There are lots of videos showing the long skulls of the Paracas culture. It appears that some of the elongated skulls are natural, not from cranial deformation techniques. Preliminary DNA appears to show the mt-dna is more ancestral than the homo/neanderthal split circa 500 kya.
It is head shaping, usually by binding the child's head from birth.
And it was practiced around the world.
The earliest written reference we have of artificial cranial deformation comes from Hesiod, a Greek poet who lived between 750 and 650 B.C. In his book of mythology, The Catalogues of Women, Hesiod referred to a tribe from either Africa or India called the “Makrokephaloi” (or “Macrocephali”), which roughly translates to “the big heads.”
Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, also mentions the Macrocephali in his work, On Airs, Waters, and Places, which was written around 400 B.C. Not only did Hippocrates mention the Macrocephali, but he got their techniques right. Rather than making the people mythological, Hippocrates tells us their methods, and their reasons: “They think those the most noble who have the longest heads … after the child is born, and while its head is still tender, they fashion it with their hands, and constrain it to assume a lengthened shape by applying bandages and other suitable contrivances …”
And it is not only European authors who found the practice amazing. Xuanzang, a Chinese Buddhist monk and traveller, whose 17-year journey to India inspired the Chinese classical novel Journey to the West, reported on the form of the practice he came across in modern-day Xinjiang, in Western China. Xuanzang speaks of the people of Kashgar, where ”children born of common parents have their heads flattened by the pressure of wooden boards …”
No.
Or is it another relative of ours in the same species, along the lines of neanderthal and denisovan? Where did they come from? Suggestions are that they are responsible for the pre-inca megaliths of Peru. Likely wiped-out by the homo sapiens sapiens (inca) that moved in?
Not a new species or a relative..
It was simply head binding. And it occurred in Africa, Australia, the Pacific Islanders, Asia, Europe and the Americas.. It was a fairly widespread. For various reasons, from religious reasons, to status.
Across the Americas, in various tribes, infants had their heads bound and shaped by their parents. Both the Mayans and the Inca shaped their children’s skulls, as did the Choctaw and the Chinookan tribes in what is now the United States. Their reasons must have been the same, to allow for the child to fit into the fabric of their societies, and to signify class. For the Maya, it also held a religious significance.
According to Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, a Spanish chronicler of the conquest of the Americas, a Mayan explained: “This is done because our ancestors were told by the gods that if our heads were thus formed we should appear noble …”
Two different styles of artificial cranial deformation were prevalent in Mayan culture, and indicated the wearer’s rank. Those who were destined (or hoped) to hold some position of high status, were given what is referred to as “oblique deformations,” which resulted in a high, pointed head shape. However, the general populace could only use an “erect deformation,” which led to a rounded skull shape, with flattening on the sides. Whether these shapes were in imitation of a jaguar’s skull, to show prowess, or in the shape of the maize god, to symbolise fertility, is a matter of debate among historians and archaeologists.
Artificial cranial deformation was also recorded amongst the remains of people as far distant as Australia and the Caribbean islands. But it’s not just an ancient practice. It still occurs in some of the world’s more remote outposts.
Foerster's is bigger. double a H.s.sapiens' cranial volume. Also, not a slope-back as in cranial deformation.
The shape of the head did not increase cranial volume for those who had their heads shaped that way.
While early European observers of the practice in France and in Eastern Europe reportedly pitied children whose heads had been bound, subsequent research has led experts to believe that cranial modification has no impact on cognitive function, nor is there a difference in cranial capacity. According to a 2007 paper in the journal Neurosurgery, “there does not seem to be any evidence of negative effect on the societies that have practiced even very severe forms of intentional cranial deformation.”
evidence? I've seen dozens of videos showing elongated skulls that are not of the cranial-deformation type. this includes infants/neonates as well as late-term still-birth mummies, showing elongated skulls. Are they all hoaxes? how so? is the mt-DNA evidence a hoax? how so? Evidence they are hoaxes, please.
It would help if you did not refer to woo woo sites and conspiracy sites.
Babies are often born with their heads deformed like that. It is actually quite common. The head often becomes deformed while making its way through the vaginal birth canal.
It usually resolves itself within a short period of time,
from a few minutes to a few days.
"Following a vaginal birth, the baby's head is fairly elongated and cone-shaped, and parents are immediately worried that's the way the kid's head is going to be forever," says Steven P. Shelov, MD, chairman of pediatrics at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City, and director of the Maimonides Infants & Children's Hospital.
But Shelov says not only will the head shape change (usually within 48 hours or less), but that cone shape you see at birth is quite normal.
"The bones of the skull of a newborn are intentionally mobile. The birth canal is tight, and the bones are meant to give, allowing the head to pass through, which is what actually causes that elongated shape," says Shelov. It is the pressure on the head coming through the canal that gives the baby the cone head shape which will resolve in a few days. Babies born via C-section do not usually display much of the cone head shape.
Some children require these special helmets that reshape the head if it does not return to normal and for some babies, they have another underlying condition that requires more extensive medical intervention (such as a fused skull, or where the helmet does not return the head back to a normal shape).
It is quite conceivable that a newborn who dies shortly after childbirth, or even a miscarriage in the later stages of pregnancy in ancient times before the advent of modern medicine and where mummification was still practiced, would see mummies today of these babies with elongated or deformed heads. Because they would have been mummified and the skull would not have had time to go back to a normal shape.
So no, they are not a new species. Babies born that way are more often than not, born that way because of the very tight squeeze of being pushed through the vagina.
Around 300 of the amazing skulls were found by Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello in 1928 in an elaborate graveyard.
But there still remains a mystery over the shape of the Paracas skulls.
Cranial deformation changed the shape of a skull, but in normal cases did not alter other features.
However, the Paracas skulls have other unusual features and are the biggest elongated skulls ever found.
Author and researcher LA Marzulli told Ancient Origins: "There is a possibility that it might have been cradle headboarded, but the reason why I don’t think so is because the position of the foramen magnum is back towards the rear of the skull. ...
Samples were taken from hair and bone powder, taken drilling deep into a skull's foramen magnum.
They were then sent to three labs in Canada, and two in the US, for tests.
Geneticists were told the samples were from an ancient mummy, to avoid any preconceptions.
The skulls were now found to have European and Middle Eastern Origin, raising questions over when man first travelled from Eurasia to the Americas, as they are 2,000 to 3,000 years old.
It would depend on how they are bound and from where on the head they are bound. For example:
It is not hard to imagine that this child's cranial features would be dramatically altered by how tightly the head has been bound. Look at the shape of the baby's forehead, the way in which it pushes it back like that to the point where the baby's eyebrows are pulled right back and makes the baby's lower eye sockets look like they are about to pop out. Look at the shape of the neck, well, the back of the neck.