A couple of years ago one of my teachers told the class I was in that a group of savages (I’m not sure what tribe, but they lived in mexico) binded their childrens head with boards, resulting in hard, flat, faces. I believe that this may be true, but he added that they could withstand a blow to their head by a sword and remain reletivly unscathed. I find this hard to believe, given that my teachers are known for pulling a few yarns now and then. Does anyone know if these flatheads could really withstand that?
I didn’t see anything about it resulting in an exceptionaly strong skull. It does seem that it was much more widespread than just in North America, however, and resulted from cultural ideas of beauty.
Try a search on google for “head binding”, and you get about three pages of results. A search on “head shaping” gives you another 2 pages.
First of all… we’re not supposed to call them “savages” anymore.
Moving right along… using a board to flatten baby’s head wasn’t confined to just one group. The custom used to appear all up and down the west coast of north and central America. Some groups also induced cross-eyes, finding them beautiful for whatever reason (usually tribes that did not rely exclusively on hitting animals with arrows or spears for dinner, I’m sure that’s just coincidence).
The custom of altering the shape of the head - with boards, tight cloth bindings and so forth - is also found in Africa and even in Europe during the Middle Ages. The extremes to which this was taken varied considerably, but although the heads wound up with odd shapes (to our eyes) this does not, apparently, affect intelligence.
As for being “sword proof” - nuh-uh. You just get a peculiar shaped skull, not an armored one with this techique. That said, some of these tribes did wear helmets shaped like their skulls, which may have been the start of such a rumor. But just a bare noggin’? No more weapon proof than a nature-shaped skull.
They were called Mayans not the, uh, “savages”. As far as the reason given, it was considered a sign of beauty among Mayans just as feet bound among the Chinese or the corsete among the Europeans, I mean, the savages. 
XicanoreX