SCHAAFFHAUSEN ON THE CRANIA OF THE ANCIENT EACES OF MAN. 171 



been practised, affording only implements made of bone and stone. 

 The skulls of these bodies are said to be divided by the coronal suture 

 into two equal parts, of which the posterior is broader than the anterior. 

 They are remarkably small, globular, and almost round; the upper jaw 

 and the nasal bones project considerably in front. They are chiefly 

 distinguished from the skulls of other races by the low and much de- 

 pressed forehead. Eschricht, as stated before, describes the skull from 

 the Hiinengrabern of Denmark in similar terms. A. G. Masch refers 

 to a skull of this character, found in an ancient grave in the Island of 

 Moen,' which is figured in the "Dag," a Danish newspaper of the 

 15th September, 1835, as well as to a skull found near Fehrbellin,* 

 which would appear to possess all the characters of that from Plau, and 

 had probably been used as a drinking vessel. J. Ritterf also gives an 

 account of a large barrow near Plau, in which the skull lay a foot 

 higher than the rest of the skeleton, and it appeared as if the body had 

 been placed in the sitting posture. The forehead of this cranium is 

 described as remarkably flat. Human skeletons in the squatting posture 

 have been found in ancient graves in France and Germany, as well as 

 in Scandinavia. Tschudi, it is well known, brought mummies of this 

 kiud from Peru ; and Trogon observed the same thing in the most an- 

 cient burial-places in the Canton Wallis. The skulls from Plau and 

 the frontal bone from Schwaan, which present a conformation resembling 

 that of the Neanderthal cranium, bear, however, but a distant resem- 

 blance to the two frontal bones from Pisede, also preserved in the Grand 

 Duke's collection at Schwerin. One of these frontal bones is thick, with 

 protuberant supraorbital ridges, a low retreating forehead, and the 

 temporal ridge rises very high, reaching the sagittal suture ; in the 

 second frontal bone, the supraorbital ridges are level, but the glalella 

 is remarkably prominent, and the forehead rather more arched. An 

 ancient cranium in the same collection, found at some depth in the 

 moor of Siilz, and of which I have been furnished with a plaster cast 

 by Dr. Lisch, is of an abnormal and very peculiar form ; it is small and 

 elongated, and, when viewed laterally, remarkably round ; the forehead 

 is narrow, but well arched, the supraorbital ridges small, but protu- 

 berant ; the sutures open, and the line of the sagittal suture raised into 

 a sort of keel, as in the so-termed "boat-shaped" skulls; the occiput is 

 very projecting, with a long pointed spine. 



In conclusion, the following propositions may be regarded as the re- 

 sult of the foregoing researches : — 



The fragments of crania from Schwaan and Plau, on account both 

 of their anatomical conformation and of the circumstances under which 

 they were found, may probably be assigned to a barbarous, aboriginal 

 people, which inhabited the North of Europe before the Germani; and, 

 as is proved by the dis&overy of similar remains at Minsk in Russia, 



* Jahrb. d. Vereins f. Mecklenb. Gesckichte, &c, 1844, ix., p. 361. 

 f lb., 1846, xi. 



