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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



elongated shape, have been found in great numbers in ancient tombs 

 in the very region indicated by Herodotus. They have been found 

 near Tiflis, where as many as one hundred and fifty were discovered 

 at one time, and at other places in the Caucasus, generally in rock- 

 tombs ; also in the Crimea, and at different localities along the course 

 of the Danube ; in Hungary, Silesia, in the south of Germany, Switzer- 

 land, and even in France and Belgium. The people who have left 

 such undoubted evidence of the practice of deforming their heads 

 have been supposed by various authors to have been Avars, Huns, 

 Tartars, or other Mongolian invaders of Europe ; but later French 

 authors, who have discussed this subject, are inclined to assign them 

 to an Aryan race, who, under the name of Cimmerians, spread west- 

 ward over the part of Europe in which their remains are now found, 

 in the seventh or eighth century before our era. As the method of 

 deformation in European specimens is not always identical, it is by no 

 means certain that the custom may not have been in use among more 

 than one nation. Whether the French habit, scarcely yet extinct, of 

 tightly bandaging the heads of infants, is derived from these people, 

 or is of independent origin, it is impossible to say. 



Fig. 8. Deformed Skull of an Infant, 

 who had died duri <a the process of flat- 

 tening; fron the Coin nbia River. (Mu- 

 seum of the Royal College uf Sur^e.ms.) 



Fig. 9 Artificially flattened Skull of 

 Ancient Peruvian. (Museum of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons.) 



In Africa and Australia no analogous customs have been shown to 

 exist, but in many parts of Asia and Polynesia, deformations, though 

 usually only confined to flattening of the occiput, are common. Though 

 often undesigned, it is done purposely, I am informed by Mr. H. B. 

 Low, by the Dyaks, in the neighborhood of Sarawak. Sometimes, in 

 the islands of the Pacific, the head of the new-born infant is merely 

 pressed by the hands into the desired form, in which case it generally 



