay close by, but the coastline had another advantage. In the old days of seafaring, the coral reef had been a great navigational hazard. Many ships had been wrecked there quite naturally and so become easy prey to the pirates. It was possible to navigate past the reef safely to the shore, but only if you knew the way ‘like the back of your tattooed hand’. This meant the pirates could make themselves quite at home along the coast, protected by the reef, and live without much fear of ever being caught by the naval authorities.
Many of the pirates became familiar with the native Mayans and even took to adopting some of their customs. The most obvious example of this was the famous pirates’ flag, the skull and crossed bones. Apparently this was a very positive and religious symbol to the Mayans. Of course it became a symbol of fear to the average seafarer, but it is by no means clear that this was the pirates’ original intention, although it was certainly the result of their actions.
Back in the bar, our conversation inevitably drifted towards the subject of buried treasure. Had any ever been found? Our barman was not aware of a treasure chest ever having been washed up on the shore, but there was something that might be considered buried treasure that had been found on an archaeological dig in the intetior way back in the 1920s. To our amazement, it transpired that this treasure was an actual crystal skull. The barman told us that the skull had been found in the lost city of Lubaantun, a Mayan name meaning ‘the City of Fallen Stones’, which lay in the jungles of Belize. We were stunned. We had thought little more about the legend of the skulls. That a real crystal skull had actually been found seemed unbelievable. We had to know more.
I asked our host if the skull had anything to do with the legend. He didn’t know. But what he did know was that ever since the skull had been discovered, truly incredible claims had been made about it. Apparently many people who had spent time alone with it claimed to have seen or heard things in its presence. The skull was said to have a distinctive glow, like an aura, extending around it, and those who had gazed deep into its interior claimed to have seen images there. Many said they were able to see the past or the future inside the skull and even that it had the ability to influence future events.
Others claimed they had heard noises, like the soft chanting of human voices, emanating from the skull. In fact, so many people had heard the skull ‘talking’ or ‘singing’ to them that it was now quite widely known as ‘the talking skull’ or ‘singing skull’, just as in the old legend.
The origins of the skull were, it seemed, a mystery. There were all kinds of theories about where it had originally come from, our barman said, including that it had initially been brought by extra-terrestrials. He had heard that some incredible photos had even been taken to ‘prove’ it. Whether or not it really had anything to do with the ancient legend he didn’t know. But he had also heard that it was one of the world’s largest gemstones. As a piece of jewellery alone, it was said to have been valued at millions of dollars!
We were fascinated – and as film-makers, we certainly thought that a real crystal skull would make a great subject for a documentary. So we asked the barman if he knew any more. Who had found the crystal skull? Where was it now? Might we be able to film it?
He said that the skull had been found by a young woman during archaeological excavations back in the 1920s, but that it was now somewhere in Canada. That was pretty much all he could tell us. But he did add, perhaps rather inevitably, that he could arrange for us to visit the site of the skull’s discovery if we were really interested in finding out more. He just happened to ‘know a man’ who knew a man who could take us there. But it would obviously cost us ‘a dollar or two’. Although some of the claims about the crystal skull did sound a little far-fetched, at least it seemed as though a real crystal skull had been found, and it was certainly intriguing. So we haggled a little over the price and finally asked the barman to make all the necessary arrangements for a trip the following day.
And so began our journey of discovery, our quest to find out the truth about the crystal skulls. Though we didn’t know it then, our investigations would take us from the cutting edge of modern science to an exploration of ancient traditions that stretch back deep into the mists of time. We would gradually uncover ideas that would challenge many of our basic assumptions about the past history of this planet and the evolution of mankind. What we learned would lead us to question how we currently think about the world, the universe and our place within it. We would think again about where we as individuals and as a society have come from, where we belong in the world and where we are going. Our whole way of looking at the world would be dramatically altered. Finally we would hear of startling prophecies about mankind’s immediate future on this small planet and be told by native elders that now we had ‘the keys to the future’ we would ‘tell the world about it’.
But in the meantime, we set off on the first leg of our journey to explore the mystery of the crystal skulls…
At sunrise the following morning we set off for the lost city of Lubaantun. We found ourselves in a small motor boat snaking our way through the swampy waterways which dominate the coastline of Belize. After the inevitable two-hour wait for our four-wheel drive vehicle to turn up at a banana plantation jetty, we were off on a bumpy ride over rough jungle track deep into the interior. There was a timeless quality about the Mayan villages we passed along the way – the wooden huts, the sound of chickens, the children laughing and playing, and the women washing their clothes in the river. It felt as if we had entered a different world.
We finally reached our destination in the early afternoon, only to find a very sorry-looking archaeological site. But there was a guide who still manned this almost forgotten place. He was a local Mayan named Catarino Cal. Dressed in regulation park-keeper’s beige uniform and Wellington boots, he came over and greeted us warmly in excellent English. It turned out that we were the only tourists to have ventured to this remote setting in days.
Catarino proceeded to show Chris and I round the site. He explained that it had originally been excavated by a British explorer called Frederick Mitchell-Hedges back in 1924. Although
