The crystal skulls are a number of human skull models fashioned from blocks of clear or milky quartz crystal rock, claimed to be pre-Columbian Mesoamerican artifacts by their alleged finders. However, none of the specimens made available for scientific study were authenticated as pre-Columbian in origin. The results of these studies demonstrated that those examined were manufactured in the mid-19th century or later, almost certainly in Europe. Despite some claims presented in an assortment of popularising literature, legends of crystal skulls with mystical powers do not figure in genuine Mesoamerican or other Native American mythologies and spiritual accounts.The skulls are often claimed to exhibit paranormal phenomena by some members of the New Age movement, and have often been portrayed as such in fiction. Perhaps the most widely known of such portrayals occurs in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the fourth film of its series, and elsewhere within that franchise. Crystal skulls have been a popular subject appearing in numerous sci-fi television series, novels and video games.
A distinction has been made by some modern researchers between the smaller bead-sized crystal skulls, which first appear in the mid-19th century, and the larger (approximately life-sized) skulls that appear toward the end of that century. The smaller crystal skulls may be actual Mesoamerican beads that have been carved in modern times into a skull shape; they may even represent a genuine Mexican Catholic cultural practice, as at least one example has been found attached to the base of a crucifix (reflecting a Christian symbolism of Golgotha, the "place of [the] skull"). However, it is the larger crystal skulls that have attracted nearly all the popular attention in recent times, and researchers believe these to have been manufactured as forgeries in Europe.
Trade in fake pre-Columbian artifacts developed during the late 19th century to the extent that in 1886 Smithsonian archaeologist William Henry Holmes wrote an article called "'The Trade in Spurious Mexican Antiquities"' for Science. Although museums acquired skulls earlier, it was Eugene Boban, an antiquities dealer who opened his shop in Paris in 1870, who is most associated with 19th-century museum collections of crystal skulls. Most of Boban's collection, including three crystal skulls, was sold to the ethnographer Alphonse Pinart, who donated the collection to the Trocadéro Museum, which later became the Musée de l'Homme.Text source: Wikipedia
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