Bell Beaker Infant Swaddling

Tabaccus Maximus

Tabaccus Maximus
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Ethnic group
Galo-Germanic Atlantic Fringe
Y-DNA haplogroup
R1b - SRY 2627
mtDNA haplogroup
H1a
I wonder if swaddling artificially changed the head shape of Bell Beaker men.


Swaddling boards and binds were once very common in Europe and among Indo-European peoples. Swaddling was also very common among Native Americans such as the Navajo, Inuit, Comanche's, Aztec's and all the rest. Several famous photos show North European Lapplanders and Saami outside their teepees in the early century often with a baby on a swaddling board. Images of swaddled infants on the backs of nomadic Yenesian and Mongol women can be found easily.

The intensity of swaddling varies, and of course, an effect of head to toe boarded swaddling into the toddler years, as was common among the Mongols, tends to deform the back of the head, or flatten the occiput. It was generally believe among Europeans, Siberians and Native Americans that swaddling straightened a mans back and made him tall and strong. Loosely swaddling infants is very common, and is believed to comfort the baby.

I say this because, after looking at Bell Beaker skulls for a while, I've lost my confidence that they are truly R1b or Indo-European. Of course, the massive, rounded head with a prominent brow, powerful jaw and short-wide face doesn't at all fit the typical Dinaroid physical type. Beakers don't fit any type, at all.

The features of the Beaker men seem internally inconsistent. Another problem is the steady increase in long-headedness in modern times of Western Europeans that has puzzled anthropologists. Perhaps this also is due the slow fading of swaddling in the last several centuries?

I think I'm probably like most of you. I go back and forth on Beaker people.
 

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