Elongated Skulls Of Paracas: A People And Their World

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

A very young child’s skull is pliant at birth, and remains in this way for months. It is therefore possible, by lashing a rope around the head, with a board placed at the back of the skull, and perhaps the front as well, to alter the shape of the head over time. Many authors state that the time period to perform this shaping was about 6 months to 3 years, but since the practice is no longer performed to my knowledge, no one really knows. Examples of this technique, supposedly last performed on infants in the Congo of Africa and the Island of Vanuatu in the south Pacific Ocean area known as Melanesia, well into the 20^th century, have also been found in Egypt, during the Amarna period, Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Russia, the island of Malta, as well as many places in Peru and Bolivia, and amongst the Olmecs of Mexico.

What you are capable of doing via this technique is to change the shape of the skull, but not the actual volume; you can alter the shape, but not the size. However, Tello found several skulls, at least 90 at the site called Cerro Colorado adjacent to the main graveyard in Paracas, which had cranial volume larger, and in some cases 2.5 times larger than a conventional modern human skull. How is this possible? As I have said, deformation can alter shape, but not the volume of bone material, and certainly not twice as much.

It is therefore obvious that we are dealing with 2 different phenomena; elongation through binding, and elongation via genetics. The Paracas skulls are the largest found in the world, but from what root race stock would they have originated? To suggest that the natural elongation was the result of hydrocephaly or some other clinical condition is ridiculous, when one takes into account that again, at least 90 of them were found by Tello, and no one knows how many are still under the earth, in private collections, or gathering dust in museum warehouses in Peru, and beyond. Hydrocephaly would tend to make the skull expand evenly, making them more round than elongated.

Tello believed that the Paracas were related to the people of the Chavin culture, who created the famous megalithic site of Chavin de Huantar, mainly based on the fact that he saw similarities in pottery designs and motifs, especially feline figures. However, to my knowledge, no elongated skulls have been found in the area where the Chavin lived, north of Lima in the Ancash district, so that clearly is not the answer as to their origins. But, since Tello was the expert and main archaeologist at Chavin, where he placed an origin date of at least 3000 years ago, he then simply applied this for the Paracas as well, and no one has dared or bothered to refute his time line until now.  READ ON