RE: Head binding now and the past
February 22, 2022 at 12:28 pm
(This post was last modified: February 22, 2022 at 12:37 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(February 22, 2022 at 1:04 am)highdimensionman Wrote: When your very young and your head is soft people can use binds to elongate the head. This can have an impact on the shape of the head generations down. Some tribes today still use head binding today and have long head's going backwards. the practice was also done in places like France until recent centuries.
I have come across three main types of head binding. One for making the head go back further, One for widening the head and the other where the head is made taller. It goes without saying that all skulls properly investigated have been found to be human in origin.
I often wonder how far head binding goes back and just how much of a role relative to other types of genetic adaption has this practice had.
This issue relates to a bigger issue in the history of evolution. How much Nature is due to behaviours and habit forming and how much is more internal and happening at cellular and sub cellular level. Thing is self conditioned evolution we have had more choice over compared to whats going on at the microscopic level and I have not found much in terms of science papers covering this issue.
Head binding is a learned social behavior trait. As such neither it’s cause nor its effects have direct genetic basis, so it is not heritable per se, and would not have first order impact on evolution.
However, there can be secondary or tertiary impacts on evolution.
Learned or innate mate selection criteria can have a impact on evolution if the traits meeting the the criteria can also have genetic basis and thus is heritable. For example,. Foot made small by binding is not heritable. foot binding is largely a upper middle class and aristocratic behavior in china. However, preference for small feet in women is not solely an upper middle class snd aristocratic behavior. So it may also impact mating chances of women who were just below the social threshold at which the practice of food binding begins. Naturally small feet would have a genetic basis and as such would be heritable. So the social preference for small feet may have a secondary effect of making women’s smaller through the generations.
similarly with head binding, the effect of head binding is not heritable, but the preference for a particular head shape may excert an evolutionary pressure by improving the mating chance of those who did not suffer head binding but whose head naturally shape more like the desired post binding shape.