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Crystal skulls

For decades the famous crystal skull in the Museum of Mankind in London was thought to be Aztec - and to possess mysterious powers like moving around within its glass cabinet at night...

But all that has changed, and most experts now think it’s a 19th. century fake, made in Europe!

In tests at the British Museum (filmed by the BBC) in 1996, traces of (jewellers’) wheel markings on the teeth suggested it had been made with modern tools, out of Brazilian quarz.

Many scholars believe the skull - bought by the Museum in 1897 for some $900 in New York - was a fake sold by a dealer who nearly managed to sell one to the National Museum of Mexico in the 1880s for $3,000!