Phrenology is the outdated study of linking skull shape to personality.
While the measurement of skull shape and morphology has strong roots in actual science, phrenology
makes assumptions beyond what is provable.
When German Physician, Franz Joseph Gall developed his theory of phrenology in 1796, his studies
focused mainly on the neurocranium, the housing of the brain as he believed it to shape the
formation of the skull as certain parts were used more.
For instance, people with outgoing personalities must have two small bumps on their forehead.
To bury this theory for the final time, in 2018 scientists from the University of Oxford’s
Department of Clinical Neuroscience tried to find a correlation between 6000 MRI scans
and the participant’s responses in a personality questionnaire.
As one would expect, there was no correlation.
While phrenology itself may be pseudoscience, the study of skull shapes, craniometry, is
incredibly important in forensic reconstruction.
From Physical Anthropology in Forensic Medicine, detectives can guess the Gender, Age, Ethnicity,
Height, Physical Build and Unique Facial Traits all from bits of human skull remains.
The part that I’ve always found interesting is how skull shapes differ by ethnicity to
adapt to their environment.
While this is a sensitive topic that’s been shrouded in racist undertones for centuries,
the science is still true that there are a range of skull shapes and sizes.
How we justify using this knowledge has changed for the better in the last 300 years.
Facial reconstruction from the early 1900s has revolved around sculpting soft tissue
over a hard dentofacial frame such as the skull.
The issue is the skull shape changes a lot by race as found by Fang Et al and other anthropological
studies.
In particular the forehead contour where a sharp incline is seen as far more masculine
than a rounded forehead.
Former model, Godfrey Gao is a good example.
Being Mixed race with many phenotypically Asian features, he has a sharp forehead with
a prominent brow ridge.
Notice how the forehead inclination matches the inclination of his nose.
This is the nasofacial angle and the difference between a handsome side profile vs a plain
one, is harmony between the nose and forehead contours.
It’s easier to change the contour of your nose with a rhinoplasty than to change the
shape of your forehead with brow implants.
I used Godfrey Gao deliberately because Asian foreheads are the most neotenized and rounded.
This is great for women for making them appear soft and cute but not so for men.
As Doug Jones hypothesizes, it’s a byproduct of sexual selection for more youthful looking
women.
In these examples the men have very rounded foreheads and they’re not cherry picked
either, it’s simply a part of the skull morphology.
Men with sharper foreheads appear more dominant by being angular which also visually makes
the hairline appear less receded, especially at the temples.
For aesthetics, I’d argue, having a steep rounded forehead to be the most unideal for
men.
Having a flat but steep forehead to be in the middle and a shallow, flat one to be ideal
for masculinity.
For women it would be the opposite order as we go from feminine to masculine dimorphic
traits.
Phrenology gets a lot of things wrong but these depictions from over 100 years ago are
still accurate in identifying masculine vs feminine dimorphic traits and explain why
we’re attracted to certain features.
Steep, rounded foreheads can still be attractive given that they’re proportionate with a
youthful hairline as it’s a neotenous trait and thus requires other youthful features.
Otherwise, inclined foreheads have the inherent advantage of being masculine by being able
to get away with a lot more hair recession and not look baby-faced.
Subscribe to the channel for the full breakdown on hairstyles for men and women soon.
So that was the forehead, lets move onto the skull shape.
Anthropologist Ashley Montagu noted that the neurocranium shape of modern humans has thinner
skull bones, lacks brow ridges and sagittal crests with larger, more developed brains.
These are the facial patterns of our early neanderthal ancestors who were more focused
on survival than greater thought.
In biology we use the terms gracile meaning slender to describe modern humans vs robust
to describe neanderthal morphology.
For instance the sagittal crest provides an anchor for extremely strong jaw muscles to
develop.
As brain sizes increased, this ridge decreased.
Also, notice that this skull is very dolichocephalic, meaning that it is longer than it is wide
from the front.
There is a bias towards shorter, wider skulls for aesthetics with narrow skulls being less
resemblant of the modern human skull..
In anthropometry we use a cephalic index which is simply a ratio of width over length.
These are the classifications for skull shape provided by Saller Et al 1957 from very long
and narrow to very short and wide.
Now you may be wondering why there’s only data provided for 2 races and 1 ethnic group
which itself is very vague.
This particular dataset comes from Canadian Surgeon Leslie Farkas who pioneered the field
of anthropometry going around and measuring the bodies from head to toe of people from
different races.
His system of measurement in Anthropometry of the Head and Face in Medicine is the basis
of nearly every anthropometric measurement you’ll see on this channel or a modern plastic
surgeon using.
Unfortunately Farkas died before getting around to documenting every ethnic group but his
work was carried on by scientists in their respective countries.
Moving on, let’s consider the contour of the skull.
The way your occipital bone is shaped is important for making your skull less dolichocephalic.
Neanderthal skulls had a long occipital bone which is unaesthetic nowadays as it’s a
‘robust’ feature designed for survival that doesn’t reflect the refined fragileness
of the modern human.
As you can imagine, a long ovoid shape is stronger across its length for face first
impacts than a spherical shape.
The occipital bone can be reduced by essentially shaving down the skull to a more normal mesocephalic
shape but that depends on the thickness of the neurocranium.
Likewise any uneven depressions in the skull are just as detrimental for aesthetics but
can be fixed with implants.
We can’t discuss the contour of the skull without touching on the popular Angel vs Witch
or the Warrior vs Wimp skullconcept.
What people in the past have referred to as a witch skull, horrible I know, is actually
a result of poor dentofacial development rather than just the shape of the neurocranium itself.
In this free body diagram by F.B.
Naini the skull is drawn as one solid block and granted that there are sutures in places
that allow some movement between the cranium fragments, your brain isn’t doing jumping
jacks inside to push your skull to take on an undesirable shape.
However, during maturity, parts of the cranium can be molded with lots of external force
while they're still soft, for instance in Peruvian Head Binding.
In some cases the occipital may flatten itself naturally due to your sleeping positions as
an infant but having proper facial growth is much more important and noticeable for
aesthetics than worrying about the shape of your skull.
Unlike your neurocranium the jaw saddle and it’s components can move much more independently
of one another as you chew and grow and are subject to a lot of different force vectors
in different directions.
As these units are stacked on top of each other, they’re dependent on each other’s
location in determining the final face.
The so-called witch or wimp appearance comes from a lack of forward dentofacial growth
and not just the shape of your skull.
So to summarise, having a dolichocephalic skull shape that's long and oval shaped is
a remnant of our hunter gatherer ancestors.
Modern humans have evolved to spherical and brachycephalic skulls which are more gracile
and prioritize brain size at the expense of protection.
Having physical features that resemble a neanderthal neurocranium is unaesthetic as it’s not
koinophillic (resembling the average) for the modern human.
This can include an overly prominent brow-ridge, s agittal crest or long occipital bone.
If you’re a woman with the supposed witch skull, the focus should be on your dentofacial
development rather than fussing about your skull shape.
Do you have a recessed jaw, does your nasal contour match your forehead contour, etc.
There are plenty of women who can pull off a wide range of skull shapes as the rest of
their face is proportionate.
If you’re a man with a long occipital bone and short hair, you’re better off getting
the occipital bone shaved down if it bothers you.
However, having strong dentofacial features is much more important for aesthetics.
In this example, the man has a sharp, angular jaw, his forehead is inclined back.
His nasal contour is straight and although it doesn’t perfectly match his forehead
because of his strong brow ridge he’s still handsome.
If you look at the back of his head, he has an occipital bun, a long occipital bone and
a relatively dolichocephalic skull.
Unless you make your living as a bald model, the shape of your skull should be low on the
list of things to worry about.