Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/552

536 Among the first if not the first specimen that came into my possession was the skull of an adult male Navajo, and, after a careful study of it, it was presented to the craniological section of the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh, where it now is. This was early in 1886; and in the April number of that year of the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology of London, the writer published his observations upon that skull, the paper being illustrated by a fine lithographic plate presenting the four principal views of the same.

In the same number of the Journal which I have named above, Prof. Sir William Turner contributed an additional note upon the same skull, wherein he says that it "presented a well-marked parieto-occipital flattening, obviously due to artificial pressure, which had been applied so as to cause the suprasquamous part of the occipital bone and the posterior three fourths of the parietal to slope upward and forward."

"The frontal region did not exhibit any flattening, so that in this individual, and it may be in his tribe of Indians, the pressure applied in infancy was apparently limited to the back of the head. Owing to this artificial distortion, the longitudinal diameter of the head was diminished, and the cephalic index, 94·6, computed from Dr. Shufeldt's measurements of the length and breadth, was therefore higher than it would have been in an undeformed skull. The cranium was hyperbrachycephalic."

This, and much more, was set forth in Dr. Turner's valuable "note" upon my specimen; but it was hard for me to see how a baby could have pressure applied to the back of its skull of sufficient amount to produce the flattening found, unless there was a counter-pressure applied at the opposite aspect of the skull, which naturally would produce there perhaps a similar flattening or some other distortion, and this latter deformity is never seen to exist in the skulls of the Navajos. As I say, at the time I read Dr. Turner's note, I was in a position to examine this question quite thoroughly, as these Indians were living all about me, and I saw the Navajo women daily with their infants strapped in their cradles.

It will be seen in the sequel that my subsequent observations in the premises compelled me to hold a different opinion from the one advanced above by so eminent an authority as is Sir William Turner.

Another skull which soon fell into my hands was a fine specimen from a young Navajo girl of some six or seven years of age, and it showed this peculiar flattening to a very marked degree. By the aid of my camera I am enabled to present herewith two figures of the skull of this individual, showing the flattening from two views.