On the three periods known as the Iron, the Bronze, and the Stone Ages / by Professor Rolleston.

  • Rolleston, George, 1829-1881.
Date:
[1879?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the three periods known as the Iron, the Bronze, and the Stone Ages / by Professor Rolleston. 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.

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    of the pai'ietals, so that a veiy marked undulation is formed at the line of meeting of the two bones. The I’elation of inferiority held by the height to the breadth of the skull is ]>robably merely a sexual character ; the vertical contour being eminently that of the dolichocephalic type of skulls, whilst the smallness of the mastoid, the slightness of the supi-a-orbital ridges, and the feebleness of the lower jaw, shew what the characters of the limb and trunk bones also show, viz., that the owner of this skeleton was a woman. This woman had lost the second molar of the left half of her upper jaw some time before the evolution of the wisdom teeth of the lower jaw of the same side, and probably not very long after the evolution of the second molar of the same side of the lower jaw. The first molar of the right half of the upper jaw had been similarly lost early in life; the second molar next to it was largely excavated, and the wisdom tooth on to which that carious cavity’’ opened had an abscess at its fangs. The lower jaw teeth, though all sound except the left second pre-molar, are much crowded together. It is not clear that the wisdom tooth of the left upper jaw was ever develoj)ed. Six abnormalities is a large 2>roportion in the dental series of a woman who was not much beyond thirty’^ years of ago. The slightness and straightness of the collar bones; the hori- zontal direction of the neck of the femur ; the characters of the os iiutominatum and other bones, show the skeleton to have belonged to a woman of about thirty’ y’ears of age, or a little over that age. The suture between the first and second vertebra of the sacrum is widely, but not syunmetrically ojien, and its 2>!^tency’with a greater width on the left than on the right side, must be con- sidered iis due to some morbid 2^1‘ocess. All the sutures and ejii- physes of the limbs are closed and anchylosed; So also are, to a great extent, the sagittal and lambdoid sutures in the skull. The charactei's of the facial bones, such as those of the elevation of the nasal bones, and the j)ro2)ortions indicated by the measurements, show that this Roma no-British lady may’ have deserved the }>raise