Re: Cranial Indexing

"tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
<<Nonsense. The only scenario with "population continuity" that would
be consistent with these facts would be one where mysteriously only
the long-skulled part of the population decided to practise the new-
fangled idea of inhumation; an explanation in need of an explantion
of its own. What it would be consistent with, is an invasion...>>

Or,100% equally consistently, some folks just moved to some place they
thought was nicer. And if I understand your data correctly they didn't have
to move far.

Speaking of taste, food is one of the things that can turn a population
dolichocephalic in a single generation - food was Boas' explanation I think.
(Franz Boas... "found significant differences in cranial index between
immigrant parents and their American-born children. The immutable obtuseness
of the brachycephalic southern European might veer toward the dolichocephalic
Nordic norm in a single generation of altered environment (Boas, 1911).)

Religious conversions often come alongside of changes in economic conditions
and these may also reflect changes in the way people live and sustain
themselves. If disease or failure of a food source cause social upheaval and
religious changes, it could also on a much more basic, everyday level mean a
fundamental change in diet. (e.g., crop failure.) Medically, dolichocephalia
is sometimes associated with a malfunction in bone generation, which might be
caused by the unavailability of certain nutrients. Or it might changed
skeletal development in other ways.

I don't know if much cranial measuring (again, these measurements have a bad
reputation for reliability) has been done on the difference between Christian
and non-Christian graves in Scandinavia and Iceland, but the comparison may
be relevant.

BUT I must point out the BIGGEST problem here comes in comparing skulls where
inhumation is practiced versus skulls where bodies are BURNED. Know what I
mean.

Steve