The Story of the Tribe that Shrunk and Hanged Their Skulls on Their Neck

Over thousands of years, many human societies on Earth strange ‘traditions’ it happened. Like embalming the dead, sacrificing people to the gods and spilling their blood on the ground… Another very interesting and blood-curdling tradition of this kind is the ‘skull reduction’ tradition of the Amazon tribe, the Jivaro.

The Jivaros are an indigenous people living in the Amazon jungle. What distinguishes them from hundreds of other indigenous tribes is skull reduction traditions. Because of these frightening traditions, they are often with words like savage and murderous Although they are remembered, the Jivaros are as ‘savages’ as a society that kills or fights any living thing because of any belief or thought, nothing more…

So who are these Jivaros?

The Jivaros live in the Marañón river region between Peru and Ecuador. traditional lifestyles Hunting with primitive weapons and ‘horticulture’, which is also a primitive agriculture is formed.

According to the beliefs of this tribe, who try to live on their own in the Amazon forests, every living and non-living being has special invisible souls. Only these souls does not exist from birth; acquired by some traditional means.

Also, if a person continues with the same soul for 4-5 years, at night when the owner of the soul is asleep. It’s like going out for a walk in the woods and leaving its owner. believed to have happened. It is thought that while the spirit is wandering in the forest, another Jivaro may find it and claim it. That’s why the Jivaros it gets a new spirit every few years.

Why do the Jivaros cut people’s heads off and carry them like necklaces?

We have said that the Jivaros acquired the aforementioned souls through some ‘traditional’ method. Request this traditional method is unfortunately ‘to kill’. The soul they gain when they kill brings them strength according to their beliefs.

And then every few years, they kill again in order not to be soulless and to renew their strength… This social tradition turns into a system based on constant killing, where this is considered perfectly normal, and so on.

In fact, killing and displaying as a sign or source of power is not just a Jivaro tradition. Even on the contrary, in the past of almost every society We can say that there are similar applications.

What makes Jivaros special is the ‘reduction’ process they do to the skulls of the people they kill. Let’s take a look at the details of this process.

Jivaros cut off the heads of those they killed. after cutting hollowing out skulls and separating bones They fill it with hot sand and stones and boil it. Thus, the reduction process begins. The skulls, which are then boiled and shrunk, are covered with a mixture of herbs specific to the region where the Jivaros live. Then their mouths and sometimes their eyes are sewn dry.

The Jivaros carry these skulls with them as a sign of their strength. Also, the souls they ‘gain’ as they kill themselves protect from sickness and death they also believe. Male Jivaros usually start killing and gaining souls from the time they reach puberty.

What are the skulls ‘shrunken’ by the Jivaros in Turkey doing?

At the end of last year, in the borders of Turkey four skulls captured. What are these skulls unique to the Jivaros, which have been subjected to ‘reduction’, which is unique in the world, to do in Turkey?

Let’s answer right away. The method of the Jivaros, which is now known as the ‘wild’ ‘murderer’, unfortunately, received for tens of thousands of dollars and it has been transformed into a commercial product for sale. Skulls, which were seized in Turkey and thought to be at least 500 years old, were seized during a raid against “historical artifacts smugglers” in an operation in Aliağa.

In many parts of the world, ‘artifacts’ of this primitive tradition are still marketed to enter the ‘collectors’ secret chambers, while today ‘produced’ to be sold for tens of thousands of dollars It is claimed that there are shrunken skulls, which are linked to the ‘unsolved murders’ in the Amazons. However, there is no data to confirm these claims.

Coşkun Aral described his frightening journey to the Jivaro tribe years ago in a video;