Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Shrunken Heads Work

Episode Date: September 2, 2017

In this week's SYSK Select episode, although U.S. museum collections are rife with counterfeits, shrunken heads are far from fiction. The Shuar tribe of Ecuador has shrunken heads for centuries. Learn the methodical process of shrinking a head and how they're used in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, it's me, Josh, and for this week's SYSK Selects, I've chosen Shrunken Heads, one of the all time great stuff you should know episodes. It originally ran in June of 2011.

And although it will teach you step by step how to shrink a human head, you should not try this at home. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me, as always, it's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes this Stuff You Should Know, the podcast.

Indeed, not the radio show, though. No, not yet. It probably will be eventually, this one. Yeah, I bet you they'll speed this one through, man. You know it's crazy, is we could say right now, hello WFMU listeners, so that when this is repurposed into our radio show and WFMU, it'll blow their minds.

What you're speaking of is we're on WFMU in New York. If you live in the New York, New Jersey area, 91.1, you can hear us Fridays from seven to eight PM now. That's not at all what I was speaking of. Or Hudson Valley at 90.1. You got the call signs all over the place, don't you? Two stations. Yeah, and tattooed on your tricep.

I might do that. Yeah. They're gonna rush this one through. They're gonna see, I'm not even gonna say the topic, even though people already know, because they clicked on it, but they're gonna see that and go, whew, we need to get this on the air.

Yeah. Chuck, remember we also did one on cannibalism before. Yeah, and this is related? Well, I relate the two in the introduction of this article in Trunken Heads, right? So those two things really probably are equated with pre-civilized barbarism, savagery, more than anything else, right?

Agreed, and this is just as gruesome we should point out. That's our little warning, done. But with cannibalism, there's a lot of dispute over exactly how and when it was practiced. We do know there is evidence that people have eaten other people in the past, but we're starting to think that it was never in any kind of ritual form,

where basically it was like we're enduring some horrible climate change and famine, and so we're going to figure out how to justify this through warring with neighbors and then feeding ourselves with their dead bodies. Yeah, for nutrition. But the jurors still out as to whether or not cannibalism was ever practiced in any real mass form

by any culture, but that's not the case with head shrinking. Head shrinking is this weird little cultural trait, I guess, that is specific to one culture as far as we know, and we know that culture because we could go down to Ecuador right now and meet some of them, the Shuar culture. Yeah, I got a few tribes that did it, but they're the main daddies. So what you're talking about is there's evidence

that other tribes did practice it in pre or pericolumbian contact. Yeah. And the evidence is like it's shown in tapestries or that tribes are or something. There's only one tribe that's documented as having done it and that's the Shuar. And only one that did it really, really well.

Yeah, they're pretty good at it. And if you're going to look up Shuar and you run across Javaro Shuar, it's the same people as Shuar members of the Javaro Language Group. Yeah, and that's a, apparently that's a kind of a slam that the word Juara, it's like a corruption of that. What, Shuar?

Those people, yeah. It was, I think it meant like uncivilized or something in different languages. Like Eskimo. Yeah, maybe so. Lubber Eater's member. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the Nazis may have done it too.

May have named the Shuar? No, may have shrunken heads. Oh, really? Yeah, they found some at Buckingwald and even presented that at the Nuremberg Trials as like, hey, look what these guys did. Yeah, they did all sorts of mess up stuff. There's a bar of soap in Canada

that's supposedly made from the fat of concentration camp victims. I should say it's alleged though. They never pinpointed and said the shrunken head came from Jews from Buckingwald, but it's, you know. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like there's very few incredibly strange exotic things that a culture has done that we can say yes,

definitively these people did do this. There's no, it hasn't been blown up by Hollywood or anything like that. This is legitimate and shrunken heads are that kind of thing. And the reason why the Shuar were able to shrink heads and get really good at it over the years was because even after contact with Europeans,

like the Spanish coming into South America, the Shuar were one of the very few groups that managed to repel any kind of Spanish colonialism. Like they lived under Spanish rule for I think like 30 or 33 years. And then frankly said, we're tired of being taxed for our gold. So we're just gonna kill a lot of you. Yeah, and it worked.

Yeah, there was a revolt, right? Yeah, they killed like 25,000 people and then Spain, was it just Spain? I guess said, we're just gonna get out of here. You guys are good. Exactly, and that's really saying something, considering the amount of gold ore that the Shuar's like land sat on.

Right, yeah, and you know that Spaniards love their gold. So the Spaniards were like, okay, we know you're in there and we're gonna leave you alone, you go do whatever you wanna do. The Shuar just continued to practice head hunting and head shrinking. Head hunting practice all over the world, right? Yeah.

Head shrinking, Shuar only as far as documentation goes. The meetings with the Spaniards, they probably at first were like, no, no, and then they were like, it's not that much gold. Exactly. It's really, I mean. We can get gold elsewhere. Exactly.

Yeah, well, we'll hold the Incas hostage. I'm reading 1491 again right now. Really? It's a great book. I was hoping to read that before you read it again. Sorry. I never picked it up though, that's the first step. I even went and bought a book like special for this book.

Oh yeah? Yeah. One of those little clip on deals? Yeah. Very nice. Works like a champ. So Chuck, why would anybody shrink ahead? I mean, obviously they're just big dumb savages

who like to shrink heads, right? I mean, there can't possibly be any explanation behind this. Not true, Josh, because as you point out, because you wrote this awesome article. Oh yeah. So you know the answer, but that's just our shtick. I was acting. They are firmly rooted in magic and spiritualism and war.

And from an early age, little boys are taught like retribution, violent retribution is a really good thing and it's a part of our culture. Yeah, and if you don't carry out violent retribution properly, your dead uncle or your dead grandfather or whatever, your dead ancestors going to come back and bring horrible pestilence and famine on you. You're in trouble.

So they do do it for a reason. They do it to, I guess, ward off those spirits, right? Or to finalize the whole thing. Yeah, well, so it's part of this larger process. It's part of this bigger belief, which is if you die, if we're related and you die of some unseen disease, right? Let's say you die of cancer. It's not cancer.

It's somebody else in another household, another Shuar household, bewitched you and using magic killed you remotely. So since there's no priestly class among Shuar culture, like anybody can consult with the spirits under the right circumstances, the right circumstances being you take hallucinogenic drugs, I would take a hallucinogenic drug, probably Natema, right?

Yeah, it's from a jungle vine, evidently. Yes, a jungle vine that gets you lit. Yeah, and I just want to point out, I love that from a jungle vine, like hallucinogenic mushrooms, it's like you name it, some human has found a way to get every bit out of every single thing on the earth if it can mess you up.

Don't forget toads. Toads, yeah, licking toads. Yeah. We don't recommend that, though, by the way. No. Although I was listening to an old, old, old episode and you talked about your hallucinogenic toad collection in college that you just like to collect toads.

It was funny. I don't remember that. So, I suspect that you died because you were bewitched and now I've taken Natema and I'm on a vision quest and I'm consulting with your spirit, maybe some other spirits to find out who killed you and I'm going to come down and be like, oh, it was George down the river.

Right. So now I have a blood vendetta against George. Jorge. Jorge, thank you. Okay, sure. And I'm going to assemble other households in the area into a confederation to go take your head, George, to make it right.

Jorge. Yeah, because if I don't, then you, my dead relative, are going to haunt me. Yeah. And bad things are going to happen. And plus it's just a matter of like, that's what our culture calls for. Yeah.

And you said they'll even tell the other tribes sometimes like, we're coming for you. Yeah, they'll alert the other householder plans because this isn't like a quick thing. It's very well planned. Yeah. And there's a lot of people involved and it's very violent and bloody

when it finally does happen. But yeah, they'll say, we're coming after you. You're in big, big trouble. And there may be retribution, but more likely than not, it's going to be like, well, you probably shouldn't have killed his uncle. Oh, really? Yeah.

Because that was going to be my question. Isn't this just an endless loop of head shrinking and cutting or cutting then shrinking? Well, it is like it's supported by death, but it's generally nonviolent death that they associate with magic or bewitchment, which really requires this specific type of retribution. Okay, okay.

Gotcha, yeah. So revenge will take place. I see you also pointed out that maybe the whole household is slaughtered, maybe they'll take the women as wives. Yeah. And we're not really sure. Like they used to take the wives further back. Is that the deal?

Well, some old account said that these guys are polygamous, which they are as you are, are polygamous. So if they do carry out one of these raids, they're going to take the women as their wives. But then a more recent one from I think the seventies or eighties or something later in the 20th century said, no, they kill everybody they find in this household. They just don't take little kids' heads,

but they'll kill little kids. Yeah, but they don't take their head. I like that even they had a line they would draw. Not much shrinking to be done. They like to shrink things. I wonder if that has something to do with it, but a little, never mind, I'm not going to go there. So check there's a specific way that all this

is going to go down, right? Very specific. Because she or don't live near one another. They live over a pretty substantial area of the Amazon basin. Yeah, there's no high rise full of sure. Right. So it will take days to get to this place.

And when they finally get there, they basically alert their target that they're here by, if they have guns, they'll shoot into the air. They'll shoot at the house or whatever. Basically, they're like, come on out, punk. We're looking for Jorge. Yeah, because he killed my uncle. I imagine too, I'm making this up,

but it seems like if they sent out Jorge, they might just be like, OK, we'll just take Jorge. That could be the case. Or do they just exact revenge over the whole family no matter what? You know, I would imagine that probably depends on the person, on the amount of rage and mourning and grieving. And drugs that they're taking.

Right, yeah. So even if they do have guns, you use a spear. If you're going to take someone's head to shrink it and turn it into, we haven't even said yet, what's called a tansa. Yeah. Or sansa. Yeah.

Right? T-S-A-N-T-S-A. Yes. You kill them with the spear by driving the spear through their neck. I'll do it. Their throat. That's that.

And then you start this process of shrinking their head by cutting their head off. And you even do that in a specific way, too. Yes, right. You cut Chuck into a V, right? You do. Between the clavicles, above the clavicles, in a V shape, resulting in the point of the V,

I guess, between the nipples. Yeah, so there's like a pointed flap hanging down from the neck. Just a pointed flap. Sort of like a skin ascot, right? We should probably say that this is where it starts to get graphic in this podcast, because we're going to describe, you will know how to shrink

ahead after we're done. We're always like 20 seconds late with us. Also, if you shrink ahead, because of this, we no longer consider you a member of the Stuff You Should Know Nation. You've gone off the deep end. You're a murderer. And you should be punished severely for your crime.

OK, thanks. OK, is that a good disclaimer? Yeah, I hope we didn't have to say that. But there may be one sicko out there. You never know. So like you said, you cut it in the V shape. And then you set a hairband, potentially, or a vine. It's like a scrunchie.

Yeah. OK. Yeah, because the men often wear their hair long, and they'll have it back in a ponytail. And once you have stabbed somebody, cut their head off in this methodical way, you need to get out of there, because there may be reinforcements coming.

So you loop it through the throat, and then out the mouth, tie it off, and you've got a little pocketbook. Yep, and you tie it around your waist, or throw it over your shoulder, and you get the heck out of there, exactly. Because you will be killed if you're found, right? Yeah, I would imagine.

They don't like it when you kill neighbors or whatever. Sure. But also, you need to get out of there, because you've just probably discarded your weapons. Once you use a weapon to kill somebody in this ritual manner, it's spoiled. Like everything from the beginning stages of this raid all the way to the end of it, the stuff that you're using

is spoiled, and has to just be left behind. So you're probably running to get out of there, and you're weaponless. And I would agree with that tactic anyway. I mean, lightens the load? Well, no, and like we say later, there's like a clay pot and other things you use. That is spoiled, you know?

Because it has a head on it? Yeah, it's just dirty, like get it out of there. It's got blood on it. You don't want to cook in it? No. We're getting to that now. So wow, this is a really methodical one, isn't it? Like step by step.

As is shrinking heads. And you know what's funny is, as I was reading this the whole time, I was like, yeah, that's how I'd drink a head. Like it all makes total perfect sense. And they've been doing it for centuries, if not millennia. So they really do have it down step by step. Now, obviously, it's easier for us to see it as step by step as outsiders.

Sure. There's tons of significance with every single step and a lot of symbology. But for the most part, it is a very methodical way of taking and shrinking a head that this you are practiced. That's right. So we left off with getting the heck out of Dodge. And that is when the process begins.

Because like you said, they live far apart from each other. So they can't just wait till they get back. It might be three days later. And you're going to have a rotten head. So they started immediately with an elder tribesman who's probably not doing the fighting. But he heads up the process. What were they called?

He is called the kuraka. They started on the way home. Well, he's probably the one who, he's the head of the household, or he's like in this confederation of households that was assembled, he's probably like the most respected or war-worn warrior. He shrunk a head or two in other words. Yeah, he knows what he's doing.

And he's probably the one who took the natema and had the vision quest and got the answer. But basically, he is the party planner for this whole thing. And he's the one imbued with the most spiritual significance throughout. So he's the one who's going to shrink the head. But he didn't necessarily go on this raid. And if he didn't, then he met this raiding party at a

pre-designated camp, one of many along the way back home from the place where they just killed the people to home. So he says, Jorge's the man. Go get him. I'll meet you at checkpoint A. Exactly. Camp Fun. And now they're meeting there.

OK, so that's where we are. It is very methodical. And it's important, you said, to be attentive to these steps. Because if you do it wrong, it doesn't count, right? Well, yeah, you're part of this is paying homage to your dead ancestor, or appeasing your dead ancestor. And if you don't do it right, then your dead ancestor's not appeasing.

You're in trouble. Right. Yeah, it doesn't count. And part of that is if the Soraka, the Karaka, when he starts this process, he'll say there's incantations. And it's not just him. It's like everybody in the raiding party is very much paying attention to this and being a part of it.

So he'll be like, I'm pulling the throat from the neck. And the other people will say he's pulling the throat from the neck. And it goes down like that pretty much every step of the way. There's nothing funny about that. It's the way you said it, I think. Yeah.

Well, we also need to point out that the warrior guys also have to do certain things like not eat certain foods, abstain from sex, they don't hunt alone. And this is during the whole year long process? No, this is during the head shrinking process. OK, OK. All right, because the spirit is held at bay. Yeah.

And you said it. I mean, this is a year long process. It doesn't take a year to shrink a head, but a head holds this magical significance for a year. And there's certain prescribed celebrations that have to take place to fulfill this obligation to the dead ancestor. It's a big deal. It is.

Yeah. Yeah, you don't just shrink heads willy-nilly. Right. At least I don't. And Chuck, I don't know if we should say here or not, but the head has three significances, right? Yeah. First, it's physical proof to the dead ancestor

that you're carrying out this revenge on his or her behalf. Yeah, so a trophy in a way, but not like Europeans thought of it. Right. Secondly, it has a spiritual significance where it is the vessel in which the spirit of the person who's been killed, whose head it was, is trapped. So you're commanding that person now.

Right. And then thirdly, it increases the social status of the warrior who's wearing it, because you wear that thing for like a year around your neck. Exactly. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker

necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever.

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Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So let's tell them how it's done. What's step one?

Well, first, if you want to shrink ahead, Josh, you have to skin ahead, because you can't shrink a skull. Everyone knows that. So you need to get the, basically, what you want to do is create a Halloween mask where there once was a full head. So you cut some flaps around the base of the skull that, and I guess, sort of like, when you're taking chicken skin off, you can, or if you're like,

spicing chicken under the skin sometimes, you'll cut a sliver, and then you'll stick your fingers in there. So you're loosening, little by little, the skin from the skull, cutting the tendons, and cutting everything, the muscles that hold it all together. Right, but you want to cut close to the skull, because one of the aims of this is to keep

the facial characteristics of the person so that he would be recognizable to his family. Except smaller. Right. Yeah. So you're working all that through. You're separating it from the skull. You remove the eyes.

You discard the eyes. You discard the cartilage. You discard the skull with the brain inside of it, evidently. And what else? You cut away the cartilage that holds the nose and the ears intact. So like you said, just like a mask. It's just what you have is the scalp and the face and the neck,

all that skin still connected, and the hair, and the holes where the eyes were, and those flap in the mouth, and all that stuff is there. It's just there's no bone or connective tissue, or there is connective tissue and fat still. There's just no bone any longer. So this is the most gruesome mask that you could ever envision in your life.

Because it's real. I wonder if any of them ever put it on. I don't know. Hey, look at me. Like, yeah, it would have to be a caraca with a small head and a victim with a really big head, but yeah, maybe so. Although, no, this is so specific. There's no way, because that would

mean that the revenge will come up on your head. All right. So that's the skinning. So now we get to the shrinking. Yes, now you have that rubbery mask that's made out of real skin, because it's a real person. And you have to boil it down first. You mentioned a clay pot.

They make a ceramic pot that is just big enough to hold a head, and they make it just for that person's head. Because it's never been used before, and it will never be used again. They'll break it and leave it in the river. Can we call it a head at this point? That's a skin bag, the face bag, the skull bag. This is going off the rails.

So the caraco dips it three times into this heated water, this heated over a campfire. And this is one of those situations where he says, like, I'm dipping the head, and then the warriors will be like, he's dipping the head. And then I think on the third time, he leaves it in there. For 30 minutes, no more than 30 minutes. I've seen several sources cite this,

but no more than 30 minutes, because after that, the hair starts to come out. But the skin bag, the skull bag, basically simmers at a light boil for 30 minutes. Yeah, and remember, vinegar, not olive oil, because the olive oil floats at the top. Yeah, and imagine there was trial and error in this, too, because they probably boiled it too long,

and the hair came out, and they're like, no, we like it with the hair. So let's work on this. Yes. So they figured out, all right, 30 minutes. You can't really go beyond that, or else you lose a lot of hair. Right. So then after that, you take it out,

and this thing is already shrunk by about a quarter now, or a third. Third. And you leave it to dry. You dangle it from like a spear and just let it dry for a while. Break the pot. Yep, so you see your pot spoiled. Yeah.

And then once this is dried, now you're entering the real curing process. Yeah. The head is already noticeably smaller, unsettlingly smaller, but it's going to get a lot smaller. Like you said, the size of a fist through this dry heat curing process. Yeah, and like I said, this all makes total sense.

This is how I would have done it had I been a shura. So we should probably also say that when it was boiled, pigs were likely inserted to keep the mouth closed, right? And those pigs may be left in, or they may be removed, but either way, the mouth is going to be sewn shut after it's dried. To begin this dry curing process in between the boiling and the dry curing, they're going

to start to sew the orifices shut, right? Yeah, because what you want to end up with is something that you can turn upside down like a sack and put hot rocks, then hot pebbles, and then eventually hot sand in there in a step-by-step process to dry it from the inside out, and they roll it around in there because you don't want it to sit there. You don't want it to burn through a cheek.

Yeah, it would burn through a cheek, exactly. So they move it around, they work it around, it dries a little by little until you get to the sand. And at that point, I'm sorry, they use a blade to press against the lips to dry out. Like a heated machete, like sears the lips. They use hot rocks on the outside to press it against and rub it against like you're ironing an Oxford.

Right, because as it's shrinking, if you don't shrink it evenly, the face is going to get distorted. I mean, think about this. You're shrinking it down almost like the point of linear perspective, that vanishing point. Yeah. So imagine that's in the center of this head. You're trying to shrink it all down evenly to that point.

And that's got to be incredibly difficult, because you're doing it with hot rocks and hot pebbles and hot sand, and you boiled the skin. So to bring it down, you have to smooth it out once in a while by basically using a hot flat rock as an iron, a clothes iron to smooth out the wrinkles. Let me ask you, how you get down so small? Remember that in Beetlejuice?

From Beetlejuice. Hey, there goes Elvis. Yeah, there was a, you just reminded me of that, like the intro of this had like five different variations of that scene, description of that scene. Yeah. And I couldn't figure out why I couldn't make it work. And then I finally realized, oh, this is a lot more serious

than the Beetlejuice reference. Yeah, the Beetlejuice reference isn't allowed in this one. I think it's allowed in the podcast now. Sure. Yeah, the podcast is totally different. That was because that was a great part. That's how he switches numbers with the tribesmen. Yeah.

He's in the waiting room. He has like 9 million something. Yeah. And then he goes, hey, there goes Elvis. And he switches number four. Yeah. Good stuff. You know the numbers, huh?

Well, I mean, yeah. That's pretty impressive. Thank you. It's a great movie. I've seen it a bunch. Oh, and so that guy didn't look anything like a Shuar. And I think he used like some sort of magical dust to shrink Beetlejuice.

Yeah, it was not that good. So Tim Primm was totally off. But I think another appearance of Shuar in the movies is the Raiders of the Lost Ark with the gold skull in the beginning. Remember the guys who all have the bozaneros? From what I've seen of what Shuar looked like, those were very closely modeled after Shuar tribes people.

Oh, really? Interesting. Yeah. All right. OK, so Chuck, where we last left off poor Jorge's head, he had hot rocks and hot pebbles and hot sand being rolled around him. His eyes had been sewn shut.

His mouth had been sewn shut. The flap had been sewn shut. So it was just a pouch. The ears too, I guess. Somebody pressed a hot machete to his lips, probably the Caraca. Yeah. And no, I didn't see anything about the ears

being sewn shut. But surely they have to be. But I didn't see it anywhere in any of the sources. I think that's implicit. But so now you have this thing. It's getting more and more shrunk. And it's probably about as shrunk as it's going to get from the hot pebbles or whatever.

So you hang it over a fire. Yeah, that's the final drying stage, right? Yep. And then you take some campfire charcoal ash, rub it on the skin, which gives it that distinctive darkened look. That and the fact that it's been shrunk down by dry heat. And you have yourself a santa. And that takes a few days, right?

The final fire drying process? Yeah. OK. All right, done. That's it. And we should also note that the hair doesn't shrink at all. So you might not think about it when you're looking at it. But any shrunken hen you've ever seen

is a tiny head with very long hair. Yeah. The guy didn't necessarily have long hair. His head just shrunk a lot. He might have had a flat top. To about the size of a man's fist, about a quarter of the size of a regular human head. Yeah.

It's gruesome, but I mean, as is our way with don't judge other cultures, who am I as Chuck in Atlanta to judge these people in South America has been doing this for millennia, it's kind of neat. Yes. Is that wrong to say? No. OK.

It is. It's interesting. It is. And our interest in this is probably more refined and less like, oh, than like our fellow Americans from like 50 or 100 years ago. Yeah, sure. You know?

Right. You know this was filmed. One guy actually filmed the rituals. Yes, that's what I'm saying. It's documented. Yeah, 1961 is the only time anyone has ever put a camera on this. Yes.

And they're pretty sure that was it. Yeah. I haven't seen it. It looks like it. Oh, you saw it? Is it on the YouTube? Huh? No way.

Yeah. Edmund Belofsky? Yes. Wow. All right. Oh, I'm going to go look that up like right now. And I don't remember the guy's name. I wasn't like, oh, yes, of course, Edmund.

But I mean, he's the only one who has it on there. So yeah. Wasn't Tim Burton? No, he doesn't know what he's talking about. So. All right, where are we here? It's sound shut. You've got the beginnings of your vengeance,

but this is the beginning of the long, year-long process of fulfilling this. Yeah, so basically, you walk into town, your town, your household, holding this new Sansa you just made along the way, aloft with the Rocky theme going off in your head, right? Sure. Because you are as bad as they come.

That's right. You've just taken a head of somebody who killed your relative and you shrunk it. And now you're going to wear that around your neck for the next year, and it's time to party. Yes, that is the first thing that happens is a big, what you call, in quotes, ceremonial dance at which there is an orgy of wild drinking.

Yeah, this guy did a brief ethnography of the Shuar in 1921 for the National Geographic Society. And that's how he described this first party. And you thought, why paraphrase it? Let's just throw quotes around it because it's perfect. I mean, that guy saw it, you know? And they drink chicha, which is manioc beer. And chicha is a, or manioc is a shrub.

So they make this chicha out of shrub. I think manioc's a root. I saw it was a shrub. I saw a root. Maybe it's the root of that shrub. So manioc, right? They drink this stuff all the time, as it is. So the average adult male drinks three to four gallons,

11 to 15 liters of manioc beer every day, just as a normal matter, of course. Yeah. So that's everyday drinking. Imagine how much they drink at a wild orgy of drinking, like an actual celebration. Imagine kegs of chicha are abundant. Right, and they go for days.

The celebration goes for days. And basically, the raid party have whatever sances they've made and are showing it off and using them to recreate what happened. Right, right. I'd like to try that, the chicha. Like we get beer from like, you know, this is my beer from Wyoming.

I don't know if we have any Ecuadorian listeners. And we appreciate that beer, but I want to try chicha. I want to see what that's all about. I bet it's pretty gross. If we have any Ecuadorian listeners, we'd love to have some. I don't think it's bottled commercially. But just send it to us in a bucket.

That's how people used to get beer up until like the 40s, I think. In a bucket? Yeah, you'd go down to the brewery with like a bucket and they'd fill it up. Those were the days. But you'd spill so much, I imagine. Yeah.

I think you'd drink it down a little first before you hit the road. That's what I think. On the way home, you'd get home and be like, man, my bucket's empty, I need to go back. I spilled it along the way into my mouth. All right, so more parties. How many parties in total?

Three feasts and parties? Yeah, there's three. There's the first one, which is the num-pank. Then there is the nappin and amianu. And amianu is the last one. It occurs about a year after this raid. Right. And amianu means fulfillment, as far as I understand.

And at the end of this, they're like, yeah, we don't need this anymore. Seriously. And it ends up in a gift shop in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Or they're known to give it to their kids as toys. It loses all significance whatsoever. Like overnight, like after amianu, it goes from this prized spiritual, social, cultural,

significant item, right? To nothing. Nothing. So the shuar were known to be fairly surprisingly friendly people if they thought you were on the up and up. Yeah, if you had something to trade and you were there to trade with them, they would say, yeah, sure.

As long as they thought it was fair, remember, they revolted in 1599 against Spanish colonial rule because they thought they were being unfairly taxed. And I bet they probably were. Sure. So if they think you're on the up and up and you're cool and you're not doing them any harm or whatever, then you can trade with them.

And that happened big time. Yes. And Europeans say, what you got there, buddy? Whoa, this is a Santa. It's a shrunken head of somebody who insulted my or who killed my uncle and then my kids playing with it now. And then they say, well, I got a boomstick that you might be interested in.

Exactly. And that began the trade of shrunken heads between the West and the shuar. And it started out just like that, a gun for a shrunken head, one for one. That seems fair. Yeah. I'm surprised that the Europeans didn't

try to take advantage of that and be like, oh, this boomstick is pretty pricey. I need like five of those heads. Or maybe they didn't want to push their luck. Yeah, I wouldn't push my luck with the shuar. One for one sounds like a good straight up deal. You give them their gun and you call them sir the whole time. Well, and since they did give them guns,

that led to a downward spiral, like usually when you introduce guns into a culture, of war. Well, remember, they don't use guns to kill. They use the spear. What do they use it for to hunt? Just to shoot and be like, check me out. I'm going to scare the tar out of you by shooting at your house. But I'm really going to cut your head off with a spear.

Well, what really started the war was, I think the Europeans came there to do this trading. And then that, of course, brought disease that they weren't used to seeing. And so that disease killed people. And they thought, of course, because they were a shuar, they didn't know it was disease. They thought it was magic.

So they started taking drugs and saying, hey, it was Jorge. Right. More disease equals more death equals more retribution. That is huge. That is a huge and very overlooked aspect of how European encroachment into shuar culture increased the war among the shuar. And the other way it did was just simple supply and demand.

The Europeans wanted more heads than the shuar had. So the shuar were like, OK, well, we'll just go start warring more frequently. Before, it was a very infrequent thing. And then by, I think, the turn of the 20th century, that war was like a monthly endeavor, which had never been seen before among shuar. Yeah, you said between 1889 and 1911,

one area declined in population by 50% because of this war. Just because of war. Not even disease. Just war. That's a lot of dead people. That's a lot of shrunken heads. And it's because the West demanded it. They wanted this, and they were willing to trade for it.

They were very much in demand because they saw them as obviously very exotic collectibles. But they did have a, I like this, the shuar had a backup plan in case you were able to go and kill the person who inflicted pain upon your family. But I couldn't get your head. They'll allow you to get the head of a sloth instead. But I imagine that's sort of shameful.

The guy with the sloth around his neck might be like, oh, it's not Jorge. He's a little self-conscious at the party. Yeah, I think so. Like he's partying, but he's like, ah, Jorge. He's off to the side drinking and punch. Now what if they, do you know if they don't even get retribution, what if they get defeated?

I didn't run across anything like that. I think that it was obviously a possibility because you're staging a raid. These people know you're coming, and they're not sending out Jorge on their own. They're going to fight you probably. So yeah, I don't know. I think you just failed and you're dead.

So you probably don't care that much about what happened to your uncle because you're sitting next to him right now. You're getting a near fall from him. So the sloth heads are significant because they have a feeling that that might be some of the early forgeries, which became commonplace. I think about 80% of the ones that they have today are likely forgeries.

Yeah, but they were authentic because the Shuar made them. Yeah, they were something. They were Shuar tances. They just weren't human, right? So that started, that was quickly, they quickly ran out of the sloth ones, and then they were counterfeited by people who weren't Shuar.

So you would have monkey heads. One's made out of goat or horse skin. Human heads that were stolen and shrunken by amateurs from bodies from the morgues in Ecuador who had nothing to do with the Shuar. The Shuar had never had anything to do with these shrunken heads. And there's a lot of ways that you can tell

an authentic Shuar, Sansa, Tansa. I'm going to say it both ways, the whole time. And one of them is the lips are usually so shut and they were knotted in a certain way and the strings were left to dangle. That's called the Shua knot. That's a dead giveaway. And there's, I ran across this one source.

It was basically like here, 10 identifying characteristics of a Sansa. Number one, head shrunk. Right, well there was one, there were a couple of specimens of entirely shrunken bodies. But the people didn't go, there's one guy who's like an Ecuadorian general

or something, or military officer. The person who shrunk his whole body didn't go to the trouble of removing all of the bones from the hand or feet. So he's just a little body with like big hands and feet. That's kind of cool. It is kind of cool, but not authentic. Yeah, and I just cooked up an idea though.

If I was, went to get Jorge, but I could not get Jorge's head. And I was shamed into getting a monkey instead. I would just tell people that that was Jorge and that he sort of looked like a monkey. Yeah. I wonder if that would work. I don't know, no.

If you're a big fat lying shoe, or you would work. Okay. You know? Yeah. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews,

co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger

and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander

each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So, Chuck, you mentioned that like 80% or something of all Sansa's are considered counterfeit. It was probably, I would think it's even higher than that. Like, big museums, big time museums, were collecting these or received them

through donations of famous adventurers or collectors, widows. Which is a moral issue. It is these days. It didn't used to be. It was just like, oh, cool, shrunken head. Oh, cool, mummy. But now, there is this question of repatriation.

Like, remember in the Totem Pole episode, we talked about George H.W. Bush, signing the Grave Repatriation Act for Native Americans? So this is a big issue, and it has been once. It's like the 80s or 90s, I would say. And now, all of a sudden, all these museums who were used to making gobs of cash off of displaying shrunken heads are like, oh, we're

kind of on morally gray ground here, which is really like we're on immoral ground. So what do we do with this? Well, some people are returning them. Some museums have returned them. And that, I guess, solves that problem. Other ones, I guess, I mean, they're testing them now a lot. In fact, this week, they got the first successful DNA

test from a shrunken head. Oh, yeah. Who did it turn out to be? Agatha Christie. Or, hey, Agatha Christie. It was published in this week's issue of, or maybe it's monthly or quarterly, Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.

And it was on display. The head was on display at a museum in Tel Aviv. And a senior lecturer at a veterinary school, which I thought was interesting, tested this thing and authenticated it as real human skin. And probably, and died in South America, probably of Afro-Equadorian descent. Wow.

So we knew it was real anyway. But with DNA now, it's like, all right, it's 100%. Yes. And now we can tell. Well, and now you can test, though, at least these museums can, to see if they're forgeries. If they're forgeries, I guess there's no harm in keeping them. No.

On display. They're probably not going to draw the visitors in a real Sansa wood. Right. But the Smithsonian's, oh, which one was it? The National Museum of the American Indian? Yes. Led the way in repatriating Sansas to the Shuar in 1999,

I think. And then other museums are thinking of doing it, thinking very publicly and very hard about it. Like the Pitt Rivers Museum in England has a pretty substantial collection. There was a lot of basically grave robbing and looting of cultures in the 19th and 20th centuries that were funded by museums that now have these collections

that everybody was cool with that all of a sudden the public's not so cool with. So maybe we should give that stuff back, because these are human remains. And Sansas in particular are called quasi-objects, because because of the transformation they go through, they're not just human remains. They're also cultural artifacts.

Right. But at the end of the day, they're human remains. And really, they should probably go back to what's now the Shuar Federation, which was established in the 1950s. Right. And supposedly, since then, there hasn't been a Sansa, but that film from 1961 kind of undermines that idea, doesn't it? Yeah.

And didn't you point out, too, that during the boom in the trade of the shrunken heads that people would rob Ecuadorian morgues? Right. Of their heads to make these? Yeah. So that's certainly hinky. Yep, to say the least.

Yeah. So I guess the moral of this entire episode is if you have a shrunken head, you should probably give it back. That's right. And didn't the Christians stop all this? Aren't they to blame or to be credited with? Yeah. Christian missionaries are the ones who kind of brought the Shuar

more into Ecuadorian society and got their culture into this Shuar Federation. And they stopped warring within themselves, too. Yes, but there are still rumors. And we'll end it on this one. As recently as 1996. So everybody's like, if you're a Shuar, supposedly you don't shrink heads anymore,

but you know exactly how to do it. Well, now I do, too. And under the right circumstances, you would do it. Right. But everything's just been so cool for so long, you don't have to do it. But supposedly in the 1996 Senapa War, I believe is what it was, between Peru and Ecuador, Ecuadorian soldiers who were Shuar.

Modern soldiers. Yes. So there was a rumor that they were making Sansa out of the heads of Peruvian soldiers that they killed during this war. Interesting. Yeah. I wonder if they followed the whole process, the year-long deal

with the celebrations, or if it was more modernized. Like, well, we're just going to do this for the old school guys. I don't know. Keep the culture alive. Well, the idea that it happened during the Senapa War has been largely poo-pooed. But I don't know. If they did, I don't know how they did it.

But I'll bet that all of the other people in their platoon were really scared of them. Yeah, probably so. So that's it for head shrinking, literally. There's nothing more to say about it. No, I can't think of anything. No? I even looked.

If you want to see a bunch of pictures of shrunken heads and stuff like that, you can look up my article on HowStuffWorks.com by typing in shrunken heads in the handy search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. That's how I found it. That brings up not listener mail, as I understand it, right? No, Josh. You know what it's time for?

Say it. Admit it. That's right, Josh. This is the point that we do every few months, where we thank fans for sending tokens of their appreciation in. And many of them are trying to get a small plug of their own, which we don't mind doing, as long as it's on the up and up. Yeah.

And so here we go. We'll just tag team this. Listen up for your name. And if we forgot you, please remind us, and you will be on the next edition. Susanna from Archie Comics knows that I was an Archie Comic fan from the show, and that you made fun of me for that. And so she sent us a load of stuff, Archie boxer shorts,

and comics, and pencils and pens. I showed it to you, and you didn't want it. Chuck, you also got both of the gift cards from George from Guitar Center in Austin, Texas. George, I appreciate that. Yeah, man. But I knew that Chuck would put it to a lot better use than I would, so he got that one.

You could have got like a Guitar Center t-shirt. Mm-hmm. All right. Thank you, George. I used them both already. Vanessa, you sent us germ-inspired plushies. And they're these little zippered pouches that look like germs.

Yeah, two of my nieces are crazy about those, yeah. I should donate those to a small child. Germusa.com is where you can find those. And she donates 20% of sales to St. Jude's Children's Hospital. So that is very much worthy. And if you are re-gifting them, to really complete the whole thing, cough into it first, and then zip it up real quick, and then give it to the little plush germs.

That's good luck in the show. Sure, a culture, I think. Sure. Liz, a little bit sweets.com. Send us some more chocolates, which, thank you, Liz. But she owed it to us after the Molecular Gastronomy podcast. It was in return, remember? Yeah, are we one up on her now, or is she even?

We're even now. OK, yeah. But we got a good deal going with her, so let's just keep this up. OK, so thanks, Liz. Littlebitsweets.com, that is L-I-D-D-A-B-I-T-Sweets.com. And it's so good. That's true, Chuck.

I mean, we're not just plugging it. Every time we get a package from her, I just am delighted. Yes. And fatter. Farmer Al sent us unicorn tears from unicorntears.org. And my unicorn tears were tears of joy. Apparently, there are different kinds of unicorn tears. Oh, really?

Yes, mine were tears of joy. Mine were decked tears. Jody sent us some geocoins from her geocaching experience. It was very nice. Oh, yeah, that's right. No plug there, just a kind deed. Matt Lively sent us a sketchbook, Grandma's Big Breakfast, and 99 Other Drawings.

Is that the one with the everybody made a little squiggle and he'd draw from it? I believe so. OK, thanks, Matt. It was very neat. We got something from Jenna Dommas, and Jenna was on the co-ed trip to Guatemala with Jerry. Is it Gina?

It is Jenna. OK. It is spelled Gina, and Jerry told me how to pronounce it. And she sent a CD. She's a musician. And she sent us some CDs and t-shirts. And you can support her at jenadommas.com, but that is G-I-N-A-D-A-L-M-A-S.com.

And I haven't listened to CD yet because I just got it, but I'm going to check it out. Looks like some sort of an alt-country type of thing. Yes. Which I dig. So do you remember those competing gross stories, the paramedic and the ER nurse who are, I think, married? And we judged which story was grosser?

Fish in the butt. Yes, or intestines. When we pushed back in and we voted intestines, well, Matt and Anna, whose story is those worse, sent us thank you beers. So thank you for the beers. Johnny Spanish. I doubt if that's his real name.

He does discover Spanish. There's a podcast, actually, called Discover Spanish, and it teaches you Spanish. And he sent us a CD set from Language Treks. And I haven't listened to it yet, but I've long wanted to learn Spanish. And I didn't want to throw down for Rosetta Stone. Yeah.

So I'm going to try it. Why? Was it pricey? Yeah. So I got it now for free from Johnny Spanish. Yes. Who's going to teach you to say stuff that you're not supposed to be saying?

Probably so. Carrie and Ryan sent us a lovely photo of Woods on Fire. She teaches back country landscape photography at a community college in DuPont, Washington. And you can go check out her stuff at photosbycarry.com, photosbykerre.com, all one word. Josh, we got some beef jerky. I know.

This was awesome. I haven't tried it yet. It was so good. I almost finished it all on the way home. And it was a slab. Yeah, it was a slab. It was like my bucket of beer, but it was beef jerky. It was Bud's beef jerky from Northern California.

And Mike, Geotas, or Geotas, sent us that. And did he send us anything else? I don't. I think it was just a beef jerky. Yeah. I mean, that's plenty. Yeah. But at first, somebody's not thought

there was beer that went with it, or maybe just came in. And Mike, if you want to keep that coming, if you can stagger them so I get a new one every day, that would help me a lot. What's next? Let's see, Allison and Frazier from Victoria, British Columbia sent us the SYSK Army t-shirt. This was an entrant into our contest

that we had some time back, which, by the way, I think we should have another t-shirt contest. What do you think? I was thinking that just the other day, actually. All right. And didn't win, but is awesome. And we've got our versions of it. We can wear them around now.

Yeah, they're Canadian. They might have won. But they were not allowed because of silly rules. Yes, they couldn't even enter. But they're in the image gallery. And they made the shirt anyway and sent it to us. Yes, so thank you very much, you guys. And finally, I want to give a personal thanks

to Dr. Gabriel Bird, dentist of Norman, Oklahoma. Because as you know, Josh, I am potentially looking at braces and jaw surgery for my messed up bite that is weakening my teeth. You're like Lisa Simpson projected 10 years out. Awful, man. It's so awful. And I posted on Facebook one day about people

that had experience with this. And Doc Bird said, hey, dude, I'm a dentist in Oklahoma. Call me. So I did. And we spent an hour on the phone. And he gave me all sorts of awesome tips and advice on what to look for in my appointment. And we're Facebook buddies now.

And it was very kind of them. So if you're in the Norman, Oklahoma area, I highly recommend Dr. Gabriel Bird. And he's quite a dreamboat. And then finally, we have about 10 more shoutouts. We've got Ajuma and other stories from Tyler Davis. He sent us his self-published book, which is pretty awesome. Got a nice origami crane from Jordan Hetzwell

in South Australia. We got a letter from Courtney B, who is an archeologist in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Thank you. We got a very nice letter from Sam W. And Sam, tell your dad, thank you for introducing you to the podcast from us. Please. We got a Valentine from Vlada.

I don't know if we ever thanked Vlada for that one. I found it in some postcards. OK. We got a postcard from Grenada from Emily, a postcard from Hell, Cayman Islands from Famous Tracy, who we know very well. Oh, yeah. Postcard from Gisborne, New Zealand from Susan P,

postcard of Benjamin Smythe on the UC Berkeley campus. Cool. Have you heard of this guy? No. He's just holding a sign that says you're perfect. He's a nice, positive dude. I bet he's wrong, but that's nice. OK.

And that came from Magnolia. Thanks, Magnolia. Got a postcard from Michelle W in Leiden, Holland, and then a postcard of a garot execution in the Philippines at the turn of the century from Cecile, who's a doctor in Manila. That's neat, though. It's like a guy wearing a bag over his head, and there's like a machine that looks kind of like a press.

But it's vertical. No, it's horizontal rather than vertical. And he's being executed. Some guys are standing around, but the executed is just sitting there holding his hat. Like, I'm just going to hang on to my hat while they kill me. Do you still have that? I don't think I saw that.

I want to see that. Yeah, it's pretty serious. But thank you, everybody, for all that stuff. And thank you to everybody who has ever sent anything that we forgot. If we did, it was a total oversight. It has nothing to do with how we feel about what you sent us. Send us an email and say, jerks, I sent you this.

How could you not thank me? I love you anyway. Signed you. OK? Agreed. You can send that email to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.