Skull for scandal

The mystical skull was supposedly discovered on New Year’s Day of 1924, by Anna Mitchell-Hedges, an orphan from Port Colborne, Ont. Anna had been adopted by British adventurer and story-spinner Frederick Mitchell-Hedges, who was excavating the Lubaantun ruins, looking for clues about the lost city of Atlantis.

Remarkably, it just happened to be Anna’s 17th birthday.

She had spotted something shining deep inside a chamber of the ruins and was lowered by ropes to investigate. What she found was a wondrous piece of quartz crystal carved in the shape of a skull. The detachable crystal jawbone was found later.

Now aged 100, Anna Mitchell-Hedges still has the skull, though it is mostly kept locked away in a bank vault. Anna moved away from her Kitchener home more than a decade ago and now stays with friends in the United States.

“She’s in good health,” Bill Homann, one of those friends, told the Star in a recent telephone interview. “She has some aches and pains but we all have that.”

There’s still intense interest in the skull, Homann says – he and Mitchell-Hedges are planning to give a couple of lectures on it in New York and Arizona later this year.

But controversy continues to swirl around the skull and the story of its discovery, particularly after it was revealed that Frederick Mitchell-Hedges had bought the skull at a Sotheby’s auction in 1943.

It is one of 13 such crystal skulls apparently discovered in Mayan and Aztec ruins. The Lubaantun skull, however, is remarkable for the clarity of the crystal and the skill and detail of the carving. Other examples, including one in the British Museum in London, are cruder, more stylized and lack the detachable jawbone.

“It’s a remarkable piece of craftsmanship but that’s all it is,” paranormal investigator Joe Nickell told the Kitchener-Waterloo Record‘s Colin Hunter in 2005, adding that he doubted Anna’s story: “I would say (Anna’s) veracity seems no better than her father’s.”

Nathaniel Mas gives a dismissive shrug when I ask him what he thinks. “There are different stories and lots of rumours,” he says.

Tucked away in southern Belize, neither Lubaantun or nearby Nim Li Punit are as well known as some of the major Mayan sites in Mexico and Guatemala. Nor have they been as extensively restored; you need to bring your imagination with you, along with a bottle of water and some stout shoes.

“They are fairly small scale but well worth visiting,” says Canadian Sherry Gibbs, a Belize-based archaeologist who has been to both sites several times and worked Pusilha, another southern Belize site.

“The architecture in the south is very different. At Nim Li Punit you have that gorgeous sandstone and at Lubaantun you have beautifully cut stone, so perfectly done that they didn’t have to use mortar,” says Gibbs, who lives in San Ignacio with husband Fernando and nine-month-old son Joaquin and works as a consultant.

“Nim Li Punit is one of my very favourites. In fact, the first time I saw it, I told my boss I really wanted to work there.”

Earlier archaeologists displayed little such affection for Mayan ruins. Lubaantun, in fact, was miserably treated by some of those who worked there and there’s no mystery about how it got its modern name.

The site was first excavated in 1903 by Thomas Gann who seemed to favour dynamite rather than gentle exploration with a trowel and brush.

“He couldn’t get into the temples very easily and was wondering what was in the centre and the easiest thing was to blow it up,” says Mas. “Perhaps that’s why they named the site the falling stones. Everything collapsed and he didn’t find anything. It’s a shame.”

Then there was Harvard University’s R.E. Merwin who visited the site in 1914 and made off with three priceless ball-court markers, which are now on display in Harvard’s Peabody Museum.

Interestingly, the markers depict a singles match between two men, rather than a team game. “At this site, they sacrificed the loser, pulling out his heart and then burying the body,” says Mas.

Lubaantun, which flourished between 730 and 860 AD, has three ball courts and five plazas. It’s unusual for several reasons – the buildings have rounded corners; an unusual number of pottery figurines were found during excavations; and there are no carved stone monuments (stelae).

Lubaantun was probably an administrative headquarters for trade; Nim Li Punit, on the other hand, is thought to have been the religious and ceremonial centre of the area. And it’s full of stelae – 25 or more of them.

In fact, the name Nim Li Punit or Big Hat comes from a figure wearing a large headdress made of Quetzal bird feathers, carved on the site’s tallest stela.

The 9.5-metre stela was discovered in 1976 by a company oil worker, says Mas, as we wander through the small museum built to house several stelae and other artifacts.

“This is the second-largest stela in the Mayan world,” he says. (The first, the 10.75-metre Stela E, is at Quirigua, in Honduras.)

Shockingly, several of the stelae have chip marks on them – the work of vandals and the reason why the museum was built in 1997.

It’s something of a treat to visit the site with Mas – it’s not often you get to visit Mayan ruins with someone who actually made a major find there.

Mas was part of a small team reconstructing a wall here in 1998 when they noticed the ground nearby had a hollow sound.

“There was a little tiny hole there, so what we decided to do was to cut a piece of stick about five or six feet long and shove it in the hole,” Mas recalls. “It went right in.

“We told the guy in charge that there could be a tomb so he gave us an extra guy and we started to clear. We found two tombs on that day. Everything was covered with bedrock, which had collapsed inside, so we just moved it out, carefully.”

Inside the tombs were some pieces of ceramic, including a bowl, and human and animal bones.

The first tomb had been discovered in 1986 by Richard Levington and it was thought to date back to 800 AD.

“It belonged to the ruler, the highest person of his time. Jadeite was buried with him and a mask pendant was discovered there, too.”

It’s a beautiful spot, about 65 metres high and nestled in the foothills of the Maya Mountains. The views are spectacular; on a clear day you can see the Caribbean Sea.

We wander towards yet another ball court, with stepped sides. “The rubber ball was five to six pounds,” says Mas, showing me a rubber tree on site. “And the players were well equipped with helmets, gloves and knee pads.”

Goals were scored by shooting the ball through a hoop. “Many people think the hoop was made out of wood and that’s why they haven’t survived.”

But at least here at Nim Li Punit, the loser apparently escaped with his life.

“He wasn’t sacrificed here, unlike Lubaantun,” says Mas. “The high priest gave blood which was collected and used as the sacrifice.”

Gibbs says archaeologists have many different theories about the ball courts.

“They may have been used for different purposes. One may have been for theatre-like spectacle, another for religious ceremonies. Maybe they were used for exercise and maybe the game was like tennis, keeping the ball moving rather than putting it through a hoop.

“Each theory is as good as the other.”

It’s yet another mystery swirling around these fascinatingly enigmatic ruins.

Robert Crew is the Star’s Travel editor.