Hirota people of Japan intentionally deformed infant skulls 1,800 years ago | Live Science
For 400 years, a group of Indigenous people living in Japan deliberately deformed the skulls of their infant children, a new study suggests.
The Hirota people resided on the southern Japanese island of Tanegashima between the end of the Yayoi period and the Kofun period, or between the third and seventh centuries. Between 1957 and 1959, and later between 2005 and 2006, researchers excavated numerous skeletons from a Hirota site on Tanegashima and found that most had deformed skulls.
Until now, it was unclear if the skulls had been deformed by an unknown natural process or deliberately misshaped via a process known as artificial cranial deformation (ACD), which normally involves wrapping or pressing an infant’s skull to change its shape shortly after birth. (ACD is also known as intentional skull deformation; however, this term is used less often, as most individuals do not make this decision themselves.)
Thank goodness we are much more advanced than these poor people, who mutilated their children because no doubt they held cockamamie theories about the world.