The University of Mercer in Georgia in the USA thought they had a fake human head on display. Further investigations show that it was not true.
The head is real, and once sat on the shoulders of a warrior who died almost a hundred years ago in the Amazon, writes NBC News.
Now the university has decided to return the head to Ecuador, and they have handed it over to the consulate.
Shrunk
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The head is a «tsansta», or a «shrunken head». Head shrinkage was done by some indigenous tribes in Ecuador and northern Peru by removing the skin from the heads of their fallen enemies, and shrinking it by exposing them to heat.
Then the heads were put on display to take over the power of their enemies. This head is about the size of a fist.
«Ga» over me i promille
Throughout the 19th century, these heads began to gain value because travelers from Europe and the United States wanted to take them home. This made it a market for fake heads, and it was such a fake edition the university thought they had, the university writes in a press release.
sorry
“This is not a rarity, it’s someone’s body, it’s someone’s culture, and it’s not ours,” researcher Adam Kiefer told NBC.
– So from our perspective, it was absolutely essential to give it back, and we were very lucky that the university supported our efforts, he says.
He is one of the researchers who has now written a research article about the head, and how they concluded that it was real.
Among other things, they have made a 3D model of what the head would have looked like if it had not been shrunk.
Suddenly the neighbors see this
Used in film
Researchers at Mercer University write in the research article that they have managed to trace the history of the head back to 1942, when a now deceased employee at the university brought it home from Ecuador, where he had been while in the military.
He writes in his memoirs that he exchanged it for some coins, a pocket knife and an emblem from his uniform.
He took it with him to the university when he finished his military service, and it was there for many years in various places, including the warehouse and the university museum.
In 1979, the head was partially destroyed after it was borrowed for the filming of the John Huston film “Wise Blood”, or “Evil Blood”, in Norwegian. They glued it to a doll so it would look like a real corpse.
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