258 ANTHROPOLOGICAL SURVEY IN ALASKA [eth. ANN. « 



MODULE AND CAPACITY 



A comparison of considerable interest is also that of the cranial 

 module or mean diameter, to the capacity of the same skulls. This 

 comparison reveals an important sex factor. 5 Relatively to the 

 module, the capacity is very appreciably smaller in the female than it 

 is in the male. This is a universal condition to which, so far as known, 

 there are occasional individual but no group exceptions. It appears 

 very clearly in the Eskimo. In 283 western male Eskimo skulls in 

 which we have so far measured the capacity, 6 the module averages 

 15.38 centimeters, the capacity 1,490 cubic centimeters; while 

 in 382 female skulls thus far gauged the former averages 14.82 

 centimeters, the latter 1.337 cubic centimeters. The percentage 

 relation of the capacity to the module, the numbers taken 

 as a whole, is 96j8 in the males but only 90.2 in the females. This 

 means that relatively to the external size of the skull the female 

 Eskimo brain is 6.66 per cent smaller. Similar sex disproportion 

 exists in other American groups as well as elsewhere. Some day 

 when suitable data accumulate it will be of much interest to study 

 this condition on a wider scale. 



ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON CRANIAL MODULE 



Before we leave this subject, it may be well to point out two note- 

 worthy facts apparent from the data on the northwestern and north- 

 eastern groups. The first is that the figures on both sexes from 

 Barrow and Point Barrow are very nearly the same, suggesting 

 strongly the identity of the people of the two settlements; and the 

 Point Hope group is in close relation. The second fact is the curious 

 identity of the old Igloo group, 8 miles southwest of Barrow, with 

 the Greenlanders. The import of this will be seen later. 



SKULL SHAPE 



Utilizing the materials of the Otis and Barnard Davis Catalogues 

 and with measurements taken for him on additional specimens in 

 several of our museums, Boas, in 1895 (Verh. Berl. anthrop. Ges., 

 398), as already mentioned, reported the cranial index of 37 " west- 

 ern Eskimo " skulls of both sexes (without giving localities or de- 

 tails) as 77. He also reports in the same place (p. 391) the cephalic 

 index of 61 probably male living "Alaska Eskimo," again without 

 locality, as 793. These rather high indices and the relatively elevated 

 stature (61 subjects, 165.8 centimeters) lead him to believe (p. 376) 



& See writer's " Relation of the Size of the Head and Skull to Capacity in the Two 

 Sexes," Am. J. Phys. Anthrop., 1925, vm, No. 3. 



'All measured de novo by my aide, T. D. Stewart; for procedure see my "An- 

 thropometry." 



