IN RELATION TO THE FORM OF THE HUMAN SKULL. 267 



geometer, M. Helleberg, who resided long in Ohio, learnedly defends 

 the opinion maintained by many others, that the Indians of North 

 America are descended from the tribes of Israel, alleging that their 

 features are essentially Jewish, that McKenzie saw the Chippeways 

 practice circumcision, &c. Without meaning to adopt this opinion as 

 my own, I vet refer to it as bearing favorably on the hypothesis ad- 

 vanced above respecting the primitive kindredship of the Carib and 

 Guaranic races on one side of the Atlantic, and the Guanches on the 

 other, the latter being in turn nearly allied to the races of North 

 Africa, whose resemblance to the Jews, as regards the face and form 

 of the skull, is very close, and who present a complete contrast to the 

 Mongol tvpe on the Asiatic side. Morton has remarked that "the 

 primitive Egyptians, the Misraimites of Scripture and descendants of 

 Ham, were directly affiliated with the nations of the Lybian family, 

 and in their physical traits were intermediate between the Indo-Eu- 

 ropean and Semitic races." In view of the developments of modern 

 geology respecting the rise and subsidence of vast tracts of laud, 

 there would seem to be nothing absurd in admitting that America 

 was once united with Africa or Asia, and obscure traditions to this 

 effect are said still to exist among the American Indians. 



The brachycephalic tribes of America are found for the most part on 

 that side of the continent which looks towards Asia and the islands 

 of the Pacific, and they seem to be related to the Mongol races. A. 

 de Humboldt, the first of modern naturalists, has expressed himself 

 in favor of this view, which new proofs appear every day to corrobo- 

 rate. Some of these American brachycephalics possessed a high 

 degree of culture at the period of the Spanish conquest, and the in- 

 fluence which this civilization exerted over most of the inhabitants 

 of the continent has disposed many eminent ethnologists to infer the 

 unity of the whole American race. Thus Dr. Latham has been led 

 to comprise them all under the significant appellation of American 

 Mongolidce, an extension which ethnological craniology will by no 

 means countenance. Morton, too, as has already been said, main- 

 tained a unity of race, witli the exception of the Esquimaux, esteem- 

 ing the brachycephalic type as predominant among all the tribes, and. 

 furnishing positive proofs of its existence at least on the western 

 coasts. For my own part, I have long been convinced of the con- 

 sanguinity between the brachycephalee of America and those of Asia 

 and the Pacific islands, and that this characteristic type may be 

 traced uninterruptedly through the long chain of tribes inhabiting the 

 west coast of the American continent from Behring's Straits to Cape 

 Horn. In my work on the skulls of the Indians of the Pampas, (Om 

 Pampas Indianernas Granier, 1855,) I announced the opinion which 

 I now reaffirm, respecting the distribution of the Indian tribes into 

 dolichocephala) and brachycephahe. as well as the relationship of the 



duciug a complete revolution in vegetation, especially in the basin of the Mediterranean, 

 and wns, therefore, much more likely to have engraved itself on the. memory of the Egyp- 

 tians than any other circumstance of the supposed catastrophe. Yet we hear ol no coin- 

 cidence of such a revolution of climate with the disappearance of the Atlantis — Note by M. 

 E. Cl'Jjyarede, (French tramlator. ) 



