Skullcap

“ I think that the ape-like form of the skullcap and its capacity, too small for a man, can not be brought to harmonize with such a conception. Even Cunningham, who has examined the skull, and is convinced that it is human, finds that its ape-like characters greatly predominate, and that there is nothing human about it except its excessive size for an ape. ”

“ This headdress consists of a kind of metal skullcap, as often made of gold as of silver, fitting closely at the temples and embellished at these points with a pair of spiral ornaments. Over this is worn a cap of white or light blue lace, having a so-called “tail piece” dangling down the back of the neck like the scoop of a fireman’s helmet. ”

“ Now, on the one hand, human bones have never been recognized below the Middle Pleistocene, much less as low as the Tertiary, and, on the other, but few remains of apes have been found, and these are much smaller, more significant, and by no means as human in character as the skullcap in question. ”

“ Their want of attraction is increased by the state of filth they wallow in. The men are clothed in a sort of loose tunic of dark brown woollen, felt leggings wound round by garters, and felt boots with leathern feet. These are large canoe-shaped things, having no reference to the size or shape of the foot, but are wadded with old shreds and woollen rags to make them fit. A close-fitting skullcap, with an upturned rim, crowns their greasy heads. Then, the females—can they be the fair sex, these hideous specimens of creation human? ”

“ In contrast to this more refined skull, the extremely broad and low face of the man is entirely disproportionate to the moderately broad forehead and well rounded skullcap; the breadth of the face is 153 mm. and exceeds the greatest width of the skull, which is only 144 mm. This is a markedly disharmonic type, the width of the face being due not only to the broad upper jaw but to the exceptional size and breadth of the cheek-bones. The skull is decidedly dolichocephalic, the cephalic index being 74 per cent; the brain capacity is about 1,500 c.cm. ”

“ Public schools are secular. In March, the Government passed legislation that will prohibit public school employees and students from wearing conspicuous religious symbols, including the Muslim headscarf, the Jewish skullcap, and large crosses; the legislation is scheduled to take effect during the 2004-2005 school year. Religious instruction is not given in public schools, but religious facts are taught as part of the history curriculum. Parents may home-school children for religious reasons, but all schooling must conform to the standards established for public schools. ”

“ They almost all wear the white garment coming down to the knee, with of course a sash round the waist, and sleeves reaching down to the elbow or an inch or two below it. Some wear turbans, but the majority simply skullcaps. ”

“ This cap has part of its curves—those behind the head approximating too closely to the curve of the skull: in fact, at the hinder part it is a skull-cap; whereas, the other part of the curves in front are too much in opposition to the outline of the face: they bend over and form an unpleasant contrast with the nose and chin: they are deficient in the shade or visor, and there is not one man in a thousand whose face they suit. All fancy-caps with whalebone, falling tops, angular projections, &c., are utterly abominate ”

“ The undoubted “osseous remains” of pleistocene man are few. Burial was not practised, and the few bones found are for the most part those which have by mere chance been preserved in caves or rock-shelters. Of these the three chief “finds,” in order of probable age, are the Trinil (Java) brain-cap, the lowest human skull yet described, characterized by depressed cranial arch, with a cephalic index of 70; the Neanderthal (Germany) skull, remarkable for its flat retreating curve with an index of 73-76 ”

“ The skull, like that of the Canstadt type, is dolichocephalic, but in all other respects totally different. The brow-ridges and generally bestial characters have disappeared; the brain is of fair or even large capacity; the stature tall; the forehead fairly high and well-rounded; the face large; the nose straight, the jaws prognathous, and the chin prominent.
This type is found in a number of localities, especially in the south-west of France, Belgium, and Italy, and it continued through the quaternary into the neolithic period, being found in the caves of the reindeer age, and in the dolmens. ”

“ The skull is mesocephalous, with an index of about 82; the forehead of good size, round and prominent; the face rather short, and often quadrilateral. The nose is somewhat broad, with rounded tip and nostrils, often short, and, when not straight, as is most common, is as frequently convex as concave. The eyes are large, horizontal, and placed widely apart, with black pupils and muddy yellow sclerotic; and the lips, which are well-formed and neither excessively prominent nor thick, are kept closed when at rest, and cover teeth strong though irregular and often stained from use of tobacco. ”

“ These skulls represent creatures as far apart, I was about to say, as gods and bears. The "Engis skull," with its full frontal brain-pan, its fine lines, and its splendidly arched dome, tells us of ages of cultivation and development in some favored center of the race; while the horrible and beast-like proportions of "the Neanderthal skull" speak, with no less certainty, of undeveloped, brutal, savage man, only a little above the gorilla in capacity;--a prowler, a robber, a murderer, a cave-dweller, a cannibal, a Cain. ”

“ Skulls, however, have been obtained not only from peat, but from tumuli of the stone period believed to be contemporaneous with the mounds. These skulls are small and round, and have a prominent ridge over the orbits of the eyes, showing that the ancient race was of small stature, with round heads and overhanging eyebrows,—in short, they bore a considerable resemblance to the modern Laplanders. The human skulls of the bronze age found in the Danish peat, and those of the iron period, are of an elongated form and larger size. ”

“ Round the summit were upward of seventy raised poles about four feet apart, connected by numerous rows of cross-poles passed through holes in the masts, on each of which five skulls were filed, the sticks being passed through the temples. In the centre stood two towers, or columns, made of skulls and lime, the face of each skull being turned outwards, and giving a horrible appearance to the whole. This effect was heightened by leaving the heads of distinguished captives in their natural state, with hair and skin on. ”

“ We do not know what influences alter the shape of the skull, just as we do not know why people of British descent in the Darling region of Australia (“Cornstalks”) grow exceptionally tall, or why in New England their jaw-bones seem to become slighter and their teeth in consequence rather crowded. Even in Neolithic times dolichocephalic and brachycephalic skulls are found in the same group of remains and often buried together, and that is true of most peoples to-day. Some peoples, such as the mountain people of central Europe, have more brachycephalic individuals per cent. than others ”

“ Busk have stated, this skull is the most brutal of all known human skulls, resembling those of the apes not only in the prodigious development of the superciliary prominences and the forward extension of the orbits, but still more in the depressed form of the brain-case, in the straightness of the squamosal suture, and in the complete retreat of the occiput forward and upward, from the superior occipital ridges. ”

“ Ten skulls from Halsaflieni in Malta have cephalic indices running from 66 to 75.1, the average being 71.84. Of a series of 44 skulls from the rock-tombs of the Petit Morin in France, 12 had an index of over 80, 22 were between 75 and 80, and 10 were below 75. But in the dolmens of Lozère distinctly broad skulls were frequent. A series of British neolithic skulls, mostly from barrows, ran from 67 to 77.
The builders of the megalithic monuments thus belonged in the main to a fairly dolichocephalic race or races, for the large majority of [131] the skulls measured are of a long-headed type. ”

“ Everyone in the habit of making post-mortem examinations knows how much the skull-cap differs in thickness in different persons and in different parts of the same skull. In old persons it is often in some parts not thicker than a shilling, owing to absorption of the diploë. ”

“ The modern theory of the acoustic purpose of the skulls fades as we trace the custom to more remote times. A small chamber in the belfry of Elsdon church, Northumberland, appeared to have been built specially to contain three horse skulls, which had lain piled against each other for hundreds of years [1229] . The masons of old time doubtless imagined that the skulls would make the tones of the bells more resonant, but, “lulled in the countless chambers of the brain” there must have been almost-forgotten memories of these traditional talismans. ”

“ It is, in fact, a fair average human skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage.
The case of the Neanderthal skull is very different. Under whatever aspect we view this cranium, whether we regard its vertical depression, the enormous thickness of its supraciliary ridges, its sloped occiput, or its long and straight squamosal suture, we meet with ape-like characters, stamping it as the most pithecoid of human crania yet discovered. ”

“ They show that the receding forehead was a natural characteristic of the ancient people of Central America. The same form of head has been found even in fossil skulls. We may therefore conclude that the skull-flattening, which we find to have been practised in both the Old and New Worlds, was an attempt of other races to imitate the form of skull of a people whose likenesses are found on the monuments of Egypt and of America. It has been shown that this peculiar form of the head was present even in the foetus of the Peruvian mummies. ”

“ Though the handiwork of primæval man is common enough—rudely chipped instruments or weapons of flint or other stone, worked portions of bones and antlers, and such like—yet his bones are far less common than those of other mammals, and, most of all, skulls are rare. Professor Huxley, in his work from which we have already quoted, states that Dr. Schmerling found a bone implement in the Engis cave, and worked flints in all the ossiferous Belgian caves, yet this was the only skull in anything like a perfect condition, though another cavern furnished two fragments of parietal bones. ”

“ The average height of the people to whom they belonged was little more than five feet: the skulls have hardly been described with sufficient accuracy to enable us to compare them with others of the same period; but, in regard to breadth and to the degree of projection of the lower jaw, they were not very different from the majority of modern British skulls.100 Two other human skulls have been found in England for which palaeolithic age has been claimed—one near Swanscombe in Kent, the other near Bury St. ”

“ I found neither drums nor statues here, and of the local religion I could learn nothing. There is a skull-cult, similar to that on Malekula: a man will paint the skull of a favourite wife or child yellow, shut all the openings with wooden stoppers and carry the relic about with him. Towards the end of my stay I obtained possession of some of these interesting skulls. The idea in shutting the holes is doubtless to preserve the spirit of the dead inside the skull. ”

“ The Huron skull is of a well-defined dolichocephalic type, with, in many cases, an unusual prominence of the occipital region; the parietal bones meet more or less at an angle at the sagittal suture; the forehead is flat and receding; the superciliary ridges in the male skulls are strongly developed; the malar bones are broad and flat, and the profile is orthognathic. Careful measurements of thirty-nine male skulls yield a mean longitudinal diameter of 7.39 to a parietal diameter of 5.50 ”

“ The skull from Java is no less remarkable in its general form than in its weak capacity. Its entire median curve is extremely elliptic; the forehead is extremely narrow and tapering. The lower portion of the frontal bone above the orbits forms a sort of visor of which the relative prominence surpasses all known proportions in the human species, not excepting, even, the famous Neanderthal skull. ”

“ Many other similar skulls are still existing in various places, and, in addition to their antiquarian interest, have attracted the sightseer, connected as they mostly are with tales of legendary romance. An amusing anecdote of a skull is told by the late Mr. Wirt Sikes. [11] It seems that on a certain day some men were drinking at an inn when one of them, to show his courage and want of superstition, affirmed that he was "afraid of no ghosts," and dared to go to the church and fetch a skull. ”

“ Should the body be that of a rich man, or of the relative of one of the village chiefs, the skull is removed to the house, and placed in a conspicuous spot, as I have before mentioned. If, on the other hand, the body is that of a poor man, the remains are thrown together into a cleft in a rock, or some such place, as soon as the coffin has decayed. The bodies of malefactors are buried at once, without anything being erected to mark the place of interment. The remains of human beings are never to be seen scattered about, and it is extremely difficult to obtain a skull from the natives. ”

“ The form of the skull is a decidedly elongated and narrow oval, differing much from that usual in ancient British skulls from the circular barrows of Wilts and Dorset. All its characteristics are more marked; but it bears a singular resemblance, especially in the face, to skull No. 3; and, like that, presents no marks of violence. Lying over this skull was a small slab of sarsen stone, and beneath this two fragments of a fine and peculiar black pottery, (see wood-cut, fig. 8,) neatly marked with lattice lines, corresponding fragments of which were found in a distant part of the chamber. ”