Bell Beaker phenotype and the flat occiput

[Northener]

The recent Bell Beaker (BB ) publication titled "The Beaker Phenomenon And The Genomic Transformation Of Northwest Europe" has cause much rumor. Especially the fact that the scientist states that the BB replaced up to 90% of the Neolithic British population. There is a big relationship between the Dutch and BB (the Guardian in the overdrive: "Dutch hordes"). And they were mostly rooted in the Steppe and not in Hibernia.


But how did those BB look like? The easiest answer is: divers. And they most probably were. But that's not the end of the story I guess.


I know physical anthropologist became non-existent. Most of their products were pseudo scientific and/or dead end street.


But recently I discovered in a symposium about the Bell Beakers in Oberried 1974 published in Lanting e.a Glochenbecher Symposium (Haarlem/Bussum 1976) a really interesting referral of the Swiss physical anthropologist Kurt Gerhardt.


About the phenotypes of the Bell Beaker he had some interesting observations, he underlines the diversity of the Bell Beaker phenotype and he denies phenotypes like DInarid or Borreby etc. in a convincing way.


But what astonished Gerhardt was that in Northern Europe before the Bell Beaker there are no findings of people with a flat back of their head, planocciput. During and after the BB there were a lot of findings, especially in the Rhenish and British BB were people had a flat occiput (in German: Planocciputale Steilkopf).


Gerhardt's theory is quite simple. He states that there were two basic European (hunter gatherer) phenotypes: crogmagnid and aurignacid (robust doliomorphic). During the BB periode both types evolved. This picture shows the different directions of the evolvements:

I don't sum up the all the evolvements. But for here, the most important one, is that Gerhardt states that the evolvement of the Aurignacid, in the third column, through a brachycephalic (shortening) and hypsimorphic (elongation) at once.


That's the one which is according to Gerhardt (based on finding onto the seventies) the most remarkable one along the BB.


A research (Pearson 2016) published last year confirms Gerhardt's opinion:


"Statistical analyses of the Peak District sample confirm the existence of significant differences in cranial length measurements between Early Neolithic (c.3800–3400 cal BC) and Beaker/Bronze Age (c.2500–1500 cal BC) individuals, confirming the transition from dolichocephalic (long-headed) to brachycephalic (broad-headed) cranial forms. Certain individual skulls exhibited occipital flattening, a cranial modification probably caused by infants lying flat on their backs or being secured to a cradle-board. In contrast, two Neolithic- period skulls exhibit artificial cranial deformation resulting from infant head-binding to produce long skulls. This evidence for artificial skull deformation was recognized at the time of excavation (Bateman 1861; Wilson 1863: 273–4) but has been largely forgotten; it goes some way to resolving the long-term debate about the existence of racial types of brachycephalic Bell Beaker people and dolichocephalic Neolithic people across many parts of Europe (Abercromby 1912; Childe 1925: 90; Brothwell 1960; Brothwell & Krzanowski 1974; Gerhardt 1976; Brodie 1994) by introducing a cultural explanation for some of these differences in cranial shape."


Gerhardt supposed that the men with a flat occiput had some kind of "status aparte". Only due to infant cranial modification and/or genetics (natural selection)?