TABLE VII
| Capacity. | Brain- | ||||
| Skulls of Men. | No. | Weight | Cubic | Centi- | weight |
| of Sand. | In. | metres. | oz. av. | ||
| Anc. British, L. Barrows | 18 | 82 | 99 | 1622 | 54.0 |
| Anc. British, R. Barrows | 18 | 80½ | 98 | 1605 | 53.5 |
| Mod. English, Morton | 28 | 77 | 94 | 1540 | 52.2 |
| Mod. French, Broca | 357 | 74 | 91 | 1502 | 50.6 |
| Mod. German, Welcker | 30 | 72 | 88 | 1450 | 49.0 |
The highest average of any nationality, as determined by Drs. Reid and Peacock from the weighing of 157 brains of male patients, chiefly Scottish Lowlanders, in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, is little more than 50 oz., or 1417 grammes; whereas the estimated average brain-weight in the ancient British skulls is 54 oz. for the Dolichocephali of the Long Barrows, which equals that of Sir James Simpson, and exceeds all but six of the most distinguished men adduced in [Table IV.] For the Brachycephali of the Round Barrows it is 53.5 oz., which is in excess of the brain-weights of Agassiz, Chalmers, Whewell, and other distinguished men, and exactly accords with that of Daniel Webster and Lord Chancellor Campbell. In so far, moreover, as this illustrates the cerebral capacity of ancient races, it is in each case an average obtained by gauging eighteen skulls, and not the cranial capacity of one or two exceptionally large ones. Dr. Thurnam does indeed suggest that the Barrows may have been the sepulchres of chiefs; nor is this unlikely; but the superior vigour and mental endowment which this implies fails to account for a cerebral capacity surpassing all but the most distinguished men of science and letters in modern Europe referred to in the above table. Rather may we conclude from this, as from other evidence, that quality of brain may, within certain limits, be of more significance than mere quantity; and that brains of the same volume, and agreeing in weight, may greatly differ in minute structure and in powers of cerebration.
In the case of the ancient British Barrow-Builders we seem to have large heads and remarkable development of brain, without any indications of an equivalent in intellectual power; and although the estimated brain-weight derived from gauging the capacity of the empty chamber of the skull proceeds on the assumption of mass and weight agreeing, sufficient data exist to justify the adoption of this for approximate results. The average weight of brain of twelve male Negroes of undetermined tribes, deduced from gauging their skulls, has been ascertained to amount to 1255 grammes, or 44.3 oz. The actual weight of brain of the Negro of Guinea, described by Professor Calori, was 1260 grammes; and other examples vary considerably from the average. Mascagni gives 1458 grammes as the weight of one Negro brain weighed by him; equivalent to an actual brain-weight of 51.5 oz., which is greater than that of Dupuytren, Whewell, Hermann, Tiedemann, or Grote. Nevertheless, although the extremes are great, and are confirmed by a like diversity in measurements of the horizontal circumference and of internal capacity, the average result given above appears to be a fair and reliable one.
Thus far the inquiry into data illustrative of comparative size and weight of brain has dealt chiefly with the races of the eastern hemisphere. The compass is great in point of time in so far as it embraces savage and civilised peoples, including the barbarians of Europe’s Palæolithic era, along with modern tribes of Asia, Africa, and Australia, and some of the most notable among the prehistoric races of the British Isles. The compass is equally great in the range of intellectual development, when to those are added data illustrative of the average brain-weight of some of the leading nations of modern Europe, and a series of examples derived from noted instances of the highest exceptional types of intellectual power and activity in recent times. Some general conclusions of a comprehensive kind seem to follow legitimately from this evidence. Notwithstanding the prominence given to the assumed evidence of a low type of skull, depressed forehead, and poor frontal development, in the assumed primitive European Canstadt race, when we keep in view the enormous interval of time assumed to separate “those savages who peopled Europe in the Palæolithic age” from our own era, the amount of difference in size and apparent brain-weight is not remarkable. Compared with those of contemporary savage races it suggests no more than the accompanying development of the brain in a ratio with the intellectual activities of progressive civilisation, and even then the relative brain-mass of the lowest type is suggestive of latent powers only needing development. But the old and later races of the New World stand in a different relation to each other; and the process thus far employed when applied to determine the comparative cranial capacities of the native American races, discloses results of a different character, and widely at variance with those above described relating to the ancient races of Britain. On the continent of America the native ethnical scale embraces a comparatively narrow range, and any intrusive elements are sufficiently recent to be easily eliminated. The Patagonian and the Fuegian rank alongside of the Bushman, the Andaman Islander, or the Australian, as among the lowest types of humanity; while the Aztecs, Mayas, Quichuas, and Aymaras, attained to the highest scale which has been reached independently by any native American race. We owe to the zealous and indefatigable labours of Dr. Morton, alike in the formation of his great collection of human crania, and in the published results embodied in the Crania Americana, a large amount of knowledge derived from this class of evidence in reference to the races of the New World. In one respect, at least, those results stand out in striking contrast to the large-headed barbarian Barrow-Builders of ancient Britain. Dr. Morton subdivides the American races into the Toltecan race, embracing the semi-civilised communities of Mexico, Bogota, and Peru, and the barbarous tribes scattered over the continent from the Arctic circle to Tierra del Fuego. His latest views are embodied in a contribution to Schoolcraft’s History of the Indian Tribes of the United States, entitled “The Physical Type of the American Indians.” In treating of the volume of brain, he draws special attention to the Peruvian skulls, 201 in number, obtained for him from the cemeteries of Pisco, Pachacamac, and Arica. “Herera informs us that Pachacamac was sacred to priests, nobles, and other persons of distinction; and there is ample evidence that Arica and Pisco, though free to all classes, were among the most favoured cemeteries of Peru.” Dr. Morton accordingly adds: “It is of some importance to the present inquiry, that nearly one-half of this series of Peruvian crania was obtained at Pachacamac; whence the inference that they belonged to the most intellectual and cultivated portion of the Peruvian nation; for in Peru learning of every kind was an exclusive privilege of the ruling caste.” In reality, however, later additions to our knowledge of the physical characteristics of the ancient Peruvians tend to confirm the idea of the existence of two distinct races: a patrician order occupying a position analogous to the Franks of Gaul or the Normans of England, though more aptly to be compared to the Brahmins of India; and a more numerous class, constituting the labouring and industrial orders of the community, abundantly represented in the Pacific coast tribes of Peru, the cemeteries of which have furnished the larger number of crania to European and American collections.
To such a patrician order or caste the intellectual superiority and privileges of the governing race pertained. But whatever may have been the exclusive prerogatives of the patrician and sacerdotal orders, there is no doubt that the Peruvians as a people had carried metallurgy to as high a development as has been attained by any race ignorant of working in iron. They had acquired great skill in the arts of the goldsmith, the engraver, chaser, and modeller. Pottery was fashioned into many artistic and fanciful forms, showing ingenuity and great versatility of fancy. They excelled as engineers, architects, sculptors, weavers, and agriculturists. Their public works display great skill, combined with comprehensive aims of practical utility; and alone, among all the nations of the New World, they had domesticated animals, and trained them as beasts of burden. It is not, therefore, without reason that Dr. Morton adds: “When we consider the institutions of the old Peruvians, their comparatively advanced civilisation, their tombs and temples, mountain roads and monolithic gateways, together with their knowledge of certain ornamental arts, it is surprising to find that they possessed a brain no larger than the Hottentot and New Hollander, and far below that of the barbarous hordes of their own race. For, on measuring 155 crania, nearly all derived from the sepulchres just mentioned, they give but 75 cubic inches (equivalent, after due deduction for membranes and fluids, to a brain of 40.1 oz. av. in weight,) for the average bulk of the brain. Of the whole number, only one attains the capacity of 101 cubic inches, and the minimum sinks to 58, the smallest in the whole series of 641 measured crania. It is important further to remark that the sexes are nearly equally represented, namely, eighty men and seventy-five women.”
Other collections subsequently formed have largely added to our means of testing the curious question thus raised of the apparent inverse ratio of volume of brain to intellectual power and progressive civilisation among the native races of the American continent. In 1866, Mr. E. G. Squier presented to the Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology at Harvard, a collection of seventy-five Peruvian skulls, obtained by himself from various localities both on the coast and in the interior. “The skulls from the interior represent the Aymara on Lake Titicaca, as well as the Quichua, Cuzco, or Inca families; and the skulls of every coast family from Tumbes to Atacama, or from Ecuador to Chili.”[[177]] Subsequently the curator, the late Professor Jeffreys Wyman, made this collection, along with two others, of skulls from the mounds of Kentucky and Florida, the subject of careful comparative measurements. The following are the results: The crania from Florida were chiefly obtained from a burial place near an ancient Indian shell mound of gigantic proportions, a few miles distant from Cedar Keys. They are eighteen in number, and have a mean capacity of 1375.7 cubic centimetres, or nearly 84 cubic inches. The skulls from the Kentucky mounds, twenty-four in number, show a mean capacity of 1313 cubic centimetres, 80.21 cubic inches, with a difference of 125 cubic centimetres, or 7.61 cubic inches in favour of the males. Yet, small as the Kentucky skulls are, they exceed the Peruvian ones. Keeping in view the varied sources of the latter, Professor Wyman remarks: “Although the crania from the several localities show some differences as regards capacity, yet in most other respects they are alike.” And the numbers, when viewed separately, are too few to attach much importance to variations within so narrow a range. Nevertheless it is noteworthy that the highest mean is that of the Aymaras of Lake Titicaca; and this difference is considerably increased by measurements derived from subsequent additions to the Harvard collection, received since the death of Professor Wyman from the high valley of Lake Titicaca. In other respects besides their marked superiority in size, the latter crania differ from those of the Coast tribes, and confirm the earlier deduction of an ethnical distinction between the more numerous race so abundantly represented in the Coast cemeteries, and that which is chiefly represented by crania brought from the interior. The numbers from the several localities selected by Professor Wyman as fair average specimens of the whole stand thus: six from burial towers, or chulpas, near Lake Titicaca, 1292; five from Cajamaquilla, 1268.75; fourteen from Casma, 1254; four from Truxillo, 1236; four from Pachicamac, 1195; sixteen from Amacavilca, 1176.2; and seven from Grand Chimu, 1094.28.
In 1872, the collection of Peruvian crania in the Peabody Museum was augmented by a large addition from 330 skulls obtained by Professor Agassiz, through the intervention of Mr. T. J. Hutchinson, British Consul at Callao, in Peru. From those contributed to the Harvard Museum, Dr. Wyman selected eleven as apparently the only ones unaffected by any artificial compression or distortion, and therefore valuable as illustrations of the normal shape of the Peruvian head. They are quite symmetrical. The occiput, instead of being flattened or vertical, as in the distorted crania, has the ordinary curves, and in some of them is prominent. Two of them are marked by a low, retreating forehead; but in all the others the forehead is moderately developed. As, moreover, the larger half appear to be the skulls of females, this accounts for the mean capacity falling below the Peruvian average. But they are all small. The largest of them is only 1260 cubic centimetres, or less than 74 cubic inches; and the average capacity of ten of them is 1129 cubic centimetres, or 69 cubic inches.
The collection, as a whole, differs from that of Mr. Squier, in having been derived from the huacas, or ancient graves of one locality, that of Ancon, near Callao. Professor Wyman stated as the result of his careful study of them: “The average capacity obtained from the whole collection, including those having the distorted as well as the natural shape, varies but little from that of previous measurements,” including those of Morton and Meigs, and his own results from the Squier collection.
Another collection of 150 ancient skulls, obtained by Mr. Hutchinson during his residence in Peru, and presented to the Anthropological Institute of London, has the additional value, like that of Squier, of having been carefully selected from different localities, including Santos, Ica, Ancon, Passamayo, and Cerro del Oro; and the same may be said of those enumerated in the Thesaurus Craniorum of Dr. Davis. We have thus unusually ample materials for determining the cranial characteristics of this remarkable people, and the results in every case are the same. After a careful examination of the Peruvian skulls, in the London anthropological collection, Professor Busk states his conclusions thus: “The mean capacity of the larger skulls, which may be regarded as males, appears, as far as I have gone, to be about 80 cubic inches, equivalent to a brain of about 45 ounces, roughly estimated. This capacity, and the measurements above cited, show that the crania generally are of small size”; and he adds: “this is in accord with the statements of all observers.”[[178]]