what is good, Conran?

Interesting tour round the medicinal, nutritive, decorative and utensil oriented potential of human skulls, based on the discovery – or maybe strong assertion – that remains found in Cheddar Gorge indicate that Neolithic locals used them as drinking cups.

What I would disagree with is the assumption that cranial guzzling is necessarily connected to cannibalism and human sacrifice. In the absence of positive evidence for these fine things, I think skulls and other human parts would have been used for the same reason they were in Tibet until fairly recently, namely that there wasn’t much of anything else available, either lying around or capable of being manufactured easily with the technology available.

Skulls, after all, make pretty good drinking utensils until you invent tables, at which point you notice their tendency to roll around. But if humans had evolved with flat topped heads, we’d probably still be buying skulls in sets of four in Habitat and the unit of liquid measurement would be based on what a hollowed out cranium could hold. Sexist pub landlords would refuse to serve women out of anything but baby’s skulls, because women shouldn’t be drinking pints. And the phrase metric martyr assumes a whole new meaning.

Comments

[ricardo]

magnificent, magnificent post title.

[ajay]

Skulls, after all, make pretty good drinking utensils

I beg to differ: a skull's got a hole at the bottom where the spinal cord goes in. This makes it a terrible drinking utensil unless you line it with clay. In which case you don't really need the skull.

There's more in a decent-sized skull than you might think: 1.4 litres is the typical human brain. Two and a bit pints. A skullful would be just about the right size for a quiet evening out.
Pick your skull carefully though; some people have surprisingly small skulls. Anatole France was less than a litre.

[ajay]

Hmm, ok, on clicking the link I see that the idea is that you saw off the top of the skull and use that instead. Which rather invalidates my point re: spinal cords.
Looks a bit jagged at the edges though.

[dsquared]

... particularly in places like Britain, where gourds don't grow. In Jared Diamond's book, I think he says at one point that the earliest known agriculture involved the cultivation of plants specifically for use as vessels, rather than food.

[chris y]

Sorry I broke your cup, mum, you can have mine when I'm dead.

But dsquared's point is a good one. Not many waterproof receptacles available to palaeolithic people in these latitudes. They were probably trade goods.

[Alex]

Jared Diamond is full of shit, though. Well worth reading everything Doug Muir and James Nicoll say about him and especially the links. (shorter: where it's not discredited, it's unfalsifiable.)