Interesting reason why all of our skulls have squiggles on them

Since you can't very well have a look for yourself, you're going to have to trust us when we tell you that there's a bunch of squiggly lines on your skull.

Don't feel too self-conscious about it though - first off, nobody can see them because your scalp is in the way and secondly, every human being in the world has got them.

The squiggly lines on the human skull develop because it's not all one bone, it is several different ones which fuse together and the lines where they join up are called something called 'sutures'.

To give them their official name, because 'squiggly lines' isn't a proper scientific term, they are called 'cranial sutures'.

There are four of them in total with two of those on the top of your skull, one of which is running over the middle part of the top of your head and the other essentially 'crossing the T' with it by lying across the width of your skull.

The one running across the width is called the coronal suture, while the sagittal suture connects with it and then runs back down the length of your skull.

Dorling Kindersley ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

Joining these in running patterns across your head are the lambdoid suture and the squamous suture.

When we're born the bones in our head don't quite line up properly which actually makes it easier for the baby to make its way along the birth canal, but once the baby is born they start fusing together.

Not having the skull bones joined up means the plates of the skull can compress and overlap to make birth easier, and make it easier for the skull to expand for the swift brain growth which occurs after birth.

This is the reason why babies have two 'soft spots' on their head when they're born as the bones of the skull haven't fully fused together yet.

It's a bit like that weird stitch all guys have on the underside of their scrotum which forms because two previously separate parts fuse together and the mark shows where they joined up.

imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo

Even today we're still conducting important research on human skulls to learn more about the place our brains call home.

Just recently a team of scientists aiming to solve an ancient murder of 34 people which occurred 5,000 years ago decided to smash up a bunch of replica skulls (don't worry, they didn't go graverobbing) with ancient weapons to determine which was likely to have caused the deaths.

Learning more about the skull can help us in all sorts of ways, as it allowed researchers to identify a case of botched prehistoric surgery which appeared to have killed the patient.

The practice of trepanning, drilling a hole in the skull, has been used for thousands of years and amazingly most people survived having a big hole made in their head even if clearly not everyone made it through.

Topics: Science, Health, Weird

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@MrJoeHarker