Not just head hunters...

I came across these weird tiny heads in Ripley’s Museum in London some years ago and I have to admit that they really drew my attention. I had never seen them before and the whole story of why and how they were made fascinated my greedy nature for learning more about anything macabre and weird.

What exactly are they?

Well, they are real human heads miniaturised, even though it is hard to tell due to their size and the way they look now. They look like some kind of animal-human-alien mutation. But they are just human heads used for trophy, religious, ritual or trade purposes.

Where?

Despite the many forms of head hunting around the world, head shrinking had been performed only by members of the Jivaroan tribes of the northwestern region of the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador and Peru. The Jivaroans were divided in smaller groups, the Shuar, Achuar, Huambisa and Aguaruna.

Why?

The making of the “tsantsa” as the Shuar tribe called the shrunken head, was a process with a religious significance. Tsantsas were made from unfortunate enemies that were decapitaded on the battlefield. They believed in the existence of a vengeful spirit called muisak, that inhabits the human body. By shrinking the head of the enemy, they prevented the muisak from using its powers when a person is murdered and at the same time save the shrinker. It was a way to prevent the soul from avenging his death.

They also believed that each warrior had his own magical power called the “arutam”. A way to increase their arutam was by collecting heads in the battles. Thus the collector would be benefit with the original warrior’s arutam.

In the late 19th century Europeans and Americans showed interest about the traditions of these tribes and started buying the shrunken heads. The rate by the 1930s was about $25 each. When the tribesmen realised that they could gain money themselves, they went for more headhunting in order to increase their profits. The head hunting madness forced the governments of Peru and Ecuador to forbid the buying and selling in order to calm things down with the slaughter. The United States also banned the import of tsantsas in the 1940s.

How? (In case you are eating right now, I suggest that you finish your food first and then continue reading)

In order to shrink the heads as bones were obviously an obstacle to the process, they started with removing the skull from the head-the skull was discarded into a river. They achieved that by making an incision on the back of the neck, in order to keep the face as it was.

Then the eyelids were sewn shut and the lips skewered closed with wooden pegs. A wooden ball was placed inside the head in order to keep its form. After that the skin was put into a boiling pot and allowed to simmer for an hour and a half (oh dear God I’m literally giving you a recipe on how to cook a human head… :S ). In the pot they included also some herbs containing tannins in order to preserve the skin.

Once removed from the pot, the head would be about 1/3 its original size and the skin was dark and rubbery. The next step was the drying process. The head would continue to shrink during this stage as it was turned upside down and filled with small rocks heated by fire. This way the inside was also “tanned” in order to preserve it.

After that they rubbed the skin with charcoal as they believed that in that way they would keep the avenging soul from seeping out. The wooden pegs were being removed from the lips and replaced with with dangling cotton cords. The last step was to hang the head over a fire to dry and harden.

The warriors wanted to maintain the features, as it was important to them that the final product resembles the original victim. Even so, distortion was inevitable and the jaws appear to jut outwards.

They used to make a hole in the top of the head in order to be able to wear them around their neck as a trophy. After the heads were complete they were presented as a sign of victory and they were used in feasts and rituals.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrunken_head
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-does-one-actually-shrink-a-head-5994665/
http://www.unmuseum.org/headshrinkers.htm