{"id":12601,"date":"2018-11-14T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reasons.org\/when-did-modern-human-brains-and-the-image-of-god-appear\/"},"modified":"2018-11-14T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T11:00:00","slug":"when-did-modern-human-brains-and-the-image-of-god-appear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reasons.org\/adam-eve\/first-humans\/when-did-modern-human-brains-and-the-image-of-god-appear","title":{"rendered":"When Did Modern Human Brains\u2014and the Image of God\u2014Appear?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When I was a kid, I enjoyed reading Ripley\u2019s Believe It or Not!<\/a> <\/em>I couldn\u2019t get enough of the bizarre facts described in the pages of this comic.<\/p>\n

I was especially drawn to the panels depicting people who had oddly shaped heads. I found it fascinating to learn about people whose skulls were purposely forced into unnatural shapes by a practice known as intentional cranial deformation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For the most part, this practice is a thing of the past. It is rarely performed today (though there are still a few people groups who carry out this procedure). But for much of human history, cultures all over the world have artificially deformed people\u2019s crania (often for reasons yet to be fully understood). They accomplished this feat by binding the heads of infants, which distorts the normal growth of the skull. Through this practice, the shape of the human head can be readily altered to be abnormally flat, elongated, rounded, or conical.<\/p>\n

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Figure 1: Deformed ancient Peruvian skull.<\/strong> Image credit: Shutterstock.<\/em><\/p>\n

It is remarkable that the human skull is so malleable. Believe it, or not!<\/p>\n

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Figure 2: Parts of the human skull.<\/strong> Image credit: Shutterstock.<\/em><\/p>\n

For physical anthropologists, the normal shape of the modern human skull is just as bizarre as the conical-shaped skulls found among the remains of the Nazca culture of Peru<\/a>. Compared to other hominins (such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus<\/em>), modern humans have oddly shaped skulls. The skull shape of the hominins was elongated along the anterior-posterior axis. But the skull shape of modern humans is globular, with bulging and enlarged parietal and cerebral areas. The modern human skull also has another distinctive feature: the face is retracted and relatively small.<\/p>\n

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Figure 3: Comparison of modern human and Neanderthal skulls.<\/strong> Image credit: Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Anthropologists believe that the difference in skull shape (and hence, brain shape) has profound significance and helps explain the advanced cognitive abilities of modern humans. The parietal lobe of the brain is responsible for:<\/p>\n