Head binding now and the past

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

And in Japan (I think) the 'Beauty' of a woman was in having small feet.

I suspect you're thinking of China. Bound feet were horribly unhealthy, but considered sexy. That never caught on in Japan.

Japanese ladies did blacken their teeth, though, for beauty reasons.

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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.

Are you a specialist in biology stuff? I haven't had a class since high school.

I have heard, though, that ideas about evolution keep evolving, and the issue of nature vs. nurture is always in flux. Certainly the idea of what is "natural" for people and what is culturally determined is an ongoing debate -- as in gender issues, etc.

Thank'e for the correction.

[Anomalocaris]

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.

[brewer]

[Ranjr]

 the practice was also done in places like France 

[arewethereyet]

So we get to talk about neck stretching next?

[Anomalocaris]

So we get to talk about neck stretching next?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayan_people_(Myanmar)

[Fireball]

I had my neck "stretched" last week- got a haircut.

[brewer]

Size matters.

[The Grand Nudger]

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.

Earlobes.  Long since ceased to present human beings with any advantage, and even though many other mammals have lost the prominent lobes we all inherited together, ours are still the thing we hang precious stones from, or elongate to massive proportions..which only works if you have some real estate to work with.

Similar to crops and wattles.

[highdimensionman]

Natures elephants now sometimes come tuskless at birth. If they kept cutting the tail off generations of rat it would be shorter but were probably talking over 40-70 generations because it won't die from having it's tail cut. Artificial cranial deformation has been going on for at least 100,000 years and there were deaths and successes.