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THE HUMAN SKULL 



163 



fact which still further emphasises the extent of the great hiatus be- 

 tween them and the cranial outline of Pithecanthropus erectiis. 



III. The Bregmatic Angle and the Cranial Curvatures. 



The bregmatic angle is an important criterion of the degree of 

 evolution of the frontal region of the skull. This angle was found by 

 Schwalbe^ to be forty-four in the Neanderthal skull. It may rise as 

 high as sixty-six in modern European types of skulls according to 

 Duckworth.^ The range of difference is thus extraordinarily great. 



\37-i'* 



4 ^-:; 



Fig. 7. — Has been designed to illustrate the gradual expansion of the bregmatic angle 

 from the stage of Java man to that of the modern European type. It will 

 be noted that if the Piltdown cranial arc were to be swung upwards by 

 increasing the size of the bregmatic angle to 55, the area GaB^ would almost 

 exactly coincide with the area GaB of the modern skull, showing that the 

 evolution of the frontal cranial arc as such, has remained practically 

 stationary since the time of Piltdown man. 



Smith Woodward^ calculated the bregmatic angle to be fifty in his 

 first reconstruction of the Piltdown skull, which is larger than the 

 angle found in many aboriginal Australian crania at the present day. 



^ op. cit. 



^ Morphology and Anthropology, 1904. 



^ op. cit. 



Sec. IV, Sig. 12 



