CENTERS OF CIVILIZATION — SWANTON 369 



ever, the circumstance that a brachycephalic, Armenoid type makes 

 its appearance in Egypt in the Third Dynasty and "in the upper 

 classes," the greater significance now attached to the Hurrian broad- 

 heads in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and the fertile crescent as a 

 whole and the neighboring highlands, including the Hittites, the 

 pronounced brachycephalic element among the Indus people, and 

 above all the attainments of the brachycephalic Greeks, indicate just 

 as clearly that they were perfectly capable of taking over a high 

 civilization and even, as in the case of Greece, improving upon it. 



Whatever doubts may remain as to the abilities of brachycephalic 

 people as discoverers and inventors are removed, however, when we 

 turn to the remaining centers of civilization. The Chinese are among 

 the most typically brachycephalic people in the world. There are and 

 have been from a remote period dolichocephals in eastern Asia, but 

 evidence is as yet lacking that they originated Chinese civilization. 

 In the New World, at any rate, the higher cultures are decisively 

 associated with brachycephaly. The Maya may be mentioned at once, 

 and in the secondary culture areas along the Mississippi Valley and 

 on the North Pacific coast brachycephaly is very prevalent. It is again 

 markedly in evidence among the Quechua and other advanced tribes 

 of northwestern South America. On the other hand the hunting 

 peoples of northeastern North America and eastern South America 

 usually are dolichocephalic. The conclusion seems evident that head 

 form, pathological cases aside, has nothing to do with cultural status. 

 Indeed, if that were the case, artificial head-deformation, which often 

 distorted the occiput vastly more than nature varied it, should have 

 had a more marked effect on the intelligence of tribes which practiced 

 the custom. On the contrary, many of them, such as the Aymara, 

 Maya, and Natchez, were among the more advanced peoples. 



Nor do we find, allowing for the later date of those in the New 

 World, any marked differences between the several culture centers 

 when we compare their contributions to civilization. Emmer wheat 

 was cultivated by the Egyptians, and bread wheat by the Sumerians 

 of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. Both also had barley. Wlieat and 

 barley were cultivated by the Indus people and they may have raised 

 rice which, in any case, originated in India or China. The great 

 American contribution to the staple cereals was corn, and they also 

 gave us various species of beans and squashes. Olive culture is thought 

 to have started in the eastern Egyptian delta, but on the other hand 

 the Sumerians and Indus people cultivated the date palm. Flax was 

 raised by the Egyptians and Sumerians, cotton by the Indus people, 

 Maya, and Peruvians, and the Chinese contributed silk to the textiles 

 of the world. Cattle, sheep, and swine were already domesticated in 

 Egypt in predynastic times and apparently in the earliest period in 

 Sumer. Humped and humpless cattle, buffaloes, sheep, fowls, and 



