NATURAL SCIENCES OP PHILADELPHIA. 2?1 



meatus. In the cranium figured by Blumenbach only the extreme portion of the 

 occipital region is flattened, and there is much more of the head projecting back 

 of the bony meatus. We may conclude, therefore, that the fragment does not 

 belong to the Persic type. 



Of the cranial characteristics of some of the races mentioned in the 2d 

 chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, I have not been able to find any record 

 whateyer. The materials, therefore, for determining positively, by the method 

 of exclusion, the race to which our Jerusalem fragment belongs do not exist. 

 The various races of men occupying from the earliest times the ancient Ionia 

 or Asia Minor and the table lands of Persia and Armenia, constituted a very 

 heterogeneous population, in which Cushite, Shemitic, Arian and Turanian 

 ethnic elements appear to be inextricably blended. Much uncertainty pre- 

 vails among ethnographers as to the distinctive physical characters of these 

 different races. The national types of the Medes and Parthians are not cer- 

 tainly known. These people are generally ranked among the Turanians, 

 Scythians, or Turk-Tartars ; while the Persians, by nearly all chronologists 

 and philologists are looked upon as true Japetidse. Mesopotamia appears to 

 have been occupied from the remotest epoch by both Shemitic and Arian races. 

 Renan, guided by philological data, considers the bulk of the population to 

 be Shemitic* To the Elamites Polybius and Strabo ascribe a northern origin. 

 Josephus considers them to be the," ancestors of the Persians." Certainly in 

 the first Maccabees, Persia and Persepolis are both called Elam. Lenormant, 

 Quatremere, Movers and others consider the Elamites to be a people cognate 

 if not identical with the Persians. On the other hand Lowensternf thinks tha' 

 the primitive Elamites were of Shemitic origin, and that in more recent times 

 their ethnic characters were altered by intermixture with Scythic conquerors. 

 It matters not which of these two theories we adopt. For as the Barclay skull 

 differs from both Persian and Shemitic crania, it follows that in all probability 

 it differs equally from the Elamitic skull. 



The natives of Pontus were the Tibareni and affiliated tribes on the south- 

 east of the Black Sea in the neighborhood of Colchis. The Tibarenians of 

 Herodotus, according to Dubois, J are the Georgians of the present day. If so, 

 the Jerusalem skull never belonged to a " native of Pontus." 



If the Guanche skull in the collection represents truly the form of the 

 Libyan or Berber head, the Jerusalem cranium cannot be considered as a speci- 

 men of that race ; for the skull of the Guanche is a long oval, terminated 

 posteriorly by a protuberant occiput. In the Museum of the ' ' Carolinischen 

 Institut " at Stockholm, there are four Guanche skulls, which Prof. Retzius 

 speaks of as " grosse, geranmige, ovale Schiidel, sehr denen der Araber 

 gleichend." In the anatomical Museum " de lEcole de Mt-decine de Paris" 

 there is a skull of a Kabyle woman. From the reference made to it by Br. 

 Gosse it appears to be a long, narrow skull. According to Furnari, however, 

 the Berber cranium is " globuleux et conique en arriere."|| 



According to Klaproth the Parthians were cognate with the Getae, Massagetac, 

 and other tribes generally included by the ancient writers under the vague 

 and comprehensive term Scythian.^ Strabo calls them Carduchi, i. e. in- 

 habitants of Curdistan. Pulszky says, "The Parthians were probably not 

 Persians proper, but an unartistical Turanian tribe, held in subjection by the 

 earlier Persians under their Achaemenian kings, which, in its turn, revolting 



Histoire Generate et Systeme Compare des Langues Semiliques. 1 ere Partie Par,? 

 1855. Li v. I. Chap. II. 11. 



t Revue Archeologique, 1850, pD. 677-723. 



t Voyage aut'ur du Caucase, Paris, 1840, IV. 321. 328. 



jJEssai sur les Deformations Artificielles du Crane. Paris, 1855, p. 59. 



H Voyage medical dans 1' AroSrique Septentrionale. Paris, 1815, t. 1, p. 23 



JTab. Hist, de l'Asie. p. 40. 



1859.] 20 



