21st October 2010
Doors at 6 pm, Talk commences at 7 pm
"You cut the head off and shrink it to ensure that the person is fully punished and also so that his spirit is not going to come back and cry for vengeance. It's very effective!”
Piers Gibbon, on why headshrinking was practiced by warrior tribes.
Terrifying legends from the Amazon tell of Indian headshrinkers who would shrink an enemy ’s head to render the vengeful soul powerless. This ancient tribal custom largely disappeared in the twentieth entury, but in the late 1960's the intrepid explorer, Edmundo Bielawski managed to capture the the process of an actual - recently deceased - human head being shrunk on film. An adventurer himself, author Piers Gibbon retraced Bielawski's journey with National Geographic and turned his travels into a documentary. Gibbon will recount his perilous tales of venturing to the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon jungle where he was subjected to the dangers of malaria, held by machete-carrying Shuar tribe members and later subjected to questioning at a military checkpoint.
A British explorer and author as well as television host and correspondent, Piers Gibbon studied human sciences at Oxford University. For Channel 4 UK, he presented “Jungle Trip,” in which he had frog poison burned into his skin and swallowed a live millipede as part of a Peruvian shaman initiation ceremony. He has traveled extensively in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and the Sahara, and his book on tribes of the world will be published in 2010.
Talk at 11 Mare Street - please click here to buy tickets
