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its origin in Elephantine. So much for the Ethiopians. As to the Syro-Arabs, there is no doubt they had a very small nasal index, since that of recent Arabs is only 45.57, and that of Syrians 45.87. There remain the Lybian and Berber peoples, who established themselves in the Delta during the XIXth Dynasty, and who later, under Psammetik, gave a dynasty to Egypt. It is admitted that these peoples have a remarkably low nasal index. Broca measured ten Kabyle (Berber) skulls that had an index of 44.28, and some Guanches, who belonged to the same race, had an index of 44.25.

At the XIth Dynasty (2821-2778 B.C.), after the Dynasty of Elephantine, which was the VIth, and which lasted for over two hundred years, the index rose to 48.43. Under the XVIIIth Dynasty (1587-1327 B.C.), which followed close the long domination of Syro-Arab pastoral kings, it was maintained at 48.77; under the dynasties that followed, until the Macedonian period, it descended to 47.28. These are insignificant oscillations, and quite as insignificant is the change which has followed the Arab conquest of the seventh century, as the existing Kopts have an index of 47.15. One sees then, that if the mixtures of races have been able to exercise a slight influence on the nasal index of the Egyptians, this influence has only been temporary.

MEAN NASAL INDEX OF EGYPTIANS AT VARIOUS PERIODS.

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The persistence of the nasal index has not been less re

markable among the peoples who, from the most remote periods, have occupied the soil of France.

For the Mammoth Period, Broca has only two skulls from Eyzies, whose indices were 48.98 and 45.09. The mean index of these would be 47, but, as Broca points out, the true average index is the index of the means and not the mean of the indices; as the nasal heights in these cases were 24 and 22 (mean 23), and the breadths 51 and 49 (mean 50), the index of the means is 46.

The neolithic series is not homogeneous, but we may conclude that the peoples of the Polished-Stone Age, so far as is known, were leptorhine.

MEAN NASAL INDEX OF ANCIENT AND MODERN POPULATIONS OF FRANCE.

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The low index remains constant through the Bronze Age. The fifteen Gaulish skulls of the Iron Age measured by Broca belonged to at least a century before the conquest by Cæsar. The Roman invasion did not modify the index.

Most of the Merovingian skulls came from a cemetery at Chelles. The interment belonged to somewhat different dates, but it is probable that most of the skulls belong to the second half of the seventh century. Eleven more ancient skulls, that were found in a lower layer, have a mean index of 51.52; the more recent series of forty-four

skulls average 48.83; the total mean of the Chellian skulls being 49.36. The nasal index of some Merovingian skulls found at Champlieu descends to 47.58.

Amid all these variations one fact shines clear, that in all the Merovingian graves the nasal index is markedly above that of the earlier populations of France. The Franks then brought to the country, which received its name from them, a new nasal type. In any case it is certain that the Franks had a nasal index of over 48, consequently they were not leptorhine like the people of Western Europe, but mesorhine like the Mongolic peoples. They belonged to the whiteskinned, fair-haired, Teutonic race, but must be regarded as a distinct variety of it. There is no reason to believe that we have here traces of those remnants of the mesorhinic hordes of Attila who fled towards Pannonia.

Wherever they came from, or however they acquired their nose, the arrival of the Franks augmented in a marked manner the mean nasal index of the population of Southern Gaul.

We will now follow the modifications of the nasal index in later periods. Under the three Frankish kings Paris became the capital of Neustria. The aristocratic class congregated there and were so numerous as to escape better than elsewhere the effects of mixture. In the twelfth century the mean nasal index of the Parisians was still mesorhinic, but it had already descended from 48.87, the mean number of the Merovingians, to 48.25—an index that is nearly leptorhine. In the succeeding centuries it continued to diminish, and at present it has returned to the figure (46.81) that it had before the Frankish period, and the influence of the foreign race has now disappeared from the mean nasal index.

Concerning the nasal bones it may be noted that among

the white races they are usually arched and prominent; among the yellow races, the Malays, and the Negroes, they are flat. They are often, in addition, short and very broad among the Negroes, and frequently long and narrow among

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The Lower Border of the Apertura Pyriformis of Orang-Utan; from Hovorka. the Chinese. The bridge of the nose is almost always flat in infants, and, as we have just seen, it usually remains so in the lower races, and it frequently also persists in this condition in women of higher races.

Lastly, I must draw attention to the variations that occur in the lower margin of the apertura pyriformis.

In the apes the floor of the nasal cavity passes insensibly on to the surface of the upper jaw, and there is consequently no definite inferior border to the nasal aperture. This condition may obtain among human skulls, and it is known by the name of simian groove.

Of more frequent occurrence than the last is the condition which is characteristic of the human infant, in which the floor of the nasal chamber passes by a variable but distinct angle on to the surface of the maxilla. This is termed the forma infantilis.

The characteristic human condition is that in which the lower border of the pyriform aperture is formed by a distinct thin ridge which sharply cuts off the floor of the nasal cavity from the alveolar portion of the maxilla. This is the forma anthropina.

In some skulls there is a pair of depressions immediately external to the lower border of the apertura pyriformis. These are known as the fossa prenasales.

FIG. 15.

The Four Types of the Lower Border of the Apertura Pyriformis in Man; from Hovorka.

a. Forma Anthropina (Lower Austrian, 30 years old); b. Fossæ Prenasales (Bavarian, 49 years old); c. Forma Infantilis (child, 31⁄2 years old); d. Simian Groove (Javanese, 28 years old).

It frequently happens that a skull with a forma infantilis may be transitional between the simian groove on the one hand or between a forma prenasalis or a forma anthropina on the other. No well-defined limits separate these various conditions.

Hovorka' gives the following statistics concerning the distribution of these varieties among various peoples:

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1 O. Hovorka (Edl. von Zderas), Die Aussere Nase, eine anatomisch-anthropologische Studie, Vienna, 1893. (This paper contains an extensive bibliography.)

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