Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/341

] from the interment of the Bronze age at Gristhorpe, Yorkshire.

Prof Busk has noticed that some of the leg bones present peculiar characters, the thigh bone bearing an enormously developed linea aspera, and the tibia being flattened laterally, sometimes to the extent of presenting a section similar to that of the blade of a sabre. The latter character is not, as it is sometimes considered, a character linking man with the apes, but is probably related to the free use of the muscles of the feet uncontrolled by rigid sole or sandal. In the large collections of skeletons which I obtained from the sepulchral caves, and the caves of Perthi Chwareu, Rhos-Digre, and the chambered tomb near Cefn, this peculiar character was only met with in some of the older bones, and was absent in most of the men, and all the boys, women, and children. The same irregularity applies equally to the large collection of skeletons of Red Indians from the burial mounds preserved in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, Mass., which I was allowed to examine by the kindness of Prof. Putnam in 1875. The flattened tibia has been observed among negroes, and it is not unknown even among civilised Europeans. It cannot therefore be taken to be a character distinctive of race, but one dependent upon the use, more or less, of certain muscles.

These small men are proved by numerous discoveries to have had a wide range on the Continent in the