For years I have been troubled by the types depicted in the splendid series of oil portraits of Indians in the Peabody Museum. The most of these represent Indians of the eastern and southeastern United States, and, although the portraits are the work of an excellent painter, his subjects look very European. The features of most are very un-Mongoloid, with prominent noses and oval faces ... some Plains Indians are included in the series, and these seem to be accurate representations of types familiar today. I am, therefore, disposed to think that the European-like types are not the result of an artistic convention, but actually did exist.[2]
Racial Definition—the Field of the Physical Anthropologist
Physical anthropology has its difficulties and uncertainties when it tries to reach back deep into time. But the tests by which it distinguishes races seem as sound and dependable as those of any of the disciplines that deal with early man. Some of the results are certainly striking.
There are problems, of course, as to the order in which the various races developed and spread throughout the Old World. In the opinion of some authorities, the Pygmy, or Negrito, came first. The Pygmy, although resembling the Negro in most respects, has in general one of the roundest heads of all mankind, while the Negro’s is pre-eminently long and narrow. Many anthropologists pick the Australoid as the second race to leave an unknown homeland and spread far abroad. The White, or Caucasoid, racial stock is divided into certain groups by one authority, and into other groups by another. Hooton puts the beginnings of the White race far back by calling the Australoid “an archaic form of modern White man.”[3]
But, in spite of conflicts of opinion, the physical anthropologist has fairly firm ground to stand on. He can bring to bear on the skull or the fleshed bone of man certain tests, certain measurements, which enable him to discriminate with some accuracy between the various racial types. The most important of the measurements have to do with the shape of the head and certain of its features.
The Cephalic Index—and Others
A hundred years ago a Swedish scientist, Anders Retzius, set up a measurement called the cephalic index, which indicates whether a head is dolichocephalic or brachycephalic—long-headed or round-headed, narrow or broad. The width of the skull, divided by its length, and multiplied by 100, gives the cephalic index—as 15.0 cm. ÷ 17.6 cm. × 100 = 85.23. The long-headed, or dolichocephalic, skull, lies below 75; the round-headed, or brachycephalic, at or above 80. Between lies the intermediate ground of the mesocephalic. (It is rather easy to keep “dolichocephalic” and “brachycephalic” straight if you note that the longer word applies to the long-headed skulls.)
The Pygmy aside, we find long-headedness common to early peoples and then gradually giving way to round-headedness. Round-headedness is a progressively modern tendency; there seem to be more round heads than there used to be. (Round-headedness seems to have increased sharply with the advent of agriculture. Are the two related? Does a vegetable diet have a functional effect upon head shape?) Among modern peoples, the Australian, the Negro, the Nordic, and the Mediterranean are long-headed. The Pygmy, the Alpine of Central Europe, and the Chinese are generally round-headed. Most Indians, being heavily Mongoloid, are likewise round-headed. The cephalic index alone is not too good a means of determining races today, but it has definite value in dealing with early man in the Americas. Here, as in the Old World, he seems to have been, with two exceptions, as long-headed as the modern Australian.
In this diagrammatic description of one of the most important measurements of the head, the length is given as 100, instead of 18 centimeters, or some other actual measurement, in order to make the matter simpler to comprehend.