234 NATURAL HISTORY OF 





of Man, they were, at least, the oldest and first wan- 

 derers that reached the American continent.* They 

 appear to have possessed in Peru, elements of social 

 progress before strangers came among them, provided 

 always that the Titicaca and other remains of this type 

 represent the Peruvian people before the Yncas obtain- 

 ed the sway, t The question would certainly be more 

 doubtful, if the imitation of their cranial form had not 

 been adopted by races of strangers in both Americas, 

 and even by the aquiline nosed hero tribes, whose por- 

 traits still adorn the ruined temples of Yucatan, where 

 they represent giant divinities in the character of con- 

 querors. Such homage was never paid by conquerors 

 to the vanquished, unless these last were in possession 

 of indisputable superiority in arts, or in the forms of 



* Natives of scattered southern Islands, such as the Male- 

 colese, and sallow Papua-Malays of some sandal wood islands, 

 all distinctly marked with very elevated frontal bones, seem 

 to countenance the probability, that there were men of this 

 form in Polynesia, but then their frontal does not appear 

 depressed. 



t There is a statement somewhere, that the Yncas per- 

 mitted one or more villages of Flatheads, taken during a 

 war of conquest to the east of the Andes, to settle near the 

 capital ; but this seems to be at variance with Dr. Tschudi's 

 observations. It may be right to repeat here, that writers 

 speak often in very indefinite terms of American flat- 

 headed tribes, there being certainly three very different in 

 form ; the first, those whose crania are naturally depressed ; 

 the second, with the occiput obliquely flattened in a vertical 

 manner (this belongs also to Peru, and is seen on the Yu- 

 catan images) ; the third is the North American, where both 

 the frontal and occiput are pressed down, bulging out 

 laterally. See Plate of Skulls. 



