Most of you have probably seen the Indiana Jones movie about them, but the interesting this is that that crystal skulls actually exist. They're thousands of years old and were made by the Mayans who made these by hand...and that's something that even today would be incredible difficult.

Here's some information
http://www.scaryforkids.com/crystal-skulls/

I know it seems like a hoax but the dating of the skulls makes you wonder because it's been verified they are thousands of years old. What are your thoughts on them?

Somebody way back when had a lot of free time.

Do we have any idea what they were used for?

Save the earth from a horrible movie being made but then one was destroyed.

@Expresate

No there doesn't seem to be any real obvious reasons for the creation of these skulls, which is why all these crazy conspiracy theories have risen up around it. It does make you wonder what was around before recorded history though. You really never do know.

I figure it was just art, I mean look at Roman-era Statues, they are pretty impressive so I don't see why these wouldn't be for the same purpose.

In my opinion Boradam, the difference is that these skulls were beyond any technique that we knew the Aztecs and the Mayans were ever capable of when making works of art. The statues we understand how the Romans cut them from marble and such materials, but these skulls are made from huge amounts of precious materials and the properties are something we can mimic today with modern technology, something they didn't have.

Long periods of time, focused groups, and so and such could have done some of the skulls.

Some of those skulls look like hoaxs though.

Maybe people just knew how to get [censored] done back then.

Pimping dem shamans.

I take the same view as Mark from Peep Show.

"How could you possibly make one of these except with some kind of magic?"
"...in a factory? With glass?"

Yeah, but according to the OP, scientists have dated them to be actually thousands of years old. I could see if they hadn't been verified to actually be that old, but they have, so your(and Mark from peep show) theory holds no water whatsoever.

This is definitely interesting OP, I never knew they were actually real. Perhaps they were done by shamans/witch doctors/whatever they were considered before they became the official tribe witch doctor. Like, it was their rite of initiation to become so?

They have a stamp on the bottom saying "made in Mexico, 1500 BC." Probably.

Edit: or is it Peru or somewhere else? Can't remember now. They probably outsourced it to China anyway.

i believe it was well known that the crystal skulls were real around the time the movie was being made, i remember documentary after documentary being aired because the movie made it a sudden hot topic

and something people probably haven't taken into account yet is the wear and tear on the crystals. after thousands of years tool markings could have naturally faded

These have been carbon dated guys. If your familiar with carbon dating, the process can't yield the exact timeframe of creation but there is no way whatsoever that these were created in modern times. Joke all you want about it, but it was created in a time looong ago.

Wait how would that even work? I mean, doesn't that just mean the crystal itself is that old? How do we know the dating is from the time of fabrication of the skull?

You make an excellent point. There is no way to prove when it was "carved"...at least I don't think there is.

Carbon dating only works on organic materials anyway. And, if I'm not mistaken, it's been proven several times that they were made using modern tools and likely no earlier than the 19th century. The name of that website also makes me a tiny bit suspicious about their fact checking. It is an interesting story, though.



:nod:

[citation needed]

Also, how did they carbon date these skulls, when the mitchell-hedges skull is made of quartz, a substance composed of silicon and oxygen?

As campy as "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" was it had some "truth" or "urban legend" to it. In fact in every Jones movie there is always some basis of "fact".

In "Raiders of the lost Ark" you had the Nazi SS involvement with the occult and the search for the Ark of the Covenant. In the prequel "Temple of Doom" you had diamonds, although the actual lore of the diamonds eludes me. In the "Last Crusade" you had The Knights Templar and their role in hiding The Holy Grail.

"The Crystal Skull" was by far my least favorite movie but it rated higher than "Temple of Doom".

Here's some better sources on these skulls:

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/article_index/s/studying_two_crystal_skulls.aspx

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-mystery-of-the-british-museums-crystal-skull-is-solved-its-a-fake-495587.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7414637.stm

Oh you make a good point about the fact that it's mineral...

AFAIK, they were fakes and made with modern tools.

--- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-mystery-of-the-british-museums-crystal-skull-is-solved-its-a-fake-495587.html

I'm guessing they were made just for the reason of being made. My guess is that the artists wanted to make them to show off their talent, sell them for a profit, or maybe they were gifts for people. Why else do artists today make stuff like that? They make them to show off their skill, sell to people, or maybe to give gifts to loved ones.

I am amused that people think only here and now has ever had advanced technology.

Archeology has found many enigmas where a culture that lacked any other form of advanced technology possessed many practices that defy explanation.

The druids building Stonehenge with such mathematical and astronomical precision that even how much the stones would sink into the ground from their weight was accounted for...but they lived as druids.

A culture that deals with their dead by setting off the corpse in a hot air balloon...but lacks any understanding of the concept of flight.

Remnants of what appears to be a spark plug...primitive, but built to the same design of a modern spark plug.

Any number of catastrophes could have taken an advanced society and forced them back to a barbarian stage of existence. Why do we presume that ancient cultures didn't possess more knowledge and understanding of the sciences than we currently do? Just because of how they live today?