Page:The Outline of History Vol 1.djvu/167

lively few generations.^[1] We do not know what influences alter the shape of the skull, just as we do not know why people of British descent in the Darling region of Australia ("Cornstalks") grow exceptionally tall, or why in New England their jaw-bones seem to become slighter and their teeth in consequence rather crowded. Even in Neolithic times dolichocephalic and brachycephalic skulls are found in the same group of remains and often buried together, and that is true of most peoples to-day. Some peoples, such as the mountain people of central Europe, have more brachycephalic individuals per cent, than others; some, as the Scandinavians, are more prev-

1. The skull shape of the Lombards, says Flinders Petrie, changed from dolichocephalic to brachycephalic in a few hundred years. See his Huxley Lecture for 1906, Migrations, published by the Anthropological Institute. Ripley is the great authority on the other side.