From time to time, in different parts of the planet, archaeologists find unusual skulls, the shape of which is very different from the usual human one. Crimea occupies a prominent place among the regions famous for such finds.
Strange skulls are the subject of controversy and curious research. And also the subject of fantastic speculation: where did people with deformed skulls come from, who were they, and were they people?..
Considered the noblest
People with an unusual, elongated skull shape have been known since antiquity. The owners of the so-called elongated heads were called macrocephals (macrocephaly) and were considered an outlandish tribe. This is how the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and the historian Strabo mention macrocephalus, saying that this mysterious people lives somewhere in the region of Lake Meotius - the present Sea of Azov.
And the earliest description was given in the IV century BC by the famous physician Hippocrates: “There is no nation that has such a head shape. Macrocephalus consider the noblest those who have the longest heads,”he wrote.
But if in ancient times people at least occasionally encountered living owners of long heads, then later both meetings and knowledge about macrocephals almost completely passed into the realm of legends. However, 200 years ago, archaeologists began to find elongated skulls in different parts of the planet, and this topic again became relevant. And the unusual skulls themselves began to be called artificially deformed.
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First finds
It is believed that the first artificially deformed skulls were found in Peru at the very beginning of the 19th century, and European scientists immediately attributed them to the numerous wonders of the then little-studied New World, believing that they were a feature of the distant American continent.
Skulls from Peru
But in 1820, a skull with traces of a similar deformation was found in Austria, and researchers at first took it for a Peruvian skull, who knows how it ended up in Europe, but then they began to consider it the skull of an Asian nomad from the Avar tribe - this tribe appeared in Europe in the 6th century of our era.
For some time, scientists adhered to the belief that the owners of long heads lived somewhere in the Asian steppes, were representatives of a special tribe that formed two thousand two years ago, and found themselves outside of their original place of residence during the era of the Great Nations Migration.
But later, archaeologists began to find the same skulls in many regions of the planet, and dating their age ranging from 13 thousand years to some hundreds of years ago.
Territory with special status
Over the past 200 years, deformed skulls have been found in different places on the planet: in the Caucasus and the Kuban, in southern Siberia and near the mouth of the Don, in the Voronezh and Samara regions, in Kazakhstan, India, America, Australia, China, Egypt, Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Congo and Sudan, the Pacific Islands, Malta, Syria - you can list for a long time.
And, accordingly, the versions about peoples that had such strange heads varied significantly. Here are the ancient Egyptians, the Mayans, the Incas, the Alans, the Sarmatians, the Goths, the Huns, and even the Cimmerians - a people whose existence legends are associated with the Crimea.
By the way, Crimea, in connection with the finds of deformed skulls, stands apart. The fact is that the skulls of the Crimean macrocephals represent a very characteristic type - the deformation reaches an extreme degree. And the geography of the finds is extensive: at different times, such skulls were found in Kerch, in the Bakhchisarai region, in Alushta, Gurzuf, in Sudak and in the vicinity of Simferopol, in Inkerman and on the territory of Chersonesos, in the area of present-day Sevastopol. Moreover, there are dozens of skulls found, which indicates a wide spread of the tradition.
Deformed skulls from the collection of the Kerch Museum
Just this year, another deformed skull was found during archaeological excavations in the cave city of Eski-Kermen.
The man who embalmed Lenin's body
Previously, the peninsula had its own outstanding specialists who devoted years to the study of unusual skulls. Among them, it is worth noting the first head of the Department of Normal Anatomy of the Crimean Medical University, Viktor Bobin, who collected a collection of 32 deformed skulls found in the Crimea.
Vasily Pikalyuk, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Head of the Department of Normal Anatomy, Crimean Medical Academy named after V. I. S. I. Georgievsky:
“It was a unique collection, samples of which are over 2500 years old. Unfortunately, it has not survived in its entirety - part of it ended up in Germany during the war, part is now in Kharkov, at the National University. We have 12 skulls left from that collection, found in Chersonesos and on Buckle. Professor Bobin, of course, did a lot to study deformed skulls, he was a famous anthropologist, who was known all over the world and without whom no anthropological expedition on the peninsula could do. But he is also famous for the fact that he stood at the origins of the creation of the department of anatomy of our university - from 1931 to 1968 he was in charge of it, as well as for the fact that he rebalanced Lenin's body after the war. He was a student of Professor Vorobyov, the same one who embalmed the body of the leader after death."
Versions, hypotheses, assumptions …
Where did people with such a head shape come from on the peninsula? On these issues, there are many opinions, the supporters of which are fundamentally different in their views. Among the most daring assumptions is the version that the owners of long heads were representatives of a special race that once colonized the Crimea - they say, before the peninsula was the center of habitation and culture of people whom contemporaries considered a special race with superpowers, and then became a kind of “reserve of long-headed”, Of which there are very few left, because the overwhelming majority of them died along with Atlantis, and the remains of that civilization must be sought at the bottom of the Sea of Azov.
More restrained versions say that Crimea was indeed a kind of nature reserve, but the custom of giving the skulls an elongated shape appeared as a fragment of a culture widespread in many regions of the Earth.
“There are three main versions of the origin of deformed skulls,” says Professor Vasily Pikalyuk. - The first is alien. Say, this is proof that once someone flew to us. The other two are more “earthly.” One is based on the fact that deformed skulls of different ages - both children and adults - were found in rich burials. And, therefore, they were possessed by the heirs of noble families as proof that this is the seal of God, that they The other is based on the assumption that the shape of the head was changed in order not to become prey to the invaders, because there is information that the conquerors did not touch people with deformed skulls, considering them marked with the seal of dark forces, and any contact with such did not promise anything good."
Cradle torture
Considering that Hippocrates called the region of the present-day Sea of Azov, to which the Crimea partly belongs, the habitat of macrocephalics, one can form an idea of some of the peculiarities of the worldview of the ancient local population.
It is also noteworthy that among the deformed Crimean skulls found by archaeologists, a significant part are female, and the number of long skulls in burials sometimes reaches 40 and 80%. That is, it is possible that there was a period on the Crimean peninsula when at least half of the representatives of a certain people living here had tall, elongated heads.
To what people these individuals belonged - the researchers argue, but the majority agree that they were representatives of the Sarmatian tribes.
It is also noteworthy how the process of head deformation is described. Such information can be found in various sources, because the tradition can be traced at different times and in different regions. Among the most interesting descriptions are the testimonies of one of the Spanish missionaries, Diego de Landa, who lived in Yucatan.
He wrote in 1566 that “the local inhabitants put children of four or five days old in a bed made of twigs, and there they fastened the heads of the babies between the boards - one on the back of the head, the other on the forehead - and held them in torment until the head became flattened, as is their custom."
However, as scientists say, there were many ways to deform the skull. And it looks like they were all pretty painful.
Imitation or experimentation?
Why were children subjected to such a painful procedure? Is it only for the sake of a peculiar concept of beauty or to designate a special status? And where in general could such a strange ritual come from, which, moreover, threatens with death or incorrigible injury?
So, supporters of paleocontacts see here a direct relationship with the existence of an alien civilization, the representatives of which some earthlings wanted to be like. And as proof, they cite the words of contactees, who, they say, often see aliens with just such an elongated head.
And researchers who adhere to "earthly" versions assure that these were attempts to influence the brain. Already in antiquity, people supposedly realized that various incomprehensible states of consciousness, spiritual practices, divine providences depend on the activity of the brain. And that this activity can be controlled. And, therefore, they conducted experiments, trying to influence certain parts of it, including by changing the shape of the skull.
“A deformed skull does not in any way affect human mental activity,” assures Vasily Pikalyuk. “It’s just getting a different shape for the brain. By the way, when a child is born, the configuration of his skull repeats the configuration of the birth canal. That is, the skull of a newborn is similar to those skulls that are obtained by deformation and which are found during excavations."
There could have been more exhibits
You can see deformed skulls in Crimea today, in particular, in the Kerch Historical and Archaeological Museum. There are kept four skulls of macrocephals, two of which are presented in the exhibition dedicated to the sarmatization of the Crimea in the first centuries of our era. There could have been more such exhibits, if not for the tragic consequences of the war, and sometimes vandalism.
Semyon Shestakov, senior researcher of the Kerch Historical and Archaeological Museum:
“In 1976, while excavating a mound in the Marat-2 microdistrict, during new construction works, I discovered a crypt of the 4th century BC, which consisted of two chambers. And in the cell that was closer to the entrance, along the walls were deformed skulls - four on each side. The skulls were identified as Sarmatian. Unfortunately, there were no guards at the excavations and at night the skulls disappeared somewhere. Probably, it was not without the "help" of local residents."
Old scandal
In 1832, a loud scandal erupted in Kerch, caused by the loss of valuables from the local museum. What made the scandal unusual was that not gold jewelry, not rare vases or documents, but human remains - the skull of an ancient inhabitant of the Kerch Peninsula, found during excavations in the Yeni-Kale region - had disappeared from the museum collection.
The skull was of an extremely unusual shape - strongly elongated upward, moreover, very well preserved, and even then researchers saw in it evidence of the existence of a special race of people in the Crimea in the past.
This case was described in his memoirs by the Swiss scientist, traveler Dubois de Montpere, who at that time was in Kerch. They accused the director of the museum, Mr. Debrux, who had sold the strange skull to some visiting foreigners for 100 rubles in banknotes.
As a result, the scandal reached the Russian Academy in St. Petersburg, causing a resonance both among scientists and among officials, because every discovery and loss of such skulls was considered in the 19th century as an event.
Dmitry SMIRNOV
The material was published in the newspaper "Crimean Telegraph" No. 351 of October 23, 2015