Further researches and observations on the two principal forms of ancient British skulls : with tables of measurements / by John Thurnam.

  • John Thurnam
Date:
[1867]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Further researches and observations on the two principal forms of ancient British skulls : with tables of measurements / by John Thurnam. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    40/52 page 28
    ON THE TWO FORMS OF This table should bo compared with that at page 10, for the round-barrow skulls, and that at page 10, for the long-barrow ones. An examination of the three shows how remarkably they differ; the long and round-barrow skulls crowding around the high and the low figures respectively, while the Basques gravitate almost entirely to the intermediate and central figures. But, though not typically dolichocephalic, the Basque crania, as compared with those of Europe generally, and especially with those of France, are relatively dolichocephalic; and no- thing is more striking than the very small proportion of brachycephalous skulls which are found in the series. Accord- ing to the high authority of Professor Virchow, two at least of the brachycephalous skulls of the series owe their brachy- cephaly to synostosis of the transverse sutures.* They are probably the skulls of a decidedly mixed, though originally dolichocephalic, people ; the original type having been modified by a moderate brachycephalous infusion, continued through many generations. It has already been shown from my measurements, [ante p. 23), that, as in other modern Europeans, the mean vertical diameter of these Basque skulls falls decidedly below the trans- verse. The reverse, as I have shown, is the case in the long- barrow dolichocephali.* I still adhere to the opinion that the tendency to a dolicepha- lous type in the Basques is derived from the ancient Iberians; and that the brachycephalous admixture is Gaulish. More evidence as to this, it is to be hoped, may be derived from * “ Two of the Basque skulls belonging to the Anthropological Society of Paris, have been described as unusually brachycephalic; but it will be found that they both exhibit a premature ossification of the transverse sutures. The Basque skull is eminently dolichocephalic, and in this respect it re- sembles the ancient crania which are found in the oldest tumuli of North- eastern Germany.”—Prof. Virchow, at “The Anthropological Congress of Paris of 1867,” Med. Times and Gazette, 7th March, 1868. + M. Broca’s vertical diameter is a basilo-bregmatic one, and differs entirely from that generally employed by cranioscopists. My “ greatest-height” is taken, as usual, between the plain of the foramen magnum and the bregma, or vertex, of the skull, a little behind the point of junction between the sagittal and coronal sutures.
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