﻿52 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



The mutual relation of the three main diameters, however, does 

 not remain the same from the lowest to the highest heads. With the 

 height it is as 1 10.4 in the latter to 100 in the former, but with the 

 breadth similar proportions are only 104.2 to 100, and with the length 

 103.5 to 100. Hence, the highest heads are not only highest abso- 

 lutely, but also relatively to head length and breadth. The length 

 has evidently lagged behind even slightly more than the breadth (C. /. 

 in lowest heads 74, in highest 74.6), but the difference is small and 

 within the possibilities of accidental. 



The above conditions do not fall, it seems to the writer, in the 

 category of simple compensations ; they are more likely directly 

 connected with the anatomical peculiarities of the vault of the skull 

 and are expressions, in the main, of the law of expansion of the skull 

 in the directions of lesser resistance. 



Cephalic Module 

 The sum of the length, breadth and height of the head, divided by 

 three, gives the mean diameter of the head or the cephalic module, 1 



Cm. 14 14.5 15« 15.5 16 16.5 



I I I 



PERCENT 



U / \ 



-\ t 51 



1 t 



/ \ CM. 



__r. _ v 



15 it 



15 f V 



-4 X 



1 t 



r t X 



j \ 



10 -f- h 



I _ _ f 



/ \ 



-n - -L 



-4 V 



t X 



t 1* 



J 



^f'* 



*T 



Fig. 5. — Curve showing the distribution of cephalic module (mean diameter 

 of the head) among 150 adult males of the Kharga Oasis. 



which, for comparative purposes, represents the size of the head 



1 The term " modulus " was first employed by E. Schmidt, who designated 

 by it (in Archiv f. Anthrop., Vol. 12, 1879- '8o, p. 179, and in his " Anthropolo- 

 gische Methoden " Leipzig, 1888, p. 212 et seq.) the mean of the three diame- 

 ters of the skull. 



