No distinctions were made on the basis of sex. Babies were simply held and their heads were pressed or tied. The objective was none other than to permanently deform his skull. The Hirota people, a community that lived on the island of Tanegashima, in southern Japan, between the 3rd and 7th centuries AD, thus achieved a short testa and a flattened occipital bone.
For decades, researchers have wondered if this quirk was intentional or due to some kind of practice that caused the modifications unintentionally. Now, a team of anthropologists and archaeologists from the Universities of Kyushu and Montana claim that the Hirota consciously searched for these deformations.
The researchers’ theory is that this practice, which has been discovered in numerous civilizations around the world, was used to indicate group affiliation or demonstrate a particular social status, as explained in an article published in the journal PLOS ONE.
“The site on the Japanese island of Tanegashima, in Kagoshima Prefecture, has long been associated with cranial deformation. This is a large-scale burial site of the Hirota people who lived there during the late Yayoi Period, around from the 3rd century, to the Kofun Period, between the 5th and 7th centuries,” explains Noriko Seguchi, who led the study.
The site was excavated between 1957 and 1959 and again in 2005 and 2006. During the initial work, remains were found with cranial deformations characterized by a short head and a flattened posterior part of the skull, specifically the occipital bone and the upper parts. posterior to the parietal bone.
Archaeologists have employed a “hybrid approach” using 2D imaging to analyze the outline shape of the skulls and 3D scans of their surface. The experts also compared the data obtained with skulls from other archaeological sites in Japan, such as the Yayoi village of Doigahama in western Yamaguchi and the Jomon people of Kyushu Island.
Both hunter-gatherer peoples were the predecessors of the Yayoi people, a farming community from the Korean Peninsula that dominated the Japanese archipelago for about 550 years, developing metal and ceramics, as well as initiating rice cultivation.
In addition to visually assessing the morphology of the skulls, the researchers collected the data and analyzed the contours and shapes. “Our results revealed a distinct morphology and a significant difference between the individuals from Hirota and the samples obtained from Kyushu Island and Doigahama,” Seguchi continues.
“The presence of a flattened posterior part of the skull characterized by changes in the occipital bone, together with depressions in parts of the skull that connect the bones, specifically the sagittal and lambdoid sutures, strongly suggested an intentional cranial modification,” says the expert from the Kyushu University Faculty of Social and Cultural Studies.
The motivations behind this practice remain unclear, but the researchers hypothesize, supported by archaeological evidence found at the site, that the Hirota people deformed their skulls to preserve group identity and potentially facilitate trade in seafood to long distance.
Intentional cranial modification has been a ubiquitous practice in various cultures spread across all continents since ancient times. There is evidence of this peculiar custom in China, Australia and also in the Andes and pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
