H.— ANTHROPOLOGY. 193 



before, are strongly marked. On the whole the Tasmanians seem to have 

 descended from early types of modern man in whom the process of 

 skull-lengthening, inferred above, had proceeded some distance. 



VI. — Some African Features. 



Before going any farther, attention must be drawn to the curious 

 problem of the hair, which in all these types is in close spiral curves. 

 Now, ape- hair is wavy, with roots stretching down into the deeper layers 

 of the skin, and Sarasin*^ and Junod have recently claimed that it is only 

 at about the time of birth that the hair of a negro child becomes spirally 

 curved. Fritsch has shown that the slighter, or downy, hairs of the 

 Bushman have a fairly straight course up from the roots, and that the 

 spirally curved hairs develop that curve just above the root, often with 

 a fairly sharp angle between the root and the beginning of the curve. 

 For the moment it seems probable that these slighter hairs are part of 

 the downy-hair covering already mentioned, but it would not be safe to 

 assume that they are the modified survivors of ape-hair ; they may be. 

 In any case it would seem that among some early representatives of 

 modern man, if not earlier still, a specialisation of hair-growth occurred 

 and produced the ' spiral ' types of hair among those groups which were 

 on the south side of the presumed early home of modern man. That 

 specialisation has fixed itself racially, in the end, at an early stage of growth. 

 Factors of equatorial climate probably contributed to this result, for by 

 this change the hairs were concentrated nearer the surface and the blood 

 could thus be brought near the surface, and possibilities of cooling could 

 be increased. This condition is a step towards that which obtains in 

 various degrees among African peoples, in which the blood-vessels of the 

 skin are abundantly developed. It is worth noting that the Aurignacian 

 statuette called the ' Venus of Willendorf ' is sculptured to suggest woolly 

 head-hair, while the ' Sorcerer ' of Lourdes is drawn to show wavy hair. 



Next, we may think of the cases in which the lengthening of the head 

 argued in an early paragraph has taken place fairly clearly and com- 

 pletely ; but for the moment we shall consider only those of the southern 

 lands of the Old World, those who may have drifted southwards from the 

 early home of modern man. Certain Hottentots and Koranas measured 

 by Broom'" are distinctly taller than the peoples discussed above, their 

 heads are often quite long, absolutely as well as relatively, and their 

 cranial indices range from 64.2 to 72.3 on the skull. The brow-ridges 

 are often very strong, and some men have more face-hair than is usual 

 in Africa ; the hair is spirally curved, as usual. Some are tall and strongly 

 built. The height of the skull is usually as great as, or greater than, the 

 width, so in this feature again they illustrate what I have supposed 

 occurred in some types of early modern man. The ancient S. African 

 Boskop" skull differs from these in some ways, just as the Cro Magnon 



'•' Sarasin, F. ' Sur le changement de la chevelure chez les enfants des 

 Melanesiens, et des negres Africains,' L'Anthropologie, 1925. 



'^ Broom, op. cit. 



" Pycraft, W. P. 'On the Calvaria found at Boskop,' Journ. Roy. Anihr. Inst., 

 1923. 



1926 O 



