138 



ANTHROPOID APES. 



is contradicted by the wide diffusion of tliis charac- 

 teristic, even in modern timcb. And it is doubtful 

 whether platycnemy is absolutely restricted to the 

 lower races. At Janischewek, Virchow found an 

 extremely platycnemic tibia, exhumed from a kuja- 

 wish grave of the Stone Age, which belonged to 

 a skull remarkable for its unusual beauty and size, 

 so that, taken by itself, the impression which it 

 gave to an anatomist was that of a highly organized 

 race.* 



It is important to remark that platycnemy has 



Fig. 43. 

 Section through a 

 platycnemic tibia 

 from Cro-Magnon. 



Fig. 44. 



Section through the tibia 



of a male gorilla. 



Fig. 45. 

 Section through the 

 tibia of a male 

 chimpanzee. 



been regarded as a pithecoid structure, and for this 

 reason the atterQpt has been made to establish the 

 degraded position of those peoples which are most 

 remarkable for platycnemy. But, as Boyd-Dawkins 

 has already observed, although the tibiae of the 

 gorilla and the chimpanzee are to some extent 

 platycnemic, they are much less so than the platyc- 

 nemic bones of the human skeleton. The tibia of 



* Sitzungshericht der Berliner Anthropologischen Gesellschaft : 

 April 17, 1880. ^ 



