Why Is It So Easy to Buy a Human Skull Online?

Damien Huffer and Shawn Graham argue in their 2023 book These Were People Once: The Online Trade in Human Remains, and Why It Matters that the online sale of human remains has grown largely because social media algorithms treat negative engagement as a signal to show posts to more users. Their research, based on years of monitoring e-commerce sites and social platforms, found that sellers often describe remains as former medical specimens. In a sample of skulls advertised online, ancestry estimation strongly supported the vendors' claimed origins in only a quarter of cases, and in another quarter suggested Native American remains. The authors state that the sale of Native American remains has been a felony under NAGPRA since 1990, and that legality claims by sellers should not be trusted.