Artificial cranial deformation
Form of body alteration
Artificial cranial deformation or modification, head flattening, or head binding is a form of body alteration in which the skull of a human being is deformed intentionally. It is done by distorting the normal growth of a child's skull by applying pressure. Flat shapes, elongated ones (produced by binding between two pieces of wood), rounded ones (binding in cloth), and conical ones are among those chosen or valued in various cultures.
Typically, the alteration is carried out on an infant, when the skull is most pliable. Because of this, artificial cranial modification most commonly occurs during the first three years of the individual's life.
History
Intentional cranial deformation predates written history; it was practiced commonly in a number of cultures that are widely separated geographically and chronologically, and still occurs today in a few areas, including Vanuatu.
The earliest suggested examples were once thought to include Neanderthals and the Proto-Neolithic Homo sapiens component (9th millennium BCE) from Shanidar Cave in Iraq. The view that the Neanderthal skull was artificially deformed was common for a period. However, later research by Chech, Grove, Thorne, and Trinkaus, based on new cranial reconstructions in 1999, questioned the earlier findings and concluded: "we no longer consider that artificial cranial deformation can be inferred for the specimen". It is thought elongated skulls found among Neolithic peoples in Southwest Asia were the result of artificial cranial deformation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Artificial cranial deformation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.