This makes the subject crystal clear. Or does it?

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-......aey2YFqE

Cool article. Thanks for sharing.

You can almost see right through it.

C'mon now Willie, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

A crystal skull is a MacGuffin in a novel that I'm currently writing. I even reference the dubious lineage and the legend that there are 13 originals.

But you can get a head of others.

I don't have a bone to pick with most people.

There is a fellow in Mexico that makes crystal skulls some quite large. He also makes skulls from other stones also. They looked very good last time I saw them.
It was a long time ago though and I can't remember who it was but I am going to research it. Interesting thread. I have a small skull made from amber it is quite beautiful. I have read of the famous crystal skulls and seems they have been studied and are not authentic, who knows? How do you truly authenticate something like that. Not like any around from ancient times to compare. Who truly knows beyond a shadow of a doubt who made them where they came from? I don't think some folks give the ancient people credit for the abilities they really had.

Aside from the dubious provenance, the skulls don't match the artistic style of the time, and the evidence of "modern" (at the time) tools used in their creation makes for a fairly convincing case they are hoaxes.

Too bad... they're a cool artifact nonetheless.

Here is a small part of something I posted recently in a private group which really is private. However since it is my own personal encounter with one of the skulls this may save you some time chasing your tails. This is all an absolutely true story about a close friend's collection in Mexico. This was during a series of visits in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

"And now about the Skull. I spotted it on the second time Shelly and I were invited to dinner. It was on one of shelves in that wall of books and objects at one end of the room. In other words, the opposite end from the kitchen door.

It was carved of Rock Crystal Quartz and about the size of a golf ball. The carving had obviously been done by hand and not appear at first look to be done with modern tools. It had the normal veiled inclusions you associate with Quartz. Certainly it was very recognizable as a skull in form. Just not “Indiana Jones Look”.

Here is the interesting part of the story. With a lot of research it is now known that in the late 1800s several “skulls” like this appeared in Mexico City. They were from the collection of Eugène Boban, a Frenchman with a pretty loose background. He popped up in Mexico and supposedly had been “consulting archeologist” to Maximilian. The timing wasn’t great for this story since Maximilian shortly ended up being executed by Benito Juarez during the Mexican Revolution. A number of scholars agree that the skulls had been carved in Idar-Oberstein, Gemany before Boban got them.

Plus, Quartz like this was from one of two sources Brazil or Madagascar. It simply wasn’t available in Mexico during the Aztec era!

Humberto had acknowledged to me it was probably one that was in the group of two or three that the Frenchman had conned people with. So interesting but there “ain’t no such thing” as an Aztec Crystal Skull.

Now back to Humberto’s item. I suggested that it would be really striking if it had some lighting to “showcase” it better on the shelf. He agreed and when I got back to Dallas I made a small wooden box with a frosted glass top to act as a lighted base for the skull to rest on. We took it back down to Monterrey about a year later and the skull looked tremendous on it.

Here’s the bad news, the next year on a trip down I asked him if he was still enjoying it and he said something sad had happened. Yep, one of the housekeepers decided to dust it, knocked it off and the skull hit the tile floor. It shattered along all of those natural inclusions and was beyond repair.

We toasted the late item’s memory that evening while Humberto played Rachmaninoff on the Grand Piano!"