An unusual cube-shaped human skull has been uncovered at a Mesoamerican site in Mexico. It’s 1,400 years old and provides the primary evidence that individuals on this area practiced a singular type of head-shaping often called cranial modification. The weird skull was unearthed near the archaeological site of Balcón de Montezuma (Balcony of Montezuma) within the east-central Mexican state of Tamaulipas. (Picture: INAH)
The world is understood to have had various Mesoamerican ethnic groups living in the realm between 650 BC and 1200 AD. The Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) reveals that around 400AD a village sprang up, eventually encompassing around 90 circular houses in two plazas. A recent review of artifacts and bones discovered at Balcón de Montezuma led to researchers noticing that the skull of a middle-aged man was a shape they’d never seen before. (Picture: Getty)
Biological anthropologist Jesús Ernesto Velasco González explained that, while artificially modified skulls have been discovered in the realm before, the form of this man’s skull is exclusive. He said: ‘Because of this, not only was intentional cranial deformation identified for the primary time for this sort of site, but in addition a variant with respect to the models recognized in Mesoamerica, not reported, until now, in the realm.’ (Picture: INAH)
He added: ‘The kind recorded for Balcón de Montezuma is tabular erect, but it surely has a superior plane that had not been seen before in bone stays recovered within the Huasteca region. Unlike other common types, this shape is tabular superior or parallelepiped, so named by some specialists given the polyhedral appearance it creates within the skull, where the compression plane is between the lambda above the occipital angle and the sagittal suture within the parietal bones. This causes the pinnacle to point out a more square shape, unlike the conical shape.’ (Picture: Jon G. Fuller/VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
People could also be aware of cultures that practised cone-shaped cranial modification. Often, these skull shapes are formed through the use of lengths of cloth or soft padding to ‘bind’ the heads of infants and encourage the skull to grow in an ‘oblique’ direction, and so they appear elongated. But this recent find was unusual for one more reason too. (Picture: Jon G. Fuller, Jr./VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Examples of this flat-topped skull shape had only been seen outside the realm, including in Veracruz and within the Maya area, so the researchers desired to test whether the person was local or foreign. They analysed the chemistry of the person’s bones and teeth and discovered that he was born in the realm, likely lived there his entire life, and died there. (Picture: DeAgostini/Getty Images)
The researchers say that the person’s unusual head shape could have some form of culturally-specific meaning that remains to be unknown. In lots of parts of Mesoamerica, barely different head shapes are related to different cultural groups, so although this man himself was not from one other geographic location, it is feasible that the individuals who shaped his head were members of a distinct cultural group. (Picture: Getty)
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