446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



bone, which is such a characteristic feature of the Natchez and. other 

 ' Southern races of Indians. The Caribs of the West Indies and the Chi- 

 nooks of Oregon both flattened the heads of their children in infancy ; 

 and the skulls of the ancient Peruvians and the figures on the monu- 

 ments at Palenque show a remarkable flattening of the frontal. This 

 is generally considered to have been the natural form of the skull, to 

 have been the type of beauty cultivated by the Peruvians, Central 

 Americans, Toltecs, etc., and not to have been produced altogether by 

 compression. The peculiar form of skull became hereditary, and chil- 

 dren were born with this (to us) deformity. 



Various forms of diseased bones are found among the human re- 

 mains. One of these is a peculiar anchylosis of the spinous and articu- 

 lar processes of some of the vertebra?, the bodies remaining free.* 

 It is supposed to have been the vertebral column of a female dwarf, 

 the skeleton of which presented several other points of interest. 

 Among the crania are several which have been fractured by some 

 blunt implement, and the fracture has been partially or completely 

 healed. Two other very interesting specimens are among the human 

 bones. One is the eleventh dorsal vertebra, in which is imbedded for 

 a quarter of an inch one of the small flint-points called war-arrows. 

 The other specimen is a sacrum in which there is imbedded a similar 

 point. This last was found in a pit with twenty-two skeletons,! and 

 doubtless belonged to an individual killed with the others in a battle, 

 all of the killed having been buried together. These specimens show 

 with what force the people could send their arrows. Both had entered 

 from the front of the body, passed through it, and were only stopped 

 by the vertebral column. Some of the long bones exhibit various 

 excrescences which have been referred to syphilitic diseases, and which 

 show that the people here buried were afflicted with that fearful 

 scourge which, as some one has expressed it, " turned Europe into a 

 charnel-house." 



But the bones of an extinct race of men, interesting though they 

 may be, can tell us but little of their domestic habits, and it is to the 

 implements found here that we turn with greatest interest. These are 

 so abundant, and often of such a peculiar character, that we have much 

 to speculate upon. First of all is the remarkable circumstance of find- 

 ing so many implements of bone ; the abundance of which has gener- 

 ally been thought to be a proof of a low grade of civilization. But 

 probably their abundance or their rarity has been regulated also by 

 the age of the deposit, for, the older the deposit, the less likely it is 

 that the bone relics have resisted the action of time. 



Many of the remains are of a peculiar character, unlike anything 

 found elsewhere, and speculations in regard to their origin and use are 



* For a figure of this and various other diseased bones, see article in " Journal of the 

 Cincinnati Society of Natural History," vol. iv, pp. 241-257. 

 f Ibid., vol. iv, p. 253. 



