****. Double ****.
I hadn’t even heard of this skull “shaping” business before this. That the Peruvians did this as a matter of course was an interesting snippet I learned in the course of this thread. But I’d assumed that’s something they did to the mummies. I mean, you’re embalming and hocus-pocusing and entombing the body of the king, or priest, or whoever, and what’s more packing in goodies for them to use, and wives and concubines and armies as well; so okay, while you’re at it you also file away their skull, and their hands also, why not. It’s completely weird, sure, but making mummies of them in the expectation that they’ll resume life afterwards, that’s weird too, so this weirdness doesn’t really stand out particularly.
But when I checked a bit (cursorily, a quick look at a few articles that Google threw up, just now), I see that they did this skull shaping things to people
who were still alive, and not to the mummies! How utterly horrible is that! (Not that that has anything to do with religion per se, apparently, more a social-status thing, or so a quick look-through seems to indicate.)
I’d heard of the Chinese strapping young girls’ feet to have them, the feet, all small and dainty. I suppose this is something like that. But it’s …ewww-inducing, this thing, about “shaping” skulls, not of mummies but of live babies and children!
(This won’t be news to you, clearly you know about this already, but still, a link:
https://www.iflscience.com/why-ancient-peruvians-had-elongated-skulls-no-its-not-aliens-46179)
…Oh, and apparently it isn’t something done only in Peru. This article says “skull elongation” was practiced across different cultures, all over the world, not just in the Americas but also in Africa, and the Far East, and, yes, in Europe as well. Wow.