310 GENERAL REMARKS 



the eruption of these teeth to have been provoked, as is sometimes 

 the case in savage races, into taking precedence of the union by 

 ossification of the occipital and sphenoid bones. Such precedence 

 has been noted by Professor Broca x in one of the Cro-Magnon 

 skulls; and from his comparison of the skulls of various modern 

 savages between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five with skulls 

 of modern Europeans at the same period of life, it results that this 

 peculiarity must be considered as a mark of degradation. 



Several other notes of inferiority which are commonly found in 

 savage races of modern days, and which have been described as 

 existing in the remains of troglodytic man, are wanting in the 

 neolithic skeletons which I have examined. Foremost amongst 

 these may be mentioned prognathism ; a peculiarity which our 

 knowledge of the extent to which the jaws are modifiable and 

 modified by the nature of the dietary alike in the lower races of 

 man and in the lower animals would certainly lead us to expect to 

 find amongst a stone- and bone-using people. But, as it has often 

 been remarked 2 , the facial angle of these early races is by no means 

 small, and their jaws have none of that pithecoid elongation which 

 is so striking and prominent a characteristic in the crania of many 

 still existing savages. On the other hand, prognathic and macro- 

 gnathic jaws are not rare, though they are not the rule, in series 

 from the bronze, and also from the early iron period in this 

 country. 



A second mark of inferiority, not entirely unexampled among 

 modern savages, the junction, namely, of the squamous to the frontal 

 bone, has never to my knowledge been observed in any prehistoric 

 crania. If this peculiarity had been present its significance would 

 have been very great, as denoting a curtailment of the part of the 

 brain which, corresponding to the great ala of the sphenoid in the 

 skull, is eminently favourably conditioned, both as regards vascular 

 supply and histological constitution. 



I have already remarked (pp. 236, 248 supra, and ' Journ. Anth. 

 Inst.,' vol. v. p. 126, Article XVIII) that a third mark of in- 



1 See ' Revue d'Anthropologie,' 1873, ii. p. 20. Dr. Barnard Davis in his ' Thesaurus 

 Craniorum,' 1867, p. 309, observes of a Loyalty islander, ' aet. c. 25/ that ' the syn- 

 chondrosis sphenobasilaris is not quite ossified, yet all the teeth have been cut.' This 

 is the ordinary sequence in the lower animals. 



2 Broca, 'Memoires,' ii. p. 197 ; 'Rev.Anth.,' I. c, p. 19; Thurnam, 'Principal Forms,' 

 p. 32. 



