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Amongst the oddities of what may be termed strange discoveries are spheres, stones, and crystal skulls. Although these may not necessarily lie within the field of Ufology they are, perhaps, peripheral subjects; especially as many believe these artefacts had extraterrestrial origins. Isn’t it strange how many of us that are interested in UFOs are also fascinated by other esoteric topics? I wonder if that arises from the way in which we see the world, or perhaps we’re just more open- minded than the scientists!
However, you’ll be relieved to read that I’m not writing an article about esotericism. Instead I thought I’d take a look at just a few of these incongruous, and unexplained, discoveries.
SPHERES
Back
in 1977 some very mysterious spheres were found in a mine in South Africa during
the removal of some vulnerable rock engravings thought to have been drawn by
the San People. A gentleman who had seen a similar sphere in the Klerksdorp
Museum found these particular spheres in pyrophyllite deposits. 
They appear
to be made from limonite concretions, are extremely hard, their sizes vary from one and a quarter to two inches, and they have precisely concentric groves around the centre. It also seems that the spheres are so delicately balanced that, even
with modern technology, they would need to have been made in zero gravity. The
story goes that scientists at NASA were totally flawed when they examined them,
and were unable to come up with any explanation.
At the
following website you can read more about their discovery:
http://community-2.webtv.net/WF11/MysterySpheres/
And the page ends with the following, very puzzling sentence:
I wrote NASA HQ, to confirm or deny this in 2000, and never received a reply. Mr. Hund's letter was removed from the Klerksdorp Museum page, afterwards, when I checked back some time later, and the page re-designed.
You can also find more information here, including the geology within which they were found – together with the argument that they might not in fact be what they seem:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mom/spheres.html
There
really doesn’t appear to be very much on the Internet about these strange
spheres. However, in early May this year a short piece appeared here:
http://posthumanblues.blogspot.com/
(Also, please see the very end of this page for more information.)
So
next I’ll take a look at some stones.
STONES
Dropa Stones
In
1938 Chinese archaeologists were exploring a chain of caves in the Himalaya,
on the border between China and Tibet. Amongst their finds were a row of graves
containing the relics of an apparent species of people that were around four feet tall, with big outsized heads and elongated thin limbs. In other caves they
found pictograms that included depictions of the sky, and these have been carbon dated at between ten and twelve thousands years old.
However, the most amazing finds
were those of handmade stone discs, about nine inches in diameter, 
which were entirely
circular, with a hole in the centre. They also seemed to have a groove that spiralled
outwards from the centre; but on later examination these grooves were found
to contain some type of totally unknown lettering. Seven hundred and sixteen such discs were found,
and taken to Beijing University.
Could the
remains and artefacts be those of an alien race? After almost thirty years a Chinese researcher, Dr. Tsum Um Nui, 
declared that he had managed to decode them. For
two years his conclusions were suppressed, but they were eventually published under the title The Grooved Script concerning Space ships which, as recorded on the Discs, landed on Earth 12,000 years ago. And in his report
he maintained that the discs told the story of how a spaceship had crashed,
but the survivors had encountered hostility from the local inhabitants -
the Ham Tribe - although they later made peace.
Naturally, his theory was met
with derision from the rest of the scientific community. Intriguingly, tests
showed that the stones contained a high proportion of cobalt, along with other metals, and that they also had an odd oscillation rhythm, which might mean they
had once been electrically charged.
According
to a quote from the following site one of the decoded lines read:
http://www.ancientx.com/nm/anmviewer.asp?a=61&z=1
The Dropas came down from the clouds in their aircraft. Our men, women and children hid in the caves ten times before sunrise. When at last they understood the sign language of the Dropas, they realized that the newcomers had peaceful intentions...
Two cave dwelling tribes, called the Ham and the Dropas, once populated the region where the stones were found. The people were strangely formed in that they were short, weak, under- developed, and not characteristically Chinese or Tibetan. Furthermore, local legends from the area relate how small, bony, yellow-faced, men came from the clouds a very long time ago. And some believe that, like the Dogon in Africa, they have descended from Sirius.
There
is also a very interesting forum thread here:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=3771
At that
link most of the posts pick up the various flaws in the story and present very
good reasons for the whole thing possibly being a hoax. 
And yet, on the other
hand, some posters present equally good evidence for the story being true. It’s really a case of read it and then make up your own mind. One of the most interesting
posts makes a comparison between the Dropa Stones and the report of a UFO seen
over Derbyshire, UK, back in June 2001. You can read the Derbyshire UFO story at this link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1363000/1363848.stm
However,
there is also a translated version of a lecture about the Dropas, which was originally given in German, by Hartwig Hausdorf. He authored a book entitled UFO & Ancient Astronaut Theory, and his talk was given in August 1997. As can be guessed, this talk puts the other side of the sceptic debate, and presents his view that the Dropa story is true. You can read this
translation here:
http://www.inquiring-mines.com/dropas_hausdorf_lecture.htm
In a previous article I’ve mentioned the 'Hobbit' species recently found in Indonesia; and it might be worth bearing that discovery in mind when reading about these dwarf Chinese people.
Around twenty-three crystal skulls, made from clear quartz, were also discovered in the caves where a gentleman, who wishes to remain nameless, found the Dropa Stones. He believes that they were used in conjunction with the Dropa Stones as a form of radio communication with their home planet.
I’ll
be mentioning Crystal Skulls again later in this article. But for now, at the following site you can see some pictures of these skulls, all of which are copyrighted:
http://webs.lanset.com/dolphin5/siriusly/thumbnails2_001.htm
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, in Peru, South America, some very different stones have purportedly been found.
Ica Stones
Dr. Javier Cabrera, who died of cancer in December 2001, collected over eleven thousand examples of what were to become known as the Ica Stones. 
They were named after
the town of Ica, in Peru, South America, where, around 1996, he established
a museum to house them all. The stones are etched with images of what appears
to be a library of ancient knowledge. Some are said to show humans co-existing
with dinosaurs, some are said to be depictions of medical procedures that our
current civilization has only recently learned how to perform. Others are said
to demonstrate how the Earth’s continents looked millions of years ago, whilst yet others are said to show events such as comets, eclipses, and even
the Horse Head Nebula. Much of this led the good doctor to believe that ancient
man interacted with extra-terrestrials.
Naturally, archaeologists think they are a hoax, even though some of the stones had been found during the excavation of some of the tombs in the region. But Dr. Cabrera believed them to be authentic relics of a lost civilization.
It
appears that a peasant farmer found the Ica Stones in a cave. Although, when questioned by the police the farmer denied having found them and, instead, owned
up to making them himself. But there are so many thousands of these stones that one wonders how much time he would have had left in which to earn his living!
At
the following link you can read an 'in-depth' account of the stones
by a lady who went to meet Dr. Cabrera on numerous occasions.
http://www.labyrinthina.com/ica.htm
The stones
are made from oxidised andesite, which is a fine-grained volcanic rock, 
and the pictograms are engraved, rather than being carved. The difference is important
because Dr. Cabrera thought that a pre-Columbian people using only stone tools had made them. Andesite is a hard igneous rock and it would therefore be far easier
to engrave them, than to carve them, by simply scratching away the surface.
This
surface is made from a natural varnish, created by bacteria over millennia, and the picture is made by scratching this away to show the lighter colour of the stone beneath.
On
the MOHS Scale, (a scientific measure of hardness), Andesites measure 6° with 1200 Kg/cm² of compression resistance. This is towards the top of the scale, which goes up to 10°, and would therefore be very hard to carve
as it would be akin to carving granite – for which carbide tipped tools
are needed.
At this next link there is an article that takes a very balanced look at these mysterious Ica Stones, and includes various theories
as to the pros and cons of them being real or a hoax:
http://paranormal.about.com/cs/ancientanomalies/a/aa041904.htm
The piece ends with this paragraph:
The Julesrod Collection.
The Ica Stones aren't the only controversial artifacts that seem to depict dinosaurs. About 50 years ago, an amateur archeologist named Val Julesrod began collecting clay figurines that had been unearthed in Mexico, and have been radiocarbon dated to be about 3,500 years old. While most of the figurines (there are more than 30,000 of them) are stylized human heads, some are of animals that strongly resemble camels, elephants and horses – animals that did not exist in Mexico 3,500 years ago. Others dated at 1,500 years old are monstrous forms that could be interpreted as dinosaurs. Or are they just mythical creatures?
So, perhaps we shouldn’t ignore the local Peruvian stories of strange creatures that are still extant deep within the jungles. And perhaps we shouldn’t ignore the legend that a Jesuit Missionary, called Father Simon, visited the Inca in 1525 and sent stones engraved with strange animals back to Spain as part of the Spanish Conquest. If that proved to be true it would certainly show that some of the stones are not a modern hoax.
The
author of a website devoted to Planet X, (a.k.a. Nibiru), suggests that the stone showing a telescope and comet may be a depiction of this, so far unfound,
celestial object. They also put forward a very cogent argument as to why some of the stones may, after all, be genuine; and it also takes a look at other artefacts
that have been found over the years that seem to show what modern scientists
say can’t possibly be true. You can read this most interesting article here:
http://www.darkstar1.co.uk/inca2.html
The commentary
to be found at the DarkStar site also mentions the Crystal Skulls, so now I’ll take a look at those.
SKULLS
Crystal Skulls
I suspect
that most people who have an interest in the Crystal Skulls have heard of The Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull as it seems to be the most famous. The
story goes that in the middle of the 1940s Mr. F. A. Mitchell-Hedges,
a British archaeologist, took his adopted daughter, Anna, with him on an expedition
to Lubaantan, Belize, and there she discovered a crystal skull. 
The skull is
made from clear quartz and stands about five and a quarter inches high with a weight
of around eleven pounds, and it also has a removable jaw. However, the day of its discovery was also her birthday, and it is now believed that her father had hidden it for her to find as a present. It does seem that there is a record
of his having bought a skull at Sotheby’s, which had come from the Sidney
Burney collection, shortly before she found it. In addition to which it is noteworthy that other members of the expedition have no recollection of Anna even being there!
And
yet, according to an article at this next site, Hewlett-Packard examined the Mitchell-Hedges’ Skull in 1964 – although many believe this idea
to also be a hoax. At that time they specialized in crystal oscillators and
were thus highly competent to give an opinion. They concluded that it hadn’t been made by any mechanical process and, in fact, it really shouldn’t
exist at all:
http://www.wintersteel.com/Crystal_Skulls.html
However, the Mitchell-Hedges Skull is not the only one
in existence as others have also been found; purportedly in various parts of, mainly, The Americas. You can read a most interesting article about them
here:
http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_6_1.htm
The
same page also carries an article entitled TheCrystal Skull Explorer
- reprinted with the permission of its author Joshua Shapiro. For over twenty years this gentleman has lectured throughout the world about these skulls.
And you can even download a free e-book Journeys of the Crystal Skull
Explorers by Joshua & Desy Shapiro at this link:
http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/free-ebook/csexplorers.html
Just under a decade ago the British Museum examined some of these objects, and
their conclusion was that most were of contemporary derivation. The museum suggested
they might have been made in Germany, in about the middle of the 19th Century,
when that area had a large crystal carving industry. The Smithsonian examined
some of the skulls as well, and they too reached a similar conclusion.
There
is also an interesting snippet to be found two-thirds of the way down this page,
part of which reads as follows:
http://www.ramtops.co.uk/mesofaq.html
Welcome to sci.archaeology.mesoamerican
THE "INFAMOUS" CRYSTAL SKULL(S)
A documentary by the German TV from 1982 examined the skull. Examination of the polishing technique suggests that this was done with the help of a spinning wheel, something not known in America. Crystal workinghas been practiced in 16th and 17th century Europe, and while no skulls are known, crystal balls for magical purposes are known. The interpretation would be that the skull came from such a source. Why is there no historical documentation of the skull? Actually, virtually none of the 16th-17th century crystal pieces can be traced back to the artists. Seems like nobody cared to document this. Mitchell- Hedges in a letter from 1945 states that he doesn't want to reveal the source of the skull, so it could come from anywhere.
But
regardless of whether some of these crystal skulls are ancient or comparatively
recently manufactured there are many Native South American legends about them.
Most
of them say that there were originally a total of either twelve or thirteen such skulls, and that when all are gathered together in one place they would be able to tell
the history of the Earth and the evolution of Mankind. You can read about the
legends, and some of the other skulls, including some lesser known ones, here:
http://www.angelfire.com/mi4/polcrt/CrystalSkulls.html
It would seem that only a very few of these crystal skulls really are genuine Mesoamerican artefacts. So let’s take a look at the evidence for many of them being hoaxes.
The Fakes
It
might good to begin by reading the article from this site explaining the why and how of so many of them being fakes. For a sceptical article it’s very fair and well balanced:
http://skepdic.com/crystalskull.html
Then, in
January 2005 two articles resurfaced in the newspapers that reported how one
of the skulls had been examined by the British Museum, and found to be a fake.
In the following report, entitled The mystery of the British Museum's crystal skull is solved. It's a fake – written by Steve Connor, Science Editor. It states:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=598446
A detailed analysis of the skull's surface has revealed that it was cut and polished with the sort of rotating wheel common in the jewellery houses of 19th-century Europe but absent in pre Columbian America. Historians and scientists believe that the skull was cut from a piece of Brazilian rock crystal by a lapidary in Europe, possibly Germany, and then sold to collectors as a relic from the ancient Aztec civilisation of Mexico. We are not at all sure that there is a rock source in Mexico that would produce a rock crystal of this size. There is strong circumstantial evidence that it comes from Brazil.
But, let’s give the last answer to this site where, amongst other
questions, one is asked about the authenticity of the Mitchell-Hedges Crystal
Skull:
http://www.archaeologyanswers.com/questions_answers.html
014... CRYSTAL SKULL A FAKE?
QUESTION: Have you read this study about the Lubaantun skull?
1. If it was found at the bottom of a pit under rocks and debris from the ruins, then why weren’t there scratches on it?
2. Indigenous people don’t give away something that they revere.
3. There were no on-the-spot photographs of it shot at Lubaantun.
4. In 1992 (about 60 years later) the local natives were interviewed, but they did not remember the skull. Juan
ANSWER: Yes, Juan, I have. And I'm pleased to summarise the facts on crystal skulls for you. While some aspects of the Mitchell-Hedges story do raise serious doubts, the arguments against its authenticity are, on a number of counts, just as tenuous. The safest course in such a situation is to keep an open mind on that particular example of crystal skull. At this present time, no scientist on earth can date any crystal skull - unless it can be proven that a modern artisan has made it. Crystal itself, of course, cannot be dated. But what is certain is this: that a large number of genuine, high quality ancient crystal skulls have been found. Some of these crystal skulls have been unearthed in Chinese tombs from a period in which stone pyramids were being constructed. And 23 more ancient crystal skulls were discovered of recent times in the Himalayas. Concerning almost any ancient artifact that shows sophistication, skeptics are a dime a dozen. And admittedly there have been some fakes. However, as an archaeologist, over the past 36 years I have seen so many plausible arguments against discoveries, in which skeptics later had to eat their words, that one learns to be skeptical even of one's own skepticism.
As the answer pointed out, the skulls, just like the spheres and the stones, can’t be dated. So as to whether they are ‘real’ or ‘fake’ we will probably never know. But perhaps we’re missing the point entirely here. Perhaps it’s not so much about whether they’re genuine or not, but more about how they ‘speak’ to those who see them, touch them, and work with them.
Note: For information about some other strange stones and, more importantly, an update about the Spheres I've mentioned, please go to this article.