Illustrated dictionary for kids DK

Transcribed by: Jesserene M. Soriano

Skulls Through History, 2021

The skull is the universal image of death and the afterlife. It is one of the most powerful images of the transitoriness of our human experience, and at the same time almost mystically embodies the concept of the afterlife. While many of us may today think about death as the ultimate ending of the experience called life, the distinction was not as strong in antiquity. In fact, for many ancient civilisations the concept of death did not signify simply an end, but rather a step that everyone must take to enter the underworld or the afterlife. Accepting the natural cycle of human life, those populations were not afraid to confront the concept of death. Indeed, the idea of life and death is often expressed in their art forms and constantly present in their daily life and rituals. For example, in Meso-American cultures the skull was not intended as a macabre symbol, but as concomitant with life, existing side by side, the one essential to and nurturing the other. The Maya, the Aztecs, and other cultures regarded the ‘other world’ as an integral part of the physical world, and that the barrier separating the two was like a revolving door. Since the afterlife is ‘peopled’ with spirits and deities, they must be honoured and given offerings so as to ensure their favourable help in the material world. Therefore, cults venerating and appeasing death flourished for centuries, and are still a fundamental part of many cultures. Skulls featured heavily in those cults and practices. These magnificent artefacts grab our attention in an instant. They strike deeply into our primordial consciousness. Their unadorned power is elemental, forceful and penetrating.

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Science, 1994

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

Contribution to the Study of Skull Cult in Moesia Superior,, 2020

— Introduction: Today, no objective standardized planning procedure exists for the preoperative planning of open cranial vault reconstruction of patients suffering from craniosynostosis. The use of a normative skull model, which will serve as a reference, will enhance the standardized planning procedure. Since no normative skull models of the Dutch population exist yet, a method was developed to create normative skull models of this population. Methods: Steps include the creation of volumetric data and threshold determination, creation of mesh data, registration, rendering and normalization. Results: A normative skull model represented as point cloud was created based on the CT scans of three patients. Conclusion: The presented method enables the creation of normative skull models, using three CT data sets containing skull images. Therefore, this method is suitable for the creation of normative skull models of the Dutch population.

Journal of the World Federation of Orthodontists, 2014

Background: Terminology that comes from the anthropometric index, which is indicative of the form of the skullcap, is widely used to describe the face in orthodontics. Using this terminology assumes that the face and skull always follow the same pattern of morphology. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that the morphology of the face corresponds with the morphology of the skull. Methods: Measures related to the cranial and facial indexes were taken randomly from 51 dry human skulls with neutral occlusion, selected from a larger collection. Skulls were classified, according to the cranial index, as dolichocephalic (<76.0), mesocephalic (76.0e<81.0), or brachycephalic (!81.0) and according to the facial index as leptoprosopic (!90.0), mesoprosopic (85.0e<90.0), or euryprosopic (<85.0). The McNemar-Bowker test and linear regression models were used to assess the relationship between the cranial and facial morphologies. Results: The correspondence values between the cephalic and facial index ratings in expected cephalofacial pairs (brachycephalic and euryprosopic, mesocephalic and mesoprosopic, and dolichocephalic and leptoprosopic) were observed to be only 3.9%, 7.8%, and 13.7%, respectively. Coefficients of linear regression confirmed a weak influence of facial measurements on the morphology of the skull. Conclusions: Facial morphology exerts little influence on skull shape and, therefore, does not support the widespread use of a terminology derived from the cranial index. The development of a standardized diagnostic terminology is timely given the increasing use of electronic records in health research and facilitating data sharing across different areas.

Journal of Craniofacial Surgery, 2009

International Journal of Engineering Science, 1996

AIWlr~l-ln this work an attempt is made to study the dynamic characteristics of the human dry skull. The analysis is based on the three-dimensional theory of elasticity and the representation of the displacement field in terms of the Navier eigenvectors. The frequency equation was solved numerically and the results obtained are fairly good, in comparison to the experimental ones.