316 GENERAL REMARKS 



ibique citata) ; secondly, that even in these ' tombs of the kings ' 

 we find (see supra, pp. 256, 258, 305) female skulls and female 

 skeletons of disproportionate smallness ; and, thirdly, that (see 

 pp. 214, 249, 274 supra), mixed up in these tumuli with the large 

 and well-filled male skulls, there are not wanting ' ill-filled,' ' boat- 

 shaped ' crania, to parallel which we have to go far afield amongst 

 modern { Natur-volker ;' or that, in technical language, the crania 

 of the neolithic period were not rarely dolichocephalic in a way 

 which justifies us in speaking of them as being stenocephalic 1 and 

 of their owners as being in contrast to modern civilised dolicho- 

 cephali, ' angustiores ' rather than ' latiores.' To the narrowness of 

 the ill-fed brain the simplicity or obliteration of the sutures testifies 

 often, even in the most fragmentary of the neolithic crania ; in 

 more perfect specimens we have the same conditions more forcibly 

 impressed upon our imagination by the sight of the parietal and 

 frontal eminences standing prominently out in relief upon the wall- 

 sided and vertically-ridged cranium. If a contrast such as this can 

 be shown to exist, between a series of what were all but certainly 

 the crania of the most favourably conditioned and best developed 

 of the neolithic population and any mixed series of later times 



1 Professor Aeby in 1863 (' Verhandl. Naturforsch. Gesell. Basel.,' iii. 4) proposed to 

 divide all skulls into the two classes of Stenocephalous and Eurycephalous, having 

 regard simply to the differences of breadth. In 1867, in his ' Schadelformen des Men- 

 schen und der Affen,' p. 32, he again argues that this division should be substituted 

 for that of Retzius, according to which skulls are similarly divided into two classes, 

 but into Dolichocephalous and Brachycephalous by reference to the relation sub- 

 sisting between their length and breadth. His words are as follows : — ' Was er 

 (Retzius) also fur lang und kurz gehalten ist nichts anders als schmal und breit, und 

 es scheiden sich die Menschen nicht nach Dolichocephalie und Brachycephalie 

 sondern nach Stenocephalie und Eurycephalie.' As there appears to be some 

 tendency in recent writers, e.g. Zuckerkandl, ' Novara Reise,' 1875, p. 65, to adopt this 

 classification, it may be well to say here that with dolichocephaly and brachycephaly 

 respectively many more properties are correlated than those which their mere etymo- 

 logy connotes. Some of these are of primary morphological (see p. 233 supra), others 

 of primary physiological (see p. 276 supra) importance. Neither is it possible to 

 overrate the ethnographical importance of the fact insisted upon (pp. 189, 245, 260, 

 263, 264 supra) that within the circumscription of dolichocephaly and brachycephaly 

 both, a natural subdivision may be made by reference to this very matter of breadth. 

 There are 'ill-filled' brachycephalie skulls as well as ' well-filled;' ' well-filled ' dolicho- 

 cephalic skulls as well as ' ill-filled ; ' and to use, as is now sometimes done, the word 

 ' stenocephalous ' or ' schmalkopfige,' as convertible with dolichocephalous and as 

 opposed to brachycephalous, is simply to ignore facts. These are excellently ex- 

 pressed by Professor Cleland's proposed quadrifid division of dolichocephali and brachy- 

 cephali into 'latiores ' and 'angustiores' respectively. See 'Phil. Trans.' 1870, p. 148. 



