They are systematically found all over the world, and no one can say for sure who they belong to.
Let's try to figure it out …
The main theory of scientists is that the ancient people deliberately distorted the skulls of babies using various tricks and tools. In childhood, babies were tightly tugged at the temples with ropes or special blocks.
However, the most striking thing is that such a practice was among many peoples completely remote from each other in terms of time and geography. Research done by David Childress in Peru, Adriano Forgione in Malta, and Andrew Collins has led to greater knowledge of the practice of elongated skulls.
First of all, it is a rare anomaly that has been found since ancient times in various parts of the world. Elongated skulls delight archaeologists in Egypt, Mexico and Peru, but also in Malta, the Mittani belt of northern Iraq and Syria; and it appears that those skulls that possess such traits were associated with royal or priestly classes.
In 1995, explorer Robert Connolly photographed these skulls during a trip to collect material about ancient civilizations.
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There are myths about gods who descended from heaven and had elongated heads. They were highly respected. In Mexico, among the Maya gods, the Serpent Gods are known, who wore elaborate, elongated headdresses. It is understood that the Maya upper class wanted to liken their skulls to the heads of the gods.
Egyptian Gods also wore elongated headdresses, general tie?
There is a version that even the well-known moai of Easter Island depict figures with an elongated head, and their strange reddish "headdresses" are actually just hair, under which this elongated head shape is hidden.
In North America, skull deformation can be traced in various tribes. Moreover, it was practiced until very recently.
Even in the USSR, by the beginning of the twentieth century, there were wild places where people continued to bandage their heads, and Africans from the Mangbetu tribe continue to mutilate their children today.
"Omsk Skull". The oblong skull found at excavations in the Irtysh region in the early 1990s is still controversial. The expedition was carried out in the vicinity of the village of Ust-Tara, on the territory of a burial mound. As a result of excavations, 8 graves were found there, dating back to about the 5th century AD. The origin of this burial ground is still a mystery.
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Another custom of the Alans, the deformation of the skull, is well confirmed. The elongated shape of the head was achieved by bandaging the head in childhood. This custom had a limited distribution among the early Sarmatians, but then reappeared and became widespread in the 2nd-4th centuries. under the influence of the Huns. Among the Volga, according to archaeologists, 70% of the discovered skulls are deformed. Deformed skulls are found in Alanian burials of the 4th-5th centuries. in Western Europe.
And more about the Sarmatians:
If in the Sarmatian burials of the 1st century. BC. - 1 c. AD 35.7% of skulls were artificially deformed (Shilov V. P., 1959), then in burials of the 2nd - 4th centuries. AD already 88% of the skulls are deformed (Sinitsyn I. V., 1960). This allowed KF Smirnov (1959) to call artificial deformation "one of the most expressive features of the late Sarmatian population of the Volga region."
That is, it is not such a "rare anomaly".
And yet it is strange that exactly the same deformed skulls are found on the territory of modern Europe, including present-day Norway and France, and in Central Asia, and in Central and South America. How did people, separated by oceans and gigantic distances, adopt such bizarre fashion from each other?
You can read more about the research here - ARTIFICIAL DEFORMATION OF THE HUMAN SKULL. A. Zaichenko.
Grachev Konstantin writes:
These are skulls from the city of Kislovodsk, Stavropol Territory. According to locals, in the spring, when the Berezavka River rises, flowing through the city, a lot of this is washed. Museum workers claim that these are "constrictions" and so on, it's hard to believe. There is also a helmet, it seems to me to this shape of the skull.
There is little I can add about the skulls. I was with a local ethnographer in the alluvium area. This is a valley on the outskirts of the city, pasture mountains. There are small rocks or something like sandstone with small caves, rather niches. The breed is replete with ancient fossils of marine life. It is there, according to local historians, that the river carries the skull.
Period IV-VII centuries AD known as the Great Nations Migration. The events that gave the name to this era have mainly affected Europe. Researchers still know less about what was happening in Siberia at that time. An invaluable material for the reconstruction of the history of the medieval inhabitants of Western Siberia is provided by a study of the remains of ancient people, which makes it possible to characterize not only the appearance, race and demographic indicators of the population, but also to clarify some aspects of their medical knowledge. An example of this is the excavation of the Ustyug-1 burial ground (IV-VI centuries AD), located in the middle reaches of the Tobol River. According to specialists from the Institute for Problems of Northern Development of the SB RAS (IPOS SB RAS), one of the people buried in the burial ground underwent craniotomy. Scientists with a high degree of probability established the diagnosis of the patient and the sequence of actions of medieval surgeons.
Anthropological reconstruction based on the skull of a 35–40 year old man from the Ustyug-1 burial ground (full face and profile): a - skull; b - craniogram of the skull; c - graphic portrait. Reconstruction by Elena Alekseeva.
Burial ground Ustyug-1 belongs to the Bakal culture that existed in the Tobol region in the 4th – 13th centuries AD. During the excavation, which was led by Natalya Matveeva, professor of Tyumen State University, Doctor of Historical Sciences, researchers examined 19 burial mounds and found the remains of 30 buried men, women and children. Burials were located not only under the embankments, but also between them. Time and people did not spare these graves, some of them were destroyed and plundered.
Almost all of the buried had deformed skulls. Apparently, in childhood, they were wearing a soft circular bandage on their heads, which squeezed the skull and gave it an elongated shape. Sergei Slepchenko, a surgeon, postgraduate student of the Institute of Postgraduate Education and Science of the SB RAS, says:
“Artificial head deformities can be divided into intentional and unintentional. Unintentional can occur, for example, when a tightly wrapped baby lies on its back for a long time in a cradle. In this case, the occipital type of deformity develops, that is, the head is flattened under the influence of its own gravity. There are many types of deliberate artificial deformations, their purpose is to give the head a certain shape, for example, in order to emphasize belonging to a certain tribal group or class. Perhaps these people considered the deformed skull to be beautiful - everyone has their own ideas about beauty.
“I studied one such skull, found in the 1930s near the city of Chihuahua (Mexico),” says the famous archaeologist Lloyd PI, author of Everything You Know Is A Lie. - When the appearance of the "owner" was restored by the method of Professor Gerasimov, it turned out that it most of all resembles the portraits of aliens, as eyewitnesses-contactees now draw them. In two laboratories I made a genetic analysis of bones - the DNA chains of this "creature" in a number of fragments differed from human ones. And the skull itself would have to hold about 2 liters of brains. This is half a liter more than modern people.
Near the small Mexican village of Onvas, in the south of Sonora, archaeologists have discovered the first pre-Hispanic cemetery in the area, whose graves date back about 1000 years.
The burial ground consists of the remains of 25 people, the skulls of most are elongated and deformed, and some have deformed jaws. The finds were similar to those pre-Hispanic burials that were practiced much to the south and had never, until now, been found in this part of Mexico. Of the 25 skeletons, only one was female.
On the map, the state of Sonora, northern Mexico, borders the United States.
Apparently, the practice of stretching skulls for ritual purposes, with the aim of changing consciousness, or in order to designate a special role in a social group, was widespread in pre-Columbian America. And if this is not so, then a detachment of priests, similar to alien aliens, was making their way somewhere to the north from the south, but was carefully laid by someone in a common grave.
Elongated skulls at the Regional Museum of Ica.
According to the accepted point of view in academic science, such an elongated shape is the result of artificial and deliberate deformation. A similar deformation of the head is still practiced by some tribes of the Congo, Sudan and the New Hebrides (western Pacific). With the help of various tricks and devices, which boil down to limiting the development of the cranium, representatives of these peoples achieve an unnatural head shape. In particular, this is ensured by the use of a tight bandage that tightens the head - this is exactly the method presented on the stands of the Regional Museum of Ica.
Since the growth of the cranium is much slower than that of other bones of the skeleton, and with age the bones of the skull become less susceptible to external influences, in order to obtain a deformed shape, “sculptors of living heads” have to “work with the material” for a rather long time and start their “work” with the earliest age of "sculpture". Simply put, the deformity had to begin in the earliest childhood.
In addition to living examples that can be seen among the modern tribes mentioned above, there is also archaeological evidence of the practice of deformation. So on the territory of the American continents, in ancient burials, not only deformed skulls were found, but also devices for deformation (bandages in South America, plaques in Mesoamerica), and even special children's beds on which small children were fixed so that they could not remove these devices and dressings that naturally caused serious discomfort and discomfort.
Deformation of skulls in South America was recorded in a number of cultures - Chavin, Lauricoca, Paracas, Nazca, Puerto Moorin, Incas and other peoples. So, according to historians, the version of artificial deformation as the cause of the elongated head shape is fully supported by facts and archaeological data.
However, a number of questions remain. And first of all, the question of why this was done …
The most common answer possible is for beauty.
Indeed, everyone strives to be beautiful, and the concept of “beauty” is different for each nation. And what someone considers beautiful can cause surprise and even bewilderment in us. Someone "decorates" their body with multi-colored tattoos, and someone with numerous scars - the more tattoos or scars, the "more beautiful". Someone pulls the earlobes, hanging an incredible weight on them, while someone increases the length of the neck, gradually changing the length of a special spiral that rests on the chin and shoulders. And these procedures are not always pleasant. But what you just do not go for the sake of "beauty" …
And still…
The concept of "beauty" is really different for everyone. Then why, with the most diverse methods of influencing the shape of the head and in the most diverse territories where this practice was widespread, people tried to provide the same result - to achieve exactly an elongated head shape?.. Nobody, anywhere, has ever aspired to any another form - say, flattened, triangular or square.
What is the basis of this "uniformity of purpose" among peoples separated by thousands of kilometers (according to some sources, elongated skulls were found even in our country, on the territory of Siberia)?..
The question "why" is especially acute in the light of the data of modern medicine, according to which such an effect on the head, in addition to the inconveniences and unpleasant sensations caused, contributes to the occurrence of regular headaches and seriously increases the risk of negative consequences for the mental and physical health of a person.
The ancient peoples were not at all stupid and did not keep their health in last place. On the contrary, in the course of centuries of practice, what we now call "traditional medicine" has been developed, meaning by it whole systems of knowledge aimed at maintaining human health - recipes for the preparation of medicines, special gymnastics for the body, exercises to control the "internal energies" of the body, acupuncture, etc. etc. The community also cared about its own survival as the individual cared about his own.
Tightening bandages to deform the head.
The Indians could not fail to notice the negative health effects during the mass practice of head deformation. Moreover, the earliest finds of deformed skulls - as one of the caretakers of the Regional Museum of Ica told us, whom we were able to talk to - date back to 17 thousand years, and the Indians had plenty of time to be convinced of the negative consequences of head deformity for health human. And yet, for some reason, they continued this practice. But why?!.
Historians do not give any intelligible answer to this question, writing off everything, at best, to a cult ceremony with an incomprehensible motivation. However, even with all the power of the influence of religion and cult on the entire way of life of people, it is clearly not enough. There must be a much more powerful incentive for such a "fanatical egg-head" drive. And the incentive is quite stable, considering the ubiquity and duration of this "tradition".
Recently - following the aforementioned current fashion for "extrasensory perception" - more and more researchers are inclined towards the neurophysiological version. The fact is that a change in the shape of the skull also affects various areas of the cerebral cortex, which should, in theory, contribute to certain changes in the human psyche. However, until now, all this is only in the field of hypothetical assumptions, and among the tribes practicing deformation of the skull, something has not been noticed any special positive shifts in mental abilities. And cult servants (shamans and priests), for whom the ability, for example, to fall into a trance or immerse in meditation is very important, do not at all strive to deform the skull, preferring less radical means …
A fundamentally different version was put forward by Daniken - a supporter of the version of the real existence of the ancient "gods" who were representatives of an alien civilization and, quite possibly, had some physiological differences from the representatives of the earthly race. In this version, the gods had an elongated head shape, and people tried to "become like the gods."
In this regard, attention is drawn to the research of Robert Connolly, who, during his trips to South America, drew attention to the elongated skulls of an abnormally large size. In 1995, he published photographs of these skulls, as well as the results of his research on a separate CD-ROM entitled "The Search for Ancient Wisdom."
The fact is that in the course of a deliberate deformation, only the shape of the skull can be changed, but not its volume. And the skulls that Connolly drew attention to, according to him, are almost twice the size of an ordinary human skull!..
Strictly speaking, among people there are cases of an increased size of the cranium - with some diseases. However, in cases of such a strong deviation of the head from its normal size, people are close to the state of a "vegetable" and do not live up to adulthood. And the skulls that attracted Connolly's attention clearly belonged to adults. In addition, the enlarged skulls of people with such diseases do not at all acquire an elongated shape, but increase more or less evenly in different directions …
Some of the anomalous elongated skulls are in the Regional Museum of Ica. In particular, the skull with the number 176 engraved on it (see Fig. 38) appears in Connolly. Its dimensions, judging by the purely visual impression, do seem to be significantly different from the average person. However, if you take a closer look, you will notice on this skull something that looks like traces from a tightening bandage. And, strictly speaking, Connolly's conclusions about the anomalousness of the skull number 176 (as well as other similar skulls) should be double-checked. And if the statement about the almost two-fold excess of the volume of the cranium in comparison with ordinary human skulls is confirmed, then anomalous skulls can become real contenders for the title of skulls of the ancient "gods" with all the ensuing consequences. Although there may be another option …
The mythology of, perhaps, all the peoples of the world and various religions indicate that the ancient "gods" entered into sexual relations with people, after which hybrids, "half-breeds" were born. It is clear that with such a genetic mixing, such half-breeds, as well as their offspring, inevitably had to periodically show the genes for "egg-head", that is, an elongated skull could well have appeared. And it is quite natural that individuals with elongated skulls from birth - as “descendants of the all-powerful gods” - occupied a higher social position.
It is also natural that the “opposite” is also possible - representatives of the local nobility, in order to emphasize their “right” to a higher social status, could deliberately deform the heads of their children, so that they looked more like “descendants of the gods”. And with this the fact of a certain "social imbalance" is quite compatible - the skull deformation procedure was first of all subjected to the representatives of the upper strata of society (this is not so clearly expressed in South America, but among the Mayans in Mesoamerica it can be traced quite definitely).
Civilizations around the world have built pyramids, perhaps not knowing about each other. Other ancient cultures also erected stone dolmens and menhirs all over the world - and yet, we are still taught that they were not related either.
Is it possible that there was once a civilization that united these cultures?
So all this is not casual: