CUAiiIA BRITANNICA. [CHAP. IV. CHAP. IV.] DISTOUTIONS OE THE SKULL. 35
m
CHAPTER IV.
DISTORTIONS OE THE SKULL.
TH.U. is a — subject, which has received a good deal of attention «^late year. ^
extortion of tJ. — n^ostly hy art, .no^ying and
.yn^nretrical shape in a wonderful .^d frequently w y fantastic ma^er, " ^ ^
I n T o tie learned Peruvian traveller, Dr. Tschudi's, views may necessarily unpart to thc^m a
¡ r i l r tlge S^iousnes s than we are Justified in doing; for it is difficult to wr.te . precisely
which he designates that of an Asiatic Macroccphalus the h.s- plate nor I
tory of which was not well ascertained. He received rt from t H. N., hb. vi. cap.
Russia, with the account that it was probably the cranium of a
correct terms of supposed abnormal distortions, which are in reality natural conformations ;
whereas the author's language ia relation to them is quite positive and unhesitating. Dr.
Tschudi teUs us that he has examined many Peruvian mummies of tender age of the Huanca
race or nation presenting the elongated form of the head, without ever meeting with marks or
apparatus of pressure, and that even childi-en unborn exhibit the same configuration. Ho refers
to the body of a foetus obtained from the abdomen of the mummy of a pregnant woman found in
a cave at Iluichay, two leagues from Tarma in Peru, in his collection. Professor Outrepont,
a celebrated obstetrician, has decided that it is of about the sixth month of intra-uterine life.
It is fio'ured in the rich Atlas to the work of Don Rivero and Dr. Tschudi* ; and the latter
regards it as a decisive proof against the partisans for mechanical action, being the sole and
exclusive cause of the phrenological form of the Peruvian race. The lithograph of this
desiccated foetus represents it so as only to give a front view of the head, inverted. The frontal
suture is persistent in nearly the whole of its course, and the parietal bones are seen at the
sides of and below the frontal, projecting at least half an inch beyond the coronal sutm-e.
The head certainly presents a flattened form, elongated in the direction backwards, but it is to
be regretted that no careful figure of the skuU is given in profile. Wliether such form might
not have been imparted by compression of the maternal body seems a Uttle imcertain. The
following Plate is described as presenting the mummy of a child of the Opas Indians in the
Museum at Luna of the natm-al size, seen in front and in profile, and is referred to in the text
as affording similar proof of Dr. Tschudi's positiont. The two figures of this Plate, however,
one in front and the other in profile, and both presenting heads extremely elongated backwards,
have every appearance of having been drawn from two distinct subjects. As an evidence of the
exaggeration of this unusual, if we may not say, unnatm-al form, it may be stated that the
length of the head in the lithograph seen in front (Lamina VI. a.) from the tip of the chin to
the fine terminating the occiput, is four inches, whilst the greatest depth of the head in the side
view, from the sagittal sutuie to the neighbourhood of the foramen magnum, is only two inches ;
and the breadth of the top of the head, which presents almost an exact parallelogram, for more
than one-half of the extent exhibited, or an inch and a half, is two inches and two-tenths.
Without disparaging the accuracy of Dr. Tschudi's observations, we may well desire further
evidence before we admit unreservedly such extraordinary forms of the head as these to be
natural, and consent again to entertain doubts whether these fantastic shapes are not always the
result of art and manipulation!.
At length, researches made in the ancient cemeteries of the Eastern continent have brought
to light a number of examples of crania presenting distorted forms, and which have undergone
compression. Probably one of the earliest receiving proper attention after Blumenbach's was
the skull found in the year 1820 at Eeuersbrunn near Grafenegg in Austria, in a field under
cultivation. It exhibits a remarkable form, the frontal bone being considerably depressed from
above the frontal sinus to near the coronal suture, where there is a iwominent ridge. It feU
into the hands of Count von Brenner, the owner of the lordship, who referred it to the Avars, a
* Antigiiedndcs Pcrnanas, Lamina VI,, 1851.
t Ibid. Lamina VI. a.
t Dr. Morton, only a few weeks before his lamented, and
for the science of Ethnology, untimely death, reiterated in the
strongest terms his conclusive conviction, the result of his most
extended observation and inquiry, that art alone caused the
distortions of the skull we are here treating of. See his communication
on the " Physical Type of the American Indians"
in Schoolcraft's History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian
Tribes of the United States, ii. p. 326, 1852.
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