Are Eastern European flat head shapes caused by genetics or by maternity wards?

maxb

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Eastern Europeans (especially Poles, I think) often have flat heads. This is a famous Polish boxer:
skull.jpg

Is this caused by genetics or by maternity wards leaving babies lying on their backs on hard surfaces?
 
It's not just me who noticed this:

why_polish.jpg

More examples:

Two boxers, both Polish, both have flat heads:

artur-szpilka-adam-kownacki.jpg

skull.jpg

Note the flag:
polish_flag.jpg

I just want to know if this is "nature or nurture", as they say.
 
I don't understand why the images aren't getting embedded. They were embedded in the preview. What a buggy site... argh!
 
'flat' is very confusing: flat on the top or on the occiput (headback)? Not the same, here we could think in a so called 'dinaric'type input (frist man, on left in the two man picture; in old time, deformations in cradle were common, todate, these old traditions, common in Balkans and Armenia, according to someones (to micmic an elite?) are been left by a lot of people. So? before, nature + nurture, today: nature only? Uneasy to know, I don't know how it goes for Poland today.
 
in Poland, this kind of heads was reputed to be more common in the S-East, around Carpathians.
 
I would say, not hospital wards but the practice of swaddling babies making look like mummies, and laying them flat on a hard surface, like a wooden crib. It is unattractive by-the-way, that flattened occiput.
 
'flat' is very confusing: flat on the top or on the occiput (headback)? Not the same, here we could think in a so called 'dinaric'type input (frist man, on left in the two man picture; in old time, deformations in cradle were common, todate, these old traditions, common in Balkans and Armenia, according to someones (to micmic an elite?) are been left by a lot of people. So? before, nature + nurture, today: nature only? Uneasy to know, I don't know how it goes for Poland today.

People say "flat occiput" a lot, but this is COMPLETELY wrong.

The occipital bone is actually BELOW the lambdoid suture. It's not even the back of your head. It's where your neck and skull meet.

All these guys have flat areas in the UPPER BACK parts of their heads.
 
I would say, not hospital wards but the practice of swaddling babies making look like mummies, and laying them flat on a hard surface, like a wooden crib. It is unattractive by-the-way, that flattened occiput.

Being bald is usually unattractive.
 
People say "flat occiput" a lot, but this is COMPLETELY wrong.

The occipital bone is actually BELOW the lambdoid suture. It's not even the back of your head. It's where your neck and skull meet.

All these guys have flat areas in the UPPER BACK parts of their heads.


You're right enough in your remarks; I use the terms 'occipital flattening' and 'lambdoid flattening' sometimes by simplification as did a lot of scientific works in older times. Right when you say the occipital bone is under the lambdoid suture, not right when you say it's not even the back of the head, because seen from sides even the more flattened headbacks shows the higher and middle part of the occipital bone more backward than the parietals (linked to occipitalS by this lambdoid suture).
In fact these terms of lambdoid or occipital flattenings ((bad, I recognize) were popularised simplifications to mark a flattening beginning more forward on the skull top and less vertical (so called 'lambdoid fl.'), considered more frequent among subbrachycephalised ancient people of North Europe, and a flattening beginning more backward on the skull top and more vertical ('occipital fl.'), typical 'dinaroid' to say shortly. BTW true brachycephals exist with almost no flattening, only a shortening of the head (or broadening!).
to be precise both flattening involved in some way back part of parietals and the occipital. The angle and the part of the bones concerned make the difference, stated by Coon when studying Northern Albaneses and Montenegro people in his time.
I maintain these two Poles (this thread) have not the same cranial brachycephalisation.

The lambdoid/occipital 'dinaricoid' flattening (glup!) would still exist in regions where cradling deformations are no more in use or had never been in use, what doesn't contradict the fact that artificial deformations tending to imitate them have been "in the wind" some time ago; snobism? - surely the abandonment of these practises have diminished the %'s of people presenting this kind of features.
 
My head shape is kind of like that too, though not exactly.
Has nothing to do with maternity wards. In Belgium it is more common than England, Netherlands and Germany (overall). I am not sure about France.
We don't resemble Poles, though.
 
flattened occipitals existed among Western Norwegian and Eastern Scotland (at rather low level, it's true) in the last century without I ever heard of a special cradling mode. Bad informed?
 
Some low numbers of planoccipital men have been found in Eastern Scotland and Western Norway and I have never heard of a special cradling mode there. Bad informed?
 
Genetically, the reason is probably the greater levels of Ancient North Eurasian and Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer ancestry, plus the low levels of Uralic/Siberian ancestry associated with Haplogroup N in some regions.

I think the back of my head is pretty flat (I have a small head generally, less pronounced in the face). Dodecad K12 says I'm 25% Caucasian and then 6% "Gedrosian".
 
It's not just me who noticed this:

View attachment 12546

More examples:

Two boxers, both Polish, both have flat heads:

View attachment 12547

View attachment 12545

Note the flag:
View attachment 12548

I just want to know if this is "nature or nurture", as they say.

They may be descendents of the following bellbeaker woman. It seems to me that she had a high nose, but a little flat face considering eye socket angle:

From "Bell Beaker Culture in South-Eastern Poland" Budziszewski, Haduch, Wlodarczak


"The Samborzec Beakers are typical of the Beaker ethnic as repeatedly described by osteologists, being an often tall, powerfully built, short-headed people with a flattened upper occiput bone (among other hereditary and environmentally-influenced characteristics)."
 

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