One of the best-known examples of skull symbolism occurs in Shakespeare's Hamlet, where the title character recognizes the skull of an old friend: "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio a fellow of infinite jest." Hamlet is inspired to utter a bitter soliloquy of despair and rough ironic humor.Ĭompare Hamlet's words "Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft" to Talmudic sources: ".Rabi Ishmael. However, the increasing use of the skull as a visual symbol in popular culture reduces its original meaning as well as its traditional connotation. Nevertheless, the skull seems to be omnipresent in the first decade of the twenty-first century, appearing on jeweler, bags, clothing and in the shape of various decorative items. Throughout the centuries skulls symbolized either warnings of various threats or as reminder of the vanity of earthly pleasures in contrast with our own mortality. Unicode reserves character U+1F480 (□) for a human skull pictogram. Societies predominantly associate skulls with death and evil. As such, human skulls often have a greater visual appeal than the other bones of the human skeleton, and can fascinate even as they repel. A skull with the lower jaw intact may also appear to be grinning or laughing due to the exposed teeth. Moreover, a human skull with its large eye sockets displays a degree of neoteny, which humans often find visually appealing-yet a skull is also obviously dead, and to some can even seem to look sad due to the downward facing slope on the ends of the eye sockets. Hindu temples and depiction of some Hindu deities have displayed association with skulls. Because of this, both the death and the now-past life of the skull are symbolized. The human brain has a specific region for recognizing faces, and is so attuned to finding them that it can see faces in a few dots and lines or punctuation marks the human brain cannot separate the image of the human skull from the familiar human face. Humans can often recognize the buried fragments of an only partially revealed cranium even when other bones may look like shards of stone. The most common symbolic use of the skull is as a representation of death. Skull symbolism is the attachment of symbolic meaning to the human skull.
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