Sci Fi special probes skulls prophecy

The ancient Mayan calendar prophesies that Armageddon is only four years off – unless a collection of mystical crystal skulls can be located and aligned just so.

There are people who believe this prophecy still and who are searching as you read this for any missing skulls. And there are those who believe that the skulls were not made by the Mayans, but by space aliens or by the doomed citizens of Atlantis.

That’s the subject of a two-hour Sci Fi special, “Mystery of the Crystal Skulls,” premiering tonight at 9.

So what is a veteran newsman like Lester Holt, weekend anchor of “NBC Nightly News” and co-anchor of the weekend edition of “Today,” doing in Belize, groping his way through such mystical fog?

“I do projects like this (occasionally),” Holt said in a recent phone interview. “I did one a couple of years ago on the Bermuda Triangle.

“These projects intrigue me to the extent that we go out and ask questions,” he said. “One thing I’ve tried not to be is a professional snob, an elitist. I truly believe there are things we just don’t know about.”

If the title of the special sounds more than vaguely familiar, that’s because of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” the forthcoming new installment of the film franchise starring Harrison Ford.

Holt finds himself dealing with the legacy of a real-life Indiana Jones, a British adventurer and treasure seeker named Frederick Mitchell-Hedges who searched for the skulls back in the 1920s.

His daughter, Anna Mitchell-Hedges, claimed to have found one of the skulls while on an expedition with her late, swashbuckling father. Before her death, she passed on the skull to her American husband, Bill Homann, who’s been trying to track down more.

So Holt went off with Homann to Belize to investigate Mayan ruins, machete through jungles, canoe down rivers and dive into tropical waters.

No spoilers here about what they did or did not find, just a final word from Holt:

“Bill Homann is a true believer and I tried to shake him. He doesn’t get upset when you challenge him.

“And there was a part of me waiting for the ‘a-ha’ moment, that this is just a silly legend. But who am I to dismiss things just because they don’t ring true originally?”