Wharram Percy's mysterious round skulls

[the_historian]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... ge_id=1770

Any thoughts?

[kbs2244]

How do we know the "Round Heads" were born there?
They need to do the kind of analysis that shows birth and early childhood location.

[Beagle]

Hello Historian, and welcome to the forum.

Interesting article. I think the nutritional hypothesis seems most likely, although that's just a guess.

[kbs2244]

I don’t go with evolution due to climate. Too short a time period.
Besides, there are some round headed black tribes in so pretty warm parts of Africa.
I didn’t know about nutrition effecting boys more than girls, so that is a possibility.
But I would still check out the possibility they were cross channel imports. Maybe as indentured servants?
There may have been a genetic plan to all this also. Are there graves full of male newborns with long skulls in the neighborhood?
It would not be the first time the local males were killed off.

[Minimalist]

Most likely a genetic thing. If the village was as isolated as they suggest a certain degree of inbreeding in a small population seems to be a more likely explanation. Like kb, I don't see evolutionary change as happening that quickly.

And yes, welcome aboard.

[Digit]

Without more info Historian I tend to think as Min, and very welcome you are.

[daybrown]

Sometimes a successful leader with a particular physical characteristic, sets off a kind of racist thing in which all men that look like that in a tribe are rewarded with positions and sex.

Head binding being an example of an effort to magnify differences. But then mismanagement leads to new leadership and the view of what is attractive is changed. power is an aphrodisiac, and an ugly old mug like Kissinger should know.

We are now likewise in an era when the lantern jaw warrior is being replaced with the pencil neck geek.

[Digit]

Head binding being an example of an effort to magnify differences.

Yep! and they're all so busy trying to be different it's like a uniform.

[kbs2244]

Yeah, but it is kind of hard to bind your head into a ball shape.
Easier to just have round head fathers and kill any long head male babies.
It wouldn't take but 2 or 3 generations.

[Minimalist]

the lantern jaw warrior is being replaced with the pencil neck geek.

Or the big-earred Texan.

[the_historian]

Thanks for the welcome all!
I must admit I'm stumped. I would reckon it either needs to be genetic or environmental, but there doesn't seem to have been much research done to swing it either way.

[daybrown]

Because politics tends to swing to extremes, the alpha male in charge now has been given enuf rope to demonstrate how bad that form of leadership can be, thus making it that much easier to replace with a woman.

I didnt mean that the heads were bound in this case, but simply to note that these kinds of differences have always been used to denote status, or the lack thereof.

I expect that "Thick Headed" comes not actually from the thickness of the caranial bone, altho that may play a part, but from the increase in white matter at the expense of gray matter. If you have more of the former, you have more of a cushion to the gray, but then also, lacking the gray, more of a need for it.

Phrenology mite've actually gotten somewhere had they focused on the shape on the inside of the skull, where the lack of internal ridges provided greater resistance to gray matter damage on impact. If a round skull could take a licking, but keep on ticking, it'd pay off real well.

[FreeThinker]

Maybe a constricting heavy round hat was worn by all the males for a few centuries and then a new lighter looser type of hat came into style.



maybe...

[Minimalist]

Ya think?

[Rokcet Scientist]

Well, that was certainly a 'lighter and looser' improvement over this: