ONE of the world’s most significant collections of human remains is to be lost to science after the Natural History Museum agreed yesterday to repatriate it to an Australian Aboriginal community.

Bones and teeth from 17 Tasmanian Aboriginals, collected in the 19th century, will be sent back to Australia next April, where they are expected to be cremated. The specimens are the first from the museum’s collection of almost 20,000 human remains to be repatriated since the law was changed last year, under the Human Tissue Act.

The request from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, supported by the Australian Government, was accepted by the museum’s trustees even though its own scientists had argued strongly that it should be kept intact as “a particularly important collection to the global scientific community”.

The ruling sets a precedent that could ultimately see thousands of items from the museum’s collection returned to indigenous communities for burial or cremation. Though 54 per cent of its human remains are from Britain, all those from abroad that are less than 1,000 years old could now qualify for repatriation if an appropriate request is made.

The Australian Government has already begun negotiations about the return of a further 450 items and Native American and New Zealand Maori groups are also in discussions with the museum.

The Tasmanian collection is particularly signficant because the island has been isolated from the Australian mainland for thousands of years, and its Aboriginal population offers valuable insights into human evolution that cannot be obtained from other sources.

Natural History Museum scientists said in their response to the repatriation request: “Failure to maintain scholarly access to these remains would reduce the ability of all people to know aspects of their common heritage, to the detriment of both the Tasmanians and the wider community.”

While most scientists accept the case for repatriating remains where a clear line of descent to living individuals or communities can be proven, many object to the idea of granting broad claims where ancestry is less certain. Some modern aboriginal groups can trace descent to full Tasmanian Aboriginal, but have heavily interbred with other populations.

The museum has approved a three-month period of extensive scientific research on the remains before they are returned. The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre had asked explicitly that no further research be conducted on them.

MUSEUM IN NUMBERS

19,500 specimens are in the Natural History Museum’s human remains collection

500,000 years: the oldest item

54% of specimens are from the British Isles

450 specimens are of aboriginal Australians

24 specimens from 17 Tasmanian Aboriginals are being returned by the museum

1800s most of the remains were collected by George Augustus Robinson in the early 19th century. The individuals’ identities are mostly uncertain

56 scientists from 31 institutions used the collection for research in 2002

4,000 Aboriginals were living in Tasmania in 1803, when the British first landed on the island

1860 only 15 Tasmanian Aboriginals were left alive

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