Hello everyone, I take the time out of my busy schedule today to bring you the following article, welcome to taste it together!
In the thousands of years of human history, there have been countless civilizations that have risen and countless civilizations that have been annihilated. People have been
Gone
Civilizations are always full of curiosity, and the Maya civilization is probably the most famous of those that have disappeared. In particular, the doomsday theory that prevailed before 2012 put a veil of mystery on the Maya civilization. Although 2012 has long since passed, and the Wheel of Doom has proven to be a misunderstanding of Mayan legends, it has not hindered interest in the Mayan civilization at all.
The reason why the Mayan civilization is famous, in addition to the mysterious overnight disappearance of the Mayans, the relics left by the Maya have always been a hot topic of discussion. However, because the Maya disappeared too mysteriously and lived in a relatively old age, there were no heavyweight artifacts found in the Maya civilization except for those legends about the Maya until the beginning of the 20th century. It wasn't until 1924 that a 17-year-old girl went out on an expedition with her father and discovered a Mayan artifact that struck the world.
The 17-year-old girl's name is Anna Michelle Hedges, and her adoptive father was an English explorer and an archaeologist passionate about maya civilization. In 1924, Anna followed her father on an expedition to the ruins of a Mayan city in Belize, Central America, during which Anna discovered a crystal skull, the famous Michelle Heggis Crystal Skull.
This skull is completely carved from a whole piece of crystal, and its appearance is very realistic, almost indistinguishable from the skull of a real person. So, when Anna's father and daughter announced the discovery, people were convinced. Later, under the intentional publicity of Anna's father and daughter, this crystal skull was also given a mysterious color, becoming a crystal skull with magical magical powers. It is said that the skull can obtain amazing power by looking at it, and it is the most important artifact of the ancient Mayan sacrifices.
Later, Anna's father and daughter wrote an autobiography, and the experience of excavating this crystal skull was written into a novel, which was also warmly sought after by people. Since then, the identification of Michelle Hedges' crystal skull as a Mayan artifact has almost become common knowledge in the archaeological community, and even appeared in many popular science books. When I was a child, I once read a popular science publication about the Mayan crystal skull, which described the many magical features of the crystal skull. I believe that many friends, when they were young, they should have read similar books, right? If I remember correctly, the title seems to be "The Unsolved Mystery of the World."
But who would have thought that this mysterious Mayan skull would be one of the biggest hoaxes in archaeological history? When this crystal skull was first unearthed, it was believed that it could not be made with the technology of the time, which also led people to believe that this crystal skull was made by the mysterious Maya. In fact, it was just that people at the time underestimated the manufacturing process at that time. In 2005, the British Museum identified several other Mayan and Aztec crystal skulls in its collection, and the results of the scientists' identification showed that these crystal skulls were not Mayan relics at all, but rather fakes produced in modern times. The crystal skull was carved using a piece of equipment and technology used by jewelry merchants at the time to process diamonds, and traces of machining can be seen on the surface of the crystal skull through electron microscopy. Scientists unanimously conclude that the so-called Mayan crystal skull is indeed a fake.
Since ancient times, counterfeit cultural relics have been emerging in an endless stream, and the production process of fakes is sometimes more complicated than real cultural relics, and even to the extent of fake and real. The reason why counterfeits appear is because the people who make counterfeits covet the huge profits in them. After all, such things as cultural relics are often calculated at sky-high prices, and the benefits contained therein are too great.
Therefore, Xiaobian believes that at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, it was also the period of a large number of excavated cultural relics around the world, and a large number of precious cultural relics were unearthed in all areas where ancient civilizations were produced, and these cultural relics eventually flowed into the pockets of Western countries, and some entered the museum and some became private collections. At that time, in addition to the so-called explorers who were frantically digging around the world, there was also a kind of person who specialized in making and selling fake artifacts, and it was these people who made this crystal skull. However, although this crystal skull is not a relic of the Mayans, it is still a remarkable work of art from the perspective of crafts.