450 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dogne. Eight sepulchral caves have been discovered within as 

 many miles of the village of Les Eyzies alone in the V^zfere val- 

 ley. Because of this geographical concentration of a peculiar 

 type in this region, it has become known by the name of the Cro- 

 Magnon race, since in the cave of this name the most perfect 

 specimens were found. 



The geographical evidence that here in Dordogne we have to 

 do with the real Cro-Magnon race is fully sustained by a com- 

 parison of the physical characteristics of the crania here discov- 

 ered in these caves in the valley of the V^zere with the peculiar 

 living type we have above described. The original Cro-Magnon 

 race was extremely dolichocephalic ; as long-headed, in fact, as 

 the modern African negroes or the Australians.* The cranial 

 indices varied from 70 to 73, corresponding to a cephalic index 

 on the living head between 72 and 75. This was and is the 

 starting point for the theory that the Mediterranean populations 

 are an offshoot and development from the African negro. The 

 only other part of Europe where so low an index has been located 

 in the living population is in Corsica, where it descends almost 

 to this level. The people of Dordogne do not to-day range quite 

 as long-headed as this, the average for the extreme commune of 

 Champagnac being 7(;. This difference need not concern us, how- 

 ever, for within the whole population are a large proportion 

 with indexes far below this figure. Close proximity to the very 

 brachycephalic Alpine type, just over the line in Correze, would 

 account for a great deal larger difference even than this. Prob- 

 ability of direct descent becomes almost certainty when we add 

 that the Cro-Magnon head was strongly disharmonic, and very 

 low- skulled. The modern population does not equal its pro- 

 genitors in this last respect, but it approaches it so distinctly as 

 to show a former tendency in this direction. The skull was elon- 

 gated at the back in the same way a distinguishing trait which 

 appears prominently upon comparison of the profile view of a 

 modern Cro-Magnon type with that of its Alpine neighbors, as 

 we have already observed. The brows were strongly developed, 

 the eye orbits were low, the chin prominent. The noted anthro- 

 pologist, De Quatref ages, prophesied what one of these types ought 

 to look like in the flesh. I give his description in his own words, 

 that its agreement with the facial type above represented may 

 be noted: "The eye depressed beneath the orbital vault; the 



* Quatref ages and Hamy, Crania Ethnica, p. 46 seq. See also Qiiatrefages, The Human 

 Species, in Appletons' International Scientific Series. The best collection of material in 

 small compass, with references, is given by Salmon in Revue Mensuelle de TEcole d' An- 

 thropologie, V, 1895, pp. 155 and 214 seq. Bertrand, in La Gaule avant les Gaulois, Paris, 

 1891, has mapped these finds of the reindeer period. The correspondence with our modem 

 population is very close. 



