When residents of Onavas, Sonora were digging irrigation channels in a 1,000-year-old cemetery earlier this year they made a startling discovery.
The 13 elongated skulls they uncovered appeared more like extraterrestrial remains than human ones. Theories of contact between alien life and pre-Hispanic cultures have long abounded and some believed that here, at last, was the definitive proof.
However, analysis by a team of archaeologists has proved that these “conehead” skulls dating back from 945 to 1308 A.D. were merely the result of cranial deformation, an ancient human ritual common in Mesoamerica.The deformation of human skulls was achieved by using cloth to bind a child’s head between two blocks of wood. The pressure would distort their growth, resulting in the warped skull shapes uncovered in the Sonora cemetery.