The historical Maya were of fair height and sturdy, qualities which appear also upon the monuments. A peculiar appearance was given to the head by the practice of cranial deformation which prevailed from the earliest times. Boards were applied to the heads of infants so that the forehead and occiput were flattened, and the crown assumed in profile a “sugar-loaf” aspect. Individuals exhibiting this form of distortion in a marked degree are shown in Figs. 49, 61, 82, and Pls. XXII and XXIV, pp. 294 and 310. Cranial deformation is relatively common in America, and the practice extended northwards along the west coast, and southwards into Peru, but the Maya were peculiar in considering a squint a mark of beauty. Landa states that the Yucatec mothers were accustomed to suspend some small object from the forelock of a child in order to produce the desired result. We have seen that tooth-chipping was characteristic of the Huaxtec, Totonac and Mixtec in Mexico, and that the Huaxtec and Mixtec were also accustomed to ornament the teeth further by means of inlay. Both these practices were widespread among the Maya. Allusion has already been made to the chipped teeth which appear as attributes of the sun-god (see Fig. 72; p. 316, and the cover-design), and it may now be mentioned that teeth mutilated in exactly the same fashion have been found in burials at Copan, in the Uloa valley, and in caves at Loltun. Teeth inlaid with small circular plugs of jadeite have also been found at the first of these sites. Tooth-filing was also practised by the later Yucatec, by rubbing with a stone dipped in water. The ears and nose were pierced and ornaments worn in the apertures. Plugs with long pendants were carried in the ears, and the monuments and manuscripts show figures with the lobes considerably lengthened by the weight of the ornaments inserted in them (e.g. Pl. XXII; p. 294). In the nose a bar was worn, of the same pattern as is occasionally seen in Totonac pottery (Pl. XVIII, 5; p. 194). Sometimes the bar terminated each end in a long tuft of feathers, as among the Huaxtec, and ornaments of this description are common on the stelæ at Menché. The peculiar curved nose-ornament associated with the sun-god has already been mentioned. As a rule the ears of the men were much scarified from ceremonial blood-letting. [Illustration: _PLATE XXII_ _British Museum_ MAYA STONE LINTEL FROM MENCHÉ, CHIAPAS (Scale: ⅛th)]