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Elongated Skulls in utero - Morton Collection

Elongated Skulls in utero: A Farewell to the Artificial Cranial Deformation Paradigm?

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Elongated skulls are usually explained in terms of head-binding or artificial cranial deformation. This paradigm emerged in the first half of the 19th century as a way of explaining unusual skulls discovered in Europe and South America, in places such as Crimea and Peru respectively. The main idea behind the head-binding paradigm is that ALL elongated skulls are a result of intentional modification of the form of the skull by applying external pressure. In other words, ALL elongated skulls are merely deformed ‘normal’ skulls similar to those of modern humans.

Elongated Skull from Crimea and other parts of the worlds, Baer 1860

Elongated Skull from Crimea and other parts of the worlds, Baer 1860

Challenging the Paradigm

What evidence could challenge this paradigm? Right – the existence of fetuses with elongated skulls, i.e. evidence that such skulls already had an elongated shape in utero , before any head-binding was possible. Do we have such evidence? Yes, we do! Moreover, this evidence has been known to the academic community for over 163 years!

Rivero and Tschudi in Peruvian Antiquities (1851 Spanish, 1853 English) argue that the protagonists of the artificial cranial deformation hypothesis are mistaken, since they had only considered the skulls of adults. In other words, the hypothesis fails to take into account the skulls of infants and, most importantly, foetuses which had similar elongated skull shape.

It is worth quoting Rivero and Tschudi:

“We ourselves have observed the same fact [of the absence of signs of artificial pressure – IG] in many mummies of children of tender age, who, although they had cloths about them, were yet without any vestige or appearance of pressure of the cranium. More still: the same formation of the head presents itself in children yet unborn; and of this truth we have had convincing proof in the sight of a foetus, enclosed in the womb of a mummy of a pregnant woman, which we found in a cave of Huichay, two leagues from Tarma, and which is, at this moment, in our collection [my emphasis – IG].

Lithograph by D. Leopoldo Mueller from the Spanish 1851 Edition of Peruvian Antiquities

Lithograph by D. Leopoldo Mueller from the Spanish 1851 Edition of Peruvian Antiquities

Professor D’Outrepont, of great Celebrity in the department of obstetrics, has assured us that the fetus is one of seven months’ age. It belongs, according to a very clearly defined formation of the cranium, to the tribe of the Huancas. We present the reader with a drawing of this conclusive and interesting proof in opposition to the advocates of mechanical action as the sole and exclusive cause of the phrenological [i.e. cranial – no negative connotation at that time - IG] form of the Peruvian race.

The same proof is to be found in another mummy which exists in the museum of Lima, under the direction of Don M. E. de Rivero.

Mark Laplume’s reconstruction of the Rivero and Tschudi’s foetus

Mark Laplume’s reconstruction of the Rivero and Tschudi’s foetus

The Elongated Skulls of Infants

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

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'

Lithographs by John Collins, 1839 from Samuel Morton's 'Crania Americana'

Cranial Features of Ancient Peruvians

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 two 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

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 projects, 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

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 fetuses 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.

Top 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

By Igor Gontcharov

Updated on June 1, 2021.

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).

 

Comments

Pete Wagner's picture

Fantastic!  And what I thought.  You just hope the geneticists are given free reign, and ONE DAY, we can begin cloning (implanting test-tube embryos into loving surrogate mothers) and bringing back these intelligent beings ...to experience them as beautiful, living relics, and at the same time giving them a highly deserved second chance here on Earth.  

Nobody gets paid to tell the truth.

It always made more sense to view artificial cranial elongation as a response to mimic a physical trait once seen and since admired than a custom that developed of its own accord.

Elongated skulls are usually explained in terms of head-binding or artificial cranial deformation. This naturalistic explanation emerged in the first half of the 19 th century as a way of explaining away unusual skulls discovered mainly in Europe and South America, in places such as Crimea and Peru respectively. However, many were found in megalithic sites of the mysterious mound builders in America, Egypt, and other places and were hidden at the Smithsonian. The main theory behind the head-binding explanation is that ALL elongated skulls are a result of intentional modification of the form of the skull by applying external pressure by boarding or cloth wrappings. Secular scientists falsely claimed that all elongated skulls are merely deformed ‘normal’ skulls similar to those of modern humans.
This was a lie. They knew about proof that refuted their speculation in the 1800s. Secular scientists did not want to support the fact that the Bible describes these hybrids as offspring of Fallen Angels. But they knew all along that these elongate skulls were natural to the Nephilim whose origins was at the Tower of Babel around 1900 BC.
Occult Ancient Astronaut researchers came up with another explanation, that they are aliens from space, the Anunnaki (another name for the Nephilim giants) made famous by occult writers Zecharia Sitchin and Erich von Danike, etc. These New Age writers are trying to fool people with a naturalistic explanation for the future invasion of demonic beings during the Tribulation Period.
Of course evolutions (atheistic philosophy) have preconceived ideas and always try to fit all the evidence into their religion based on faith in naturalism which has been falsified. See my books.
The fact is the Bible gives the answer to all mysteries. These skull remains are from a remnant of the giants like Goliath and the Pharaohs like Akhenaten who founded the worship of the one god Baal the sun god symbolized as the 36th and highest god whose solar number was 666. This god exalts himself above all other gods of the Egyptians. And the future Antichrist will claim he is a reincarnation of this pharaoh and Nimrod. The Nephilim have odd physical and mental abilities like Uri Geller. Some had six figures and toes, different suture lines in their skulls, double row of teeth, and some were giants 8 to 18 feet tall. They are not from another planet, they are the offspring of Fallen Angels from human women and they are still with us today in royal bloodlines. But they have lost some of these odd characteristics which exposed them to attack by normal humans causing their extinction.

catbloom's picture

I’m wondering whether or not the mothers of these fetuses also had the elongated skull, Just curious.

There are too many common features over too many land masses for this phenomena to be just cultural. Let's not forget ALL the isolated areas history of why the act of head binding was done: it was to emulate the GODS! Main stream close minded experts fail to include this in their attempts to justify their findings. History cannot be discounted as fable or lore, especially when it's so very similar from other cultures many thousands of miles away. Elongated heads, larger brain capacity, enhanced eye socket volume, distinctly different jaw and missing crania sutures are just too many differences to categorize these skulls as "head bound" anomalies. The truth is in the history, which I am sure through time many have tried to destroy. Are we not to believe the bible? Even it speaks of a different race of giants that the Hebrews set out to destroy. Was this race of people also purposely destroyed also?
Greg Akrey

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Igor Gontcharov's picture

Igor Gontcharov

Igor Gontcharov is an independent researcher studying how scientific paradigms emerge and decline, how science and alternative approaches to the unknown – shamanism, religion, meditation, inspiration… – shape each other and contribute to our understanding of who and what and... Read More

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