Human Skull Posts

　　In the Pu'er region before the 1950s, the Wa people of Ximeng practiced an age-old custom during the crop planting season, where tribes would engage in headhunting rituals to offer enemy skulls as sacrifices. The old practice of headhunting for a good harvest included a series of rituals such as hunting heads, transferring them, and conducting ceremonies for them. The leader who directed the headhunting was chosen through divination. After a head was taken, it was first placed on a human skull post under the wooden drum house. Ashes were sprinkled onto the head, allowing the ashes and blood to drip onto the ground. Then, each household received a small amount of the blood to mix with seeds and scatter in their fields during sowing, believed to ensure a bountiful harvest.

　　During the blood sacrifice, although the human head was regarded as the highest offering, it was also treated with reverence, which led to it being revered as an object of worship itself. The head-worshiping ceremony was divided into communal and family rituals: communal worship was carried out by the tribe; after a head was taken, it was first offered at the oldest village in the settlement, then rotated among villages for worship. Eventually, it was returned to the original village. Family worship rituals were usually conducted in the late afternoon. First, the person responsible for the transfer would take the head from the altar in the shaman’s home and hand it to two unmarried women to carry to the wooden drum house.

　　On the way, the headhunters led the procession, followed by family members, with gunshots and drumbeats. Upon reaching the wooden drum house, the head was placed on the altar, and rice was sprinkled over it to pray for blessings. Then, the head was carried around the wooden drum house nine times while dancing, and later brought back along the original path to the shaman's home to be handed over for the next family’s ritual. After all families completed their ceremonies, the head was returned to the wooden drum house and placed by the shaman on a specially designated bamboo rack for skulls. The rack was 2 meters long, with its upper part woven into a circular basket shape, 0.3 meters in diameter. Communal rituals involved sacrificing pigs and cattle, while family rituals also used pigs and chickens as offerings. Every year around April and May, during the planting season according to the lunar calendar, a ceremony to send off the heads was held. During this time, the shaman and elders would take the skulls from the previous headhunts to the "ghost forest" outside the village and place them on the human skull posts there. The ghost forest skull posts were wooden stakes, 1–1.2 meters tall and 0.35 meters in diameter. The tops of the stakes were hollowed out to hold the old skulls, covered with a stone slab 0.35 meters wide. The skull posts were often carved with a full-faced human head, surrounded by diagonal grids, with lime and ox blood painted between the squares. After the founding of New China, with the social progress and gradual spread of science among the Wa people, the old custom of headhunting and blood sacrifice has long been abolished. The human skull posts in the Wa mountains have become historical relics.

　　Address: Ximeng County, Pu'er City, Yunnan Province