Celtic skull found at Hallstadt as dolichocephalic and orthognathic, with the incisor and molar teeth entirely worn down, and the frontal bone much inclined backwards.[1] The crania found in Lower Austria, near Grafenegg, and afterwards at Atzgersdorf, with depressed foreheads, were regarded as those of Avares; but their very abnormal form, resembling that of the Peruvian skulls, and which may also be traced in the fragments of cranial bones from the Crimea, described by v. Rathke and K. Meyer,[2] has been produced by artificial means.[3] In many instances, also, in which human bones, taken as the oldest traces of the existence of our race on the earth, have been found intermixed with those of extinct animals, they have exhibited an undeveloped primitive form of the cranium. Among the crania collected by Schlotheim in the gypsum caves near Köstritz, Link found one with a remarkably flattened forehead. In a bone-cavern in Brazil, Lund discovered human crania mixed with the bones of extinct animals, in which the forehead receded on a level with the face—a formation which is also represented in ancient Mexican pictures. In the rocky caverns of the Peruvian Andes, Castelnau discovered, under the same conditions, human crania of a similar strongly retrocedent, elongated form. A cranium found, together with fossil bones of animals, in the cavern of Engis, near Lüttich, is described by Schmerling as being elongated, with a slightly elevated and narrow frontal bone, and a form of the orbits more approaching that of the Negro than of the European. In the cavern of Chauvaux, near Namur, among numerous fragments of human bones, the half of a cranium was found, in which the forehead was so retrocedent, and the alveolar arches so prominent, that the facial angle was not more than 70°. Rasoumovsky's statements respecting the supposed fossil skulls of the Mount Calvary, near Baden, which have been compared sometimes with that of the Negro, sometimes with the Caribbean skull, have been corrected by Fitzinger, who agrees with Hyrtl in regarding the crania, according to Retzius' description of the Czechen-skull, as Sclavonic.[4]
In a report of the meeting of German naturalists and physicians, held at Tübingen, in 1853, published in the German and foreign periodicals, Fraas is reported to have exhibited a petrified human skull from the Swabian Alps, of an elongated form, with prominent jaw, worn teeth, retrocedent forehead, large frontal sinuses, and strongly developed
- ↑ Jahrb. d. K. K. Geologischen Reichanstalt. Wien, 1850. I., p. 352.
- ↑ Müll. Arch., 1850, p. 513., taf. xiv. and xv. [Vid. also, on the subject of these macrocephalic skulls, a recent, learned memoir by K. E. v. Baer: "Die Makrokephalen im Boden der Krym und Osterreichs," &c. (In Mém. de l'Acad. de St. Petersbourg, tome ii. No. 6. 1860.)]
- ↑ Fitzinger, Sitzungsb. d. K. Ak. d. Wissensch. Math. Naturer, Kl. vii., B. 1851., p. 271.
- ↑ Denkschr. d. k. Akad. d. Wissensch. Wien, 1853. V.
