Original subtitles

Mastrelli: Shrunken heads.

What are these macabre curiosities?

Where do they come from?

How were they made?

Now scientists are using advanced forensic technology

To find out who these people really were.

They're uncovering a dark tale of ancient ritual

To reveal the secrets of shrunken heads.

For centuries, the mysteries of the past

Have kept their secrets,

But there are clues cast in gold,

Etched in stone, written in blood.

We can unlock them.

(mysterious music)

There are thousands of shrunken heads

In museums around the world.

Some on display, others locked away.

And the shocking truth is,

Many of these are real human heads.

Where did they come from?

How were they made?

And what's the true story

Behind this strange and disturbing phenomenon?

Now scientists can finally answer these questions

Using forensic science and advanced computer modeling.

In the 19th century,

A gruesome curiosity captured the public imagination

And created an obsession for these exotic novelties,

Decapitated human heads,

Shrunk to a fraction of their original size.

While they fascinated the public,

Little attention was ever paid to their origin.

Houlton: Shrunken heads have long been viewed

As almost like freak show ornaments

That would be put in displays,

Or in even private collections for people to stare at,

Without anyone really acknowledging

That this was once a living, breathing individual.

Mastrelli: Doctor tobias houlton is an anthropologist

Specializing in facial anatomy.

Today he is on a quest to unlock the secrets

Of ritual shrunken heads.

Houlton: The intention of our forensic investigation

Is that we can actually discover

The identity of the individual,

That it's not just the so-called specimen

That's hidden behind a glass cabinet,

But actually a living, breathing person that once existed.

Who are they?

Where did they reside?

And how did they land up as a shrunken head?

Mastrelli: The story begins deep in the amazon rainforest,

And with a single tribe, the shuar.

The tribe's ancestral homeland

Lies amongst the tributaries of the amazon river,

In the remote jungle of ecuador.

With a reputation as fearsome warriors,

The shuar were never conquered by the spanish empire.

Over thousands of years they mastered the macabre art

Of head shrinking before it was banned in the 1960s.

The shuar called these shrunken heads, tsantsa.

Felipe tsenkush is a former president

Of the shuar federation.

These weren't trophies of war.

They were more than simply symbolic.

In a world in which the spirits of the dead

Were as real as the living,

Shrunken heads served an important, practical purpose.

Houlton: It was not about the physical item.

It filled purely a practical, spiritual function.

Mastrelli: Doctor tobias houlton is traveling to the amazon

To the historic colonial city of cuenca in ecuador.

Here on the edge of shuar territory,

He wants to discover the secrets of shrunken heads.

Houlton: I want to get to understand the whole custom,

The people behind it,

As well as the victims of the head shrinking.

Mastrelli: The city's museum is home

To south america's largest collection of shrunken heads.

Houlton hopes these heads, so close to the shuar homeland,

Will hold more clues about how they were made,

And who they were.

But he's about to discover they're not what he expects.

With specialist imaging technology

Used by crime scene investigators,

He examines the heads in forensic detail.

Infrared reflectology captures infrared wavelengths

Beyond the range of visible light

To reveal details invisible to the naked eye.

Houlton: The benefit of using this

Is that it will give me a nice defined image of the skin

And give me a detailed idea

Of any changes in the skin pattern,

Which will help identify if this is a ceremonial tsantsa.

Mastrelli: It's the first time this technology has been used

To examine the heads in the museum's collection,

Revealing to curator, tamara landivar,

Details she's never seen before.

And almost immediately, houlton sees

There's something strange about this shrunken head.

There's no doubt this is a human head.

But a genuine ceremonial shrunken head

Should have smooth hairless skin,

Evidence that the head had been prepared

Using the traditional shuar technique

Of ironing the skin with a heated rock.

The images reveal the skin on this head

Is thicker and rougher than expected.

Houlton: The individual that was processing this head,

Didn't actually iron the skin

In quite the same way as the shuar.

Mastrelli: This subtle detail, invisible to the naked eye,

Suggests this is not a genuine ceremonial shrunken head.

So if this was not a ritual tsantsa,

What was the story behind this shrunken head?

By the 1880s, the western mania for shrunken heads

Had triggered a twisted gold rush.

And this treasure wasn't mined from the earth,

It was made from human flesh.

A single shrunken head could be exchanged

For a gun or a machete, or sold for between $5 and $25.

Not much for a human life,

But a small fortune in 19th century ecuador.

With serious money to be made,

The shuar began killing to meet western demand.

Tribal warriors became commercial head-hunters.

The guns triggered an explosion in violence.

As a viscous circle of supply and demand ensued,

Blame and retaliation spiraled out of control.

(explosion from gunshot)

And it wasn't long before outsiders

Joined the deadly treasure hunt.

In the towns and settlements on the edge of the jungle,

Colonial settlers soon learnt the ancient art

Of head shrinking.

Mastrelli: By the late 19th century,

The shuar and the colonial settlers

Were all making shrunken heads to sell.

For the shuar, as victims and perpetrators,

The consequences of this twisted trade were catastrophic.

The proud shuar tribe was pushed to the brink of extinction.

Gradually, victorian obsession

Turned to modern repulsion.

From the 1930s onwards, the trade in shrunken heads declined

Until it was eventually banned

By the ecuadorian government in the 1960s.

Now, doctor tobias houlton wants to set the record straight.

He wants to help restore the shuar's reputation

As a proud ancient people, using 21st century technology.

But first he must learn

The centuries old craft of head shrinking.

Anthropologist, doctor tobias houlton is on a mission

To reveal the secrets of shrunken heads.

In cuenca, ecuador,

He's been investigating this ancient ritual,

But now he's hoping to learn more from the tribal elders

Of the shuar and apply his findings in a unique experiment,

One that has been years in the making.

Houlton: My earliest experience of witnessing a shrunken head

Must have been when I was in school,

Aged near enough nine, ten years old.

And I remember walking into a museum

And seeing this specimen on display,

And immediately questions were ringing in my head.

Who produced these incredible specimens?

How did they do it?

Why did they do it?

Mastrelli: More recently, houlton has been captivated

By one head above all others.

The shrunken head of a man given to the mcmanus museum

In dundee, scotland in 1923.

Doctor tobias houlton wants to discover

The effects of the shrinking process.

Then with this information,

He'll attempt to reverse engineer the process

That turned this man into a shrunken head,

To create a computer-generated reconstruction

Of the man's face as he looked in life.

Houlton: I want to go ahead and reconstruct a shrunken head

To its original full human form.

And this is essentially to raise the dignity

Of that individual and remind everyone

That this was actually a human being.

Mastrelli: The trade in heads

Was banned over half a century ago,

But the physical process of making a ceremonial head

Has been handed down by word of mouth

To today's tribal elders.

Shuar tribal elder, nawech entsa kayap pedro,

Is one of the few people alive today

Who know how to make a ceremonial tsantsa.

For houlton, this meeting is a unique opportunity

To discover the secrets of the tsantsa at first hand.

Mastrelli: Nawech shares his ancient knowledge,

Providing a blow by blow account

Of how to shrink a human head.

As houlton listens,

Nawech explains the process in detail,

How to remove the skull, eyes and tongue,

How to treat the skin and how to dry it out.

Mastrelli: This unique insight reveals the ritual

And technical complexity

Of making a genuine ceremonial shrunken head.

Houlton: To actually preserve a human head

Within a hot and humid environment

Is something that doesn't come naturally.

So the intelligence and sophistication

That they had to practice in order to mummify

These heads is quite astonishing.

And the ability to preserve a head for over a hundred years

Within an amazon rainforest condition

Is really quite incredible.

Mastrelli: Houlton's trip to ecuador

Has given him step -by-step instructions

On how to shrink a head.

Now, he must put this new-found knowledge into practice.

His goal?

To create a shrunken head.

With smooth, relatively hairless skin,

A pig's head provides the closet analogy to a human head.

Houlton: So I'm just taking dimensions across the face,

And this will act as a means of comparison

Following head shrinking to get a general idea

Of how much the head's reduced.

Mastrelli: Using the techniques learned in ecuador,

Houlton begins the gruesome process.

First, he removes the one thing

That won't shrink, the skull.

Houlton: What most people don't realize is that the shuar

Had to remove the skull in order to make shrinkage possible.

So that's the reason for removing the skin from the head.

Mastrelli: Next, three wooden pins seal the mouth shut.

Houlton: Amongst the shuar, it was essential that the mouth

Was well and truly fastened because that was believed

To be the central orifice that the enemy's spirits

Would escape from.

Mastrelli: He uses thick twine to sew the eyes shut.

Houlton: So the significance of stitching the eyelids shut

Was that it was a means of trapping

The enemy's spirits within the head.

Mastrelli: With the mouth and eyes sealed,

Houlton places the head into boiling water

And leaves it for an hour.

Like human skin,

The pig's skin is made up of collagen fibers,

And when these fibers are exposed to temperatures

Above 145 degrees, they contract,

Causing the skin to shrink.

To dry the skin and shrink the head even further,

Houlton fills it with hot pebbles and sand.

This absorbs any remaining moisture.

Finally, he irons the skin.

Houlton: This is essentially the final touches

Of the head shrinking process.

What I'm doing is taking a hot flat pebble

And ironing the outer face with it.

And what this is doing is helping me mold the skin

And dry it out entirely from the outside.

Mastrelli: By the end of the process,

The pig's head is significantly smaller.

Now that he's seen first hand

How the shrinking process changes a head,

Houlton can embark on the final part of his quest.

Houlton: The next stage is to take all the information

That I've gotten so far and actually go through the process

Of reconstructing the face of a shrunken head

To revive the warrior that once existed.

Mastrelli: Using cutting edge computer modeling technology,

Houlton will attempt something

That's never been done before,

To reverse the head shrinking process

And discover the man behind the shrunken head.

On a mission to reveal the secrets of shrunken heads,

Facial anatomy expert, doctor tobias houlton,

Has discovered how to shrink a head.

Now he's ready to reverse the process,

And reveal how one victim would have looked in life.

Houlton: It's not gonna right the wrongs of the past,

But at least we're bringing back the human being

From what is essentially looked upon as a museum artifact,

Or a cultural specimen.

(dramatic music)

Mastrelli: Houlton has traveled to liverpool's

John moores university in the u.K.

Here, at the renowned face lab,

Facial reconstruction expert,

Professor caroline wilkinson has given a face

To thousands of john and jane does,

And helped solve hundreds of murders

And archeological mysteries,

But this could be her toughest case yet.

Wilkinson: Usually with the facial reconstruction process,

What we're doing is we're looking at the structure

Of the skull and the details of the bones of the skull

To tell us about the soft tissue features.

Mastrelli: But shrunken heads have no skulls.

The skull is removed to allow the head to shrink.

Wilkinson: In this case, since we don't have a skull,

We're going to use a template skull,

Which is a typical skull from that part of the world

Of a similar age and gender to our target individual.

Mastrelli: Using a template skull is standard practice

In forensic and archeological facial reconstructions

Where part of the skull is missing or badly damaged.

It won't provide a perfect likeness,

But it's the best solution with the available evidence.

Wilkinson: We can use that template to unfold and inflate

That shrunken head so that we can build the facial features

And slowly build up the facial appearance of the individual.

Mastrelli: Houlton's analysis has established

Shrunken heads are, on average,

A fifth of their original size.

So to reverse the process,

The head must be scaled up to five times its current size.

Wilkinson: You need a bit of growth on the cranium,

Don't you?

Houlton: Yeah. Yeah.

Mastrelli: The nose and mouth require careful attention.

The mouth has become distorted by being pinned shut.

And without a skull to hold it in place,

The nose has retracted upwards as it shrunk.

To correct these exaggerations,

Houlton turns to early photographs

Of shuar tribesmen as a reference point.

Wilkinson: If we push the mouth back in,

And then this is pretty much there around the top.

Houlton: Sure.

Mastrelli: Houlton uses tissue depth markers

Based on data from average indigenous americans

To digitally reinstate the tissue, fat and muscle

Destroyed during the shrinking process,

And give the face back its shape.

With the facial structure in place,

Skin texture and typical shuar body ornamentation

Can be added.

Bamboo tubes decorated with red and yellow

Toucan feathers pierce the ears.

Wilkinson: We can use cutting edge cgi techniques

For adding the skin and the hair,

And the other realistic details of the face.

Mastrelli: Finally, the program renders the fine details

And the process is complete.

At least a hundred years after his death,

Five thousand miles from his birth place,

A shuar warrior stares out from the screen.

Wilkinson: Is this the face you expected?

Houlton: Well, it certainly looks like a shuar warrior.

Wilkinson: It does.

Houlton: So yeah.

Wilkinson: It looks amazing. Houlton: It's impressive, yeah.

Mastrelli: From amazonian warrior

To victorian collector's item and back.

Houlton: They're more than just head shrinkers.

That's one very small element of their identity.

You know, they're botanists, they're horticulturalists.

They understand their environments.

They know how to survive in the amazon rainforest.

Mastrelli: The story of shrunken heads and this man

Is more than a story of macabre museum pieces

And victorian oddities.

It's the story of a society,

Of victims and the exploitation of ancient rituals.

While little attention was paid

To the provenance of these shrunken heads,

Today they have sparked a greater ethical debate

On the display of human remains in museums.

In case you're wondering, in 1995 the smithsonian's

National museum of the american indian led the way

By becoming the first to repatriate its collection

To the shuar federation.