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XVI.—The Aborigines of Tasmania. Part II. The Skeleton

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2012

Wm. Turner
Affiliation:
President of the Society.

Extract

In a memoir “On the Craniology, Racial Affinities and Descent of the Aborigines of Tasmania,” published by the Society in October 1908, I described ten Tasmanian skulls in the Edinburgh Museums, and compared them with those of this extinct race in Paris, London, Oxford, Hobart Town and elsewhere. At that time I was under the impression that I had referred to all the crania of the aborigines, seventy-nine in number, which had been preserved in museums, and for the most part had been described. The memoir did not include a description of the rest of the skeleton.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1911

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References

page 411 note * Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xlvi. p. 365, part iiGoogle Scholar.

page 411 note † Reports of the Pathological Laboratory of the Lunacy Department, vol. i. part iii., 1908, SydneyGoogle Scholar.

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page 412 note ‡ Le Bassin dans les Sexes el dans les Races, Paris, 1875Google Scholar.

page 413 note * I may refer to Professor Waldeykr's recent memoir, Der processus retromastoideus, etc., Berlin, 1909Google Scholar, for a most careful description and delineation of the nuchal and supra-mastoid regions, based on the study of the skulls of Papuans. I have in the text adopted his nomenclature.

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page 416 note ‡ A similar groove was noted by Duckworth, (Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. xxxii. p. 177, 1902Google Scholar), and subsequently by Klaatsch.

page 417 note * Klaatsch saw a pterygo-spinous foramen in the Tasmanian skull in the Sydney Museum. Many years ago.I stated its occasional occurrence in the skulls of Sandwich and Chatham Islanders.

page 417 note † It should be stated, however, that in the nine specimens measured by me in Part I. the mean cephalic index was 72·7, therefore dolichocephalic.

page 417 note ‡ Zool. Challenger Exp. Reports, part xxix. p. 127, 1884Google Scholar.

page 421 note * The references to the Challenger Reports in this section of the memoir are mostly to that on Human Skeletons, “Zoology, Chall. Exp.,” part xlvii. p. 59, 1886Google Scholar. In this Report I suggested several new descriptive terms, which I have found to be of use in the study of the skeleton from the point of view of the anthropologist; these terms are employed in this section.

page 423 note * H. Klaatsch subsequently recorded measurements of the lumbar vertebrae in these skeletons, as well as that in the Museum, South Kensington (Zeitsch. für Ethnologie, Heft 6, Tafel vii., 1903). His method was to take the height in the median plane of the body of the vertebra and to estimate the mean of the transverse breadth and to compute a breadth-height index from the formula The mean index of the three males was 52·4, that of the females 59·6. Klaatsch's measures differed both in method and purpose from those made by Cunningham and myself.

page 424 note * As a sequel to the observations of Cunningham and myself on the relation of the vertical diameters of the bodies of the lumbar vertebrae to the lumbar curve, George A. Dorsey conducted a research on 85 skeletons of North American and Peruvian Indians (Bulletin Essex Institute, Salem, Mass., vol. xxvii., 1895Google Scholar). He obtained a mean general index, 100·9. In the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and sometimes the 4th vertebra the posterior vertical diameter exceeded the anterior, but in the 5th lumbar the anterior was the longer. Dorsey places the Indian spines in the group which I named Orthorachic, where the index ranged from 98 to 102.

page 425 note * Proc. Boy. Soc, London, vol. xlv. p. 301, Jan. 1889.Google Scholar

page 426 note * The references to Dr Garson's measurements are to his chapter entitled “Osteology” in Ling Roth's important work on the aborigines of Tasmania.

page 429 note * See my address On some distinctive characters of Human Structure” in Reports of British Association, Toronto meeting, 1897Google Scholar.

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page 430 note ‡ “The Place of the Australian Aboriginal in recent Anthropological Research,” Australian Association for Advancement of Science, Adelaide, 1907Google Scholar. The Anatomical Museum of the University is indebted to Dr Ramsay Smith for a fine collection of the bones of the Australian aborigines. In a series from the northern territory the platymery is distinct and the infratrochanteric ridge is strongly marked.

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page 431 note * Goodsir's, Anatomical Memoirs, edited by Turner, W., “Anatomy of Knee-Joint,” vol. ii. p. 225, Edinburgh, 1868Google Scholar

page 432 note * Journ. of Anat. and Phys., vol. xxiii. p. 621, 1889Google Scholar; and the same, vol. xxiv. p. 210, 1890.

page 433 note * Opus cit., vol. xxiii. p. 616, and vol. xxiv. p. 210.

page 433 note † See Aborigines of Tasmania, by Roth, H. Ling, p. 13Google Scholar.

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page 434 note * Ling Roth, op. cit., p. 14.

page 434 note † See section on the pelvis in my Challenger Report, 1886.

page 435 note * Op. cit., 1908.

page 435 note † Zool. Chall. Exp., part xxix., 1884.

page 435 note ‡ Zeitsch. für Ethnol, 1903Google Scholar.

page 436 note * See Klaatsch's figure 59.

page 436 note † Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xlvi., part ii., p. 283, 1908.Google Scholar

page 436 note ‡ B. l, from New South Wales; A. 10, from Queensland.

page 437 note * I did not give a figure of the eyebrow region of this skull in Part I., but fig. 5 in Plate II. of this Part shows the character of the region.

page 437 note † Challenger Report, part xxix. p. 31, 1884.Google Scholar

page 437 note ‡ Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xl., part iii., p. 547, 1903Google Scholar.

page 443 note * I must leave for a future occasion an account of the more striking variations which I have seen in different races.

page 443 note † Challenger Reports, 1884, p. 32, Pl. II. fig. 3Google Scholar.

page 444 note * Op. cit.; also in his earlier paper in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Heft 6, pp. 884–5–6, 1903Google Scholar.

page 444 note † Fraipont and Lohest (Recherches Ethnograph. sur des Ossements humains, Gand, 1887Google Scholar) figured the norma verticalis in the Spy and Neanderthal skulls in which the post-orbital depression is represented.

page 446 note * Klaatsch noticed the barely marked infra-temporal crest in the Tasmanian skull in the Sydney Museum.

page 446 note † Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. v. p. 344, 16th Jan. 1865Google Scholar. Three skulls, adult male and female and a young one, which had been collected by M. du Chaillu, and had been presented to the Anatomical Museum.

page 447 note * Huxley, , Man's Place in Nature, 1863Google Scholar; also my paper “On the Fossil Skull Controversy” in Quarterly Journal of Science, April and October, 1864Google Scholar.

page 448 note * These descriptions of the palæolithic skulls and Pithecanthropus are written from casts of the skulls in the University Museum. Owing to some of the surface markings being obscure, the measurements between these points are stated approximately.

page 448 note † “Studien über Pithecanthropus erectus,” Zeitsch. für Morph. und Anat., Band 1, Heft 1, S. 1, 1899; “Der Neanderthal Schädel,” Bonner Jahrbücher, Heft 106, 1901Google Scholar.

page 449 note * For a criticism on the value of Schwalbe's bregma angle, of the elevation of the frontal bone through which its upper border moves upwards and forwards, in modern as compared with palæolithic man, and in consequence the supposed displacement forwards of the bregma and the more vertical direction of the frontal bone, I may refer to an important paper on the Australian forehead by the late Professor Cunningham in the volume of Anthropological Essays presented to Professor G. B. Tylor, 1907. Cunningham objected to the value of the bregma angle, for not only is the lower end of the bregma-glabellar line subject to displacement from variations in the glabella itself, but the upper end is affected by changes in the other bones of the vault, independent of those due to elevation or depression of the frontal bone. The attempt to ascertain the position of the bregma by dropping a perpendicular to the base line and calculating the relative distance from the glabella to the point of intersection is not satisfactory, as different degrees of extension of the parietal and occipital regions, as well as differences in the growth of the frontal area, modify the position of the bregma.

page 450 note * See Busk's article in the Natural History Review, 1862, p. 352, and pl. viii.

page 450 note † Thesaurus Craniorum, p. xiv., 1867.

page 450 note ‡ Instructions craniologiques et craniométriques, Paris, 1885, p. 68Google Scholar.

page 452 note * “Distinctive Characters of Human Structure,” op. cit.; also on Pithecanthropus (Journ. Anat. and Phys., 1895, vol. xxix. p. 424Google Scholar). The capacity of the orang is about 408 c.c.; of the chimpanzee, about 421 c.c. I have measured female Australian skulls with a capacity between 930 and 998 c.c., and recently a Dravidian Bheel skull, 940 c.c.

page 452 note † Trans. Zool. Soc. London, vols. ii–v., 18411866Google Scholar.

page 452 note ‡ Zoology, part xlvii. p. 119, 1886Google Scholar.