Two skulls likely belonging to enslaved people returned to Brazil after Harvard used them in eugenics studies

Remains believed to have belonged to Africans or Afro-Brazilians repatriated after being flown back by diplomats

Two skulls, including that of a man believed to have taken part in Brazil’s greatest slave revolt but whose remains were taken to the United States and used in racist eugenics studies at Harvard University, were repatriated on Wednesday.

The remains had been outside Brazil since the 19th century. One was taken about 190 years ago from Salvador, the capital of the state of Bahia; the other, about 160 years ago, from Rio de Janeiro – and were welcomed back in moving, subdued ceremonies in both cities.

The skulls are believed to have belonged to Africans or Afro-Brazilians in the country that received more enslaved Africans than any other during the transatlantic slave trade.

Each was brought back in a padded box inside a reinforced suitcase, carried on flights by Brazilian diplomats after a four-year campaign to recover the remains from Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in the US.

Brazilian researchers from local universities will now try to learn more about who the two individuals were.

The skulls will not be displayed in museums or have their images released, and the Brazilian government has pledged that they will be buried with funeral rites as soon as the identification process is complete.

“It’s very important to restore the dignity of these people, which was taken from them in life and in death,” said Carolina Dias dos Reis, a government official who travelled to Boston to sign the agreement with Harvard.

The existence of the skulls was revealed in 2022, and Brazilian researchers sought their repatriation from Harvard, but said they faced a drawn-out process that only moved forward after the Brazilian government became involved in late 2024.

In recent months, concerns grew that Donald Trump’s sometimes hostile behaviour towards his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, could derail the repatriation. But everything worked out.

“We need to recover our past as a country, however difficult and violent it was, so that we can understand what we are living through in the present: the consequences and scars of structural racism,” added Reis.

Slavery was abolished in 1888, but nearly a century and a half later, Afro-Brazilians make up the majority of the population while occupying the bottom of every socioeconomic indicator, dominating the statistics on hunger, poverty, gender-based violence and victims of homicides committed by criminals or the police.

During the repatriation ceremony in Rio de Janeiro, Ivanir dos Santos, a history professor and a cleric of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé, poured a glass of water on to the ground as researchers received the suitcase.

“It was a ritual act because you cannot deal with the remains of our ancestors without paying reverence to them. This is not a research object … for us, that person is still alive in memory and as our ancestor,” he said.

It is not precisely known who the skulls belonged to. The one taken to Salvador is believed to have belonged to a man who took part in the most significant urban slave revolt in Brazilian history, in 1835, when about 600 African Muslims attempted to seize control of what was then the country’s second most important city. They were ultimately defeated by police, who killed 70 rebels.

The man died at a hospital, and a US diplomat, Gideon T Snow, is believed to have sent the skull to Boston.

The Bahia Islamic Cultural Centre, one of the most active campaigners for its repatriation, has named the man Arakunrin, meaning brother in Yoruba.

Even less is known about the other person: initially, only that they were “an individual … exhumed from the ‘streets of Rio de Janeiro’” in the 1860s. Brazilian government officials, however, said on Wednesday that Harvard researchers had told them that some features – including that the skull was smaller than that of an adult man but larger than that of a child – suggested it may have belonged to a woman.

Bruno Veras, a historian who was part of the group that closely followed the repatriation, cross-referenced diaries, letters and maps of the city and believes the skull may have been taken from a cemetery for newly arrived Africans who either did not survive the long Atlantic crossing or died soon after disembarking.

The person believed to have taken it to the US was Walter Hunnewell, a student from a wealthy Boston family. He was part of an expedition led by the Harvard professor Louis Agassiz, who was in Brazil trying to document physical types to support his racist theories.

“To steal a skull and take it to another country was violent even in the context of racist research,” said Veras.

Researchers in forensic anthropology will now try to confirm the sex of the individuals and other information through measurements of the skulls – the one in Salvador is complete, while the one in Rio is missing its jaw – and microscopic analyses. If necessary, they will seek authorisation to carry out genetic or dating tests.

“This history of slavery cannot be undone,” said Irina Feisthauer Silveira, a diplomat who carried one of the skulls. “But acknowledging the mistakes of the past with transparency is a first step towards building a more equal, just and less violent future.”