Museum Secrets (2011–…): Season 2, Episode 11 - Inside the National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City - full transcript

- [Narrator] Mexico City,
a teeming metropolis

of intensity and innovation.

And at its heart a museum
with secrets dark and strange.

A grisly offering to the sun.

An ancient extreme sport.

The prophecy of a crystal skull.

And a descent into a watery cave of souls.

Secrets hidden in plain sight

inside Mexico's National
Museum of Anthropology.

(dramatic music)

These ancient pyramids are made in Mexico.



Remnants of cultures
both powerful and strange.

And today Mexico City's

National Museum of Anthropology

is full of what they left behind.

A brooding monument of the Olmecs,

America's first great civilization.

The relics of the Mayans, a
people of science and mystery.

And here in the museum's
most popular gallery

are the treasures of the Aztec Empire

that dominated Mexico in the 15th Century.

Most smaller nations submitted

to the will of the Aztecs, but not all.

For historian John Paul, this stone tells

the tale of one man who refused to bow.



- One of the most famous
accounts was written

down both my the by the Spaniards

and by the Aztec people
themselves after the conquest,

was the use of this stone in
a very, very famous combat

against an enemy warlord
whose name was Tlahuicole.

- [Narrator] Tlahuicole was a warrior

from the state of Tlaxcala.

Known for cunning and
ferocity, Tlahuicole led an attack

on Aztec imperial forces.

But though the conflict was savage,

few men died on either side.

- We have to remember
that warfare to the Aztecs

if very different from the way

Europeans would have conceptualized it.

Europeans were interested
in conquest on the battlefield,

and in killing as much of the enemy

as they possibly can in
order to declare a victory.

Aztec armies actually went to war

in order to capture enemy soldiers,

and then bring them back
to ritually sacrifice them.

- [Narrator] Important
captives were sacrificed

on this stone before the Temple of War,

which can still be seen in
the center of Mexico City.

- They are not simply thrown over the stone

and have their hearts cut out.

They actually engage
in a form of ritual combat.

- [Narrator] An enemy prisoner
would be tied to the stone

in front of a pumped up crowd.

To enhance the spectacle,

he was given a wooden
sword decorated with feathers.

Then he was set upon
by elite Aztec warriors

armed with battle swords.

- The basic idea was
to actually bring to life

the drama of the battlefield

in all of its bloody glory.

- [Narrator] After the captive was slain,

his heart was cut out,
and offered to the Sun God.

- And Tlahuicole was
captured in a great battle,

and forced to perform in one
of these gladitorial combats.

- [Narrator] But when
Tlahuicole was tied to the stone,

something amazing happened.

(man grunting)

He fought and killed
no less than 20 warriors.

Our museum secret is, how did he do it?

John believes part of the answer

is in the nature of the Aztec sword.

So we begin our investigation here,

in a sierra outside of Mexico City.

These hills were mined
by Aztec swordmakers.

They weren't looking for iron,

but for a volcanic glass called obsidian.

Obsidian shards are sharper

than a finely honed blade of steel.

(speaks foreign language)

There are no surviving Aztec swords,

so we asked archeologist historian

Alejandro Pastrana to make one.

On a piece of solid encino wood,

he insets obsidian shards.

To hold them in place, he
uses traditional Aztec glue.

(speaks foreign language)

- [Narrator] Alejandro has taken care

to make the new sword

according to the Aztecs'
precise specifications.

All the elements should combine

to produce a sword of similar power.

(speaks foreign language)

- [Narrator] Up against such a weapon,

it's hard to imagine how Tlahuicole

could have defended himself
with his sword of feathers.

But John wants to see for himself

how effectively the obsidian
sword cuts through flesh.

To stand in for Tlahuicole,
he's purchased some meat

from a local butcher.

- The idea is that this
would be the first cut.

The Jaguar warrior approaches Tlahuicole

and lets him have it.

Is there a particular place
that he would hit first?

(speaks foreign language)

- Whoa, man, look at that.

- Okay. - That is incredible!

The blades came off, but not only that,

but they stay in the flesh.

So man, what painful, right?

(speaks foreign language)

- [Narrator] A few missing shards

might not eliminate the sword's power,

but as a second blow is struck,

it loses the rest of them.

This is not what Alejandro
or John expected,

and it reveals something
new about swordplay

in the Aztec world.

(speaks foreign language)

- Tlahuicole could actually use solid wood,

even without the blades,
to absorb the impact

and defend himself, and
actually disarm the enemy.

It's something that we'd really see

out of a movie like Gladiator.

We could imagine almost Tlahuicole

as a Tlaxcalan Russell Crowe, right?

Fighting for his life,

and yet also standing up for his state.

Tlaxcala is the primero.

- [Narrator] So the secret of
defeating 20 Aztec warriors

comes down to the
fragility of the Aztec sword,

and the tenacity of a man named Tlahuicole.

Eventually, the Aztec emperor
ordered the carnage to stop.

- He put an end to the fight,
and he offered Tlahuicole

actually a position as a
commander in the Aztec Army,

and Tlahuicole turned it down

and said I would rather be sacrificed

in honor of my own nation, the Tlaxcalteca.

So in a sense, he sacrifices himself,

and in fact to die in a gladitorial combat

was to be guaranteed that your soul

would go to the House of the
Sun to live there for eternity.

- [Narrator] He died,
unbowed, on this stone.

(somber music)

Up next, the secret of the sinking city.

(dramatic music)

Inside Mexico's National
Museum of Anthropology,

there's no shortage of stone,

because stone lasts.

Wood tends to rot.

And that's why this ancient canoe is rare.

It's one of the largest Aztec

wooden artifacts ever discovered.

But there's a mystery
about where it was found.

It wasn't discovered near a body of water,

but here in the heart of Mexico City.

A city that is 2,000
meters above sea level.

In 1956, contractors digging the foundation

for a new expressway

unearthed the ancient canoe

perfectly preserved underground.

To historian John Paul,

this makes perfect sense.

- We're overlooking the
center of Mexico City,

which today is one of the largest,

if not the largest cities in the world,

but all of this that we're looking at

is actually built on top of a more ancient

Aztec capital called Tenochtitlan,

and much of what we're
seeing actually was built

on top of a lake.

- [Narrator] 500 years ago,
Mexico City looked like this.

So it's not a mysterious
place to find a canoe after all.

But how do you turn a
lake that can float a canoe

into a modern city?

That is our museum secret.

A tiny part of the
original lake still exists,

preserved as a World Heritage Site.

(pleasant music)

- [John] You're looking
at an Aztec environment

virtually as it would have
appeared 500 years ago.

- [Narrator] Today this man paddles a canoe

that looks much like the one in the museum.

He's a farmer.

As part of a farming cooperative,

he harvests crops from the water

and grows corn on one
of several small islands.

These islands are called chinampas.

- To create a chinampa, the
farmers first stake out an area

in the lake the size of a football field.

Then they dredge up the
mud from the base of the lake,

it's quite shallow here, and just start

to create this artificial island.

- [Narrator] And the
Aztecs didn't stop there.

As they built more chinampas,

they also built islands for habitation.

Instead of connecting them
with streets and bridges,

they opted for canals.

- Canals were used in such a way

that with the canoes, they
could bring in tons of goods

on a daily basis for
sale in the marketplaces,

so that the canoes were the lifeline

for how the entire city functioned.

They had causeways that connected the city

directly to the western end of the lake.

They built an aqueduct and brought in

fresh water on a daily basis.

The composition of the
city was really ingenious.

- [Narrator] As the population grew,

the Aztecs created more chinampas

to keep the extra people fed.

- It really allowed them
to create a type of city

that was part agricultural,
and part urban environment.

We would be very lucky to have

the centralized administration come up

with something as ingenious as this today.

(pleasant music)

- [Narrator] It seems that the
Aztecs discovered the secret

of turning a lake into a city,

and not just any city,
but a sustainable one.

Then, the secret was forgotten.

- When the Spaniards
first arrived here in 1519,

they looked down into the valley,

into the basin of Mexico,

and saw this fantastic
city of over 250,000 people

sitting in the middle of
this lake, Lake Texcoco,

and many asked the commander Cortes

whether this wasn't a dream.

- [Narrator] The conquerors
were so impressed

that they drew this map,

and then changed everything.

They drained the lake to create real estate

for cathedrals and imperial administration.

The canals became
streets, and the growing fields

became building sites.

Their idea of progress was the basis

of the vibrant metropolis we know today.

But because the Spanish did it their way,

modern Mexico City has a problem

that plagues engineers like Efrain Shelley.

- Mexico City's sinking
much faster than Venice,

at least 40 times faster.

An example of the effects
of the sinking is here.

The level of the plaza
and the level of the road

used to be the same 300
years ago, more or less.

You can see that the church is leaning

towards one side, it's
inclined, it's crooked.

There's many crooked things

in Mexico City, including churches.

- [Narrator] The city is
sinking because of a process

that began when the Spanish
conquerors drained the lake.

- It was a bad mistake, because it meant

in the long term that the
lake system was destroyed.

It was gradually depleted.

- [Narrator] This process continues today,

as deep wells take water
from the old lake bed.

- [Efrain] Why are we doing that?

Because we need that water for drinking,

for domestic consumption.

2/3 of it come from the
wells installed underneath.

- [Narrator] As the water is extracted,

the soft subsoil
compresses, and the city sinks

faster every day.

- There's measures that
can be taken of course.

Let's not drink water then.

We could probably
drink tequila, for example.

But that's not feasible.

- [Narrator] Efrain doesn't
believe that the problem

can be solved by relearning

the secrets of the Aztecs either.

(gentle music)

- The Aztecs had the
answer to sustaining a city

in the middle of a lake.

Mind you, it was a very small city

as compared to our standards.

Now we have a huge urban development

in the former lake bed,

and there's no way we can revert that.

What is the future?

We will probably sink into oblivion.

No, I'm not sure what will happen.

But we have a bleak
situation in front of us.

- [Narrator] And if seen in that light,

this canoe is not just
a rare wooden artifact.

It's a reminder that it's best
to learn the ancient secrets

before it's too late.

Next on Museum Secrets, sacrificial victims

in a watery grave.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Inside Mexico's
National Museum of Anthropology

the first thing you see is this.

It's not an historic
monument, but a modern one.

The cascade of water forms a bridge

between ancient Mexicans and ourselves,

because the need for water
is something all humans share.

We only stop needing water

when we're dead.

While the museum
displays a few of the bones

of the ancient dead,
there are thousands more

in a vast storage area
beneath the public galleries.

Many were collected by early explorers

who didn't document their findings

as a modern archeologist would.

Today, archeologist Guillermo de Anda

only knows what the bones can tell him.

- We have found all these cut marks

that are indicative of a
process of ritual violence.

There were flaying, decapitation,

disarticulation of limbs.

We know that this was not accidents.

There's a lot of traits on the bones

that indicated it was a cult.

They may have been sacrifices.

- [Narrator] These bones were discovered

in the south of Mexico,

near the ancient city of Chichen Itza,

in freshwater sinkholes called cenotes.

More than 1,000 years ago,

the Mayans built the city of Chichen Itza

beside this large cenote.

But why did human bones end up here?

According to the Spanish
invaders who conquered Mexico,

during times of drought,

Mayan priests would
perform human sacrifices

at the edge of the cenote.

The Spaniards leave the impression

that a cenote was simply a place

the Mayans tossed bodies
as ritual offerings to Chaac,

the god of rain.

Guillermo believes there is much more

to the cenote and the
bones that were found within,

but all he has are skulls in a box,

with no archeological context.

- And as we say in archeology,

the information of the context

is sometimes much more important

than bones or the artifacts themselves.

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] To discover
the cenote's secret,

Guillermo is going to dive into one

that he believes has
never been explored before.

He hopes no amateur
bone collectors got here first.

(speaks foreign language)

The water level in a cenote rises and falls

with the changing water table.

Currently, it's more than 10 meters down.

(water trickling)

So far, there's no evidence

that anyone else has been
here, except for the bats.

(water splashing)

(bats squeaking)

Beneath the surface, the
underwater world is pitch black,

but in the light of a torch,

Guillermo spots what he's looking for.

- [Guillermo] One of the skulls

has what looks like blunt force trauma.

It's a strong indicator
that there's ritual violence

and probably some human sacrifice.

- [Narrator] Guillermo expected that,

but he also finds human remains

that show no signs of violence.

That's a little puzzling, and
now that he sees the bones

in their original context,

he notices something else.

- So what is very interesting

is how this material get there.

The disposition indicates
they were probably

placed by the ancient Maya.

- [Narrator] If bodies had
been tossed into this cenote,

their bones would now
be scattered on the bottom,

but since they were placed,

then someone must have
come down here to place them.

How could an ancient Mayan
do this without diving gear?

Again, context provides a clue.

- The water level was much
lower than what it is now.

We believe that the ancient Maya might have

been able to go down just
the way we did on ropes

and use a canoe in order

to get to specific places
around the cenote.

- [Narrator] This is the
secret of the cenote.

It was a place where the Mayans

respectfully laid their dead to rest.

Those who had died by sacrifice,

alongside those who
died from natural causes.

- [Guillermo] They
believed that the cenotes

were spiritual places.

Places where the soul of the dead might go.

- [Narrator] By descending here,

Guillermo has not only seen
the context, he has felt it too.

- [Guillermo] When you
go down in this cenote,

you can really feel how the ancient Maya

might have felt as well.

The silence, the humidity,
the beauty, the darkness

play an important role on the decision

of going there, and place offerings.

They believed that the cenotes were places

where the soul of the dead might go.

- [Narrator] For us,
water is only necessary

while we're alive, but for the Mayans,

water was the sacred element

that would transport them to the hereafter.

Next on Museum Secrets, an ancient sport

that's played for keeps.

(dramatic music)

Inside the National Museum of Anthropology

is an ancient Mayan artifact that will be

of special interest to every sports fan.

It shows one of ancient Mexico's

most important inventions, the rubber ball.

(intense music)

Today, the rubber ball is at the center

of the world's favorite game.

(speaks foreign language)

(crowd cheering)

You might think that a
Mayan would be surprised

to see their game enthralling
thousands of screaming fans,

but you'd be wrong.

- At Chichen Itza, there
is the largest ball court

in Mesoamerica that resembles

the Yankee Stadium of the
Mayas or the Wembley Stadium.

- [Narrator] Historian Manuel Aguilar

is an expert in the Mayan ball game.

- Let's go back to, let's
say seven or 800 AD,

and try to feel the
ambiance of this ball court.

What we will see what would
be two teams facing each other

in each side of the court

with knee pads, loincloth
to protector for the waist.

And they wore pinachos, so the headdresses.

- [Narrator] Wearing
padding that would be familiar

to modern athletes,

the Mayans played a game called pok-ta-pok.

Players weren't allowed to contact the ball

with hands or feet,
but only with their hips.

This alone might qualify
pok-ta-pok as an extreme sport,

but one thing about pok-ta-pok

makes our extreme
sports look like tiddly winks.

Where today's stadiums display advertising,

some ancient stadiums
advertised a deadly post-game ritual.

- One of the players
is decapitating a player,

and with this hand is holding the head

where the other is holding the knife.

- [Narrator] Losers didn't just
hang their heads in shame,

they lost them.

This frieze shows how the
severed heads were displayed.

- [Manuel] This was a
platform where they placed

the heads of the sacrificed
people on the ball court.

It is always attached to the ball court.

It is like a set that comes together.

- [Narrator] And a few of the heads

may have ended up somewhere else.

- Some scholars have proposed the idea

that probably, they
played with actual skulls.

That is really difficult to prove,

because we don't have any

archeological evidence up to this day.

- [Narrator] Did the
Mayans really put skulls

inside their rubber balls?

Manuel hopes to put this museum secret

to a practical test.

(percussive music)

Fortunately, there are some modern Mexicans

with a passion for the ancient game.

Historians don't know exactly
how pok-ta-pok was played,

but these men base their rules

on the available research.

Their rubber ball has no skull inside,

but Manuel plans to change that.

For starters, he needs to
recreate Mayan rubber technology,

with the help of pok-ta-pok
enthusiast Roberto Rochin.

- And this is the latex.

It comes straight from the trees.

It's collected in several states of Mexico.

- [Narrator] Left to dry on its own,

latex becomes brittle,
with no bounce at all.

But something magical
happens when latex is combined

with the sap of certain native plants.

The sap contains exactly

what latex needs to become bouncy, sulfur.

- [Roberto] And those juices are the ones

we're going to transfer the sulfur

into the mix with the latex.

- [Narrator] The ancient process

turns liquid latex into
strips of spongy rubber.

And this is where the skull comes in.

- We can see that we
are covering the first layer,

forming the core with the skull.

We need to cover completely the skull,

and then later on we need
to add more regular layers.

- [Narrator] By the way,
this isn't a real human skull.

It would be ghoulish to use a real one,

because for us, pok-ta-pok is just a game.

But to the Mayans, it was much more.

(thunder booms)

One of the Mayan creation
myths, the Popol Vuh,

takes place on a ball court,

where twin heroes are forced to lead a game

against the lords of the underworld.

- [Manuel] The ball game is the arena

for the fight between life and death.

- [Narrator] The dark lords
of the underworlds cheat

by releasing a bat that
decapitates one of the twin heroes.

The lords then play ball with his head.

The twin's brother outwits the dark lords,

managing to reattach his brother's head.

In doing so, he brings him back to life.

To the Maya, this
creation of life out of death

brings about the beginning
of human existence.

- We have been 13 hours, Roberto?

Yeah about 13, 14 hours in this process.

- [Roberto] That's it, finished.

- [Narrator] Manuel is ready

to put his creation to the test.

(speaks foreign language)

- [Narrator] The ball is the
right size to pass through

the stone hoop, but how
will it perform in a game?

(speaks foreign language)

From our point of view as scientists,

we can say that even though the possibility

to play with a skull is there,

because they could have used that

only for certain
celebrations or certain rituals

to make a memory of the
history of the Popol Vuh,

but in practical cases it would be

very difficult that they
would use a ball with a skull.

- [Narrator] Manuel might be
disappointed with the result,

but that doesn't mean that

this ancient carving has no meaning.

Perhaps the carver was a sports fan

who was trying to offer
some friendly advice.

If you want to win on any playing field,

you have to keep your head in the game.

Next on Museum Secrets,
the dress that changed history

and the enigmatic woman who wore it.

(dramatic music)

Inside the National Museum of Anthropology,

a glorious past is written in stone.

These treasures are known as pre-Colombian,

as in pre Christopher Columbus,

but really they should
be called pre-Cortes.

In history books and popular movies,

Cortes and his small army
get the credit and the blame

for the Spanish conquest
that defeated the Aztecs,

and brought a new boss,

a new god, and a
European strain of smallpox

that killed one out of every two Mexicans.

But in the museum's library,
museum director Diana Magaloni

reveals historic drawings that suggest

that Cortes did not act alone.

There is a woman at his side.

- This is a very early
depiction of Malinche,

and what is amazing of
this depiction of the conquest

is that she appears in almost

every single frame of the story.

- [Narrator] Who is Malinche?

And what is Cortes doing with her?

She isn't Spanish,
because the dress she wears

in these drawings is like
this one in the textile gallery.

The native costume of a different culture.

- It is called a huipil.

A huipil is a Nahuatl word.

The Nahuatl was the language
spoken in Central Mexico

before the arrival of the Europeans,

and it's the typical dress of a noblewoman.

- [Narrator] Born in a land
south of the Aztec Empire,

Malinche was a princess
who had the misfortune

to be captured by local slavers.

When the Spanish landed,
she was among several women

who were given as a tribute to Cortes.

- And she was immediately noticed by him

because she spoke Maya and spoke Nahuatl,

the two main languages
in this early Mexico,

and then quickly learned Spanish.

So she was a translator for Hernan Cortes.

- [Narrator] Malinche soon
became much more than that.

- [Diana] We could compare her a little bit

to what Pocahontas is
for the North Americans.

In a way, she finds new self in the other

through a different relationship.

Through love and through
teaching her culture to the enemy.

- [Narrator] Until carbon dating

placed this huipil in a later century,

historians believed it
belonged to Malinche,

because the pattern expresses

her cross-cultural relationship.

- [Diana] The huipil has a
double-headed eagle in the chest,

and the king of Spain at the time

was a Habsburg, and
the symbol for Habsburgs

was a double-headed eagle.

So it would be Malinche
becoming like sort of

the indigenous princess of the Habsburgs.

- [Narrator] Historians now believe

Malinche's real dress was simpler,

without the trappings of
Spanish imperial power.

But her dress did have
the power to change history.

To discover why, we have to travel

to Cholula in Central Mexico.

Today, it's a minor
center of trade and tourism.

(marching band music)

But when Cortes stopped here on his way

to the capital of the Aztec Empire,

it had strategic importance.

- When Cortes arrived in 1519,

Cholula was probably
the second largest city

in Central Mexico, so it was a city

with a population of
close to 50,000 people.

There were people that came here

from all over Mesoamerica.

(marching band music)

- [Narrator] Because of
the city's diverse population,

Cortes was counting
on the people of Cholula

to ally with him against the Aztec Empire.

But then an elderly woman
approached Malinche

to warn her of a secret plot

to ambush Cortes and his troops.

- The story is that they're
going to be ambushed,

and attacked, perhaps by
an army of 50,000 Aztecs

hiding outside of town.

- [Narrator] In what would become

Malinche's defining moment,

she chose to reveal the plot to Cortes.

He was furious that the
locals had failed to warn him.

- So it was right here in the square,

in front of the Pyramid
of the Feathered Serpent,

that Cortes gathered all the nobles,

and many of the townspeople,
sealed off the exits,

and commenced the Cholula Massacre.

(man groans)

- [Narrator] This was
Cortes's defining moment.

From this point on,
there would be less talk

and much more blood and steel.

Before the sun set,
several thousand lay dead.

Men, women, and even children.

- [Geoffrey] So this is the
plaza where Cortes initiated

the Spanish Conquest.

- [Narrator] In Cholula today,

murals still commemorate
the murderous rampage.

(somber music)

And many would say Malinche
had blood on her hands.

- In the 20th Century,
Malinche was related to traitor,

and for instance when
a Mexican likes better

foreign people than themselves,

it's called Malinchismo.

- The concept of Malinche
turning against her people

is a gross simplification of what

the complex mosaic of
culture was at the time.

The Aztecs were one, but Malinche

was not a member of the Aztec culture.

In fact, she was a princess of

a completely different ethnic group.

- [Narrator] Traitor or
independent minded princess,

we have yet to reveal how
Malinche's dress changed history,

or why someone decided to tell her

about the anti-Spanish plot.

- There's a lot of debate over why

the old noblewoman would
have approached Malinche

to warn her about the attack.

I believe that one of the important clues

has to do with the dress
that Malinche was wearing.

- [Narrator] Then as now, some townsfolk

wore native costumes that
look much like Malinche's.

- The costumes were very important

elements of cultural identity.

It's quite possible that the
old woman and Malinche

were wearing virtually identical huipiles,

indicating that they were
of the same community.

And so, the old woman
recognized her as a kinswoman,

and because of that, feels compelled

to warn her about the possible attack.

- [Narrator] The Cholula
Massacre and all the events

that followed now seem written in stone,

but in this case, history
hangs by a thread.

In almost every image of Malinche,

she is depicted wearing a different dress.

What if Malinche hadn't been wearing

her distinctive dress that day?

She might have passed
by the old woman unnoticed,

and if she had, an Aztec ambush

may have ended the Spanish
Conquest before it began.

Up next, the secret of the crystal skull.

(dramatic music)

For our final museum secret,
we loose the bonds of reason

to enter a mesmerizing,
supernatural universe.

This is a story of the spirit realm,

and of the tools that true
believers use to reach it.

(speaks foreign language)

- [Narrator] To discover what
special qualities crystal has,

we start with geologist Juan Carlos Cruz.

(speaks foreign language)

- [Narrator] Juan can
see why ancient shamans

might find crystal fascinating.

(speaks foreign language)

- [Narrator] And if crystals
have supernatural power,

perhaps a crystal skull has even more.

This sparkling artifact of uncertain age

is small enough to be jewelry,

but Martha Carmona thinks it isn't.

(speaks foreign language)

- [Narrator] Does the crystal
skull have a mystical power?

That is our museum secret.

In the 19th Century, European clairvoyants

divined that there existed several

large and important crystal
skulls in Mesoamerica.

A belief shared by modern
spiritualists like Star Moser.

(chanting in foreign language)

Several times a year,
Star travels to Mexico

to take part in rituals
centered around crystal skulls.

She believes that crystal skulls

are a kind of ancient
information technology.

- Crystal skulls are receivers,

they are libraries, they store,

and they also amplify and they transmit.

- [Narrator] This may sound far-fetched,

but in more familiar
information technology,

crystals do play a part.

Electronic devices rely on
oscillating quartz crystals

to stay synchronized with the network.

Of course, these crystals
aren't skull-shaped,

but for mystical
communication, the shape is key.

- [Star] My Mayan teachers have said

that when we take a crystal,

and carve it into the
template of a crystal skull,

that it then is able to release the energy,

or the information
that's stored inside of it.

- [Narrator] Star
believes all crystal skulls

have this power,

including the one in the museum.

- [Star] The skull in the
Museum of Anthropology

holds a lot of knowledge.

- [Narrator] Martha Carmona agrees

that the skull's shape is significant.

(speaks foreign language)

- [Narrator] But she doesn't
think that ancient shamans

used crystal skulls to look into the past.

(speaks foreign language)

- [Narrator] Martha
believes that all skulls

have the same
significance for the ancients,

and to understand it, we
should look at skulls like this.

The paper skulls you
see everywhere in Mexico

on the Day of the Dead.

A celebration rooted in Aztec culture

that is still wildly popular today.

(speaks foreign language)

- [Narrator] So whether
or not a crystal skull

can store information about the past,

it has the power to
convey an age old secret

that explains why ancient Mexicans

faced sacrifice without fear,

and modern Mexicans
laugh on the Day of the Dead.

Since we must all face death someday,

we might as well embrace it.

In this museum of extraordinary cultures,

for every secret we reveal,

far more remain unspoken.

Secrets waiting to be discovered

in a watery cave, under a sinking city,

or hidden in plain sight

inside Mexico's National
Museum of Anthropology.

(somber music)