Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/707

Rh shapely, were marked by ornaments and designs that were exclusively feminine. Numerous thin sheets of earthenware, shaped like a spherical triangle, and often carefully ornamented, perforated at the corners, appear, from the figures on the vases, to have been worn as "fig-leaf" dresses by the women. The very general tattooing of the women's bodies also points to their having held a high position. Later strata furnished remains of another race, among which this exalted position of the women was not apparent.

Prof. Virchow discussed the present condition of knowledge respecting nephrite and jadeite. Désor had assumed, at the Archæological Congress in Brussels, that all the nephrite was derived from two stations in central Asia, and all the jadeite from Burmah. In the mean time, two natural occurrences of nephrite in serpentine had been observed at Zabt, in Silesia, and one in Switzerland, besides a locality of jadeite. Further, a block of nephrite had been found in the Bodensee, which bore plain marks of pieces having been taken from it. Thus, these stones had been found, and evidently worked, in Europe. M. Arzruni had discovered that both species were subject to considerable variations, and that, therefore, every severed specimen found should be tested for determining its origin with respect to the special properties of its material. The specimens sometimes exhibit remarkable relations. Thus, the famous Humboldt axe and another South American hatchet seem to be identical in substance with the European mineral, and a hatchet from Venezuela with one from Hissarlik.

In his remarks upon the anthropological classification of the native Americans, Prof. Virchow admitted that it would not do to speak of a primitive race; yet the ancient skulls are predominantly of a brachycephalic type. These forms seem to have persisted in the South to the present time, but in the North there had been a noticeable transition to long and medium forms. Herr Fritsch suggested an archæological division on the basis of his studies of the hair. He distinguished two groups of people, one with smooth or waving, moderately long, brown hair, like that of the Polynesians, and the other with coarse, stiff hair, inclining to deep black, like that of the Mongols. The former group includes the Central Americans, and, generally, the ancient civilized peoples of South America, and the other the northwestern tribes, with those of single districts in the South. Even if the supposition of a Mongolian immigration in prehistoric times is admissible with respect to this latter group, it can not be held, so far as present researches show, with regard to the ancient civilized peoples.

Herr Nehring, speaking of the domesticated animals of the