10,000 Years of Artificial Cranial Modification

Changing the shape of one’s skull is shockingly simple. The cranial bones of an infant or young child are pretty soft and take years to knit together. Applying pressure during that time can reshape the skull, which becomes permanent when the bones reach maximum growth and then harden. The practice doesn’t appear to affect cognitive function. And what’s most amazing is that different cultures around the world have been independently doing cranial modification from antiquity all the way up to the present.

Until the early 1900s, a form of artificial cranial deformation was still taking place in Western France, in Deux-Sevres. Known as the Toulouse deformity, the practice of bandeau was common amongst the French peasantry. A baby's head would be tightly bound and padded, to protect it from accidental impacts. At around the same time, the practice was still occurring in Russia and the Caucasus, as well as in Scandinavia.

It turns out that altering the shape of one's head is not shockingly unique; it's incredibly common, across time and geography. Its meaning isn't fixed, so understanding why and how it happens can reveal much about the societies who choose to change the shape of their heads.

Atlas Obscura looks at several of those cultures and indeed the very universality of deliberate cranial modification. -via the Presurfer



(Image credit: photographer unknown, restoration by Didier Descouens)


Comments (0)

whomever this Ricardo director is, sign me up for a fan! If he can do this with 5k imagine a real 50 million for a budget. I'd back him if I had that kind of money.
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Anyone know what camera he's using? Would like to get the same effect without the Digital Camera look. Hope he's not using a RED. Those are too expensive
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Touching on what Ric said:

Meanwhile the SciFi Channel (I refuse to call it by it's new name) continues to spend gobs of money to produce spectacularly bad movies with cheesy effects.

The producers of these shows claim that the special effects eat up their budget and my question is why?
Maybe they're hiring the wrong people? Just saying.
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I would rather pay to see a movie directed by this guy, all with actors I have never heard of, than another over priced peice of crap from Michael Bay.
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Plot holes.

1. If this guy can perform telekinesis on this level, why go to the trouble and danger of throwing objects AT the droidy things, why not just throw the droidy things etc.

2. Assuming the droidy things are droids, are we to believe they can't, using a big ass fully automatic weapon, at close range, not even manage one hit.

3. If we say that the guy's powers also allow him to evade bullets, without watching them, why bother running.

Too much suspension of disbelief here. Fancy effects, well shot perhaps, but story silly.
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And also, the guy in the walking tank thing had no problem with blowing away some random guy who shouted at him and posed no possible danger, but when the raven guy comes out, that same tank doesn't dare shoot at him - even though other units have clearly been trying to gun him down so it's not like there could have been any pressing need to catch him alive.
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Wow, if this were real I would love to watch this in theaters. Seems much better than the typical cookie cutter hollywood crap that keeps coming out...
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