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Yet even if actors or audiences are unnerved by the idea of using real remains, there seems to have been no shortage of people eager to donate their own and achieve a few moments of posthumous glory. The American actor Edwin Booth, who became a phenomenon as Hamlet on Broadway from the 1860s onwards, was reputed to have used a skull given to his actor-manager father by a notorious horse thief so desperate to appear in Hamlet that he was willing to do so even after his own death. Skeletal evidence shows Britain's ancient Anglo-Saxon society as more genetically diverse than once thought. Five fossil skull finds , each with its own controversy, provide a glimpse into how much we’ve learned about our origin story — and how much remains uncertain.
When you combine the pre-Columbian fascination with skulls with the technical prowess at carving stone, it may have been easy for some to believe that these ancient people could have carved skulls out of crystal. And for nearly 150 years, that subtext helped a number of museum exhibit curators feel comfortable about displaying their newly acquired archaeological artifacts, despite long-standing questions about the crystal skulls’ true origins. Many of these skulls were collected through illegal, often violent means. But according to Redman, this was justified through an assumed primacy of western science over the concerns of indigenous populations and their cultural practices. "Little thought was given to the fact that the way the bones were displayed and collected was profoundly against the traditions of many of the peoples from whom they were taken," he says.
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Meanwhile, real archaeological artifacts were also streaming out of Mexico. Excavations were uncovering new clues about the Aztec, a civilization that was just as advanced as its contemporaries in Europe. And museums and private collectors around the world were eager to get a piece of it. Curators were snatching up objects that seemed rare and exotic. Ancient crystal skulls would have seemed like the perfect get. But in the 1990s, an anthropologist named Jane Walsh at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History started to develop suspicions about these objects. Centuries ago, Aztec spiritual beliefs and ceremonies placed major significance on the human skull. They carved ornate skulls into stone and depicted their gods wearing human skulls as jewelry. When the Aztecs sacrificed humans, they’d rip out people's hearts and put their heads on stakes.
One day, the U.S. Postal Service delivered a football helmet-sized Aztec crystal skull to the Smithsonian Institution from an anonymous donor. The note claimed it formerly belonged to a Mexican dictator. A colleague gave the skull to Walsh to look after. She knew about the skulls’ history as popular museum attractions. And Walsh was also aware of their dubious side, having exhibited a skull in a museum exhibit that labeled it a fake. As she examined the new arrival, she spotted a handful of reasons to doubt it was a genuine artifact. When Sarah Bernhardt played Hamlet, she used this real skull, a gift from Victor Hugo. Photograph: V&AIt was much too big, the proportions were off, the teeth and circular depressions at the temples did not look right, and overall it seemed too rounded and polished,” Walsh and a colleague, Brett Topping, wrote in their book, The Man Who Invented Aztec Crystal Skulls: The Adventures of Eugène Boban. According to Samuel Redman, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the bone trade and colonialism have long gone hand in hand, the evidence of which can be seen in the large collections of human remains in European and American museums. In his book, Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums, he proposes that a large portion of these bones were accumulated towards the end of the nineteenth century, when remains were seen not only as fascinating displays for the curious public, but valuable databases that could provide evidence for the emergent field of race science. It was only thanks to a number of investigations like Walsh’s in recent years that archaeologists have largely come to the consensus that these crystal skulls are fakes. But, despite the saga of crystal skulls being debunked, some still display them from time to time because of the public’s extreme interest. This article was co-authored by Renée Plevy and by wikiHow staff writer, Jessica Gibson. Renée Plevy is an Internationally Acclaimed Portrait Artist from New York/Palm Beach who has painted The Grand Dames of Palm Beach and various celebrities and community leaders. With over 50 years of experience, Renée specializes in painting realistically in oil and capturing the soul of the person. She has studied under internationally renowned portrait artists John Howard Sanden, David Leffel, Robert Beverly Hale, Clyde Smith, and Leonid Gervits. Renée is featured in over 68 shows and galleries including a one-woman museum show at the Paterson Museum. She has garnered numerous awards including “Artist of the Year” from The Bloomfield Art League and First Prize from the Boca Raton Museum Artist’s Guild. Renée has even painted a portrait of celebrity, Vanilla Ice. She also teaches at the Boca Raton Museum Art School - formerly at SVA in Manhattan.
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