_Forehead: low, receding_ _Brow ridges: heavy_ _Face and jaws: protruding_ _Rear: protruding_ _Forehead: narrow_ _Vault: keeled_ _Sides: flat_ _Sockets: low, oblong_ _Dolichocephalic (very long and narrow head)_
_Forehead: low, rounded_ _Brow ridges: slight or absent_ _Face and jaws: rotruding_ _Rear: bulging_ _Forehead: narrow_ _Vault: curved_ _Sides: flat to slightly convex_ _Dolichocephalic (narrow head, medium to long)_
_Forehead: somewhat high_ _Brow ridges: absent_ _Face: flat_ _Rear: flat_ _Forehead: broad_ _Vault: broad, globular_ _Sides: convex to bulging_ _Brachycephalic (round)_
What Skull Measurements Tell Us About Early Man
These peculiarities of southwest Pacific skulls are important if you are looking for early man in the Americas. As we have said, a skull found along with the bones of extinct mammals or in a geological formation that suggests great age is almost always long-headed, or dolichocephalic. The typical, round-headed Mongoloid Indian is conspicuous by his antique absence. (The only early skulls that are not long-headed fall in the intermediate division, the mesocephalic.) Further, the early skull has most, if not all, of the following features: a heavy, almost continuous brow ridge; a receding chin; a low nose root; straight sides; a retreating forehead, and a keeled vault.
On the score of long-headedness, there can be no question about all but two of the early skulls mentioned in Chapter 6 or illustrated on page 216. The Confins has a cephalic index of 69.1, which is hyper-dolichocephalic, or extra long; the female skulls of the Pericú in Lower California average 68.50 and the male 66.15, while sixteen skulls from the Texas coast show an average of 65.37. Except for the skulls of Tepexpan man and the Minnesota girl, all the other skulls we have referred to have the same long-headed character. If those from Texas and the Pacific Coast are not so ancient as the rest, at least they seem to represent the descendants of an old strain forced off into marginal areas by the invasion of newer peoples. To be sure, we have now—and have had—Indians with long skulls, particularly in the eastern part of the United States and to some extent on the Great Plains. But their number is not large, and can never have been large, compared with the great bulk of round-headed Indians of the two Americas.