THE PRIMITIVE MAX OF NEBRASKA 



321 



rapidly through the permeable soil, and would leach the bones but 

 little. 



The limb bones are massive and large, indicating a stature of 

 six feet, and uncommonly rough, indicating a people who were very 

 muscular, particularly in the lower extremities. The strikingly 

 large protuberances support this view. The crania are low-browed 

 with heavy protruding superciliary ridges, and receding foreheads 

 which lack frontal eminences. In life these people had flat heads, 

 protruding muzzles, large chins, and heavy brows, shading eyes 

 deep set and close together. The low-browed crania are not the 

 result of head-binding, nor are they those of idiots, nor are they 

 malformed. Instead they are normal, and represent the cranial 

 development of the time. Though showing many points of simi- 

 larity as well as differences, on the whole they seem inferior to the 

 mound builder, and we may for the present at least consider the 

 Nebraska Man as a very early or degenerate mound builder. In 

 corroboration are the crude flint implements or chips, whichever 

 they are, associated with the bones, and the mode of burial in 

 mounds. 



After carefully comparing these skulls with known skulls in his 

 collection, Dr. M. H. Everett, who has studied the mound builder 

 in various states, pronounces the five skulls as being at least as 

 ancient as the mound builder, which he takes them to be. 



Several bones were deeply gnawed by rodents, one or 

 more appear to have been hacked or scraped by some flint 

 blade, and a couple are interesting pathologically. One of these 

 is a broken ulna which had knit together without surgical aid, and 

 the other is a case of exostosis between two lumbar vertebrae, 

 which have become co-ossified. A stellate fracture of the skull 

 near the temple tells of a tragedy and the roughened surface be- 

 neath and around the fracture indicates the subsequent inflamma- 

 tory abscess and a lingering death. The two sacra show peculiar- 

 ities, interesting though not unique, the one having a neural arch 

 over vertebrae one, two, and three; the other having no neural 

 arch throughout the five co-ossified vertebrae. There are peculi- 

 arities and variations in the individual bones which ought to be 

 noted, but such detailed considerations belong properly to a more 



