The purpose of this study is to closely examine the characters of cranial deformation, tattoos and extracting a tooth. Namely, this study aims to identify the reasons of customs by investigating those of the Gaya period and other parts of the world.
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The purpose of this study is to closely examine the characters of cranial deformation, tattoos and extracting a tooth. Namely, this study aims to identify the reasons of customs by investigating those of the Gaya period and other parts of the world.
We can find the extensive traces of such customs of Gaya people in several parts, which we cannot understand those customs from the current standard.
Cranial deformation is an extremely dangerous custom in which a new-born baby's head is transformed. Sometimes, some new-born babies must have lost their lives. Based on Samgukji (Chinese saga), 10 cranial deformed human bones, excavated in old tombs, located in Yean-ri, Daedong-myon, Gimhae, are valuable historical materials. The aim of this study is to identify why Gaya people enjoyed such a difficult and dangerous cosmetic surgery, namely cranial deformation. Based on the 4th century when the cranial deformation was intensively excavated, women account for 36.8%, while men take up 16.7%. Of the whole excavated skeletal remains, 21% had cranial deformation.
Considering that 10 cranial deformed human bones of a total of 210 excavated skeletal remains were excavated in the old tombs during the 4th to the 7th century, this means 4.8% underwent cranial deformation. The cranial deformations actually was excavated in the tombs with square-shape wooden outer coffin inside a tomb in the 4th century.
Regarding the reasons of cranial deformation, there are various theories including the aesthetic ritual, class discernment, religious spiritual enlightenment and a function of spell. If other areas are regarded as reference, and if the target of this study is limited to Gaya relics, one thing clear is that many people underwent cranial deformation, and a cosmetic surgery for children was conducted taking risks. In fact, cranial deformation was mainly conducted to the general pubic or women who are in the weaker position in the socially. In view of the current relics discovery, concentrated cranial deformation was conducted in some areas. The fact that a person's head was artificially transformed is a kind of cosmetic surgery, from the current point of view; hence, it can be asserted that Gaya people underwent cosmetic surgery. The goal of the cranial deformation of Gaya people can be a nature of spell to pray for happiness and prosperity of tribes or homes, on the basis of religious rituals. Also, it was found that general people or those people who correspond to the current minority people, not main stream people, underwent cranial deformation.
The goal of the tattoos of Gaya people was for practical use not to be attacked or damaged by fierce water birds, big fish or animals like a dinosaur, when they went hunting or working under the water. The tattoos were regarded as valuable like clothes, being imbued with prayers or wishes to protect human bodies from the attack of aquatic animals, such as crocodiles or snakes. Although a tattoo was widely diffused as the art of self-defense, a sign of tribal solidarity, an idea for paying a tribute to ancestors or an aesthetic function, it changed to an evil meaning, as China prescribed it as a bad custom.
As King Bupheung of Shilla (514 ~ 540) rearranged the public officials' clothes colors in full-swing, tattoos are regarded to have disappeared. Later, tattoos became the target of fear, because they were used to punish culprits by printing the crime item on the concerned culprit's face (Gyung Hyung or Muk Hyung in Korean). However, the tattoo of Gaya people was for purely practical and spell purposes, unlike its meaning in China.
A tattoo has another important aesthetical function. One of the leading views to explain the origin of beauty is a model developing from a view of utility to a view of aesthetics. The tattoo was originated from a practical purpose to defend human body at first, but a perception that utility of a tattoo was beauty itself seemed to be initiated, based on its utility attribute in later times. As a perception of beauty sprang up, the tattoo itself might have taken a path to be diversified and abstracted.
The reason of extracting a tooth is concerned with a passage ritual; namely it was conducted at the occasion of the coming of age ceremony or a wedding. The main purpose of extracting a tooth is to extract one's tooth, when the head of a family or a group died. It was a sign to announce that one's own parents had a mishap and to faithfully and sincerely pay a tribute to one's ancestor and a sign as the successor of the concerned property right or a family head's right. Although extracting a tooth, based on which others also correspondingly behaved themselves in advance, is an evil custom, viewed from the current standards, it was a means of social order those days. Such extracting a tooth is confirmed through other countries' ethnography cases or archaeological cases. Mostly, the cases that some people in kinship with the buried person, among those who participated in a funeral, extracted their teeth and provided them as a tribute to the dead person have been reported. Such an extracting a tooth has a feature that it was conducted after those who extracted their teeth became adults, compared to the cases as a passage ritual in the growth process of a person like a coming-of-age ceremony.