266 PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY. 



Strabo, riiny, and Pomponius Mela refer to various Asiatic localities where the 

 same practice of moulding the head into favored abnormal forms was in use in 

 their ilay ; and repeated discoveries in modern times in the Crimea, in the 

 Austrian valley of the Danube, and even in Swtzerland, of similarly distorted 

 crania, show how widely the practice had been followed in ancient times. Th« 

 European examples have been generally referred to the Avarian Huns, but it 

 afibrds a striking confirmation of the correspondence between the mode of 

 practicing this barbarous process in the Old and the New World, that at the 

 very time when the attention of Uetzius and other European craniologists was 

 specially directed to the subject, an American origin was assigned even to the 

 European crania. Dr. Tschudi, guided by his extensive experience as a traveller, 

 undertook to prove, in a memoir communicated to Muller's Archivjur /hiatomie, 

 that a skull found near Grafenegg, in Austria, and assigned by Professor 

 Retzius to the Avars, was in reality an ancient Peruvian relic brought over in 

 the sixteenth century, when the empire of Charles V. embraced both Austria 

 and Peru in the same vast dominion. But repeated discoveries of similar arti- 

 ficially deformed crania, both on European and Asiatic sites, have placed beyond 

 doubt that the very same processes of malformation practiced by the Peruvians, 

 the Natchez, and by the barbarous tribes of Oregon, were in use among ancient 

 Euroj)ean and Asiatic races. But the artificial changes of the human head are 

 traceable to a variety of causes, all of which require to be maturely considered 

 in order to rightly estimate the significance of national skull forms. These 

 causes may be classified thus : 



I. Undesigned changes of form superinduced in infancy by bandaging or 

 other custom of head-dress ; by the form of pillow or cradle- board ; and by 

 persistent adherence to any unvarying position in suckling and nursing. 



II. Artificial deformation undesignedly resulting from the habitual carrying 

 of burdens on the head, or by means of straps or bandages pressing on any 

 part of the skull, when such is continued from very early youth. 



III. Artificial configuration designedly resulting from the application of 

 mechanical pressure in infancy. 



IV. Deformation resulting from posthumous compression, or any mechanical 

 force brought into operation after death. 



To each of those causes I have directed some attention in different memoirs;* 

 but I now propose to limit my remarks chiefly to one of the aspects of unde- 

 signed artificial compression in its relation to certain European skull forms. 

 Th(^ influence of such causes in producing some peculiar features of the brachy- 

 cephalic cranium found in ancient British barrows, was first suggested by me, 

 in any accessible form, when pointing out the mistake into which Dr. Morton 

 had fallen in supposing that the irregularity and unsymmetrical conformation 

 observable in many skulls, but especially in those which have been subjected to 

 any extreme amount of compression, is peculiar to American crania. The latter 

 remark, I then observed, is too wide a generalization. 1 have repeatedly noted 

 the like unsymmetrical characteristics in the brachycephalic crania of Scottish 

 barrows ; and it has occurred to my mind, on more than one occasion, whether 

 such may not furnish an indication of some partial compression, dependent, it 

 may be, on the mode of nurture in infancy, having tended, in their case also, if 

 not to produce, to exaggerate the short longitudinal diameter, which constitutes 

 one of their most remarkable characteristics.t The idea thus expressed was 

 founded on observations carried out for some years on the crania of Scottish 

 tumuli in relation to the general archaeology of the country, preparatory to the 

 embodying of the whole in the " Prehistoric Annals of Scotland^ Some of 



•"• Edin. Philosoph. Journ. N. S., vol. vii, 24 ; xiv, 269. Canadian Journal, vol. ii, 40i6; 

 vi, 414 ; viii, 76, 127. Athenffium, Sep. 20th, 1862. Prehistoric Man, vol. ii, 294. 

 f Canadian Journal, Nov., 1857. 



