190 THE HUMAN S?BCIBS. 



still bore testimony to the ancient intermixture with the black 

 Colchians mentioned by Herodotus. 



To the west of Persia, the Chna or Canaanites, and Ethio- 

 pian Arabs, before the inroads of the Giant Scytbic horsemen, 

 appear to have belonged to the same family (if nations, extend- 

 ing northward to the Colchians before named. To this day 

 there remains a clan of crisp-haired Arabs on the Hieromax, 

 east of the Lake of Tiherias, with Mongolic features, by profes- 

 sion graziers, and, like the Hottentots, destitute of horses. To 

 the west, in Africa, exclusive of the basis of the ancient Egyptian 

 population, these abnormal tribes appear again to recur in the 

 Hottentots, Bushwanas, Boshemans, and probably Dokkos, who 

 may be the pigmies of ancient fable. Certain it is, that Hebra- 

 isms and Semitic words, in proper names, &c, are abundant, 

 from the mouth of the Nile to the Cape of Good Hope. Thus, 

 the Indian Parbatia, Naga tribes, as well as the African Bush- 

 wanas, have all indications of a remote intermixture with the 

 Mongolic races; and this character is retained in the earlier 

 forms of their idols, always represented with crisped hair, 

 oblique eyes, and ears detached from the side of the head ; 

 and it may, perhaps, be traced in another direction, among the 

 swarthy Kirguise. 



THE ATURIAN PALTAS OR FLATHEADS OF SOUTH AMERICA. 



Of all abnormal nations, the most singular were those Flat- 

 heads of South America, whose bones and skulls now remain- 

 ing furnish the only proof that a people with such strange 

 conformation of the cranium have positively existed, and if we 

 could now ascertain to what extent they likewise differed from 

 the other typical forms of man, in the physiological conditions of 

 structure of the softer parts ; such, for example, as the peculiar 

 epiderais which Monsieur Flourens ascribes to the whole red 

 race o { America ; a quality which they, as the most normal of 



