Maria Mednikova, Doctor of Historical Sciences, employee of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, talks about the ancient tradition of deliberate deformation of the skull:
Europeans first encountered this tradition in the 4th century AD, when tribes appeared on the territory of Western Europe, which subsequently crushed the Roman Empire. These were the Huns, but with them came other tribes who had previously inhabited the expanses of the Eastern European steppes. These were Iranian-speaking tribes, such as the Alans, and among these peoples the custom of deforming the head, and in rather extreme forms, was unexpectedly widespread.
Photos were taken in the Kislovodsk Museum of Local Lore
I think that for the then population of Europe, which developed under the significant influence of the Roman Empire, a collision with such unusual people in their appearance was in itself a great shock.
And if we consider that these people were still warriors who entered into military clashes with the Roman army, and then were included in the Roman Empire, then we can assume that there was a great interest in this tradition. And in general, she could somehow influence the formation of the worldview of that era.
It was a circular deformation: the child's head was given an elongated shape by repeated bandages. This was probably done soon after birth. For at least the first few years of life, the child wore such bandages.
There is a point of view that the deformation was a sign of a noble origin. And according to archaeological evidence, we know that among the peoples of the Alan circle, deformations are common precisely among the elite. In general, settlers from the East formed the so-called barbarian kingdoms on the territory of Western Europe, which in a sense served as a prototype for modern European states. Interestingly, many of them used artificial skull deformation.
- How long has the tradition of skull deformity existed in Europe and in the world?
- One of the Germanic anthropologists draws attention to the fact that even in the 5th century there are no remains of deformed children in Western Europe. That is, apparently, it was about male migration, and already the first settlers did not pass on the tradition to the new generation. And on the territory of Hungary this tradition has been preserved for a long time. Because Hungary, the territory of the Carpathian plain, is the western end of the huge Eurasian steppe corridor, where nomadic tribes who practiced this tradition lived. And there, in some ethnographic areas, this tradition reaches the 19th century. In Hungary, predominantly women were dressed with wooden structures under headscarves. That is, the head itself was not deformed, but the illusion was created that it was deformed.
Promotional video:
An interesting research was done in the 40s by the remarkable Russian anthropologist Maxim Grigorievich Levin. He examined modern Turkmen in Turkmenistan - their tradition of skull deformation persisted until the 40s of the 20th century. Moreover, Levin's observations help to trace very clearly how gender differences develop in this society. After the birth of all children, a deep skullcap was put on their heads, and then bandages were also put on top - both for boys and girls. When the boy was five years old, he received a skullcap, the same as worn by adults. But the girls wore deforming bandages until marriage - until about 12-13 years old. Then they took off the deforming headdress and put on the headdress of an adult married woman.
- What role did the skull deformity play in the system of traditional thinking?
Head deformation, special trepanation, and tattoos are all so-called indelible marks. That is, these are some signs, traces of modification of the human body, which are applied in vivo and remain until the end of life. Moreover, we can say that these signs are acquired at the time of very important tests, which usually correspond to the rites of passage. The fact is that, according to a representative of a traditional society, and even more so a person of archaic culture, the space of human life was not united, it was divided into different social and time periods. What is it about? At first, man was a child. He was not perceived as an adult, he was in a sense subhuman. In order to move to another category, including social, he must experience the initiation rite, after which he often received a new name.
Indelible marks are a kind of mnemonic symbol. What can we talk about here? About different systems of thinking, some are characteristic of a person of archaic culture, completely different - a modern person, relatively speaking, civilized. Two traditions are opposed here - written culture and preliterate culture. From the moment writing emerged, a new form of thinking, a new form of memory, arose. From that moment on, humanity began to pay attention to news, it began to pay attention to history, to new facts, to events. This is a completely different type of thinking organization. But a man of archaic, a man of preliterate culture, there is no history for him, everything that came before him is sacred, because everything was created by the ancestors and created at the time of the origin of the universe. And so everything that happens is a copy of the original matrix.
Lotman wrote that the oral tradition of collective memory requires the use of a large number of symbols that are on the verge of writing, but they do not belong to writing. These are the so-called mnemonic signs. And, in my opinion, all that a person can do with his body, all the manipulations of representatives of a traditional society, they are these mnemonic symbols that remind of the sacred values of traditional society.