Megalithic Marvels - New Discovery of Ancient Elongated Skulls Unearthed in Iran

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

Derek Olson of Megalithic Marvels breaks down the exciting news regarding a cache of strange elongated skulls that have been discovered in southwest Iran. According to one of the lead archaeologists, the concentration of deformed skulls unearthed in grave BG1 is "striking." In this episode, Derek will try to determine if these are the result of cradle head boarding or... genetics. SHOW NOTES Egypt Tour Article - Grave of Ancient Elongated Skulls Discovered in Iran Previous Episode - Peru's Megalithic Cave of Mystery  Follow Megalithic Marvels on the following platforms: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/megalithicm... Blog - https://megalithicmarvels.com/ Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpiP... Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/megalithicma... TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@megalithicmarvels Facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/10186... Twitter - https://twitter.com/MegMarvels

Marvel. So in this episode, we are going to talk about the exciting new discovery of a strange collection of ancient, elongated skulls that were recently unearthed in a grave in Iran. But before we do, I want to let you know, if you haven't heard that registration is now live for our second annual Megalithic Marvels of Egypt tour coming this May. And I want to invite you to join me in renowned Egyptologist. and tour guide Muhammad Ibrahim for literally the adventure of a lifetime. A 12-day expedition to see and touch the world's greatest superstructures.

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all capitals and altogether, Egypt, 2020. Just click the link below or go to megalithic marvels.com forward slash tours. All right, so it's been reported in several places in the last several days that a cache of strange elongated skulls has been unearthed on the Zora plain in southwest Iran at an archaeological site. I hope I get this right. It's called Tolle Chega Sofla. And archaeologist Abbas Maghadam stated, quote, At Tolle Chegla Sofla, the concentration of deformed skulls and, and grave BG1 is striking, end quote.

We're going to discuss this strange grave more in just a little bit, but first let's talk a little bit more about this ancient site in Iran. So Tolichagla Sofla is located on the easternmost fringes of Kuzestan province. And this site was first discovered in 1970 by an archaeologist, I believe, named Hans Nissen and his colleagues from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Now, again, Abbas Maghadam, one of the several archaeologists leading this excavation, in their report titled, quote, Tula Cefasophila Cemetery, a phenomenon in the context of late 5th millennium southwest Iran, end quote, he stated this, quote, it's considerable extent,

the diverse grave structures, their richness, and diversity of recovered goods, as well as the large number of buried individuals, are unprecedented phenomena compared to previously excavated contemporary sites, end quote. So you can kind of feel the archaeologists' excitement about what they have on Earth tier. Now, if you go to Megalithicmarvels.com, you can see our latest article about this, which has all the photos, kind of maps showing where this site is located. showing some drone views of these burial sites and the tombs and the elongated skulls. I'll also link it in the show notes below.

So the archaeologist going to say that according to recent archaeological evidence, this site flourished approximately 4,700 to 3,700 BC. So that's kind of the time frame here. Now, they say that considering the size of Tolle-Chega-Sophila, as a residential quarter, the number of dead skeletons, or the number of the dead, as indicated by the graves, is relatively high. They found at least 102 skeletons, according to the archaeologists. They believe the high number of skeletons in multiple burial graves has a primary explanation, and that is the constant use of graves over several generations. They also theorize,

that other explanations may include war of conflict, famine, and starvation. Pandemics were the prominence of ritual activities for the Toll Echegas Sofla communities living in the Zora Plain in the late 5th millennium and who brought their dead to the cemetery. That's kind of interesting when they say that maybe the high number of dead in this area are related to ritual activities. Are they hinting at sacrifice their, ritual sacrifice of their own and possible cannibalism? Archaeologist Abbas Maghadam goes on to state

that, quote, 11 graves in total were located within three excavation units named areas A, B, and C. There's three graves in area A, six graves in area. six graves in area B and one grave in area C were excavated. Grave BG3 in area B remained unexcavated. I'm thinking out loud here. I wonder why that one was unexcavated. Based on physical anthropological studies,

the buried individuals in the 10 excavated graves ranged in age, at death, between less than six years old to more than 40 years old. Most of them, 21.3% were aged between 30 to 35 years old, and only a few were aged more than 40 years old, 1.1%. The archaeologist, same guy, goes on to say, quote, At Tolle Echegla Soflop, the concentration of deformed skulls engraved BG1 is striking, end quote. And so we're going to find out there was 12 elongated skulls found in this one grave called BG1. Again, there was three different grave areas, area A, area B, and area C.

The elongated skulls were found in area B where there was six different graves. And the first one, BG1, is where they found this big concentration of what they say, quote, deformed skulls, end quote. Maghadam also went on to say, One example was also recovered from BG6, although the actual number might have been higher, end quote. So it's like he's almost saying we found all these elongated schools in the BG1 grave. Oh, by the way, we did find one more in the BG6 grave, although the actual number might have been higher. So it's kind of sounding to me like there's maybe even a lot more elongated schools than they're actually stating.

if I'm reading this right. Again, I find it very interesting that these archaeologists found the concentration of deformed skulls in this grave BG1 to be, quote, striking, end quote. I mean, if elongated schools are simply just the result of cradle headboarding

and that they're common throughout the Middle East as these very archaeologists go on to state later in the same report, then why do they seem kind of, of taken back by this discovery of elongated skulls. Again, maybe I'm reading this wrong, maybe I'm reading into it, but this is kind of what I'm sensing. Furthermore, why were most of these elongated skulls found only in grave BG1 and not spread throughout all of the other graves, or at least all of the six graves in the B area? Might these elongated skulls in BG1

have been segregated because maybe there were some kind of ruling class at some point in this area. As you scroll this article again at megalithic marvels.com, you'll see that I feature a photo that shows four of these 12 elongated schools pictured together, and the two on the bottom, number two and four, clearly seem to show more cranial volume than conventional. human skulls. And then the next elongated skull picture is, I think it's the same skull that's numbered four, number four. It's a great close-up from the top of the head to the bottom of the jaw. And this thing, again, to my eye, seems to have at least 20% more cranial mass than a conventional human skull. According to the archaeologists, seven female skulls aged between 9 to 30 years old and 5 male skulls aged between 17 to 25 year olds were deformed.

So 7 female and 5 male. The archaeologist Maghadam goes on to say, quote, The findings from Tola Chaga Sofla that only remind us to not. underestimate prehistoric communities, but demonstrate the need to review many of our previous assumptions, end quote. And I'll agree with him 100% on that. And again, I'm grateful for these archaeologists who have the expertise to find this site and excavate these amazing specimens and artifacts. As you scroll down in the article, you'll see just a beautiful picture of these artifacts the unearthed of these almost green jade-looking tools, ornaments, jewelry.

And they say there was a wide range of findings, including pottery, stone vessels, metal objects, and small ornaments were excavated from the graves. And the most interesting feature regarding the grave goods, they say it was a certain harmony between the diversity of grave goods in terms of type and material in the grave structures. So being that all this was discovered in Iran, I was doing a little bit more research on elongated school discoveries found in Iran. And I found something amazing. If you scroll down to the bottom of this article, again, you can find this at megalithic marvels.com or it's going to be linked below in the show notes.

I found a great quality photo of an elongated skull that was found, I believe, in the early 1900s at a site called Coga Safid, I believe it's pronounced. This thing is dated around the 7th to 6th millennia BC. And when you look at this skull, this thing has a... really, really long elongated skull, which again, to me, looks like it's got at least 25 to 30% more cranial mass. It looks like part of the skull is even missing, so I think we're only seeing kind of the top half of this. But I'm really struck by how long it is, the length of it. I mean, literally the cone-shaped length, very reminiscent to the Chang'o skull in Peru, but this thing looks even more ancient, as do all these previous schools in Iran I talked about.

All these, when compared to the Paraka schools, look almost petrified. They look definitely thousands of years older than the Paracus schools that are said to be about 2,000 to 3,000 years old. So in case you don't know about the Paracca schools of Peru, let me do a little recap, since I'm referencing them. In the 1920s, Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tela first discovered

tombs in Paracas filled with skeletons that possess some of the largest elongated schools on Earth. Since then, many more elongated schools from this region have been discovered, which are believed to date

from between 2000 and 3,000 years ago. Of course, skeptics always say that all these are just the result of cradle headboarding. Well, I'll admit, some of them, are the result of cradle headboarding.

I believe the majority in paracus are not the result of cradle headboarding. Here's why. I think there's two different types of skulls found amongst the paracus. There are the skulls that are elongated simply due to cranial deformation or headwinding. And when you look at these skulls up close like I have, when I was there, except for the skull elongation, everything looks similar to our schools of today. Okay, but then there's the skulls that I would call natural elongated skulls.

These are the ones that feature the crazy anatomical genetic differences. And these were like the nobles and the royalty of the proxist culture, I think. And these natural elongated schools feature much larger jawbones than ours, much larger eye sockets than ours that are up to 50% larger. Okay, that's huge. and if that's not crazy enough, these paracus skulls are missing the sagittal suture, which is the fibrous connective tissue joints

between the two parietal plates that run down the center back of our skulls. That's genetic. If that's not crazy enough, many of these elongated skulls, cranial volume, again, is up to 25% larger than ours, and some of them, such as the Chango skull that I mentioned, easily has 50% more cranial volume than ours. And so here's the key.

Cranial deformation or cranial head binding or cradle head boarding, whatever you want to call it, it certainly can absolutely change the shape of the skull. But what it cannot do is add more cranial mass or volume to a skull. And I believe that some of these elongated skulls found in Iran at Toll I Cheggla Sofla, as well as this older one here in Iran that I just referenced. These also appear to me to be natural elongated skulls.

And when you click on this article, you'll see I did a side-by-side comparison of a parochus skull on the right from Peru. and one of these Iran skulls on the left. And you can see the similarities are quite striking. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast and check out my latest episode with Tony Merkel of the Confessionals podcast

where we discuss Peru's megalithic Cave of Mystery and talk about the cover-up of ancient history and so much more. You can click the link below in the show notes and I'll see you over there Until next time, keep exploring.