Wikimedia Commons/Jabberocky

Crop circles attract a lot of attention—and for good reason. While there are some reported cases of crop circles going back several centuries, instances of the phenomena increased in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite reasonable evidence (and admissions by crop pattern “artists”) that many crop circles are made by humans, many people believe that at least some crop patterns are caused by something other than people. Even as crop circles remain something of a mystery, Vienna can now claim its own mystery—of a painted skull.

The Painted Skull

Flickr/H.KoPP

The recent discovery of a painted skull in Vienna has caused quite a stir as nobody knows who the skull belongs to, where it came from, how it came to be where it was found, or why it is painted. The skull was found in a meadow inside of a saucepan near the Wilhelminen hospital in Vienna. Oddly, the skull is elaborately painted with flowers and an inscription that reads “gehangt 1612” (which translates to “hanged 1612”).

The first theory, probably advanced by the same boring kind of people who deny crop circles are caused by aliens, was that the skull was a replica. As it turns out, the skull is real. Despite the fact the skull has been authenticated as real, archaeologists think the bones are too new to date back to 1612. How old is the skull? Well, they don’t know.

Whose Skull?

Flickr/David Boté Estrada

The name “Amelie Lagrange” is also written on the skull. The skull, however, belonged to a man at one point rather than a woman as the name might suggest.

The mystery of the painted skull is even more interesting because it is apparently an artistic collage. A piece of vertebrae on the back of the skull appears to have come from a cow rather than a human. The lower jaw also appears to belong to a different skull.

At least for the time being, the painted skull has joined crop circles, UFOs, haunted houses and other phenomena as an unexplained, but intriguing, mystery.

What do you think of the painted skull? Is it a hoax as some have claimed?

Additional Image: burbuja

Comments

comments