Head Squishing in Ancient Peru.

Don’t get the ancient Peruvian aristocrats angry: they’ll dismember you. But oddly, if they love you, they’ll squish your head!

While there is nothing pretty about dismemberment, one body also found at El Trigal displayed the ultimate of symbol of power and wealth in ancient Peru: a grossly cone-shaped skull.

Finding conehead individuals at El Trigal—achieved by binding the skull with bandages from a young age–is a bit of a mystery, said Castro-Martinez, since it was a practice usually reserved for babies of wealthy lineage and El Trigal was a lower-class community.

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