German researchers search for origin of 1,000 human skulls brought from Africa a century ago

German researchers are examining more than 1,000 human skulls recovered from storage to try to discover their origins.

It's been over a century since they were shipped from east Africa. They've survived two world wars and kept getting moved from one institution to the next. 

Now the crumbling skulls are being studied to determine where exactly they came from, with the hope that at least some of them may be returned.

We have 1,000 skulls and we may have 500 stories behind them.- Bernhard Heeb, curator

The collection of skulls, from former German colonies in what is today Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi and Mozambique, were found in poor condition at Berlin's Charite hospital and medical school and transferred to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in 2011.

"They were stored in a small, old house in very humid circumstances. It was not at all appropriate," Bernhard Heeb, curator at the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin, told As It Happens host Carol Off. "They were more or less stuffed in some small rooms."

Heeb said that the complete cache of skulls actually numbers around 7,000 and roughly 1,000 of them can be traced to east Africa. The rest were collected by anthropologist Felix von Luschan in the late 19th and early 20th century. They were taken from graves around the world, including South America and Europe.

German researchers are now joining forces with an international network of scientists to review documents and find out more about the origins of the African skulls, the foundation said.

"We will research together and after we have the results we will discuss together what could happen to them," said Heeb.

If they can be properly identified, the plan is to return them to their countries of origin, though the foundation said no country has sought them.

Skulls measured for early 20th century research

​Whatever the skulls' individual origins, Heeb said most of them were likely taken to Germany for scientific research.

"There were a lot of researchers in Germany who ... did craniometry. That means they measured the skulls and so they wanted to, let's say, get an idea about the development of mankind," he said.

"They wanted to compare skulls from Africa with skulls from Asia, for example, and so the aim was to collect as many skulls as possible to get as much data as possible. They thought they could trace the development of mankind that way."

Heeb stressed, however, that these skulls would have been measured or examined many years before elements of craniometry were used to develop the Nazis' eugenics in the 1930s.

The biggest challenge will be figuring out exactly where — and when — the African skulls are from, since there's a scant chance they all came from the same cemetery or necropolis.

"We have 1,000 skulls and we may have 500 stories behind them," said Heeb.

With files from the Associated Press.