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SterlingMNO t1_iubkbrq wrote

Reply to comment by Cyclone_1 in UK museums willing to return skulls to Zimbabwe by Jaamac2025

Probably, find it really unlikely they'll be found though, I think they'd be long gone, or kept as private tropphies until eventually disappearing into the void of time. Even today if you took a wartime trophy, you're not heading home to take it to the authorities, your ancestors might donate it but as a skull rather than "skull of xyz", in which case most museums probably wouldn't want it.

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Cyclone_1 t1_iubkjhh wrote

Sure but this article, unless I am misunderstanding something here, seemed to indicate that London's Natural History Museum and Cambridge University have these skulls and are willing to cooperate in their return.

The authorities in Zimbabwe suspect that they were brought back to the UK in the first place as trophies.

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SterlingMNO t1_iublavw wrote

> In doing a search of its archive, the Natural History Museum did uncover 11 remains "that appear to be originally from Zimbabwe" - but its records do not connect them with Nehanda. These include three skulls taken in 1893, thought to be from Zimbabwe's second city, Bulawayo, as well as remains uncovered in mineshafts and archaeological digs and later donated.

Only states they have remains connected to Zimbabwe, mostly through archeological digs, and some stuff that has no records because of how old it is and likely just used in the study of phrenology. Not the remains Zimbabwe are specifically asking for.

Still a win for Zimbabwe I guess, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say even if the NHM says "These skulls are not the ones you're looking for", Zimbabwe officials are still just gonna declare they've recovered the remains of Nehanda as a political win, which is fine I guess. I can't imagine anyone protesting to human remains being returned, short of a Pharoah himself.

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Cyclone_1 t1_iublfwz wrote

Ah gotcha. I must have missed that. Sometimes the way BBC loads on my phone, it doesn't make for the best end-user experience. Thanks for highlighting that. I see what you were saying now.

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SterlingMNO t1_iublrq2 wrote

You think BBC's bad on mobile, you should see literally any UK tabloid on mobile. It's like being back in 2002 using WAP.

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Cyclone_1 t1_iublzf0 wrote

Good fucking lord. Guardian is like that too for me sometimes now that I think of it. I swear there are at least a couple of paragraphs sometimes that I truly don't even see, so I comment on something and I must come off like I didn't even read the thing at all.

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SterlingMNO t1_iubmjsw wrote

Guardian is utter dogshit like all the rest of them so it's probably for the best ;)

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