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No. II. A Brachycephalic Man This skeleton is that of a large and powerfully built man, the bones being very heavy and strong with marked impressions and prominences for muscular attachment. The skeleton, with the exception of some of the small bones of the hands and feet is complete. The skull is large and massive, and the lower jaw very strong and heavy.
In the remarkable paper read by Professor Busk before the Ethnological Society, that eminent physiologist proved that the Asiatic apes, typified by the ourang-outang, are brachycephalic, like the Mongolians amongst whom they live, or who live amongst them; whilst the gorillas and the African anthropoids are dolichocephalic as the negroes.
At the northern and eastern end of the same line there live the most brachycephalic, orthognathous, straight-haired, yellow-skinned of men the Tartars and Calmucks. The two ends of this imaginary line are indeed, so to speak, ethnological antipodes.
This is especially the case in Polynesia and India, where the Negritos appear to shade off into the full-sized blacks through an intermediate series of half-breeds. Yet one fact of ethnological importance needs to be mentioned. The Negritos and Pygmies are everywhere brachycephalic, or short-headed, with the exception of the Bushmen, who are dolichocephalic, or partially so.
"Whether it's brachy," said Lady Viping, "or whether it's dolly I can never remember?" I guessed she was talking of Justin's head. "Oh! brachycephalic," I said. I had lost Mary's answer. "They say he's a woman hater," said Lady Viping. "It hardly looks like it now, does it?" "Who?" I asked. "What? oh! Justin." "The great financial cannibal. Suppose she turned him into a philanthropist!
In his heart of hearts he will still believe himself a Latin, a Teuton, an Anglo-Saxon, or a Slav. For his blood-race he will not stir; for his thought-race he will die. For the glory of the dolichocephalic "Nordic" or the brachycephalic "Alpine" he will not prick his finger or wager a groat; for the triumph of the "Teuton" or the "Slav" he will give his last farthing and shed his heart's blood.
There are, however, in various localities, especially in France, occasional anomalous types of skull which are distinctly brachycephalic, and show that contamination of some kind was taking or had taken place. Of the state of civilization to which the builders of the megalithic monuments had attained, and of the social condition in which they lived, there is something to be gathered.
This victorious, square-headed Mongolian had gotten into his head what the dolichocephalic German blond, who, according to German anthropologists is the highest product of Europe, and the brachycephalic brunette of Gaul and the Latin and the Slav have never been able to understand. Will they ever be able to understand it? Perhaps they never will be able.
In the so-called "long-headed" or dolichocephalic races, the proportion is seventy-five to one hundred, while in those forms that have more rounded or brachycephalic heads, like the Polynesian and the black pygmy, the relation is eighty-three to one hundred. The cranial capacity again varies considerably, from nine hundred cubic centimeters to twenty-two hundred cubic centimeters.
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