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societyculturescience
Earth Ancients, The Quarantine Series: The Long Heads of Earth's Ancient Past
About this Episode
Elongated skulls are usually explained in terms of head-binding or artificial cranial deformation. This paradigm emerged in the first half of the 19 th century as a way of explaining unusual skulls discovered in Europe and South America, in places such as Crimea and Peru respectively. The main idea behind the head-binding paradigm is that ALL elongated skulls are a result of intentional modification of the form of the skull by applying external pressure. In other words, ALL elongated skulls are merely deformed ‘normal’ skulls similar to those of modern humans.
What evidence could challenge this paradigm? Right – the existence of fetuses with elongated skulls, i.e. evidence that such skulls already had an elongated shape in utero , before any head-binding was possible. Do we have such evidence? Yes, we do! Moreover, this evidence has been known to the academic community for over 163 years!
Rivero and Tschudi in Peruvian Antiquities (1851 Spanish, 1853 English) argue that the protagonists of the artificial cranial deformation hypothesis are mistaken, since they had only considered the skulls of adults. In other words, the hypothesis fails to take into account the skulls of infants and, most importantly, foetuses which had similar elongated skull shape.
It is worth quoting Rivero and Tschudi:
“We ourselves have observed the same fact [of the absence of signs of artificial pressure – IG] in many mummies of children of tender age, who, although they had cloths about them, were yet without any vestige or appearance of pressure of the cranium. More still: the same formation of the head presents itself in children yet unborn; and of this truth we have had convincing proof in the sight of a foetus, enclosed in the womb of a mummy of a pregnant woman, which we found in a cave of Huichay, two leagues from Tarma, and which is, at this moment, in our collection [my emphasis – IG].
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/earth-ancients--2790919/support.
What evidence could challenge this paradigm? Right – the existence of fetuses with elongated skulls, i.e. evidence that such skulls already had an elongated shape in utero , before any head-binding was possible. Do we have such evidence? Yes, we do! Moreover, this evidence has been known to the academic community for over 163 years!
Rivero and Tschudi in Peruvian Antiquities (1851 Spanish, 1853 English) argue that the protagonists of the artificial cranial deformation hypothesis are mistaken, since they had only considered the skulls of adults. In other words, the hypothesis fails to take into account the skulls of infants and, most importantly, foetuses which had similar elongated skull shape.
It is worth quoting Rivero and Tschudi:
“We ourselves have observed the same fact [of the absence of signs of artificial pressure – IG] in many mummies of children of tender age, who, although they had cloths about them, were yet without any vestige or appearance of pressure of the cranium. More still: the same formation of the head presents itself in children yet unborn; and of this truth we have had convincing proof in the sight of a foetus, enclosed in the womb of a mummy of a pregnant woman, which we found in a cave of Huichay, two leagues from Tarma, and which is, at this moment, in our collection [my emphasis – IG].
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/earth-ancients--2790919/support.
No transcript available for this episode.
