One popular seller offered black-stained human skulls with iron nails for teeth, human bone wind chimes and Ouija board planchettes (the triangular gameboard pieces), and wallets crafted from human and pig skin (opens in new tab). Live Science didn't verify the authenticity of any remains in person, but showed images of the remains in this story to researchers as part of the investigation the experts thought that all of these specimens were real. He knows human remains posted online are real, partly because collectors don't want replicas so it's in their interest to offer real human remains, but also because replicas are easy to spot. Graham researches human remains trafficking online, using images posted by sellers to track the global trade. "Nobody consents to having their body bought and sold," Shawn Graham, a digital archeologist at Carleton University in Canada, told Live Science.
Ultimately, whoever the deceased were, researchers say those people didn't give consent for their remains to be used in this way. The human remains trade also has links to grave robbing, both historical and modern - and disturbing a place where remains have been formally laid to rest is illegal without a license. However, human remains are usually sold with little to no backstory and can circulate in the trade for many decades, changing hands multiple times, so it's difficult to know exactly where they come from. A 2019 editorial published in the BMJ (opens in new tab) estimated that there are likely thousands of human skeletons from medical education sources in private possession in the U.K., with medical students encouraged to buy bones for their studies in the 20th century. Most of the human skulls and bones that Live Science documented in this investigation appeared to be medical or anatomical specimens that could be decades or centuries old. A Facebook spokesperson told Live Science in 2020 that once they become aware that a group has violated their policies they take action against them. sellers offering up looted skulls and other human remains in private Facebook groups. For example, Wired reported (opens in new tab) in 2019 that Instagram had a booming human skull trade, and a 2020 Live Science investigation found U.S. This isn't the first story to highlight the role of social media in the human remains trade. A Meta spokesperson told Live Science: "We’ve removed the violating content brought to our attention and will continue to remove content in line with our policies." The human remains trade appears to be thriving on Facebook and Instagram even though Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, prohibits the sale of body parts and bodily fluids on its platforms under its terms and policies (opens in new tab).
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