The skull named M45, the earliest known case of head modification on record, dates to about 12,000 years ago. Ancient people in China practiced human head-shaping by bounding some children’s maturing skulls, encouraging the heads to grow into elongated ovals.
During the early 90s, this condition arose with remarkable frequency due to the “back to sleep” campaign, which instructed parents to keep their babies on their backs to ward off SIDS.
Latest craze involves parents shelling out for helmets that they believe can help mold their babies' heads into ideal, rounded shapes. This is because perfectly round heads are viewed as the beauty standard nowadays.
Cranial deformation is believed to have existed for years and was common amongst certain groups of people. However, archaeologists do not believe that it originated from just one place.
In Egypt, evidence of elongated skulls appears in all the members of the royal family in during the Armana epoch. Whether or not this was a genetic trait or one enforced on the royal members at birth is unknown.
This figurine is typical of the Chancay civilization in the central coastal region of Peru, north of Lima, that prospered between AD 1200 and 1450. The exact significance of the flat, bi-lobed head is unclear but since such figures were often found in graves, it is likely to have represented a particular virtue such as wisdom, beauty or godliness.
北美原住民奇努克人還會採用特製的夾板，給新生兒的頭顱塑形。
圖源：Ancient Origins
在他們看來，扁平頭是地位與智慧的象徵，有助於鞏固社會階級。
The Chinookan people inhabiting the Columbia River area in Oregon and Washington used cradleboards for the first year of a child's life to produce a wedge-shaped head. This head shape not only implied a higher status (and possibly intelligence or spiritual elevation), but was also intended to reinforce social hierarchy.
Some thinkers and physicians of the 18th and 19th centuries believed that the shape of a person’s skull could hold clues as to their psychology. That is a long-discredited “science,” known as phrenology. 一些18世紀和19世紀的思想家和醫生認為，人的頭骨形狀可以揭示人的心理狀況。這是一門久負盛名的“科學”，被稱為顱相學。
圖源：The Atlantic
與之相關的一些“術語”也沿用至今：
① Highbrow 本意為眉頭高，代指智力發達、文化修養高的人；
② Lowbrow 本意為眉頭低，代指比較庸俗、知識水平低的人；
③ Well Rounded 本意為頭骨飽滿，代指天賦極佳、多才多藝的人。
諸多證據表明，顱骨重塑 在世界範圍都是廣泛存在的：
It is a widespread practice that has been “recorded on nearly every continent in many cultures over tens of thousands of years.” 它是一種廣泛的實踐，“在數萬年的時間裏，幾乎在每個大陸上的諸多文化中都有記錄。
