![]() ![]() Current PracticesĪCD is still performed worldwide for both hierarchical and religious reasons. The Mangbetu shared similar sentiments to other groups around the world, regarding the women's elongated heads as a status symbol denoting attractiveness and intelligence - though the use of ACD in this context has become less common since the 1950s due to Belgian colonial influence. The Mangbetu people, who currently live in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, also used a cloth to tightly bind the heads of female children, beginning a month after birth, in a cultural tradition called Lipombo. The Maya took a similar approach, and likely used ACD to discern members of nobility, such as the children of priests and high-ranking individuals, from others. Two enslaved women in Congo, around 1900, who may have experienced head binding. The team noted in a 2015 Journal for Physical Anthropology stud y that many had elongated skulls, and explained that body modification was probably intended in this context to form a sense of unity and identify outsiders. Marta Alfonso-Durruty, an anthropologist at Kansas State University, affirmed this hypothesis: She and her colleagues examined 60 adult skulls recovered from Southern Patagonia and areas of Tierra del Fuego, belonging to a group of hunter-gatherers who lived 2,000 years ago. But for the groups that practiced it in ancient times - and in some cases up to this day - elongated and intentionally shaped craniums symbolize beauty and status. From a modern Western perspective, the elongation or artificial deformation of the skull may appear unusual. Since Julio Tello’s intriguing findings, scientists have sought out the motivations behind such practices. These artifacts remain on display at various science and cultural museums around Peru and have become the subject of online controversy among UFO enthusiasts and paranormalists who proclaim that they are of extraterrestrial origin and belong to "gray aliens." Status Symbols In the 1920s, Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello, who established himself as the "father of Peruvian archaeology," uncovered hundreds of elongated skulls from Paracas, some with partially attached scalps and hair. 100 - deployed a different strategy, tightly wrapping the head in cloth to elongate or deform the cranium. In what is now Peru, the Paracas civilization - estimated to have existed between 750 B.C. A modified skull from a Maya individual exhibited at the Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mexico. ![]()
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