What I Learned Today
In the spirit of Halloween, here’s something I just learned about today. If you’ve ever seen a shrunken head before, your first thought was probably “How did they do that?”
OK, so your first thought was probably really something along the lines of “Oh man, that’s nasty. I think I’m going to be sick.” Fair enough. But I bet sometime between then and now, you wondered how they did that.
“They” were the Jivaro - an aboriginal people found along the Amazon in Peru and Ecuador. The heads were collected from their slain enemies - the gruesome results of raids of neighboring vilages. Now for the “how-to”.
It starts with a decapitated head - but you probably already knew that much. Anyway, (get ready for this) the head was split in the back, from the crown of the head down to the neck, then the scalp and face were peeled from the skull and cooked in a pot. The next step was taxidermy. The head was stuffed, sewn, and tanned.
So there’s that.