SPANISH ANTHROPOLOGY. 



THE physical anthropology of the Peninsula was unti 

 quite lately a kind of terra incognita, which may 

 even still be said of that of Portugal ; but the reproach has 

 been wiped away from Spain pretty completely within the 

 last five or six years. 



What knowledge we had prior to 1889 on the subject 

 had no scientific basis, except so far as the Basques were 

 concerned. Broca's invasion of Guipuzcoa, or rather his 

 acquisition, through Dr. Velasco, of the famous collection 

 of skulls from Zaraus, had shown that there at least meso- 

 kephaly of a particular type preponderated, and that the 

 old hypothesis of their affinity with the Lapps, based as it 

 was upon hasty philological conclusions, was not at all 

 borne out by craniometry. 



Dr Landa x followed with some observations of the 

 kindred people of Navarre, but nothing of importance was 

 added until 1889, when the brilliant little work of Telesforo 

 de Aranzadi appeared. This was based on the principles 

 of concentration and thoroughness; in locality it was confined 

 to Guipuzcoa and a small part of Biscay, in numerical extent 

 to 250 young soldiers ; but within these limits it extended 

 to stature, headform, facial angle, nasal index, proportion of 

 features, proportion of limbs, colour of hair, eyes and skin, 

 and association of most of these with each other. 



In his next important work De Aranzadi was associated 

 with De Hoyos-Sainz. It was a brief account of the dis- 

 tribution of the kephalic index in the provinces of Spain, 

 founded on the examination of 478 modern crania, of which 

 423 were sufficiently perfect to yield also the nasal index. 

 Unfortunately 14 of the 48 provinces were wholly un- 

 represented in the collections to which the authors had 



1 It is worthy of note, as a witness to the accuracy of both observers, 

 that Landa, who measured 63 persons in Navarre, and 016riz, who 

 examined 112, made the average (live) index 78'32 and 78*40 respectively, 

 thus agreeing within one tenth of a degree. 



8 



