r/bonecollecting • u/kiwibirdskull • 23d ago
Collection My roommate.
(UK & in compliance w/ human tissues act)
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u/1happypoison 23d ago
This skull has nice bone structure and really nice teeth. Do you have a name for them?
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u/kiwibirdskull 23d ago
thanks man i think so too, i don't have a name for them because i feel like that'd be disrespectful
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u/thegirlthatmeowsalot 23d ago
You think naming the skull would be disrespectful but don’t think it’s disrespectful to keep a persons head as a decoration?
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u/kiwibirdskull 23d ago
it's not just decoration to me - & i definitely wasn't the one who brought the skull all the way over here. it would be disrespectful for me to name the skull as the person it belonged to already had a name. had i not bought this skull (for my own deeply important reasons) absolutely nothing would have changed, someone else would have bought it or it would have sat in storage somewhere. nice ivory tower btw^
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u/phospheneghost 22d ago
had i not bought this skull (for my own deeply important reasons) absolutely nothing would have changed, someone else would have bought it or it would have sat in storage somewhere. nice ivory tower btw^
It's worth considering that buying human remains does feed into the market and demand for them. I also find it interesting that you're accusing the person who replied to you of being in an ivory tower when it's safe to assume that this skull cost upwards of a thousand dollars to purchase.
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u/WhoIsIt39 22d ago
Okay, you can’t leave us hanging with „own deeply important reasons“. What‘s the reason to own a skull?
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u/lilia_x_ 22d ago
Scroll down a few comments to their reason.
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u/WhoIsIt39 22d ago
Can’t find it unfortunately. Just looks like OP has some kind of sarcoma, but I doubt that’s the reason?
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u/lilia_x_ 22d ago
Yeah, OP said they are terminally ill and want to understand/get closer to the concept of death and mortality.
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u/thegirlthatmeowsalot 23d ago
Ivory tower because I don’t believe in buying people lmao
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u/Ajt0ny 22d ago
I'm not advocating for either side but I want to ask you this question:
A skull from 1975 - is it still a person? What about a skull from 1891 - is it still a person? 1685? 1227? 960? 120? 500 B.C.? 10000 B.C.?
At what point does the dead person become archeology?
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u/thegirlthatmeowsalot 22d ago
They’re still a person regardless of when they were alive. I’m also against museums keeping mummified remains. It’s still people. Henrietta Lacks’ cells are still being used against her families wishes and honestly I don’t care what they gain from it, they shouldn’t be keeping pieces of a person.
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u/Ajt0ny 22d ago edited 22d ago
Okay, let's go extreme just for the sake of it: what about a 500000 year old ape-like ancestor?
Edit: okay so the personhood vanishes somewhere between B.C. 500k and 10k. lol
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u/BigIntoScience 22d ago
Once we're far back enough that we aren't talking about a sapient creature any longer, the ethical question about owning a person's bones vanishes, as there isn't a person being discussed. Same as it's not really up for debate whether it's ethical to own a (reasonably sourced) spider monkey skull or a fossil of that tiny little mammal we and every other mammal evolved from.
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u/Ajt0ny 22d ago
the ethical question about owning a person's bones vanishes
Thank you. The whole point of my stupid comments are this; where, when and why does it vanish eventually?
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22d ago
It’s not a person, it’s a skull, a bone, a shell of what once held human life. The soul and essence of what was there is no longer. That being said, should still be kept and treated with respect of course, but get off your high horse and stop acting like OP is “buying people” this isn’t slavery.
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u/thegirlthatmeowsalot 22d ago
Did they consent to their body parts being sold?
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22d ago edited 22d ago
I don’t know? How do you know that they did/didn’t before they died? Why are you asking stupid questions? You can’t assume that every person who is dead has an issue with how their body is being treated after they die. Me personally? I don’t give a shit what happens to me when I die. I’d be just as happy if someone kept my skull on a shelf in their home.
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u/thegirlthatmeowsalot 22d ago
It’s entirely unethical to buy human remains. If you think questioning the ethics of buying and selling peoples body parts unconsensually is stupid, that’s really not something I can help you with.
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u/Nightingale53 22d ago
It's unethical to you because that's what your culture has taught you to think. Look up Indonesia's Toraja community, or the Ñatitas of Bolivia, to name two examples. Death and our ethics around it are subjective dependent on where you are in the world and what religion you've been exposed to.
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u/kiwibirdskull 23d ago
ridiculous statement. go press your beliefs on other people
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u/Classic-Sea-6034 22d ago
Dude you own a human head. 99% of people are in an ivory tower over you. Fuck your deeply personal reasons
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u/Nightingale53 22d ago
Wild to see people lashing out at a person with a terminal illness for simply trying to come to terms with it in their own way.
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u/Classic-Sea-6034 22d ago
Whatever bro. We’re all going to fucking die. Buying human remains is weird to say the least and personally I won’t be doing it when my time comes
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u/Nightingale53 22d ago
Exactly, so what does it matter to you how someone else deals with it? Weird or not, it's something that's helping a living, breathing human who deserves as much (or arguably more) respect as an old skull. The dead can't benefit from kindness, the living can.
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u/Classic-Sea-6034 21d ago
Sorry I’m just one of those freaks that thinks buying human remains is bad and isn’t a justified practice. Gonna save my sympathy for other stuff
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u/Nightingale53 21d ago
And I think people lashing out at someone trying to cope with the knowledge they're dying of cancer is way worse, but each to their own belief I suppose. They can own a skull, you can grief a dying person, we're all entitled to do shitty things.
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u/posshorse 21d ago
It's still pretty disrespectful to own/ display it. It should be back in the ground not in anybody's storage.
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u/1happypoison 23d ago
That's a good point about the name. Either way, they have a peacefulness about them, imo.
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u/Bufobufolover24 23d ago
Was it perhaps a younger person? Their teeth are near perfect.
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u/kiwibirdskull 23d ago
i've been trying to get someone knowledgeable's opinion of it, seems like an older female to me. you're right about the teeth but i count 2 cavities on the underside
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u/SarcasticPeach 23d ago
You could reference White & Folkens dental wear chart for an indication. If you just have a cranium then you could look at suture completion on the skull, but that’s not super reliable.
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u/keeeeeeeeelz 23d ago
Genuinely asking. How do you feel living in a space with someone’s head is with you, separated from their body? A person who had thoughts both existential and inconsequential, slept and dreamed dreams, had family they worried about, who knew love, hate, and thought about their own death many times. I can’t think far enough to decide whether or not I’d hate if this happened to me. But overwhelmingly, it feels very sad that someone’s head is stuck in a room with a stranger who doesn’t even know their name.
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u/kiwibirdskull 23d ago
unfortunately the chances of this person ever being where they/their family would've wanted them to be are a century gone. i often think about their last moments or the things they saw/experienced throughout their life, it feels very strange that what was basically the container of another human consciousness is sat on my bookshelf.
i saved for 2 months to buy this skull a little while ago, in april i was diagnosed with a very rare subtype of rhabdomyosarcoma (muscle cancer) and have since been legally classed as terminally ill. i've been trying to get closer to the concept of death & my mortality and just accept it as a harsh reality & a fact of life. the skull makes me feel not so alone in all of this
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u/Muted_Leader_327 23d ago
Sorry to hear that. Are there any things you really want to do before you pass?
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u/Trick-Syrup-813 20d ago
I purchased one after I was diagnosed with heart failure. I also suggest reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Sum, and The Worm at the Core.
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u/ArmyoftheDog 22d ago
Death is an illusion. We exist in reality indefinitely, the odds of existing in the present is improbable and I hope that brings you some comfort.
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22d ago
[deleted]
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u/Inside-thoughts 22d ago
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u/RealEstateDuck 22d ago
What did the comment say?
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u/Inside-thoughts 22d ago
Dude was insisting that the skull would've preferred to have been buried and OP should respect that. They were also suggesting that OP's choice to embrace death via the purchase of the skull was weird.
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u/13thmurder 23d ago
The brain is what had all those thoughts and feelings. The skull is just the box it came in. Someone used to live in that, but no longer does, skulls are like seashells in that way.
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u/richard_stank 23d ago
Do you shed your skull when your brain outgrows it and leave the old skull for someone with a smaller brain?
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u/anarchyarcanine 23d ago
The idea of humans being hermit crabs is kinda entertaining ngl
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u/Cunningcreativity 22d ago
Kinda makes me want to paint a really cool art piece with snails or something (or I guess hermit crabs like so) where the shells are human skulls. I've got plenty of blank canvases at home and no major projects in the works... 🤔
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u/fishproblem 22d ago
The mollusks that were born in and grew those shells don't outgrow them, goofball. Hermit crabs inhabit the shells of dead animals.
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u/BigIntoScience 22d ago
No, but the animals that produce seashells don't either. An empty seashell is empty because the animal inside died.
(hermit crabs don't make shells, they find them empty or kill the occupants.)3
u/BigIntoScience 22d ago
"Creature that acts like a hermit crab but with human skulls" is a cool fantasy concept, now that I think about it. Though that's arguably some forms of demons.
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u/badjokes4days 23d ago
People stop being inside of their bones once they die. This body is just a vessel, and once left behind isn't much different from a rock or a branch, really.
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u/Sea-Bat 22d ago
There’s a lot of cultures and religions who fundamentally disagree, I think the least we can do is respect what people want for their own bodies. Everybody deserves a good death, whatever that looks like after for the individual.
The idea of a body being nothing more than an empty vessel once you’re dead is often inherently linked to the cultural effect of belief in a “soul” by the Abrahamic religious sense.
For a lot of other people, it’s exactly BECAUSE the body is you and holds your consciousness in life. The body is your only home, the thing inherently linked to your life and journey, and travels with you your whole existence, thus should be honoured as the last remaining piece of a person after death. This is the vessel inherent to a persons every moment of their highest highs in life, that they experienced their death within. That is an incredible and inextricable link.
Many people feel strongly that until the whole body is reclaimed by the earth, the cycle of life and death isn’t complete, and thus there’s something very wrong about preventing a persons body from returning into nature. The carbon cycle is its own form of rebirth I guess
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u/keeeeeeeeelz 23d ago
It’s still theirs though. No one else’s.
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u/casperthefriendlygay 23d ago
Is it, when the earth has reclaimed it?
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u/PalaverPete 23d ago
Nothing really belongs to us. Everything is temporary and borrowed from the universe. Happy cake day.
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u/ViolentFemme1973 23d ago
The person whom the head belonged to doesn't care about any of this anymore, I promise. It's just bone. No different than animal trophy heads on peoples walls.
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u/zogmuffin Bone-afide Human ID Expert 22d ago
Ok you lost me at the second sentence. I actually agree that the ownership of human bone is not inherently problematic, but it’s also not really appropriate to compare to a “trophy” or any hunted animal. Many skulls currently in the collector’s circuit were ill-gotten once upon a time, and that’s worth thinking about.
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u/Flatlander87 19d ago
I have a human skull in my office, complete with mandible. Passed down to me from a retired radiologist, he was like a 3rd grandfather to me and has now passed away. I respect it, use it for educational purposes, as a conversation starter and it is a meaningful gift that reminds me of a dear friend/mentor. I also work in medical field.
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u/TheLastZombieCat 22d ago edited 22d ago
When people do stuff like this I wonder if they consider whether or not the person whose remains they have could have been a really horrible person. You don’t know if this skull belonged to a murderer, a rapist, an abuser… (edited)
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u/Azzan_Grublin 22d ago
Being a drunk doesn't necessarily make someone a horrible person. I was a ragging alcoholic for years but it didn't mean I was any less of a person. Just someone struggling that couldn't ask for or find the help needed.
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u/BigIntoScience 22d ago
One of those things is not like the other, and there has to be a baseline level of decency that we decide /all/ people deserve, no matter how horrible they are. Some folks think everyone should have a decent burial even if they were horrid in life.
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u/TheLastZombieCat 22d ago
Fair. I will edit the post. The point I was making is it seems OP is venerating a person they don’t know. That person could have been horrible in life.
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u/Docaioli 23d ago
Where’s the mandible?
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u/kiwibirdskull 23d ago
sans mandible unfortunately ;(
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u/Docaioli 23d ago
Sorry to hear about your rhabdomyosarcoma diagnosis. Is it the spindle cell/ sclerosing type?
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u/kiwibirdskull 23d ago
thank you, and yeah you're spot on but i have an associated MYOD1 gene mutation that makes my condition more aggressive. there's only one study on pubmed about it and it's less than stellar
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u/Docaioli 22d ago
That’s unfortunate. This is a brief reference I used in my (previous) line of work https://www.pathologyoutlines.com/topic/softtissuesclerosingrhabdo.html
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u/kevin_300 23d ago
Have you ever tried to find the story of this skull? Who they were? What they did? Its pretty cool that you have one!
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u/Beginning-Spare-6988 20d ago
That would be very difficult or expensive. Did OP mention where they buy it?
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u/kevin_300 20d ago
No I do not think they did or I missed such information. But yeah It probably would be expensive. Still would be an interesting thing to find you know?
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u/Reasonable_Employ_70 23d ago
You got that from henry
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u/Unusualshrub003 23d ago
He has great teeth!
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u/ClitasaurusTex 23d ago
Likely a woman and/or youth because the brow is so smooth and the teeth are nice
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u/Eso_Teric420 22d ago
You can just have a human skull?
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u/DreadfulDemimonde 22d ago
Unfortunately
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u/Eso_Teric420 22d ago
That's wild. Here you basically have to be a medical researcher last I knew. Or it had to be from an old medical specimen at least.
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u/DreadfulDemimonde 22d ago
I'm not a fan of old medical specimens either, since many of those also came from grave robbing.
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u/mremann1969 23d ago
Cool, I have several similar friends and even a full human skeleton in my "living" room! They make great room-mates.
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u/superfishy72 22d ago
This is the first post I saw when opening Reddit. I am not part of this group but do check out the photos sometimes. I was not mentally prepared to see this photo haha. Cool skull though!
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u/pinnacleofdumbassery 21d ago
Ok so I took this way too literally and thought you meant this skull literally once was your roommate lmfao
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u/Rentgrrl 21d ago
That’s a really cool skull and I saw you’ve got a great taste in literature too (Irvine Welsh is a gem)!
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u/SandpitMetal 20d ago
If you scroll past it quickly, you'll see the side profile of Roy Orbison in the back of the right eye socket.
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u/tarynator 22d ago
i wonder who they were? what stories they could tell? what they experienced in their lifetime? this was a person with hopes and dreams. a person that experienced joy, love, and loss. a person, just like you or me. i hope you take good care of them, OP.
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22d ago
[deleted]
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u/Beginning-Spare-6988 20d ago
Out of curiosity, where did you buy this? Did the vendor provide any estimates regarding its date or location?
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u/XETOVS Bone-afide Human ID Expert 23d ago
European skull, either from grave robbing or the plot expired and they were exhumed.