Crani allungati dalla Crimea e da altre parti del mondo, Baer 1860
Quale prova potrebbe sfidare questo paradigma? Esatto: l'esistenza di feti con cranio allungato, vale a dire la prova che quei crani avevano già nell'utero una conformazione allungata, prima che qualsiasi fasciatura fosse possibile. Abbiamo una prova del genere? Sì, l'abbiamo! Inoltre, questa prova è nota alla comunità accademica da oltre 160 anni!
Mariano Eduardo de Rivero e Juan Diego de Tschudi in Antiguedades Peruanas (1851 in spagnolo, 1853 traduzione inglese) affermano che i fautori dell'ipotesi della deformazione cranica artificiale sono in errore, poiché essi prendono in considerazione solo i crani di adulti. in altre parole, l'ipotesi manca di prendere in considerazione i crani di neonati e, ancora più importante, di feti che presentano un'analoga conformazione cranica allungata.
E' degno di rilievo citare le parole di Rivero e Tschudi:
" Noi stessi abbiamo osservato lo stesso fatto [dell'assenza di segni di pressione artificiale - NdT] in molte mummie di bambini in tenera età, lei quali, benché fossero coperte da vestiti, tuttavia erano prive di qualunque traccia o apparenza di pressione del cranio. Più ancora: la medesima conformazione della testa si presenta in bambini non ancora nati; e di questa realtà abbiamo avuto una prova convincente alla vista di un feto, ancora all'interno del grembo di una donna incinta, che abbiamo rinvenuto in una grotta di Huichay, a due leghe da Tarma, e che è conservata, in questo momento, nella nostra collezione.
" Il Professor D’Outrepont, una grande celebrità nel dipartimento di ostetricia, ci ha assicurato che il feto ha sette mesi. Appartiene, in base a una caratteristica conformazione del cranio, alla tribù degli Huanca. Presentiamo al lettore un disegno di questa prova interessante e conclusiva in opposizione ai sostenitori dell'azione meccanica come sola ed esclusiva causa della conformazione cranica della razza peruviana.
" La stessa prova si trova in un'altra mummia che è conservata nel museo di Lima, sotto la direzione di Don M. E. de Rivero."[vedi anche https://aurora-project.forumfree.it/?t=69663239]
Litografia di D. Leopoldo Mueller dall'edizione spagnola del 1851 di Antiguidades Peruanas
Mark Laplume’s reconstruction of the Rivero and Tschudi’s foetus
Elongated skulls of infants were available to European researchers as early as 1838. The skulls of “Ancient Peruvians” were also in Samuel Morton’s collection in Philadelphia.
Two elongated infant skulls, which Rivero and Tschudi mention in Peruvian Antiquities were discovered and brought to England by Captain Blankley and presented to the Museum of the Devon and Cornwall Natural History Society in 1838. Dr. Bellamy provided a detailed description of these skulls in 1842, suggesting that they belonged to two infants – male and female, few months and about a year old respectively. He indicated substantial structural differences from those of “normal” infant skulls and the absence of the signs of artificial pressure, as well as their similarity to other “Titicacan” skulls in the Museum of the College of Surgeons in London.
Lithographs of the skulls by J. Basire from Bellamy's article (1842) and Mark Laplume's artistic reconstructions
The evidence of elongated skulls present in fetuses and children had lead Rivero and Tschudi, Bellamy, Graves and others to a hypothesis that these skulls belonged to an extinct race of people, who left their legacy on the populations who succeeded them as a practice of artificial cranial deformation. I discuss this hypothesis in more detail in The Looming Collapse Of The Artificial Cranial Deformation Paradigm . Part 1. Un/Born With Elongated Head and Part 2. Naturally Elongated .
The question now is how it happened that the cranial deformation paradigm became so prevalent? The answer to a large extent consists in the authority of Morton’s expert opinion and his extensive collection of skulls, which is now located in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology . His influence was significant enough at the time to close the debate on elongated skulls for the next century and a half; until independent researchers, and I would like to mention Robert Connolly (who popularized elongated skulls in mid 1990s) and Brien Foerster , in particular, started to raise questions about the validity of the cranial deformation hypothesis by locating and showing elongated skulls to the public interested in finding out the true story of human origins.
Lithographs by John Collins, 1839 from Samuel Morton's 'Crania Americana'
In Crania Americana Morton offered a description of peculiar elongated skulls which differed from the elongated skulls produced by various artificial means. He suggested that the territory of Peru and Bolivia was previously inhabited by the race of “Ancient Peruvians”.
“I have been so fortunate as to have the examination, in my own and other collections, of nearly one hundred Peruvian crania: and the result is, that Peru appears to have been at different times peopled by two nations of differently formed crania, one of which is perhaps extinct, or at least exists only as blended by adventitious circumstances, in various remote and scattered tribes of the present Indian race. Of these t wo families, that which was antecedent to the appearance of the Incas is designated as the Ancient Peruvian , of which the remains have hitherto been found only in Peru, and especially in that division of it now called Bolivia.”
Although Ancient Peruvians had naturally elongated skulls, Morton concluded that they further tried to articulate this feature by head binding. This is an interesting observation in itself, since it raises a question why a race with naturally elongated skulls would aspire to further elongate them. Perhaps they were also preceded by a race whose skulls were even more elongated?
Morton Collection, Skull #1277, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Open Research Scan Archive at Penn, and Janet Monge and P. Thomas Schoenemann; image in front from Meigs, 1857
Subsequently, Morton changed his opinion and started to consider all elongated skulls as an exclusive result of head-binding. However, in light of Rivero and Tschudi’s fetuses with elongated skulls, as well as hundreds of infant and children elongated skulls which are now available to researchers, it is necessary to open the debate about “Ancient Peruvians” and their counterparts (see my interview with Mark Laplume ) in other part of the world.
Accordingly, it is necessary to revisit Morton’s original encounter with elongated skulls. This is how he originally described cranial features of Ancient Peruvians:
“[The head] is small, greatly elongated, narrow its whole length, with a very retreating forehead, and possessing more symmetry than is usual in skulls of the American race. The face projec ts, the upper jaw is thrust forward , and the teeth are inclined outward . The orbits of the eyes are large and rounded, the nasal bones salient, the zygomatic arches expanded; and there is a remarkable simplicity in the sutures that connect the bones of the cranium.”
Given that there are at least two mummies containing foetuses with elongated skulls, in addition to hundreds of infant and children with elongated crania (see Children Of The ‘Elongated Skulls’ As A Challenge To The ‘Artificial Cranial Deformation’ Theory and RootRaceResearch), a priority task for the academic community would be to identify the physical location of the mummies and proceed to DNA analysis, which is currently done by independent researcher and enthusiasts who lack infrastructural and financial resources and face significant obstacles in obtaining necessary permissions. It is worth noting that we deal with very old DNA, the analysis of which is a complex and expensive procedure.
Featured image: Morton Collection, “Ancient Peruvian” skull #496, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Open Research Scan Archive at Penn, and Janet Monge and P. Thomas Schoenemann
Accordingly, it is necessary to revisit Morton’s original encounter with elongated skulls. This is how he originally described cranial features of Ancient Peruvians:
“[The head] is small, greatly elongated, narrow its whole length, with a very retreating forehead, and possessing more symmetry than is usual in skulls of the American race. The face projec ts, the upper jaw is thrust forward , and the teeth are inclined outward . The orbits of the eyes are large and rounded, the nasal bones salient, the zygomatic arches expanded; and there is a remarkable simplicity in the sutures that connect the bones of the cranium.”
Morton Collection, Skull #1681, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Open Research Scan Archive at Penn, and Janet Monge and P. Thomas Schoenemann
Given that there are at least two mummies containing foetuses with elongated skulls, in addition to hundreds of infant and children with elongated crania (see Children Of The ‘Elongated Skulls’ As A Challenge To The ‘Artificial Cranial Deformation’ Theory and RootRaceResearch), a priority task for the academic community would be to identify the physical location of the mummies and proceed to DNA analysis, which is currently done by independent researcher and enthusiasts who lack infrastructural and financial resources and face significant obstacles in obtaining necessary permissions. It is worth noting that we deal with very old DNA, the analysis of which is a complex and expensive procedure.
Featured image: Morton Collection, “Ancient Peruvian” skull #496, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Open Research Scan Archive at Penn, and Janet Monge and P. Thomas Schoenemann
References:
Von Baer, Karl Ernst. Makrokephalen im Boden der Krim und Österreichs. St. Petersburg. 1860.
Bellamy, P. F. A brief Account of two Peruvian Mummies in the Museum of the Devon and Cornwall Natural History Society. in ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History’. Vol. X. October 1842.
Graves, Robert J. Remarkable Skulls Found in Peru. No.15 of the Dublin Journal of Medical and Chemical Sciences. 1835.
Meigs, J. Aitken. Catalogue of Human Crania in the Collection of the Academie of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia: Based Upon the Third Edition of Dr. Morton's " Catalogue of Skulls". Philadelphia. 1857.
Morton, Samuel George. Crania Americana; or, A Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America. To which is Prefixed an Essay on the Varieties of the Human Species. London. 1839.
Rivero, M.E., Tschudi, J.D. Antigüedades peruanas. Vienna, 1851 (Spanish). Rivero, M.E., von Tschudi, J.J. Peruvian antiquities. New York, 1853 (English).
Von Baer, Karl Ernst. Makrokephalen im Boden der Krim und Österreichs. St. Petersburg. 1860.
Bellamy, P. F. A brief Account of two Peruvian Mummies in the Museum of the Devon and Cornwall Natural History Society. in ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History’. Vol. X. October 1842.
Graves, Robert J. Remarkable Skulls Found in Peru. No.15 of the Dublin Journal of Medical and Chemical Sciences. 1835.
Meigs, J. Aitken. Catalogue of Human Crania in the Collection of the Academie of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia: Based Upon the Third Edition of Dr. Morton's " Catalogue of Skulls". Philadelphia. 1857.
Morton, Samuel George. Crania Americana; or, A Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America. To which is Prefixed an Essay on the Varieties of the Human Species. London. 1839.
Rivero, M.E., Tschudi, J.D. Antigüedades peruanas. Vienna, 1851 (Spanish). Rivero, M.E., von Tschudi, J.J. Peruvian antiquities. New York, 1853 (English).