Monster Mondays - Dolichocephaloids
Todays Monster Monday from Dapper Cadaver travels down the spine of the Americas to Peru, circa 2000 years ago for a kind of person bizarre and real, the Dolichocephaloids or Peruvian Coneheads. There is currently a video going around getting a lot of attention saying they were found in Siberia. This video is wrong, they are from Peru.
What we do know about the Dolichocephaloids is limited, what we believe about them is vast, and what we don't know about them is enormous.
What we do know - These guys had really long squash shaped heads. They were human. They lived in Peru roughly 2000 years ago. There were a lot of them.
Most had brains the same size as other humans (1400-1600cc) others had larger brains, up to 2000cc or 2 liters. If you want to experience how much larger that is get a human skull and fill the brain case up with soda. Empty a whole 2 liter bottle. Whatever spills on your desk is how much bigger their brains are then ours.
What we believe - leading scientific theories about the coneheads is they were an elite class of Peruvian, they seam to show signs in their graves of wealth and power. They do seam to be a class rather then a race of Peruvians, as they are almost always found with many normal people around them. It is believed that the conehead shape was achieved by binding an infants skull at a very young age to warp its growth. We believe they believed these deformed skulls would give them power, possibly mystical powers.
Pseudo-science believes these people are human-alien hybryds, a lost race, mystical mutants, psychics, telekenetics, and more.
The documentary "Indian Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" explains a lot of these theories.
It's also possible they deformed their skulls for the sake of beauty, similar to the beautiful deformities of foot binding and augmented breasts.
Some believe the deformations were done as punishments. Although it is known the Peruvians would often use mutilation as punishment against conquered peoples or enemies, the Dolichocephaloids seam both privileged and deformed in a way that could not be done quickly against someones will. However, recent findings of a conehead in a lower-class village with clearly mutilated bodies is extremely mysterious.
Since we haven't shaped a human skull into that form in over 2,000 years, we only can hypothesize, and not test, how it was done and what effect, if any, it had on the persons brain and mental abilities.