204 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XXII. No. 558 



CUERENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY.— XXXTII. 



{Edited by B. G. Brinton, M. D., LL.D., D. Sc.) 



Old Skulls, and Perhaps That of Sophokles. 



Last year, before the British Association, some skulls 

 were exhibited and described, which were of men said to 

 have lived six thousand years ago. They were brought 

 by Mr. Flinders Petrie from Egypt and taken from tombs 

 of the third or fourth dynasty. They were rather dolicho- 

 cephalic, — about 75, — and from the general relations of 

 the skeleton, belonged to a somewhat undersized race, 

 with negroid characteristics. They may have been slaves, 

 or a mixed strain. 



Not less interesting is the description recently given by 

 Professor Virchow, in the Proceedings of the Royal Prus- 

 sian Academy of Berlin, of some Greek skulls of ancient 

 date. One of them, from Menidi, was believed by its 

 finder to be that of the great classical dramatist, 

 Sophokles. The oldest were from Mykense, Spata and 

 Nauplia and were prehistoric. They were all slightly 

 brachycephalic, orthognathic, with the nose rather broad. 

 The grave of Sophokles is believed, on a certain amount 

 of literary evidence, to have been on the road from Achar- 

 nai, the modern Menidi, to Dekeleia, about 11 stadia from 

 the latter. Following this clue, the archseologist Miin- 

 ter opened a tumulus at this point, and came upon a 

 a stone wall enclosing four sarcophagi, two of marble, 

 each containing a male skeleton. One of these was of a 

 very old man, with a cane by his side, an alabaster vase, 

 etc. 



Sophokles died at ninety years of age in B. G. 406, so 

 the character of skull, as that of a very old man, corres- 

 ponds. It proves on examination to be long, 78.3, with a 

 remarkable irregularity between the right and left hem- 

 ispheres, the left temporal suture nearly obliterated, the 

 forehead broad, the face narrow and high and slightly 

 prognathic, the nose narrow, the capacity low, 1340 c. c. 

 Possibly it is the very skull of the old poet. 

 The African Pigmies. 

 Few anthropological questions are of so much import- 

 ance as that of the African pigmies. In the last number 

 of the Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, Mr. Stuhlmanu, who had 

 been with Emin Bey, gives some interesting facts about 

 them. Their height is about 1.25 metres, the head round, 

 the nose flat, the face very prognathic, the hair spiral- 

 woolly and brown, the skin light-brown with an under- 

 tone of reddish-yellow. The beard is scant, a light, 

 down-like hair covers the whole body, and the effluvium 

 of the person is penetrating and disagreeable. They dif- 

 fer very much, therefore, from the true negro race. 



Mentally, they are cunning, cruel, with keen senses and 

 thieving propensities. They use small bows with pois- 

 oned arrows, live in slight temporary shelters, and wear 

 light clothing of leaves or strings. Their language has 

 no numerals, and is related to that of the Wambuba 

 tribes. They appear to have no ornaments, nor to tattoo 

 the skin, but they occasionally bore two holes in the 

 upper lip. They seem to have some religious notions, as 

 they are careful to bury the dead in a particular position. 

 They have some form of marriage, and cannibalism is not 

 general. 



Stuhlman does not believe that these dwarfs came 

 about through degeneration, but that they are the relics 

 of a peculiar variety of the human species which once ex- 

 tended over Africa and probably reached into Asia. They 

 have many childish traits, their skeltons are in various 

 respects undevelojoed, and they may be regarded as a race 

 of human beings which has undergone permanent arrest 

 of evolution. 



This was also the conclusion to which H. Panckow ar- 



rives, in an article published in the Journal of the Bei'lin 

 Gesellschaft fiir Erdkunde, in 18^2. He claims that an 

 original diversity is proved by such traits as the color of 

 the skin, the develoj)ment of the gluteal muscles, the 

 smallness of the hands and feet, etc. 



It must be said, however, that these peculiarities are 

 only somewhat greater in degree than those of the Bush- 

 men, the Lapps and other diminutive races; and it is not 

 yet necessary to demand for the African dwarfs an origin 

 different from that of the rest of the human race. 

 Further on the "Hittite" Question. 



In Science, May 26, I referred to some recent studies 

 about the so-called "Hittites," or rather, once so- called, 

 but so no longer. The Hittites, as real people, are now 

 determined to have been a Semitic tribe, speaking a dia- 

 lect not remote from that of Phenicia. They are not the 

 people who wrote the mysterious inscriptions in syllabic 

 characters which still so puzzle the antiquary. These are 

 now referred to as "Pseudo-Hittites," or as before said, 

 Cbaldi. 



Their language is still unclassified. M. Menant claimed 

 to have fixed two of its words, kar, a fortress; and sarou, 

 king; but these are Semitic, so he was off the track. Pro- 

 fessor Sayce, in the edition of his "Comparative Phil- 

 ology," published last year, asserts that it "belongs to 

 the Alarodian grouj) of speech, of which the Georgian 

 may be taken as an example;" but Professor Sayce's iden- 

 tifications and translations (J') of the Vannic inscriptions 

 have been treated with small respect by the latest stu- 

 dents. 



Among such students may be named Lehman, Belck 

 and Nikolsky. The last-mentioned has printed twenty- 

 two Chaldic inscriptions with attempted renderings, in 

 the Proceedings of the Moscow Archteological Society. 

 It is claimed that these determine positively several 

 words, such as ainei, stone; inili, palace; tiini, named; and 

 a few more. One of the most important inscriptions is 

 that of the styla of Eusas at Toprakaleh, which promises 

 to yield its contents to persistent study. 



The present tendency seems to be to regard the Chaldi 

 as of Indo-Germanic origin, probably immigrants from 

 Europe, and their culture largely self- developed. Leh- 

 mann, in the last number of the Zeitgchrift fur Ethnologie, 

 gives the credit of first broaching this theory to Profes- 

 sor Puchstein. 



Anthropoloqy in Rome. 



It is a gratifying evidence of the scientific activity 

 which prevails in Italy, that in June last the Societa 

 Romana di Antropologia was founded at Rome, with a 

 membership of about one hundred founders. The aim of 

 the Society is broad, anthropology being understood in 

 its true sense as the science of man in all departments of 

 his nature. The announcement therefore states that the 

 jjublications of the Society will embrace papers of the 

 physical traits of man; his origin and pre-history; his an- 

 cient migrations; arts and social relations; the ethnic in- 

 fluence of peoples on each other; collective and ethnic 

 psychology and pathology; and the physical and mental 

 education of tribes and nations. The Society is not con- 

 fined to citizens of Rome, but intends to include those in- 

 terested in these studies throughoLit Italy. 



The President is Professor Giuseppe Sergi, the distin- 

 guished teacher of anthropology in the University of 

 Rome; and among the members are Dr. Augelo Colini, 

 docent in ethnology in the same University; Dr. L. 

 Moschen, docent in anthropology; Dr. E. Raseri, docent 

 in statistical demography, in the same; Dr. E. Brizio, pro- 

 fessor of archteology in the University of Bologna; Dr. V. 

 Grossi, docent in American ethnology in the University 

 of Genoa; Dr. A. Zuccarelli, professor of criminal anthro- 



