Can DNA solve the mystery of pointy skulls?

[Helen of Annoy]

12 minutes ago, Harte said:

Helen appears to be curious about why people deform themselves. So ask this guy.

What is that all about? How is this any different?

Harte

I don't think the objective explanation for skull elongating practice is parents with extreme mental issues who were deforming their children's skulls in particular way but without particular cause - other than mental illness.

Or you accidentally tried too hard to maliciously misinterpret my posts?

   

Edited August 23, 2019 by Helen of Annoy
ate an 'o' in 'too'

[Hanslune]

4 hours ago, Piney said:

He has some serious issues. 

But I don't think those will show up in the archaeological record - well hopefully. In cultures where this was done it was to identify someone as belong to 'x', or being part of 'y', or of being class 'z'. Given there is no written information for that period on the subject we are left with speculation.

[Phaeton80]

17 hours ago, Helen of Annoy said:

Well, if you've got fear of using word 'mystery' you can call it 'question'.

And if you think you've got all the questions regarding these particular elongated skulls answered, including the surprising DNA results, please do contact professionals who are not as psychic as you apparently are, so they don't waste their time since you've got it all figured out. Or sucked out of ether. 

In case you haven't noticed, I find your arrogance highly disruptive, uncalled for and generally rude. 

Could you go show your emotional problems in some other thread? 

 

It's not a mystery how the skulls were elongated, but it is a mystery (or question, if you prefer) why, what started such bizarre practice and also, why are the findings much more genetically diverse than expected. 

Elongating is not even that important, as the genetic news. The migrations puzzle is very far from properly completed.  

But Helen, these people are experts! Experts, people of science, who frequent a forum called Unexplained Mysteries and attempt to intellectually p*** on everyone daring to discuss 'mysteries', they seem to take pleasure in uplifting themselves by degrading others

Can you imagine how bleak your life has to be to resort to this sort of self- worth build up? I personally suspect a tirant wife might be at play here. Very, very sad.

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Phaeton80

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

12 hours ago, Helen of Annoy said:

 religiously über-sceptical thread-crappers

You called?

[Piney]

5 hours ago, Phaeton80 said:

But Helen, these people are experts! Experts, people of science, who frequent a forum called Unexplained Mysteries and attempt to intellectually p*** on everyone daring to discuss 'mysteries', they seem to take pleasure in uplifting themselves by degrading others

Well, maybe if they discuss some real mysteries. Like who made the first sword? ( Something rife with Turkish Turanism) 

Where did pottery actually start ?( North China is the prime suspect but Japan makes the claim too) 

Was the Amazon agroforesty at it's finest.? Edna Meggers put's up a good argument.

Did Asian Homo-Erectus/ Denisovans have superior woodworking skills and a coastal lifestyle? ( Signs point in that direction)

Were the Proto-Central Algonquian Adena Culture Atlantean house pets and the mounds built in the shape of their squeaky toys? 

Last but not least, the biggest mystery...Where did Dutch racism go? Did they send them all to the U.S.?  

 

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Piney
**** Atlantis

[Thanos5150]

From here: Elongated Skulls of the Levant c. 7500BC + More

Dating to 8th-7th millenniums, more than 60 skulls since the 1950's have been found in the Levant, sometimes buried under the floor of homes, that were uniquely covered in plaster and filled in with soil in which the the faces were painted and adorned to recreate the face. The most famous collection of skulls were discovered in the ancient city of Jericho, dated to c. 7,500BC, with evidence of occupation going back at least 12,000yrs. Many (all?) of these skulls showed various forms of elongation:

Skulls of Jericho:

One in particular, the famed "Jericho man", was recently digitally reconstructed:

Quite a strange looking fellow with noticeably elongated skull akin to the "Ubaid" type I have spoken of before. Scientists assume these skulls were "probably" artificially deformed but as I have argued this is not always the case.   
Below is a collection of previous posts regarding this general subject of Near East/Egyptian elongated skulls that are worthwhile to present here. If I have the time I will collect other posts as well of more finds I have written about. The short of it is the elongated skull phenomenon in the Near East is real spanning several thousand years. To walk the streets of early Levantine, Mesopotamian, and Elamite cities, even Egypt, would have been bizarre filled with many odd looking people.    
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ancient Long-Headed Skull from Korea was Naturally Formed

Research paper:
Bio-Anthropological Studies on Human Skeletons from the 6th Century Tomb of Ancient Silla Kingdom in South Korea.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Skeleton of 7,500-Year-Old Man Found Almost Intact in Iran

While the article doesn't note the obvious elongated skull, such "long-headed" skulls are common in ancient Iran. Though elongated skulls of various types have been found in the greater Mesopotamian region spanning thousands of years well into the historical period, dating back to at least the 9th millennium BC, in Iran alone, some of the oldest, dozens of "long-headed" type elongated skulls have been excavated from just 18 sites dated to the 8th-5th millenniums:  
PREHISTORY OF IRAN: ARTIFICIAL CRANIAL MODIFICATIONS
Different in appearance than those commonly associated with the Ubaid of Mesopotamia from the same period:
Ubaid Headshaping.p125-142. 
 
While the Ubaid type of elongated skulls may have been artificially deformed (though probably not all), despite the fact the Iran article insists these too are all "artificial", the "long-headed type", there is a growing body of scientific study that is proving that at least with some types of elongated skulls, like the long-headed type pictured above from Korea as well as those found in the Amarna period in Egypt, are in fact natural. I would suggest that many of the ancient elongated skulls cataloged as being caused by artificial cranial deformation were uncritically done so based on assumptions derived from similar but different modern examples and believe that for these skulls to be scientifically re-examined using modern methods that many would in fact prove to be natural as well.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Along with the Anu ziggurat of Uruk, the mud brick Sialk Ziggurat of Iran is considered the oldest in the world dating to c. 3,000BC with occupation of the site going back to at least c. 5500-6,000BC.

Proposed reconstructions:

Another.

Dating to the earliest periods, several skull types are found including several what I call "Cro-Magnoid" (hyperdilochocephalic) skulls as well as the less extreme more rounded "Ubaid-type" spoken of before. 

Regarding the remains found at Sialk:

Quote

In Sailak I-V a number of human crania were found in graves and it was possible for H.V. Vallios to examine some eighteen of them and to make determinations of their respective head forms. There were four groups, comprising hyperdolicho-, dilocho-, meso- and brachycephaly (beginning in Sialk II). Perhaps the most interesting result was that in the periods preceding 'Ubaid (Sailk I-II) five out of eleven skulls were hyperdolichocephalic, whereas only one out of four displayed this extreme long-headedness in the earlier 'Ubaid period, Sialk, and thereafter there was no more of this type.

The Development of Cities.

10yr old girl c. 5500BC:
 
LARGE

While elongated skulls of various types as we know have been found all over the world well into AD times, much more than people realize, the fact of the matter is that apparently beginning in the 9th millennium, most notably from the 6th millennium onward, the greater Mesopotamia region in particular (including the Levant and Anatolia) was a very strange place filled with large numbers of rather unusual looking people. These are not an accumulation of unique instances, but rather the norm found ubiquitously across thousands of years of Mesopotamian culture, eventually bleeding into Egypt during the later predynastic period, which all told represents nothing short of a phenomenon.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

NW Anatolia (Turkey) c. 6,000BC:

The first European farmers are traced back to Anatolia....[/quote]
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Various types of elongated skulls start popping up c. 8000-7000BC and from about c. 6000BC onward they become increasingly common, namely by way of the proliferation of Ubaid culture throughout greater Mesopotamia. Petrie discovered Mesopotamian style Naqada II burials near Abydos, c. 3400BC, with the some the remains having large elongated skulls and robust skeletons, part of what he dubbed the "Dynastic Race". If you are interested, I ramble on about some of this stuff here: Lizard Men, Cro-Magnon, Elongated Skulls, Malta, and Fat Ladies
More about Egypt:
HERE
HERE
HERE
Skull attributed to Sanakht, supposedly Djoser's brother c. 27th century BC:

You could beat a cat with that jaw bone. Reportedly he was unusually tall for the average Egyptian with robust skeleton.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A princess of Amarna, presumably one of Tut's sisters.

Akhenaten and Nefertiti holding children with elongated skulls:
 

The skull of Tutankhamen:

Regarding Tut's skull:
Dr. Madiha Khattab and his team concluded (emphasis mine):

Quote

Tut's elongated skull was a normal anthropological variation, not a result of disease or congenital abnormality.

NY Times

The tomb KV55 skull attributed to Akhenaten, Tut's father: 

Statue of Nefertiti:

Skull attributed to Thutmose III:

Unidentified skull from Thebes, 18th Dynasty (?):
 

MESOPOTAMIA:

Regarding finds dating to the mid 3rd millennium BC, the Sumerian Royal Cemetery of Ur provides a wealth of elongated skull individuals described at large by Wooley as being a "highly dolichocephalic race". 

UR EXCAVATIONS
THE ROYAL CEMETERY 

According to the cranial index, a ratio of 75 or less indicates a dolichocephalic skull in which several of the Ur skulls studied by Wooley are are in the 72 range, some even less. Dubbed "Queen Shub-ad" by Wooley, now commonly known as Puabi, she is a particualrly notable figure famous for the discovery of her stunning headgear, perhaps infamously in some circles as Sitchin was convinced she was an Annuaki/human hybrid and called for DNA testing to be done.

Quoting Wooley:

Quote

2•1~ conclusions concerning her: the Queen was about forty years of age at the time of her death; she was approximately I-5Io m. (just under 5 feet) in stature; her bones were slender and her feet and hands small; she had a large and long head, and was a member of a highly dolichocephalic race-her cephalic index being 72-5....

Plate 268, fig. I, gives an exact drawing of Queen Shub-ad's skull as seen in profile. The drawing shows how much of the skull has been restored and how much is missing. Its length, I97 mm., is remarkable; its width is I43 mm.; the height of the vault-I29 mm.-is so great that there arose a suspicion either that the part of the bone carrying the auditory meatus (fig. I) had been wrongly articulated or that the sides of the skull had been so compressed by earth pressure that the vault had been pressed upwards to an artificial level. Even if we do allow for error in these respects there can be no
doubt that Queen Shub-ad had an uncommonly capacious skull....The cranial capacity could not have been less
than 1,600 c.cm.-250 c.cm....[My Note: the average cranial capacity of modern women of European descent, for example, is 1,130cm (1260cm for men). For comparison, a 1,600cm cranial capacity is comparable to the average Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon male.]

A woman not even 5ft tall with a highly elongated skull the size of a Neanderthal. Wooley notes that a "Prince Meskalamdug" is also of unusually large skull, and though only 5.5ft tall, "an exceptionally strong man physically". Sorry-no "giants", just unusually large elongated skulls. 
 
Wooley says these skulls are similar to Ubaid types, also commonly elongated (though as I make note different from NK DE and South American examples, comprising a distinct type of "elongated skull") which I have noted many times including reference to the remains of a 5yr old child with elongated skull dating to c.5500BC. Wooley says:

 

It will be remembered that the cephalic index for the al-'Ubaid skulls was 72.6; for two male skulls from the mound tomb of Ur, 69.8.

69.8? Yeesh.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Further recommended reading: Fossils That Could Rewrite History.

Lizard Men, Cro-Magnon, Elongated Skulls, Malta, and Fat Ladies.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Thanos5150
fix broken link

[Helen of Annoy]

5 hours ago, Phaeton80 said:

But Helen, these people are experts! Experts, people of science, who frequent a forum called Unexplained Mysteries and attempt to intellectually p*** on everyone daring to discuss 'mysteries', they seem to take pleasure in uplifting themselves by degrading others

Can you imagine how bleak your life has to be to resort to this sort of self- worth build up? I personally suspect a tirant wife might be at play here. Very, very sad.

 

I'm trying to remember these people have serious emotional issues, so their rude behaviour is not something they can control, without professional help. 

Still, it's almost impossible to treat them politely, or with genuine compassion. If I was in their place, I'd think I'd notice by now that it's just not healthy for someone grownup, to creep around a site dedicated to the unexplained, trolling every attempt at friendly conversation with their aggressive, immature cries for attention disguised, badly, as some sort of supernatural ability to decide what is 'scientific'.

Well, for starts, being dogmatic is not scientific. Not that it truly matters for someone who comes out of their personal, bullying needs.  

 

 

5 hours ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

You called?

Talk to your physician about your problem. They will probably advise you to see a therapist. You're too old to derive the only pleasure in your life from trolling. 

 

 

 

Anyway, the elongated skulls. Thanks to @Thanos5150, I now know 'long' skulls were found at surprisingly many locations. And that some of them are natural, hereditary but still normal skulls. Not usual, but genetically normal. 

It would be logical to assume naturally occurring 'long' heads were the trait so many various cultures later emulated deliberately, by deforming children's' skulls. But why? What was so special about long heads? Is it possible that it was merely aesthetic? Would people all around the world really have the same standard of beauty, which is, by the way, not really close to ours today?  

[XenoFish]

The deformed skulls are probably the results of inbreeding.

[Helen of Annoy]

1 hour ago, XenoFish said:

The deformed skulls are probably the results of inbreeding.

Thank you for your civilized contribution to this thread. 

 

Often, yes, like the other genetic defects. Though exceptionally long head, that may seem unnatural, can be just a trait that runs in certain families. Not a defect, just a bit unusual.  

But the article in the OP describes archaeological finding, dated to turn of the 5th and 6th century, where two out of three people buried together in the Hermanovi vinogradi location had deliberately deformed skulls. The unexpected news was that DNA and isotope analysis showed that though all three were about 14 years old and ate the same type of food, they were surprisingly genetically different: the one with elongated skull had East Asian genome, the one with heightened (elongated upwards) skull Middle Eastern and the one with not deformed skull was East European.     

No one sane, which includes actual scientists working on this interesting finding, thinks there's nothing to ponder about there. 

Sure, people migrated, a lot, but the closeness of the burial for genetically distant people is definitely surprising. Unless they were simply sacrificed, but the evidence for the possible sacrifice is not found - at least not yet. 

[Phaeton80]

Either the elongated skulls were indeed aesthetically pleasing, like small feet in Japanese culture.. Or it signified a certain kind of prowess, intellectual I should suppose. I'd put my money on the latter.

[Piney]

59 minutes ago, Helen of Annoy said:

Sure, people migrated, a lot, but the closeness of the burial for genetically distant people is definitely surprising. Unless they were simply sacrificed, but the evidence for the possible sacrifice is not found - at least not yet. 

The Iranian Nomads got around, mixed with and absorbed folks. From Poland to Central China. 

The Alans are a prime example. The Chinese and Gaul dealt with them. 

[Helen of Annoy]

1 hour ago, Piney said:

The Iranian Nomads got around, mixed with and absorbed folks. From Poland to Central China. 

The Alans are a prime example. The Chinese and Gaul dealt with them. 

Yes. It's the closeness that I find surprising. I'd expect each to be buried by own tribe. Either my idea of tribal life in 5th-6th century is wrong, either these three boys were in fact considered members of the same group (unless they were sacrifices). 

People did mix merrily, as our genome today shows, but cultural merging took some time. 

The fact the genetically European one did not have his skull 'remodeled', while certainly not some crucial evidence on its own, does indicate the custom came with Middle Eastern and Asiatic tribes. They most likely interacted too, but radically changing the shape of skull is not just a new recipe or clothing style, so I don't know which option puzzles me more: that Middle Eastern and Asiatic tribes met and one took nothing less than skull deforming custom from the other, or that this practice appeared in separate cultures independently. 

And then, there's South America with their elongated skulls, probably the most famous of all. Except the King Tut's family. Now, these people... really. Can you blame people when their first thought is - aliens? I'm not saying they were aliens, I'm saying it was probably the inbreeding, resulting with spectacularly elongated skulls... like Hapsburg jaw, only with more migraine, I guess.

So, say the Middle East copied Egypt who copied inbred royals, but what made the rest of the world do the same?  

Back to Hermanov vinograd grave, how come these boys were thought to belong together in death, but their cultures were not merged - European with no deformation and the two with elongated skulls each in own style of skull deformation. 

All in all, the way I see it, by answering one question, the DNA analysis opened a whole bag of more questions.  

[Piney]

13 minutes ago, Helen of Annoy said:

Yes. It's the closeness that I find surprising. I'd expect each to be buried by own tribe. Either my idea of tribal life in 5th-6th century is wrong, either these three boys were in fact considered members of the same group (unless they were sacrifices). 

Central Asian Nomads, like the American Indians of the Plains were a "hybrid group" and genetically Iranic, Turkic-Mongolian and Uralic folks were found in the same graveyards.

Slavs, Goths and Balts all joined in with the Huns, Slavs joined Turks on numerous occasions. ( Ottomans, Bulgarians) Uralics joined Turks (Magyars with both Khazars and Cumans)  Vlachs mixed with all of the above. 

Slavs joined with Sarmatians (Alans) to become Poles. Then Poles mixed with Magyars and Cumans. 

Half of Bavaria were Magyars who started speaking German. 

 Uighurs in Xinjiang have red, blond and brown hair, blue and green eyes from mixing with Eastern Iranians.

The Cumans were a hybrid tribe of Turks and Iranics and were fair with Asian and Iranic genes. 

Nomads mixed.   

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Piney
**** Atlantis

[Piney]

15 minutes ago, Helen of Annoy said:

Back to Hermanov vinograd grave, how come these boys were thought to belong together in death, but their cultures were not merged - European with no deformation and the two with elongated skulls each in own style of skull deformation. 

The boy was adopted, captured in a raid or his parents joined the tribe. 

[Helen of Annoy]

38 minutes ago, Piney said:

, Slavs joined Turks on numerous occasions. ( Ottomans, Bulgarians)

 

I don't know where to start with that one, but I know it wouldn't end well  so I'll just limit it to this: nope.

We have drastically different idea of that particular time in this particular area. I suggest we leave it at that.   

 

37 minutes ago, Piney said:

The boy was adopted, captured in a raid or his parents joined the tribe. 

Well, that's one plausible idea. I certainly like it better than the sacrificial one. 

[Jodie.Lynne]

5 hours ago, Helen of Annoy said:

Still, it's almost impossible to treat them politely, or with genuine compassion

Nice attitude lady. Ever wonder why you don't get invited to parties?

[Jodie.Lynne]

5 hours ago, Helen of Annoy said:

It would be logical to assume naturally occurring 'long' heads were the trait so many various cultures later emulated deliberately, by deforming children's' skulls. But why? What was so special about long heads?

OK princess cupcake, out with it. What is your explanation?

[Piney]

15 minutes ago, Helen of Annoy said:

I don't know where to start with that one, but I know it wouldn't end well  so I'll just limit it to this: nope.

My Bulgarian friends would differ.  

[Piney]

16 minutes ago, Helen of Annoy said:

Well, that's one plausible idea. I certainly like it better than the sacrificial one. 

There is no recorded cases of human sacrifice among Nomads except for personal slaves surrounding a warrior and that might of been voluntary. 

[Helen of Annoy]

3 minutes ago, Piney said:

My Bulgarian friends would differ.  

Maybe we're talking about different things. Maybe I missed something big about Bulgaria.

Seen from my angle, there was no merging of cultures, in the sense of forgetting the ancestry or losing the boundaries between tribes. 

Also, we must remind ourselves Ottomans were a lot more recent than the time of the great migrations. 

To this day, there is Turkish minority in each Slavic land that fought the Ottomans, and they certainly left significant cultural influence. But there's little genome outside the known minority and strong awareness about each detail that is originally Turkish. Surprisingly (or not, if you think about it knowing local mindset, that hasn't changed much since 6th century) Turks left especially little genetic trace in Bosnia, where merged Slavs and Illyrians accepted Islam - due to especially bad case of cretinism on both Croatian and Serbian side. Bosnians were Bogumili, and Catholics and Orthodox thought it's a priority to beat their particular version of rite into them, instead of tossing the invaders out.  

Aaaaand we're off topic  

 

 

18 minutes ago, Piney said:

There is no recorded cases of human sacrifice among Nomads except for personal slaves surrounding a warrior and that might of been voluntary. 

Who knows what we don't know. But I agree, from the little I've read, this very likely wasn't a sacrifice. 

[Swede]

6 hours ago, Thanos5150 said:

While the article doesn't note the obvious elongated skull, such "long-headed" skulls are common in ancient Iran. Though elongated skulls of various types have been found in the greater Mesopotamian region spanning thousands of years well into the historical period, dating back to at least the 9th millennium BC, in Iran alone, some of the oldest, dozens of "long-headed" type elongated skulls have been excavated from just 18 sites dated to the 8th-5th millenniums: 

Trinkaus (1982) documented the cranial deformation of Neandertal recoveries (Shanidar 1 and 5, Iraq). These recoveries are dated to 45 kya.

.

[Piney]

33 minutes ago, Swede said:

Trinkaus (1982) documented the cranial deformation of Neandertal recoveries (Shanidar 1 and 5, Iraq). These recoveries are dated to 45 kya.

I hit the links, saw Hancock's name and backed out........

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

6 hours ago, Helen of Annoy said:

Talk to your physician about your problem. They will probably advise you to see a therapist. You're too old to derive the only pleasure in your life from trolling.  

My only pleasure? Goodness no. Taking the p*** out of self-righteous galahs is certainly in the top three or four though.

 

on a serious note, have you noticed Helen that every conversation you seem to have ends up as an arguement?

[Swede]

1 hour ago, Piney said:

I hit the links, saw Hancock's name and backed out........

The actual paper is available on JSTOR. Trinkaus is not a lightweight, particularly in regards to Neandertals.

.

[+OverSword]

@onlookerofmayhem do you understand humor?