184 FOSSIL MEN. 



of the rude hunter tribes, except in the case of those 

 men of higher caste who had to manage public affairs. 

 Men may become degraded by too great peace and 

 prosperity, along with unvarying routine, quite as 

 much as by the exigencies and hardships of savage 

 life. These mound-builders, with their peculiar, yet 

 American heads, are perhaps the oldest men of the 

 Western Continent known to us, if we except some 

 stray bones found under circumstances which have 

 been supposed to indicate a still greater antiquity. 

 One of the most remarkable of these, the " Calaveras" 

 skull from California, is stated by Professor Wyman 

 to be of somewhat larger capacity than those of 

 modern Indians of that country, but of the same 

 type. We thus find in America a characteristic type 

 of head, but under this a great many varieties of long 

 and short, straight and prognathous, natural and dis- 

 torted forms ; and this American type of skull on the 

 whole resembles that known as Turanian in the Old 

 World. Further, the possessors of these American 

 heads were found in the most varied stages of civil- 

 ization and barbarism ; though, as stated in a previous 

 chapter, the more ancient and civilized peoples had 

 more delicate and refined forms of face and head than 

 the ruder tribes. 



Nothing is more distinct in the intimations, both 



of tradition and of monuments, than the existence 



in the Old World in pre-historic times of two types of 



men representing respectively the American Indian 



and the Esquimaux the one of large stature and 



