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An artistic illustration of two people wrapped in a baby’s head. | Credit: Tom Bjorkklund image, restored with Irene Dori’s permission published in scientific reports (2025), under the CC BY-NC-ND license.
The prehistoric skull found half a century ago is the oldest example of artificial skull modification ever detected in Europe, revealing new research. An abnormally long skull that is around 12,500 years confirms that this practice dates back to at least Stone Age;
“Body modification, including the development of the skull, was one of the many strategies that the previous society used for the design and transfer of identity, status and belonging,” the study co-author Irene DoriThe Bioarcheologist at the University of Florence, Live Science, told e -mail. In the letter.
The new study announced on July 30. In the magazine Scientific reportsInvestigators analyzed the skull from Arena Candide CaveLate upper Paleolithic location on the northwestern Italy. Between about 12,900 and 11,600 years of hunters-girlfriends used a cave Break their dead; 1940 Archaeologists found dozens of people skeletons instead, and most of them were reorganized after death in an ancient ritual. One special skull of an adult man, called AC12, was found in a niche on another burial.
In the 1980s, researchers Suggested The long, narrow AC12 skull may have been due to illness or accident that replaced the skull growth when the man was a child.
But Dori and colleagues were intrigued by another possible explanation: artificial skull modification. During new research, they essentially reconstructed the skull and statistically showed that the best explanation of the AC12 “strange shape of the head” was the modification of childhood body, they wrote in a study.
Artificial skull modification practice involves applying pressure during the baby’s head growth and development. When this is done consistently for months or years, it determines the constant redesign of a person’s skull. That is Unclear Whether practice would have affected the function of the human brain.
Skull AC12 has been reconstructed and Glued in the 1970sSo the investigators had to distinguish it to properly measure fragments of the skull. They chose this in an unrestricted way by doing CT scans skull and practically separating the bones. The researchers then digitally reconstructed the AC12 in four ways and used a technique called geometric morphometry, which quantitatively evaluates the biological shape of the bone to compare virtual reconstruction with skulls from around the world.
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All the results of this analysis revealed that the AC12 was similar to other artificially modified skulls, not with normal skulls or those influenced by disease or trauma. Specifically, the AC12 skull shape was probably made by wrapping tissue strips, firmly around the perimeter of its head, the authors said.
“This would be the earliest known case of artificial skull modification in Europe,” the researchers wrote in the study because the bones were dated between 12 190 and 12,620 years.
The causes of artificial skull modification practice are still unknown, and its significance was probably different among the cultures that performed it.
“The modification of the cultural body was probably ancient and widespread practice,” said Dori and “it may have been one of several practices used to identify and convey social norms.” Arena Candide also from people’s teeth there is evidence that they decorated their faces with cheeks plugs. But since the skeletons are very fragmented, said Dori, it is unclear what the usual artificial skull modification was.
One of the researchers investigates the idea of whether the AC12 was somehow different from others buried in the Stone Age Cemetery. AREE CANDIDE Skeleton Analysis ” DNA continues, said Dori, and this could explain possible long -distance migration or genetic belonging to other groups.
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However, artificial skull modification was practiced worldwide. The oldest example of Asia dates about 11 200 years ago while The oldest example in Australia is from 13,500 years. Although practice can be best known from Central and South America, where it has been done for almost 10,000 years, it “has its own roots in Paleolithic,” the researchers wrote.
“It may be that this practice has emerged independently in different regions,” said Dori, as a practice, “based on common human tendencies as a medium of expression.” However, according to the number of modified skulls in the entire Eurasia, “the existing evidence prevents us from determining whether the skull modification was self -invented or culturally transmitted between groups,” said Dori.