THE RACES OF EUROPE

by earth pressure, and others were improperly measured; while still others have been lost or mislaid.¹⁷

The cranial series from Muge, as it is known at present, is reasonably homogeneous. The cranial index ranges from 69 to 80, or possibly 82, with most of the skulls in the low seventies. One may postulate a mean of about 75 to 77 on the living. The brain case is of medium size, but rela­tively high; ovoid in form, flattish on the top, and gently rounded in the occipital region. The female crania have vertical foreheads, while those of the males are sloping; the frontal bone in both is always strongly curved. On most of the male skulls, the browridges are well developed in the median segment, but not on the sides, while on the female specimens, the supraorbital region is usually quite smooth.

The orbits are low, but not especially narrow. The nasal dimensions are small, yielding a mesorrhine index; the lower border of the nasal opening is usually sharp, but in some cases it is rounded, and in one guttered. The face is mesoprosopic, being both low and extremely narrow. In the photo­graphs, the zygomatic arches appear to be delicate, and closely aligned to the temporals. The mandibles are of moderate height, but narrow, while the palates are quite large for the total size of the skulls, and the teeth are also large. Most of the skulls show a slight alveolar prognathism, which in a few instances is quite marked.

Among the nine crania measured by Vallois, the females equal the males, or approach them closely, in all dimensions. Sex differentiation, therefore, is practically absent from the metrical standpoint, but the differ­ence in browridge development is apparently sufficient to permit the crani- ologist to distinguish them readily. The long bones, studied apart from the crania, to which they cannot be matched, give a reconstructed stat­ure of 160 cm. for the males, and 152 cm. for females. Despite this short stature, a limb form found among some Upper Palaeolithic peoples is re­peated here—the distal segments are long when compared to the proximal.

The racial position of the Muge population cannot be finally deter­mined until more evidence, both internal and comparative, is at hand. Yet from present indications there seems every reason to believe that the Portuguese midden-dwellers were very similar to, or identical with, the late Natufians of Palestine, and that both represented a northward thrust from a Mediterranean racial homeland somewhere in southwestern Asia, northeastern Africa, or both.

2. Mesolithic man in france

Our knowledge of Mesolithic man in France is little better than that of the Iberian Peninsula, despite the extensive digging which has been

16. Vallois, op. cit.

65

going on there for almost a century, French Mesolithic sites are di­vided into two main cultural groups, the Azilian and the Tardenoisian. The Tardenoisian represents the northward advance of the Capsians from North Africa, and its eastward spread across central Europe to Russia, and perhaps beyond. The Azilian represents a degenerate Mag­dalenian cultural expression surviving in southwestern France, in the Asturias of Spain, and in parts of England, under incoming Tarde­noisian influence. By the time of the full Mesolithic, the fauna of France had changed almost completely, for the reindeer which the Magdalenian people had hunted had been replaced by red deer, while the impressive mammoths and other large mammals were by now long extinct.

The only French Mesolithic series known, aside from single skeletons, comes from T6viec, a small island to the west of the peninsula of Quiberon, Morbihan, Brittany.¹⁸ Here a coastal population subsisted on molluscs, in­cluding Litorina, and crustaceans, with little hunting. Its remains, consist­ing of twenty-one skeletons, come from stone cists buried in a midden on a raised beach. The implements, as shown in the archaeological part of the T6viec report, seem to be of a marginal, Azilian-like Epipalaeolithic char­acter, like those from the Asturian horizon in Spain, with some late Tar­denoisian influence. On the basis of the artefacts, the raised beach, the Litorina skulls, and the stone cists, one must suppose that the remains cannot be older than the fourth millennium B.C., and may be even later. However, they are purely Mesolithic and antedate the local Neolithic, however retarded.

Of the twenty-one skeletons, seven adult males and eight adult females have been studied (see Appendix I, col. 3). The skulls are reasonably uni­form; they are smaller in size than the Upper Palaeolithic French crania, but a little larger than those of the Muge people or Natufians; the vault is as high as its breadth; the cranial form between dolicho- and mesocephaly, with a male mean of 74.3, and the narrow range of 72 to 77. These skulls are thick boned, and rather massive in structure. Morphologically, they resemble the Upper Palaeolithic rather than the Mediterranean form. The faces are low and relatively broad, with the bizygomatic diameter often exceeding the head breadth. The browridges of some of the males are rather heavy, the nasion depression deep. The noses are mesorrhine, and fully European in form; the orbits are low.

On the whole, these skulls look like smaller replicas of Aurignacian and Magdalenian forms, or an intermediate stage between these and the Mediterraneans from farther south, as exemplified by the Portuguese and

16. P6quart, Marthe, and St. Juste; also, Boule, M., and Vallois, H., AIPH, Mem. 18, 1937.