194 DESCRIPTION OP FIGURES OF SKULLS. 



This skull does not show any traces of the not uncommon 

 asymmetry of the parieto-occipital region produced by careless 

 one-sided carriage in infancy; but it has a singular and sug- 

 gestive resemblance to many of the artificially deformed skulls 

 of the New World, though it is not likely that it was subjected 

 to any such process purposively carried out. Skulls like this 

 resemble some of the purposively deformed skulls, firstly, in 

 general antero-posterior contour from the large supraeiliary 

 ridges over to the similarly developed transversa crista occipitis ; 

 secondly, in the general relations of maximum breadth to the 

 extreme length; thirdly, in the position of that plane of maxi- 

 mum breadth far back in the plane of extreme length ; fourthly, 

 in the width and strength of the upper and lower jaws ; and, 

 fifthly, in the minor yet not wholly unimportant point of the 

 disparity of size between the upper and lower squamae occipitis with 

 their respective nervous contents. Nor is prognathism, which 

 is almost always absent in these priscan skulls, by any means 

 always present in the artificially deformed ones of modern times. 

 Skulls like the one just described have a calculable brain weight of 

 54 oz. avoidupois, which is considerably above the average weight 

 49*5 oz. for European males in modern times ; their powerful lower 

 jaw and the bones of their limbs show them to have been possessed 

 of muscular strength at least as much superior to that of average 

 men ; and their owners, for these as well as for other reasons which 

 it is not my purpose to discuss here 1 , may be very reasonably 

 supposed to have been chiefs of their clan or tribe. The physical 

 peculiarities however of individuals in such positions are very 

 usually imitated by other members of their clan, tribe, or nation ; 

 and it may be suggested that the habit of artificially deforming the 

 head, at all events as we see it most commonly done when it results 

 in the production of a form like the one just described, may have 

 arisen from the wish to give a child from the first the outlines 

 which distinguished some adult whose vigour had placed him in a 

 position of eminence and command 2 . 



1 See Address to Anthropological Subsection, 'British Assoc. Report for 1875/ p. 150. 



2 It is not entirely easy even with a large number, as in the Oxford Museum, of 

 artificially deformed skulls to be perfectly certain that such a skull as the one above 

 described cannot have owed its peculiar contour to compression purposively exercised 

 upon it during the period of infancy. Some sort of a priori probability in favour of 

 this skull having been endowed with its peculiar shape by this means arises of course 



