The Mysterious Elongated Skull of ‘Pakal the Great’ «The Palenke Astronaut»

In 1952, deep in the smoldering cedar and mahogany forests of southern Mexico, and after four years of hard work, archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier finally finished removing the rubble from the stairs to access a hidden tomb where the intact sarcophagus of a ruler Maya, that of K\’inich Janaab Pakal, also known as Pakal the Great, has been located.

Underground water tunnels were discovered directly beneath the Temple of Inscriptions, where the sarcophagus was discovered, mirroring recent discoveries at the equally bizarre Mesoamerican site of Teotihuacan, known as “the place where men become gods”. The burial chamber is strange because of the mercuric sulfide dust and crystal stalactites described by Ruz. All this and more has roused the alternate history community, who say that when the lid of Pakal\’s sarcophagus is rotated horizontally, you can see the depiction of Pakal driving what could be an interstellar vehicle.

While there is still no unanimous agreement, the consensus among leading scholars is that Pakal was indeed of a very advanced age and no genetic deformity is attributed to him. However, there is consensus that Pakal had a deformed skull and teeth. These deformations, they insist, would be the result of artificial dental cranial modification. His skeleton is described as “robust” and the skull as “obliquely tabular”.

In the numerous reports spanning the 80 years since the discovery of the hidden tomb of Pakal the Great, there are many direct references to photographic documentation and the removal of the skull for laboratory analysis. However, these photographs never saw the light of day and neither did a “comprehensive laboratory analysis” of the skull. It is highly suspect that more attention and study was not given to the skull during this period, especially as initial reports were being disputed.

Even after the last opening of the tomb, no photographs or diagrams of the skull have yet been published in scientific journals or made available to the public. The photos and diagrams that have been published border on the absurd, as they look like part of a childish hoax. The photos (mostly Polaroids) are all angled in such a way that the skull is completely hidden, while the diagrams simply omit the skull altogether.

As if all this wasn\’t intriguing enough, some basic facts about Pakal are questionable, especially given the credibility gap. Pakal\’s measurements are questioned based on simple observations of the sarcophagus\’s dimensions when compared with official figures for its height. Pakal is said to have measured a point of 65 meters, but his sarcophagus is 3 meters.

Meanwhile, the cavity inside the monolithic coffin appears to be no more than 0.4 meters inside each ledge. This is just an approximation, but if accurate, it would make Pakal more than two meters tall. This estimation is also reinforced by iconography that represents not just Pakal but the entire ruling class, distinguished by their larger size, elongated heads, and other unique physical features such as supernumerary fingers and toes, or club-shaped feet.

One can reasonably speculate, given the iconographic evidence, that the ruling elite of Palenque constituted a genetically distinct human group, and their taxonomy threatens the entire conventional pre-Columbian narrative about Mayan c̳i̳v̳i̳l̳i̳z̳a̳t̳i̳o̳n̳.

Perhaps Pakal\’s skull shows deformities that cannot be caused by artificial cranial deformation. Ancient head deformation or ligation techniques cannot explain abnormalities such as lack of sagittal suture, displacement of the foramen magnum, or increased cranial volume, which were observed by independent researchers in other pre-Columbian cultures.

Perhaps Pakal\’s skull shows evidence of even stranger features. Traits that would ruin everything we\’ve been told now.