Elongated ‘alien’ skulls found in Mexico

From DATELINE ZERO

An archaeological dig in Mexico has uncovered strange elongated skulls from more than a millenia ago.

The Mazatlan Messenger is reporting that the skulls “have been seized on by UFO enthusiasts as evidence of aliens with one poster on David Icke’s site asking, ‘Does this look human to you?’”

However, Charles Choi, from LiveScience, says that the skulls skulls had been “deliberately warped into strange, alien-like shapes.”

The skulls were unearthed in a 1,000-year-old cemetery outside the village of Onavas, south of Sonora in Mexico. They were discovered while the residents were building an irrigation canal. Five of the skulls also showed signs of dental mutilation.

According to the article at Mazatlan Messenger, The ‘cranial deformation’ in the skulls is actually intentional carried out by binding the heads of babies to produce the bizarre effect. For pre-Hispanic cultures in the area, longer skulls were a sign of social status.

From the article written by Charles Choi:

The practice of deforming skulls of children as they grew was common in Central America, and these findings suggest the tradition spread farther north than had been thought, scientists added.
…
Dental mutilation involves filing or grinding teeth into odd shapes, while cranial deformation involves distorting the normal growth of a child’s skull by applying force — for example, by using cloths to bind wooden boards against their heads.

“Cranial deformation has been used by different societies in the world as a ritual practice, or for distinction of status within a group or to distinguish between social groups,” said researcher Cristina García Moreno, an archaeologist at Arizona State University. “The reason why these individuals at El Cementerio deformed their skulls is still unknown.”

“The most common comment I’ve read from people that see the pictures of cranial deformation has been that they think that those people were ‘aliens,’” García added. “I could say that some say that as a joke, but the interesting thing is that some do think so. Obviously we are talking about human beings, not of aliens.”

In a discussion thread at Above Top Secret, user “TauNorthwolf” makes the observation that elongated skulls have been found on almost all continents. And in each case the scientists state that those areas of the world had traditions that regarded elongated skulls with higher social status.

Either that, or there are extraterrestrial skulls on every continent, and the “social status” bit is simply a best attempt at finding a so-called reasonable explanation.