Archaeologists Were Excavating an Ancient Site—& Discovered a Cube-Shaped Skull

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Popular Mechanics
Archaeologists Were Excavating an Ancient Site—And Discovered a Cube-Shaped Skull
Darren Orf
Tue, December 16, 2025 at 8:00 AM EST
3 min read



Archaeologists Discovered a Cube-Shaped Skull Paul Campbell - Getty Images


Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

*Artificial cranial deformation is a uniquely human practice that dates back thousands of years, and has been practiced—at one time or another—in nearly every corner of the world.

*Typically, head binding of infants is intended to mold the skull into a cone-like shape, but a surprising discovery from the Balcón de Montezuma archaeological site in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas reveals a cube-shaped version of cranial deformation.

*Archaeologists investigated whether this individual migrated from a people group further south, but isotope studies of the skull’s teeth suggested the person lived their entire life in the region.


Nearly every corner of the world contains archaeological evidence of the ancient practice of artificial cranial deformation. The Huns of Central Asia are a well-known example, but so are the Hirota people of ancient Japan, the Maya of Central America, and even members of the peasant class in Toulouse, France, around the end of the 19th century. Today, some cultures in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Vanuatu in the South Pacific still practice the tradition.

Most of these examples—both historical and contemporary—form pointed skulls by binding an infant’s head while the skull bones fuse (typically up until the age of two). It’s not incredibly common to see a cube-shaped skull, but the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) recently reported one such discovery in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas near the Balcón de Montezuma—an archaeological site occupied by various ethnic groups between 650 B.C.E and 1200 C.E.

One of these communities, around the year 400 C.E., contained roughly 90 houses and a variety of artifacts. As the archaeologists sifted through these finds, they discovered what appeared to be a parallelepiped, or cube-shaped, skull. Artificial skull deformation was a common practice among the Maya, but hasn’t been documented in this particular site.

“Not only was intentional cranial deformation identified for the first time for this type of site, but also a variant with respect to the models recognized in Mesoamerica, not reported, until now, in the area,” biological anthropologist Jesús Ernesto Velasco González said in a translated press statement. Velasco González noted that similar deformations occurred at the El Zapotal archaeological site in Veracruz, located further south along the Gulf of Mexico, so scientists tried to piece together potential migration leaks. However, those didn’t quite pan out.

“Stable oxygen isotope studies in collagen and bioapatite samples from bone and teeth, a technique used to infer the geographic origin of the second individual's skeletal remains, indicate that he was born, lived, and died in this part of the mountains,” Velasco González said in a press statement. “Therefore, the results rule out a direct mobility relationship with the groups of El Zapotal or those further south.”

The reasons why the people of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica—or any people, for that matter—practiced skull formation are almost as varied as the people groups themselves. Sometimes it was a marker of social hierarchy, sometimes it was a religious rite, and sometimes it was just for aesthetics. Although the health effects are debated, it’s largely believed that this practice doesn’t decrease the size of the skull, and as such, health impacts are mostly negligible (though some research has asserted that the practice could impact cognitive or memory function).

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/archaeologists-were-excavating-ancient-discovered-130000804.html