Man, Past and PresentKeane, A. H. (Augustus Henry)
History
Man, Past and Present
Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry)
Anthropology; Ethnology
The Athapascans alone are homogeneous, and their sub-brachycephaly
recurs amongst the Apaches and their other southern kindred, who have
given it an exaggerated form by the widespread practice of artificial
deformation, which dates from remote times. The most typical cases both
of brachy and dolicho deformation are from the Cerro de las Palmas
graves in south-west Mexico. Deformation prevails also in Peru and
Bolivia, as well as in Ceara and the Rio Negro on the Atlantic side. The
flat-head form, so common from the Columbia estuary to Peru, occurs
amongst the broad-faced Huaxtecs, their near relations the Maya-Quiches,
and the Nahuatlans. It is also found amongst the extinct Cebunys of
Cuba, Hayti and Jamaica, and the so-called "Toltecs," that is, the
people of Tollan (Tula), who first founded a civilised state on the
Mexican table-land (sixth and seventh centuries A.D.), and whose name
afterwards became associated with every ancient monument throughout
Central America. On this "Toltec question" the most contradictory
theories are current; some hold that the Toltecs were a great and
powerful nation, who after the overthrow of their empire migrated
southwards, spreading their culture throughout Central America; others
regard them as "fabulous," or at all events "nothing more than a sept of
the Nahuas themselves, the ancestors of those Mexicans who built
Tenochtitlan," _i.e._ the present city of Mexico. A third view, that of
Valentini, that the Toltecs were not Nahuas but Mayas, is now supported
both by E. P. Dieseldorff[753] and by Foerstemann[754]. T. A. Joyce[755]
suggests that the vanguard of the Nahuas on reaching the Mexican valley
adopted and improved the culture of an agricultural people of Tarascan
affinities whose culture was in part due to Mayan inspiration, whom they
found settled there. Later migrations of Nahua were greatly impressed
with the "Toltec" culture which had thus arisen through the impact of a
virile hunting people on more passive agriculturalists.
On the North-west Pacific Coast similar ethnical interminglings recur,
and Franz Boas[756] here distinguishes as many as four types, the
Northern (Tsimshian and others), the Kwakiutl, the Lillooet of the
Harrison Lake region and the inland Salishan (Flat-heads, Shuswaps,
etc.). All are brachycephalic, but while the Tsimshians are of medium
height 1.675 m. (5 ft. 6 in.) with low, concave nose, very large head,
and enormously broad face, exceeding the average for North America by 6
mm., the Kwakiutls are shorter 1.645 m. (5 ft. 4-3/4 in.) with very high
and relatively narrow hooked nose, and quite exceptionally high face;
the Harrison Lake very short 1.600 m. (5 ft 3 in.) with exceedingly
short and broad head (C. I. nearly 89), "surpassing in this respect all
other forms known to exist in North America"; lastly, the inland Salish
of medium height 1.679 m. (5 ft. 6 in.) with high and wide nose of the
characteristic Indian form and a short head.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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