The North Americans of Antiquity: Their origin, migrations, and type of civilization consideredShort, John T. (John Thomas)
History
The North Americans of Antiquity: Their origin, migrations, and type of civilization considered
Short, John T. (John Thomas)
Indians -- Origin; Indians of Mexico -- Antiquities; Indians of North America -- Antiquities
Though both classes are found artificially compressed, yet they are
always distinguishable from each other. One of the best illustrations
of this fact, and one already used by Prof. Wilson, is afforded in
contrasting two dolichocephalic crania, both obtained by Mr. Blake
in his explorations of the ancient cemeteries of Arica and Atacama.
Both are evidently of children; one is in its normal condition,
symmetrical, and when viewed from above presents the outlines of a
graceful oval form, while the other was subjected to such compression
as to throw the volume of the brain backward and to greatly deform the
frontal bone.[251] A slight tendency to assume the dog-shaped head of
the Chinooks of the Columbia River is manifest, where deformation is
carried to such an extent as to produce monstrosities. However, even
then, the normal brachycephalic type of skull of the Chinooks is not
transformed to the dolichocephalic, since the base of the cranium
remains comparatively unaffected while distension takes place in a
posterior and upward direction. Mr. Squier in his _Peru_ (p. 580,
Appendix), has shown that circular compression produces a symmetrical
effect in the same direction.
The custom of artificially flattening the head has, upon investigation,
been shown not to be peculiar alone to the aborigines of America,
but to have been practised by many of the semi-civilized peoples of
antiquity in different parts of Europe and Asia. Hippocrates, in
his treatise _De Aëre, Aquis, et Locis_, has described this savage
practice among a people whom he calls _Machrocephali_, supposed to have
inhabited the region near the Palus Mæotis, in the vicinity of the
Caucasus. He says, “The custom stood thus: as soon as the child was
born, they immediately fashioned its soft and tender head with their
hands, and by the use of bandages and proper arts, forced it to grow
lengthwise, by which the spherical figure of the head was prevented
and the length increased.” Strabo refers to a people occupying a
portion of Western Asia, who were addicted to the same custom and
had foreheads projecting beyond their beards.[252] Pliny places them
in Asia Minor,[253] while Pomponius Mela places the Machrocephali on
the Bosphorus.[254] Blumenbach has figured in his first decade, a
compressed skull obtained by him from Russia and probably originally
from one of the tumuli of the Crimean Bosphorus, where it is supposed
to have been exhumed during the Russian occupation. In 1843, Rathke
figured and described in Müller’s _Archiv für Anatomie_, another
example of the compressed human crania, obtained from an ancient
grave near Kertsch in the Crimea. In 1820, Count August von Brenner
obtained on his estate at Fuersbrunn near Grafenegg in Austria, a
skull of similar characteristics. This was, upon examination, decided
to have belonged to an Avarian Hun. Prof. Retzius described it in
the _Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Stockholm in
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