Last week Channel 5 in the UK ran a special feature titled “Legend of the Crystal Skulls Revealed”. Emps gave a rundown of the show over at Cabinet of Wonders under the heading “Death of a Crystal Skull“, so titled on account of the documentary’s dismissal of the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull as a modern forgery:
In it, the skull was subjected to the kinds of study that have revealed the British Museum and Smithsonian skulls to be fakes, and they found the same kind of tool marks. The people running the tests were pretty clear – they are from cutting machines that only appeared at the end of the 19th century.
However, the official Mitchell-Hedges website posted a prompt response to the Channel 5 feature, calling into question the motives of the producers, and in particular calling out a few dubious lines of reasoning:
[I]t is particularly annoying to see how throughout the length of the documentary, there were dozens of inaccuracies and false claims.
…The gravest of errors committed by the documentary is that it accepted the false premise that pre-Columbian cultures did not have any tools to make the skulls. It is none other than Michael Coe who has said this statement should not be taken as dogma, yet it is precisely that which several researchers, whether Jane Walsh, Margaret Sax, or television producers such as those making this documentary, hold…
Furthermore, the full verdict of the Hewlett-Packard and British Museum claims – both of whom did extensive testing on the skulls, unlike the few hours Walsh has spent with the skull – were not all fully put together and explained, as if they did not matter.
Perhaps the strangest piece of sleight-of-hand though is the removal of Thomas Gann from a photo of Mitchell-Hedges and his co-explorer in Lubaantun – and the photoshopping required to make the image look natural again.
Emps has since posted another entry looking at the Mitchell-Hedges critique, though finding much of it wanting. Also worth noting is that he has also posted YouTube videos of the actual documentary, so you can check it out for yourself.
