The idea of beauty had always been traditionally culture-based. However, with the advent of colonization, the indigenous concept and practices related to beauty gradually began to wane in favor of the European or Caucasian standards. Eventually, due to the development of colonial mentality, most societies of the world adopted the Western idea of what is beautiful.
aBefore the Spanish colonization of the Philippines, the Bisayans practiced skull moulding as a way of enhancing one's beauty. As mothers and midwives are well aware, the skulls of newborn infants are so soft if they are continuously laid on the same side, their head become flat on that side. Many societies have taken advantage of this reality in order to provide their children a skull shape which conforms to the local tenets of beauty.
According to William Henry Scott in his book, Barangay (1995), in some parts of Sumatra, non-Muslim women used to bind babies' heads to produce flat foreheads and noses; the Minahasa of Celebes formerly restricted forehead binding only to the nobility; while the Melanau of Sarawak preferred their children to grow up “moon-faced†through binding techniques. Pre-colonial Bisayans too considered broad faces with receding foreheads and flat noses handsome. They did these by compressing their babies' skulls and faces to achieve these local canons of beauty.
How do present scholars know that the early Bisayans practiced skull moulding? Archaeological diggings in burial sites in Cebu, Samar, Bohol and other places in the Philippines had turned out dozens of skulls that clearly show the physical effects of moulding or binding. This writer himself had seen at the Aga Khan Museum at the Mindanao State University in Marawi City in 1992 two complete skeletons that were discovered in Butuan grave site showing reshaped skulls with black teeth filed to points.
The pre-colonial Bisayan skull moulding was done with a device called tangad, a comb like set of thin rod bound to a baby's forehead by bandages fastened at some point behind. This hindered the forward growth of the frontal bone and directed it backward so that the head grew higher at the rear. A scientific study of twenty-two specimens found in the country revealed considerable variation according to the location and the amount of pressure, whether between the forehead and the upper or lower part of the occiput. Thus, some had normally arched foreheads but were flat behind, others were flattened at both front and back, and a few were asymmetrical due to uneven pressure (Scott, 1995).
In the Bocabulario de la lengua Bisaya of Fr. Mateo Sanchez (1617), individuals with the desired tangad profile were called tinangad, but flatness of the back of the head was called puyak. The opposite of tangad was ondo and the word was itself a comment on the Bisayan negative attitude toward unmoulded skulls: it meant as recorded by Father Sanchez, having the appearance of a hunchback's hump.
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Topic: The Pre-colonial Bisayan Practice of Skull Moulding (Read 2482 times)