3. Eurygnathism—i.e., abnormal breadth of the face at the level of the zygoma. This is a common characteristic in the oldest human remains (skulls from Gibraltar, Cro-Magnon, and Furfooz), and in the lower races of to-day (the circumpolar tribes).
| Per cent. | |
|---|---|
| Convicts sentenced for robbery with murder | 37 |
| In 1,567 criminal heads | 18 |
4. Excessive height of the upper jaw.
This table exhibits the characters visible in the skull in a definite class only, those whom in my “Naturgeschichte des Verbrechers” (“Natural History of the Criminal”) I have, with Lombroso’s approval, designated “primatoid.” Granted that they are typical of the criminal, it has none the less often been maintained that the Italian school is not justified in speaking of a criminal type, for the reason that not one of the individuals described exhibits all these peculiarities. How, then, it is said, can a criminal type be abstracted from such utterly heterogeneous abnormalities?
This really depends upon the possibilities of abstraction. Academically correct anthropologists continue to dispute regarding the types of the most important races of mankind, whilst description is always preceded by perception, and perception is not always in a position to comprehend the typical; he who is not endowed with a sense for the significant will see nothing but the insignificant. But there is something extremely typical in the commonest and most important characteristic of the criminal nature—namely, the coexistence of several primatoid characters in the same individual. (Characters are termed “primatoid” which are present in all primates, but which in the normal human being are developed very slightly—in part, indeed, so slightly developed as to be almost imperceptible. But in many criminals these peculiarities, which are chiefly physical, are either more strongly marked than in the normal European, or else they make their appearance in the criminal in a form in which in the normal European they are entirely unknown, whereas they are present in the members of many savage races, as well as in primates lower down in the scale.)
There is one character, however, by which the primates in general are distinguished from the lower mammals, whilst in the human species it is far more strongly marked than in other primates; but in the criminal this character is often so little developed as hardly to reach the degree characteristic of prehistoric human remains. The character in question is the greater development of the cranium (dependent upon the more powerful development of the cerebral hemispheres) in association with a lesser development of the jaws and their appendages. In this way the direct cerebrogenous characters originate; and with these are associated yet other characters, evidently in part mechanically dependent on the cerebrogenous characters, but in part arising from these in a different way. To this category belongs prognathism—the condition in which the upper jaw protrudes markedly in front of the base of the skull, so that when the face is viewed in profile, the region of the incisor teeth appears very prominent. The skulls of the lower races of mankind are prognathous, and still more prognathous are the skulls of the anthropoid apes. Directly associated with prognathism is another characteristic of the criminal type—namely, the forehead which “recedes” markedly as it rises; and associated with the receding forehead is a marked projection of the “superciliary ridges.”
It is well known that the two earliest known human skulls—that of the Neanderthal and that of Spy—both exhibit to a high degree the two characters last mentioned. If we compare with these the drawing in Lombroso’s “Archivio di psichiatria” (vol. ii., 1882) of the skull of Gasparone (the brigand celebrated under the name of “Fra Diavolo”), we cannot fail to recognize a striking example of atavism.
One of the most remarkable of these characters is the middle occipital fossa, first described by Lombroso, whose dependence upon the formation of the cerebellum is still open to dispute. In any case it is a well-marked primatoid character, for it is present in all the higher primates, with the exception of the gorilla, the chimpanzee, and the orang-utan. The middle occipital fossa was found to be present in 4·1 per cent. of the skulls provided with “students’ sets” that were examined (but it must be remembered that such skulls always include a certain proportion of the skulls of criminals). In prehistoric skulls the character was present in 14·3 per cent.; in ancient Peruvian skulls in 15 per cent.; in Australian blacks in 28 per cent.; in all the criminal skulls examined it was present in 20 per cent. The significance of such a fact as this cannot be gainsaid; and it is not surprising that its discovery by Lombroso, the pupil of Panizza, made a profound impression, more especially in view of the fact that he was then about to bring to a close his comparison of the European with the melanodermic races.
The book in which Lombroso instituted this comparison, “L’ uomo bianco e l’ Uomo di colore,” was published in 1871 by Sacchetto of Padua, after the manuscript had spent three years in vain wanderings from publisher to publisher. In this work the writer asserted the common descent of the higher apes and of the human species from an unknown primate, supporting his contention by means of anthropological data. Darwin’s “Descent of Man” was published while Lombroso’s work was in the press. The latter displays the remarkable knowledge of comparative anatomy which Lombroso owed to his teacher Panizza. It displays also a wide knowledge of ethnological literature, and a thorough acquaintanceship with the previous discoveries regarding prehistoric man (including those made at Cro-Magnon, Hohlenfels, etc., during the years 1868–1870); and it shows, in addition, the author’s remarkable talent for the discovery and utilization of fruitful analogies.
I do not propose to consider here the various anomalies and malformations of the skull discovered, described, and enumerated by Lombroso and his pupils; but on account of their importance in relation to the criminal physiognomy, we may mention that an abnormal widening of the face (due to an exceptionally great distance between the two zygomatic arches), and an abnormal divergence of the two halves of the inferior maxillary bone, are characteristic of the criminal type. Subsequently to the first publication of Lombroso’s results the question of the distance between the angles of the lower jaw was thoroughly investigated, more especially by the Dutch anthropologists and alienists, at the instigation of Winkler of Amsterdam, and with the aid of a very large quantity of material.[[11]]