Archaeologica.org

A really comprehensive account of intentional cranial deformation across time and space.

Which doesn't account for everything found archaeologically, but it's good stuff to be aware of.

http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/02/04/e ... only-ones/

Left unanswered is how and why that shape became the desired one.

By whom ? Pretty evidently by the people who warped their children's heads into conformity with it.

No ?

"what was the connection with Mayan Yucatan and dynastic Egypt where they did the same to infants' heads? Was that coincidence? Or was there a cultural connection? Assuming the deforming of heads was culturally driven."

Like so many "coincidences " beloved of the hyper diffusionists it is a culturally driven human practice with a wide spatial and temporal distribution , and with supporting contemporary ethnographic evidence .
There is no evidence for anything other than that .

Yet anothet non sequitor and misunderstanding of simple English
What is it that you don't understand this time ?

There is a simple explanation for the cultural phenomenon , although some of the new age crowd fail to recognise it and prefer the usual fare of evidence free fantasy .

Blow it out your ear, T.

When you have widely separated people around the world doing the same apparently bizarre thing to themselves, your options are:

1) That the idea spread by contact.

2) That they were copying some currently ruled-out-a priori beings in emulation of them.

Either way, the "They just did it. For no reason. And with no significance beyond the fact that they did it" is disingenuity taken to the level of comedy.

uniface wrote:
When you have widely separated people around the world doing the same apparently bizarre thing to themselves, your options are:

1) That the idea spread by contact.

2) That they were copying some currently ruled-out-a priori beings in emulation of them.

Either way, the "They just did it. For no reason. And with no significance beyond the fact that they did it" is disingenuity taken to the level of comedy.

Your usually over excited imagination has come to a halt if that is the extent of the options you can up with .

Seeing as you applied the quotes , who said ""They just did it. For no reason. And with no significance beyond the fact that they did it"
I certainly didn't

You just made that up .

Of course they did it for a reason .

Which brings us right back around to the list of possibilities I posted.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/733699_2

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21121715


You guys keep throwing in the ancient Egyptians as an example of a people who habitually practiced cranial deformation.

That is NOT the case. With the exception of Akhenaten & his immediate family members, there is no evidence whatsoever for that practice before approximately 600 CE.

Kindly get your facts straight. If you want to disagree, please do & post links to support your assertion.

The only people barfing are the fantasists ,and failing to add anything constructive .
Did you read your own link .?
We know why those pre 20th C. AD deformations in France known as the “Toulouse deformity “ happened , it was due to the bandeau . It may or may not explain others deformities but the only connection the practitioners had with other examples found throughout history is that binding childrens head can result in the deformity and for various reason people chose to do it . Similar practices that occur to people to practice are found the world over in all time periods . The common denominator is people with a similar biological inheritance reacting to their environment .At one extreme you have Newton and Leibniz with no contact or assistance , coming up with a solution to a problem that even today most people don’t have a clue about .On the other hand the ubiquity of similar artistic practices whether musical , graphic or dramatic where we find the a preference for the same pitches throughout the world , we all like the pentatonic scale not because it was imposed upon us or derived from across the ocean , but because of our common biological inheritance .The same applies to the various simple patterns that are found in all arts in all periods all over the world e.g. spirals , serpentiforms ,lozenges etc .
Bodily modifications are found all over the world in different periods . Piercings and tattoos are fairly popular in the west at the moment , those who practice it are merely doing what people have done for millennia all over the world . It is not a case of diffusion but a simple preference available to all . Scarification is less popular but practiced by widely disparate peoples . Like whistling or creating fantasies to explain stuff they can't understand it is what people can and like to do ,and does not suggest diffusion .

Lilly's put her finger on it. Either of my two ways, it's emulation -- whether that be of the highest status people in that culture or of those-whose-existence-is-recorded-in-universal-memory-but-who-are-not-to-be-mentioned-because-the-current-paradigm-does-not-admit-that-they-could-have-been-here-among-us.

Same thing as Black folks in decades past buying trainloads of hair conk and skin lightener to make them look more nearly White.

None of your genetic problems or environmental issues deform skulls to that extreme a degree and in that way. That's claiming "It just happened" again -- which you reject as a summary of your position but then immediately revert to behind a smokescreen of non sequeturs.

There are various possible reasons for skull deformations . We know some for sure, the most recent ones and those in the historical record . The others we can only guess at .
Same applies to tatoos, an ancient practice that can have many potential explanations , and we know the most recent ones .
There is no reaso to suppose that the practice is any diffent from other body modifications found all over the globe and in different time periods .

As for "those-whose-existence-is-recorded-in-universal-memory-but-who-are-not-to-be-mentioned-because-the-current-paradigm-does-not-admit-that-they-could-have-been-here-among-us."
Why even bother with that nonsense when the phenomena has a much more more obvious and simple explanation .
And why don't you provide some evidence to connect that fantasy with skull deformations .
There is plenty for the the most parsimonious explanation .

There is no reaso to suppose that the practice is any diffent from other body modifications found all over the globe and in different time periods .

Good thing you didn't become a physician doing cosmetic surgery.

Still no evidence against the most obvious explanation of a practice that like other body midifications found all over the world and in different periods can be done for a variety of reasons .
You wouldn't give a ref for the basis of the " aerial evidence " or your belief that is contrary to to the most obvious explantions about vitrification , now you are being coy about clarifying
"those-whose-existence-is-recorded-in-universal-memory-but-who-are-not-to-be-mentioned-because-the-current-paradigm-does-not-admit-that-they-could-have-been-here-among-us. "
that supposedly is an explanation . Don't be shy . It's only a laugh .

What about the most obvious example of body modification? Circumcision.

Yeah... because 'god' said so.