Altough the mysterious crystal skulls were brought back in the public’s attention by the launch of the new Indiana Jones movie, according to a new study, visitors aren’t really getting their money's worth, as the items found in both London’s British Museum and Washington DC’s Smithsonian Institution are fake.

Researchers came to the conclusion that certain tools that couldn’t have possibly been available to neither Aztecs nor Mayans were used in the making of the skulls.

With the help of an electron microscope, it was established that the skulls were created by using a certain type of rotary wheel technology that wasn’t being used by pre-Columbian societies. The results of the X-ray diffraction analysis that was performed on an artifact from the Smithsonian, show that carborundum, an abrasive material which began being used sometime in the 20th century, was part of the item’s crafting process.

According to Professor Ian Freestone, from Cardiff University, there is enough evidence to point out the fact that the skull only goes back to the 1950s. The museum came into its possession in 1992, when it was anonymously donated; the "gift" was accompanied by a note that said the skull had been bought 32 years earlier in Mexico.

French researchers are also performing microscopic analyses on three crystal skulls which are being kept in European museums. One of them is currently part of an exhibition in Paris.