458 



NA TURE 



[August 30, 1906 



physical anthropology, and the papers led up to a dis- 

 cussion on the physical characters of the races of Britain. 



Dr. F. C. Shrubsall gave a demonstration of the methods 

 of determining racial characters, in which he explained 

 the meaning of the various terms used in craniology, and 

 showed the distribution of the various races in Europe. 



Dr. G. A. Auden exhibited a collection of crania, all 

 from the neighbourhood of York, and to a great extent 

 from the collection of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. 

 The exhibit included specimens of Celtic, pre-Roman, and 

 Roman skulls, while one series showed the great change 

 in head fori i which took place in York after the Norman 

 conquest. Some of the Roman skulls had a sentimental 

 interest, as they were from coffins unearthed in York and 

 the names and ages of the persons were known. 



A paper by Messrs. H. Brodrick and C. A. Hill on a 

 recently discovered skeleton in Sooska cave was then read. 

 The bones, which all belong to one individual, were found 

 under a layer of stalagmite. The skeleton is that of a 

 female Celt, and the skull is brachycephalic. Above the 

 right mastoid process is an irregularly shaped hole, 

 evidently the cause of death. The height appears to have 

 been about 5 feet 3 inches. 



Mr. J. R. Mortimer communicated a paper on the relative 

 stature of the men with long heads, short heads, and 

 those with intermediate heads in the museum at Driffield. 

 Some doubt was thrown on the correctness of the figures, 

 but if correct the paper was most important, as it entirely 

 reversed the accepted theories as to the height of the 

 Neolithic peoples of Britain, showing that the long-headed 

 Neolithic man was taller than the broad-headed Neolithic 

 and Bronze age man. 



Mr. J. Gray read a paper on England before the English, 

 in which, after stating the present condition of our know- 

 ledge of the subject, he argued that Neolithic man corre- 

 sponds with the present Mediterranean race, and that the 

 Anglo-Saxons and other fair races of northern Europe are 

 a variety of Neolithic man with somewhat broader heads. 

 The Bronze age race, which subsequently settled in Britain, 

 was brachycephalic and tall, and came by sea from the 

 eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor. 



At the conclusion of the papers Dr. W. Wright opened 

 the discussion on the physical characters of the races of 

 Britain. After quoting Caesar to show that the coastal 

 area was occupied by the Belgic Gauls and the interior 

 by another race, he argued that all the evidence pointed 

 to the fact that a mixed race came to Britain in Neolithic 

 times, and that the population was not a pure broad- or a 

 pure long-headed one. 



Dr. Shrubsall urged the necessity of tinowing exactly 

 where skulls were found, considering that as careful 

 evidence was required as in geology. He thought it a 

 mistake to deal only with the length and breadth of the 

 skull, and felt that the proportions of the face were just 

 as important. Also all work required revision on biometric 

 lines. As to coloration, which was very important, he 

 pointed out that the Anglo-Sa.xons never called the Welsh 

 dark, and felt that it was by no rheans certain that the 

 Britons were a dark people. He also considered it quite 

 possible that there was a Teutonic element in the popula- 

 tion before Roman times. 



Prof. Ridgeway insisted that all classical references 

 speak of the Celts as a fair or rufous and tall race, and 

 considered that there was no evidence of a pre-Celtic 

 language in Britain. 



Mr. J. L. Myres urged Prof. Rhys's view as to there 

 being a non-Aryan structure in Welsh and Irish, and also 

 protested against the practice of arbitrarily drawing con- 

 clusions from skull measurements. 



Prof. Petrie considered that a prima facie case had been 

 made out for an invasion of Britain, even in pre-Brythonic 

 times, by a mixed race, but felt that much more material 

 was needed before any definite conclusions could be drawn. 



Dr. C. S. Myers threw doubt on the " Crania 

 Britannica " records as perhaps affected by the collection 

 of type skulls, and Mr. H. Fleure gave some account of 

 the anthropometric work at present in progress in Wales. 



The general conclusion to be drawn from the discussion 

 was that it is of paramount importance that the existing 

 material should be revised by improved methods, and that 

 a better comparison with Continental data is essential. 



NO. 1922, VOL. 74] 



In the afternoon Prof. Petrie gave an illustrated lecture 

 on the Hyksos and other work of the British School of 

 Archaeology in Egypt. The most important work was the 

 excavation of a great camp of the Hyksos or Shepherd 

 Kings. The camp consists of an earth bank faced on its 

 outer slope with white stucco, and with a slope, more than 

 200 feet long, serving as an entrance. This slope does 

 not pierce the wall, but goes over it. Flanking walls were 

 added to command this entrance, and the whole scheme 

 of defence proves that archery was the only arm employed. 

 Some si.xty years later a wall of limestone was built out- 

 side the bank. There seems little doubt that the place 

 is Avaris, and the account in Manetho's chronicle agrees 

 with the arrangement of this site. The people appear to 

 have been Semites from Syria and Mesopotamia. Other 

 work resulted in the discovery of the city of Raamses, 

 built by the Israelites, and of the town and temple of 

 Onias, under whom the jews founded a settlement in the 

 second century B.C. 



The work of the section concluded on Wednesday morn- 

 ing, August 8. Mr. J. L. Myres read a paper on early 

 traces of human types in the ..-Egean. The population of 

 the ^gean area as far back as the beginning of the Bronze 

 age, before wliich there is no evidence, was not a purely 

 Mediterranean type of dolichocephalic man, as brachy- 

 cephalic individuals occur sporadically over the whole dis- 

 trict. Aegean culture, therefore, cannot be the exclusive 

 production of " Mediterranean " man. This evidence for 

 brachycephalic types in the /Egean, when compared with 

 the evidence as to the existence of a very pure brachy- 

 cephalic race in the Balkan and Anatolian highlands, makes 

 it probable that these latter people were established in these 

 highlands at least as early as the beginning of the /Egean 

 Bronze age, and were in competition with dolichocephalic 

 " Mediterranean " man. Intruders from the north cannot 

 have been brachycephalic, as the steppe of southern Russia 

 was inhabited from Neolithic to Classical times by a 

 dolichocephalic population. It seems improbable that the 

 brunet dolichocephalic type of the southern ^gean could 

 have arrived by a land route, owing to the presence of a 

 brachycephalic type in the Balkan and Anatolian high- 

 lands, while its brunetness precludes affiliation to the doli- 

 chocephalic peoples of the north. This type, therefore, 

 must be considered an immigration by sea from North 

 Africa, and its littoral habits are a strong argument in 

 favour of this view. 



Dr. T. Ashby, jun., and Mr. D. Mackenzie communi- 

 cated a paper on the ethnology of Sardinia. 



Two papers were then read by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers. 

 The first, entitled " A Survival of Two-fold Origin," dealt 

 with the relation between a man and his maternal uncle. 

 This connection, although in most races a survival from 

 mother-right, in India originates, in many cases, in the 

 regulation that the children of a brother and sister should 

 marry one another. This involves that a man's maternal 

 uncle is also his actual or potential father-in-law. The 

 practice is now chiefly confined to the southern parts of 

 India. 



Dr. Rivers's other paper dealt with the astronomy of the 

 islanders of the Torres Straits, who group together many 

 stars in constellations, which often represent mythical 

 persons. In Murray Island private property was found in 

 stars, two stars being the property of two men who had 

 inherited them from their ancestors. 



Two physical papers were communicated by Dr. 

 VV. L. H. Duckworth. The first directed attention to a 

 rare anomaly in human crania from Kwaiawata Island, 

 New Guinea, the anomaly consisting in the presence of 

 small but sharp spicular projections of bone springing 

 from the margin of the nose due to a bony deposit formed 

 in fibrous bands, which in all cases exist in a correspond- 

 ing situation. Dr. Duckworth's other paper was a 

 chronicle of observations made on a " eunuchoid " subject 

 in the Anatomy School, Cambridge. 



The last paper presented was a demonstration of photo- 

 graphs of racial types by Mr. T. E. Smurthwaite. Mr. 

 Smurthwaite has evolved a new classification of the races 

 of man from observations of the contours of the head and 

 face, and he resolves all the races into six common types. 



Three important reports were taken as read, namely, 

 that of the committee to conduct anthropometric investi- 



