Sidestep: Thick Boned and Californian

The remains of a man buried 3,800 years ago in a richly decorated California grave bear some unusual but unmistakable features — a protruding brow, a long thin jaw and prominent chin, thick leg and arm bones (think Maero?), and teeth so crowded together that at one point they erupt in rows three deep. This all points to something called acromegaly, a rare disorder of the endocrine system that’s similar to gigantism.

Acromegaly has only been identified definitively at two other archaeological sites in North America, a 600 year old found New Mexico and an 1,100-year-old skull found in Illinois.

The man, was found in a burial mound with 176 other bodies near the Central Valley town of Elk Grove. Labeled as Burial 37, the grave was originally excavated in the 1930s. The man was part of a hunter-gatherer culture known as the Windmiller, usually identified by its distinct burial practices, typically buried their dead laying flat and face-down, rather than in a flexed position, with the heads pointing west. (this occurs in very early burials in NZ, those before the well known immigrations occurred). The body was daubed with red ochre on the head, chest, pelvis, left elbow, and on both hands and feet.

Burial 37 man wasn’t exceptionally large for his time — about 170 centimeters, or five feet five inches — his remains bear several signs of hypergrowth in adulthood. In what seems to have been an unrelated condition, the man’s right eyetooth also grew upside down, protruding through the bone of his face just under his nose (see arrow in picture). The physical expression of the disease takes about 10 years to become fully noticeable, so it would have taken a bit for other members of the society to take notice and therefore this individual would not have been treated as a freak from birth. As such, burial 37’s grave shows he appears to have been neither revered nor ostracized but a few aspects of the burial were “interesting,” however, including the fact that the man was buried face-up, instead of prone, and with his head oriented north rather than the west, like most others interred in the mound.

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The point of producing the above is to show that deformation such as that is said to occur in 8’ skeletons, also occurs in that of normal size and that it is likely that those of giant stature where therefore suffering from various complaints such as this man from burial 37.

Are those inside the cave at the end of Kūwaha Tāwhetaana showing deformation in a way that scared those that first saw it? Were they just worried about the length of the skeletons, or worried the jaw-lines and skull shape would prove Maori were not first, or was it something else... something a little more unusual? Something a little grotesque? Something altogether freaky???