Who are the Hirotas?
The tiny island of Tanegashima is located 50 km south of the larger Japanese islands – many may have heard of it as the launch site for Japanese space rockets. In the second half of the 20th century, archaeologists found 3rd-7th centuries in Tanegashima. They discovered a mass of human remains belonging to the Hirota people who lived there for centuries. Representatives of this people outwardly resembled not modern Japanese, but the Ainu, the most ancient inhabitants of Japan. Their faces were distinguished by strong brow ridges and upturned noses that made Hirota resemble Australian Aborigines. In addition, these people were distinguished by their small stature – an average of 154 centimeters for men and 142 centimeters for women.
But, first of all, the shape of the skulls of those buried confused scientists – their back was flattened, the occipital and parietal bones were particularly flat. It is known that many ancient people deliberately deformed the bones of children, the most famous example being the bandaging of the feet of Chinese aristocrats. The skulls, on the other hand, may have been unintentionally deformed due to Hirota’s habits or customs.
How were the skulls studied?
To solve this, Noriko Seguchi of Kyushu University and her colleagues decided. analyze Hirota skulls and compare them with the remains of other ancient inhabitants of the Japanese islands. For convenience and preservation of museum specimens, bones were scanned and a virtual 3D replica was created with less than 0.05mm error. Then, using geometric methods, the authors ensured that the observed flattening of each skull was indeed large and went beyond the biological norm. Additionally, on close inspection, grooves were seen in the bones along the sagittal and lambdoid sutures.
The shape of the Hirota skull turned out to be very different from what is common among the contemporary Yayoi and Jomon peoples living on the major Japanese islands.
Hirots buried in different epochs had different degrees of skull deformation. The skulls of men and women living simultaneously in the same place are equally flattened.
All this showed that Hirota deliberately deformed his own skulls. Bone changes may be characteristic of some professions – medieval English archers, for example, suffered from their arms and spine due to the excessive strength of the beam and regular training. However, anthropologists are unaware of instances where such strong and uniform deformations may have arisen unintentionally among all humans, as in the case of Hirot.
Why did they do it?
Skull modification was not a unique feature of Hirot. A similar practice was common among the elite Mayan Indians of the classical period – the skull was either pulled towards the top and sharpened or flattened from the sides. According to Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, one of the Spanish historians of the conquest of America, the Indians explained this by a religious tradition – the so-called gods told them that this way the heads would look more noble. In practice, it was emphasized that the shape of the skull belonged to the upper strata of society.
According to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, who lived around 400 BC. e., representatives of the Scythian people with macrocephaly similarly removed skulls. “They consider the tallest heads the noblest. After a child is born, they shape the head by hand while it is still delicate and make it into an elongated shape, applying bandages and the like,” he wrote. At the same time, Hippocrates correctly captured the essence of the method, and similarly – the tight bandages in childhood. with its help – other people’s skulls were deformed.
The authors of the study first proposed that the Hirota people marked the offspring of the elite with skull modification. However, the burials show no signs of social stratification and almost all contain rich grave goods with many seashell decorations. Alternatively, scholars are willing to admit that only the tombs of the elite have been found, but this version has no proof. On the contrary, it is known that strict social stratification appeared on the Japanese islands only after rice cultivation became the basis of the economy. Rice requires the combined labor of many people who have contributed to the expansion and compaction of settlements where the elite has emerged.
Hirota, on the other hand, did not grow rice, but hunted on the nearest coral reef, so scientists proposed another explanation for the “marking” of children’s skulls: people were very fond of seashell jewelry, but they could not be collected. their hometown of Tanegashima island. As a result, Hirota had to trade with distant peoples living on the Nansei Islands, which stretched as far as Taiwan. Historians know how long-distance trading helps group consolidation. According to Seguchi and his colleagues, for the sake of success in business, the skulls were deformed to emphasize group identity and clearly distinguish friends from strangers.