Also, is it legal (in the USA, or in Oregon specifically) to own a human skull?
http://skullsunlimited.com/humanskullsnb.htm
They’ll even sell you a nice box to put it in.
You mean you don’t already have one?
They don’t say it isn’t legal…
The Bone Room sells some, too. Prices are anywhere from $250-$750 dollars. (Skulls with all their teeth cost extra)
If you’re in Oakland, CA, you can even stop by their store and buy one in person.
This begs the question…who were these people that the skulls came from? Donated? What?..and where’s the rest of them?
India
Also China.
New Jersey.
Still, do these people donate their skulls? Are they the skulls of condemned prisoners? I find it seriously creepy that human body parts can bought & sold as objects d’art.
Well, it´s better than being dumped in a hole… :dubious:
Take a look on Ebay. Plenty of real skulls up for auction.
Well, de guys from Joisy, dey don’t pay dere gamblin’ debts, and…
I’ve read that there is actually a shortage of real human skeletons and skulls. The biggest demand is actually in academia, not as a display. Yes, there are plenty of old bones in university departments all over, but with time and handling, they tend to break. Anthropologists prefer real bones to artificial ones because it helps train them to look for specific features on different types of people (useful if you’re going to be on a dig where there could be remains). Crime investigators and pathologists also need to be able to identify a variety of conditions solely by looking at bones. I even have had to identify a human skeleton–it was in my comparative vertebrate anatomy class, and on one of my lab practicals, I had to look at our lab’s skeleton (they only had one real one) and make inferences about the individual it belonged to. Such as sex, by looking at the pelvic structure, and age, by looking at the fusing of growth plates at various locations.
As other people said, most skeletons come from China or India. You can also specify that you wish to donate your skeleton, rather than a generic “donate your body to science” set-up. I don’t know exactly how you do that, though.
I would suggest making sure the thing has no teeth… just in case.
According to this article, it isn’t all that straightforward to donate your skeleton.
India banned the export of human skeletons in 1985, which has caused a considerable shortage for medical/anatomical use. I believe that most of the skeletons from India were not donated, but acquired in let us say “informal” ways, such as from beggars who died homeless on the streets or even grave-robbing. As the article mentions, some skeletons today come from “abandoned graveyards” in Asia, including the “killing fields” of Cambodia.
As far as I know, it is not illegal for anyone simply to possess human bones. However, if you were to obtain them from a graveyard in the U.S., you might be charged with something like desecrating a grave.
The web-site for nearly any medical school in the US will give you the particulars on donating your body to science. I got started on the process by visiting the the Medical College of Virginia web site.
…but what I want to know is; how do they find all of these skeletons with perfect teeth?
As long as people are still reading this (thanks to those of you who posted links), I’ve got one more question.
Forget donating your body to science. Can you leave your body/skeleton to your family? Can I write up a will describing how I’d like my body prepared, then leave my skull to kid A, my left femur to kid B, etc…If I already have a choice of coffin/crypt/graveyard and urn/scatter, why not?
So if I had a pile of human skulls (that I purchased) in my basement, and some suspicious person reported it, how would the cops differentiate between this and some homicidal- wierdo situation?
Or put another way, if some homicidal wierdo decided to keep all of his victims’ skulls, and they were discovered, could he just say he bought them, and ultimately get away with murder (supposing no other suspicious activities lingered around him)?
This is why I find it hard to believe it’s legal to own this sort of stuff (not that I’m questioning it, per se).
Happy