Man's Place in Nature, and Other EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Man's Place in Nature, and Other Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Apes; Ethnology; Human beings -- Origin; Indo-Europeans
So far as our present knowledge goes, the majority of the structural
varieties to which allusion is here made, are individual. The ape-like
arrangement of certain muscles which is occasionally met with[48] in the
white races of mankind, is not known to be more common among Negroes or
Australians: nor because the brain of the Hottentot Venus was found to
be smoother, to have its convolutions more symmetrically disposed, and
to be, so far, more ape-like than that of ordinary Europeans, are we
justified in concluding a like condition of the brain to prevail
universally among the lower races of mankind, however probable that
conclusion may be.
We are, in fact, sadly wanting in information respecting the disposition
of the soft and destructible organs of every Race of Mankind but our
own; and even of the skeleton, our Museums are lamentably deficient in
every part but the cranium. Skulls enough there are, and since the time
when Blumenbach and Camper first called attention to the marked and
singular differences which they exhibit, skull collecting and skull
measuring has been a zealously pursued branch of Natural History, and
the results obtained have been arranged and classified by various
writers, among whom the late active and able Retzius must always be the
first named.
Human skulls have been found to differ from one another, not merely in
their absolute size and in the absolute capacity of the brain case, but
in the proportions which the diameters of the latter bear to one
another; in the relative size of the bones of the face (and more
particularly of the jaws and teeth) as compared with those of the skull;
in the degree to which the upper jaw (which is of course followed by the
lower) is thrown backwards and downwards under the forepart of the brain
case, or forwards and upwards in front of and beyond it. They differ
further in the relations of the transverse diameter of the face, taken
through the cheek bones, to the transverse diameter of the skull; in the
more rounded or more gable-like form of the roof of the skull, and in
the degree to which the hinder part of the skull is flattened or
projects beyond the ridge, into and below which, the muscles of the neck
are inserted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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