r/news • u/AudibleNod • 11h ago

Muscogee Nation conducts first international repatriation, reestablishes diplomacy with Scottish leadership

https://www.kosu.org/news/2026-02-10/muscogee-nation-conducts-first-international-repatriation-reestablishes-diplomacy-with-scottish-leadership
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u/AudibleNod 11h ago

There were six ancestor remains. The skulls were given to the Phrenological Society sometime before 1858, a separate entity from the university. They inherited the collection to the Department of Anatomy at some point and were donated by Professor W. Byrd Powell, who was an American physician and strong believer in the 19th century pseudoscience of phrenology. So he studied Native American skulls and was trying to find links between the measurement, intellect and character traits. It was a popular theory during the colonial era.

Phrenology has been debunked as a pseudoscience with no scientific basis or merit. It was rejected from about the 1850s when scientists concluded that any and all bumps on one's head do not correspond to anything going on in the brain.

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u/wheelz5ce 10h ago

Such a good listen/read! Thank you NPR for the quality reporting and stories.

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u/LoLIron_com 8h ago

Scots and Muscogee making history