Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/768

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748
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in nearly all of Melanesia and in part of Australia. The Papuan skull is plainly dolichocephalous; the index descends to 71·03, and even to 70·32 in the skulls of the men. The vertical diameter is at the same time considerable, and exceeds the maximum transverse diameter, so that the head is hypsistenocephalous, or higher than it is broad. The head which MM. de Quatrefages and Hamy have selected as typical of the race—a Mafor head from Port Dorei—(Fig. 6) has an horizontal index of 71·55, and a vertical index of 105·51, with a cranial capacity of about 1,350 cubic centimetres. It is long, narrow, and high. The lateral walls of the skull rise perpendicularly, in almost parallel lines, to the parietal bosses. At this point the transverse curve is directed obliquely toward the top of the head, where it becomes rounded, and forms, in connection with a kind of median crest which crosses the

Fig. 6. Skull of a Papuan Mafor. Fig. 7. Skull from Arfak.

skull from front to rear, along the whole length of the sagittal suture, a large, blunt point. The forehead is narrow, causing the cheek-bones to appear very prominent, although their lateral development is not, really, at all exaggerated. As a whole, the face is high and narrow. The bones of the nose are quite long and slightly concave, the cavities and prominences of the lower part of the superior maxillary are not clearly defined. The prognathism of this race is so sharp that in the norma verticalis the alveolar border and a part of the bones above project in front of the skull. The facial angle of Camper varies between 73° and 76°. The Papuan woman is generally less dolichocephalous and hypsistenocephalous than the man.

Pure or more or less mixed Papuans are found in Ternate, Ceram, and Timor, in Malaysia. The pure type occurs in New Britain, and at Yanikoro in the New Hebrides, but in other parts of Melanesia it is mixed with the Negrito-Papuan or the Polynesian type. Traces of the former mixture may be detected in the Island of Toud, although