La Disputa

In honor of the new Indiana Jones movie – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – I thought it might be interesting to post about crystal skulls. Somehow, I doubt I’m the only one who thought, “Wow, 30 years of anticipation, and they come up with alien crystal skulls? Did the Even Stevens kid write the script?” But, as it turns out, crystal skulls are actually real. Sort of.

Few renowned museums have such skulls. The British Museum has one, so does the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. The rest of the 13 skulls are owned by private collectors. It is believed that some of the skulls may have powers or curses. The Mitchell-Hedges skull, aka the “skull of doom” was supposedly used by the Mayans 3,600 years ago to curse enemies.

Even so, no one is quite sure where the skulls come from – though theories on locale included ancient Mesoamerica, Atlantis, and alien worlds. But it’s been looking more and more that they were probably made by this guy.

Meet Eugène Boban, official archaeologist and seller of fake antiquities.

After scientists would study a skull, and conclude its inauthenticity, they would then trace its provenance to discover that Eugène Boban had owned and/or sold it. It seems to me that they’re doing their research backwards. They should have just started with the provenance.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 6:39 pm and is filed under Art Alert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.