head

Nearly 3,000 years ago, dozens of people were laid to rest in deep rectangular pits at Matelica, in Italy's Marche region, curled on their right sides as though asleep. When archaeologists reopened those graves, they found something unexpectedly familiar: more than four in ten of the skulls carried a flat spot at the back. New research, reported by Phys.org, argues these are the earliest documented cases of flat head syndrome in Italy, and that the condition is far older than the modern parenting advice usually blamed for it. urnal of Paleopathology, examined 26 individuals from two Iron Age cemeteries used by the Picene people at Matelica — Crocifisso and Brecce — dating to the mid-ninth to eighth century BC. Eleven