(GMA News) The National Museum of the Philippines (NMP) has backed the initiative of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) to bring the remains of Filipinos back to the country.
NMP released a statement to The Washington Post after they published an investigative report highlighting the work of anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka, who ran the Smithsonian’s division of physical anthropology for about 40 years and accumulated a collection of body parts.
Hrdlicka had a “racial brain collection” and “racial collection of pelvises,” which he used to study and compare races. He ranked people by race and believed that white people were superior.
His theories about the anatomical differences between races have now been debunked.
One of the people that Hrdlicka studied was a Suyoc Igorot named Maura, who was supposed to be displayed at the human zoo at the 1904 World’s Fair in Missouri but died a few days before the event. Hrdlicka took and studied Maura’s cerebellum, along with the brain of an Igorot from Bontoc. The fair featured Filipinos who were members of various Philippine indigenous groups… Read More
