as to equal the Flathead Indian monstrosities which have been so often described. Fortunately, these barbarous customs are rare among the civilized peoples which it is our province to discuss. Their absence, however, can not be ascribed to inability to modify the shape of the head; rather does it seem to be due to the lack of appreciation that any racial differences exist, which may be exaggerated for social effect or racial distinction.
Another equally important guarantee that the head form is primarily the expression of racial differences alone, lies in its immunity from all disturbance from physical environment. As will be shown subsequently, the color of the hair and eyes, and stature especially, are open to modification by local circumstances; so that racial peculiarities are often obscured or entirely reversed by them. On the other hand, the general proportions of the head seem to be uninfluenced either by climate, by food supply or economic status, or by habits of life; so that they stand as the clearest exponents which we possess of the permanent hereditary differences within the human species.[1] Ranke, of Munich, with Virchow, the leader of anthropological science in Germany, has long advocated a theory that there is some natural relation between broad-headedness and a mountainous habitat. He was led to this view by the remarkable Alpine localization, which we shall speedily point out, of the brachycephalic race of Europe. Our map of the world, with other culminations of this type in the Himalayan plateau of Asia, in the Rocky Mountains, and the Andes, may seem to corroborate this view. Nevertheless, all attempts to trace any connection in detail between the head form and the habitat have utterly failed. For this reason we need not stop to refute it by citing volumes of evidence to the contrary, as we might.[2] Our explanation for this peculiar geographical phenomenon, which ascribes it to a racial selective process alone, is fully competent to account for the fact. The environment is still a factor for us of great moment, but its action is merely indirect. In the present state of our knowledge, then, we seem to be justified in ruling out environment once and for all as a direct modifier of the shape of the head.
Having disposed of both artificial selection and environment as possible modifiers of the head form, nothing remains to be eliminated except the element of chance variation. This last is
- ↑ For a curiously old-fashioned statement of the exact opposite of this view, see A. H. Keane's Ethnology, recently published by Macmillan, pp. 43 and 177. There is one custom which is effective. The peoples who use hard cradles or wooden pillows for infants' use are undoubtedly modified in head form by it. This is a disturbing factor in the Americas, and to some extent in parts of Europe.
- ↑ This theory is best stated in J. Ranke, Beiträge zur physischen Anthropologie der Bayern, Part I, chap. ii, p. 75 seq.
