HRDLICKA] SKELETAL REMAINS 7l 



are the flint implements or chips found associated with the skulls and bones, 

 and the mode of burial.&quot; 



OSBORN, Century Mac/a zinc. January, 1907. Page 373. &quot; The parts of the older 

 four crania found beneath the clay layer are of the same type, it being proba 

 ble that difference in age may account for the slight differences in the develop 

 ment of the supraorbital ridges. In each the facial profile is almost the 

 same. ... This profile is seen to be of a much more primitive character, sur 

 rounding a bone with a more depressed frontal area than that of the skulls 

 found above the clay. Unfortunately the back part of each of these four crania 

 is wanting, and until this can be secured through subsequent discoveries it is 

 impossible to give an exact estimate of the cranial capacity or brain weight of 

 this primitive man. Estimating the back of the skull as of the same height as 

 that of the normal Indian skull, . . . we still have a very low cranial capacity 

 and a type of skull resembling that of the Australian negro, which is virtually 

 the lowest existing type known at present. While the supraorbital ridges are 

 not more pronounced than that of the Australian negro,&quot; the forehead is even 

 more receding and flattened. In .other words, the portions of the cranium pre 

 served indicate, so far as they go, a man of small cerebral capacity, having a 

 brain inferior to that either of the Indian or the typical mound builder.&quot; 



Page 375. &quot; To return to the recent discovery in Nebraska, the comparisons 

 which we are able to make now prove that this cranium is of a more recent 

 type by far than that of the Neanderthal man. It may prove to be of more 

 recent type, even, than that typified by the early Neolithic man of Europe. 

 Even if not of great antiquity it is certainly of very primitive type and tends 

 to increase rather than diminish the probability of the early advent of man in 

 America.&quot; 



GILDER, Putnam s Macjaziue, January. 1007. In commencing the excavations 

 in the mound I came, &quot; at 4 feet beneath the surrounding level, upon what ap 

 peared to be a compact clay bed, differing from the loess covering in which I 

 had been working. There were visible evidences of ancient fire. What I took 

 to be a clay bed burned into a semblance of brick proved to be the original top 

 of the loess hill. Fire had been built upon it, and on the ashes an upper layer 

 of bones was laid. It was so hard as to resist the spade. I managed, however, 

 to make a considerable hole through the surface, and few inches down I found 

 the upper portion of a human cranium. 



&quot; In drifting in another ditch, from the south side, I encountered the same 

 stratum of baked earth. Fifteen feet from the beginning of the ditch I cross- 

 sectioned the mound from west to east and then cleared a circle 8 feet in diam 

 eter. . . . This gave me a much better opportunity to work from above the 

 bones. Evidence of fire above the bones was very marked. The earth beneath 

 the ash bed was very dry and extremely hard, and I was puzzled not a little as 

 to how the burial had been made. Nor was I able to tell precisely how the 

 skeletons had been laid, but appearances indicated that the heads lay toward 

 the center and that the feet radiated therefrom. Two seemed to have been placed 

 in a squatting position the femurs and spinal vertebra* being in a vertical 

 position close together. 



&quot; The manner of burial differed radically from that observed in other mounds 

 I had opened in this vicinity and elsewhere. It seemed that a lower stratum of 

 skeletons had been placed in the mound, and that earth had then been piled 

 on top and burned to the consistency of a plaster wall. In another part of tho 



a &quot; It will be understood that some of the existing types of savages and aborigines have, 

 through survival or degeneration, a smaller cranial capacity than the ancestors of the 

 European types. For example, the Botocudo Indians of Brazil are described as having a 

 very low type of cranium.&quot; 



