manner, the blending of dissimilar stocks has produced the modified
race so favorably known in the modern Madjar.
For the only skull I possess of this race I am indebted to Prof.
Retzius, of Stockholm. It is that of a.woman from the parish of
Kerni, in Finland. It has all the characteristics of an unmixed European
head, and measures eighty-six cubic inches of internal capacity1'.
T h e P elasgic R ace. — Every one knows that the Pelasgic tribes
were the aboriginal inhabitants of Greece; that they, in the progress
of time, and for u n o own reasons, changed their name to Hellenes,
and were thus the ancestors of the Greeks..
_ The Pelasgic occupation of Greece ascends into “ the night of
time. They may be regarded as the indigenous possessors,-the
autocthones of the soil. Indeed there is reason to believe that there
was a civilization in Pelasgia long before that which history attributes
to the Hellenic race, though generally attributed to the progenitors
of that people; for a priest of Sais assured Solon (b. c. 400) that the
Saitic writings accounted for an antecedent Grecian epoch of 8000
years; and that Greece had moreover possessed a great and beautiful
city yet 1000 years earlier in time.*
Statements of this kind, which were once rejected on account of
their seeming extravagance, now claim 7.a respectful notice when
viewed in connexion with the new ljghts of. chronology. We are,
indeed, compelled to acknowledge a great antiquity for a race that
could produce the divine morality of Hesiod 900 years before Christ.
I do not use the, term Pelasgic with ethnological precision, but in
this designation place the Greeks and Romans, and their descendants
in various parts of Europe— Greece and Italy, and, in more isolated
examples, in Spain, France, and Britain. In the same category I
place the Persians, Armenians, Circassians, Georgians, and m a n y
other kindred tribes, together with the Graeco-Egyptians.
Of four adult Circassian crania brought me by Mr. Gliddon, two
are male and two female. The former we may suppose, from appearances,
to have been associated with a full share of manly beauty, and
measure ninety and ninety-four cubic inches of internal capacity; the
female heads measure seventy-nine and eighty; whence we obtain
eighty-six cubic inches as the mean of all. One of these skulls, that
of a woman who had passed the prime of life, is remarkable for the
harmony of its proportions, and especially for the admirable conformation
of the nasal bones.
I possess, through the kindness of Mr. Gliddon, two female Parsee
skulls, which, though small, present a beautiful form. One measures
eighty-nine cubic inches, the other only seventy-five.
. * See the Timseus of Plato. Taylor’s Trans, ii. p. 466. The accurate Niebuhr remarks
that, “ in very remotfe times the Peloponnesus was not Grecian.”
It is a highly interesting fact, that whenever the ruling caste is represented
in the statues and bas-reliefs of ancient Persia, the physiognomy
always conforms to the Pelasgic type. A remarkable example
is seen in the head of the first Darius (b . c. 500), sculptured on the
Tablet of Behistun, and copied by Major Rawlinson. [Supra, Fig.
44]. Of the same character are the antique heads of Persepolis,
Teheran and Chapoor. But we no sooner enter Assyria than the
type is wholly changed for those in which the Semitic features are
dominant, as seen at îsTineveh, Khorsabad, and other places.
The arts have beqome the'handmaid of ethnology ; and it may be
regarded as an axiom in this science, that the older the sculptures and
paintings, the more perfect and distinctive are the cranial types they
represent. Again, there is no evidence to prove that any one of the
ancient races, simply as such, is older than another.
Of four adult Armenian skulls, three pertain to men ; and the average
size of the brain is but eighty-three cubic inches. I have felt
some hesitancy in admitting these skulls in this place, for two reasons
: 1st, because their characteristics incline almost as much to the
Arab type as to the Pelasgic; and, 2dly, because the term Armenian
is not always used in a strictly national sense in the East, but is applied
to a class of merchants, whose ethnological affinities must be
often very mixed and uncertain. But, inasmuch as these crania are
inserted in my original Table, I will not now displace them.
Greek and Græeo-Egyptian Heads. — Mr. Combe describes several
ancient Greek skulls he had seen, as of large. size, with a full development
of the coronal and frontal regions. The head, in classic
sculpture, is often, small in comparison with the whole figure ; whence
the remark that a woman proportioned like the Venus de Medicis
would necessarily be a fool. The same disparity has been noticed by
Winkelmann in the Farnese Hercules ; but in the Apollo Belvidere,
[infra, Fig. 339] the perfect type of manly beauty, the head is faultless.
Whether this smallness of head was a reality among the Greeks, or
only a conventional rule of art, has been a disputed question ; but we
may safely adopt the latter proposition. There can be no doubt, however,
that the ancient Pelasgic was smaller than the modern Teutonic
brain ; and the proofs, which are derived, not from Greece itself, but
from Egypt, áre contained in the following section :
Of 129 embalmed heads in my collection, 22 present Pelasgic characters,
1 and of these 18 are capable of measurement. Some of them
present the most beautiful Caucasian proportions, while others merge
by degrees into the Egyptian type ; and I am free to admit that, in
various instances, I have been at a loss in my attempts to classify
these two great divisions of the ïulotic series. Hence it is that nine
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