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[Indiana Jones]

Introductory


In a previous publication in connection with a description of the skeletons in our two largest Viking ships, the Oseberg ship and the Gokstad ship, the present author has given a review of the skeletal material from the Iron Age which was available at that time. During the years which have elapsed since the publication of that paper so much new material has come to light that a complete revision of the material is timely. The scope of the earlier publication was limited to the material from the Iron Age which belongs to the period from the time of the great migrations up to and including the Viking Age, a period which falls between the years 400 and 1000 in Norway. In this revision of our material from the Iron Age, the present paper also includes a review of the cranium material which originates from periods which antedate the migrations. Even though this material is very limited and for the most part poorly conserved, I hope that this complete compilation of our prehistoric skeletal material, in connection with the investigations of Norwegian skulls from the Middle Age and modern times previously published by the present author and which will be continued on a broader basis in the future if possible, will contribute to our knowledge of the racial characteristics of the Norwegian people.

Any investigation of prehistoric skeletal material requires intimate cooperation between the anthropologist and archaeologists. During work on the present investigation the generous and valuable assistance of the chiefs of our archaeological collections, who have sent all the skeletal material from prehistoric graves to The Anatomical Institute of The University with detailed descriptions of the site of origin and references to all published material, has been a constant source of pleasure.

As appears from the following summary of the material, most of it is from Trøndelag and Northern Norway. The material from Trøndelag belongs to the archaeological collection of Det Kongelige Norske Videnskabers Selskabs Museum in Trondheim and has been deposited at The Anatomical Institute of The University by its director, Curator Th. Petersen. Most of the material from Northern Norway was collected by the former curator of the archaeological collection at Tromsø Museum, Dr. Gutorm Gjessing, and was sent by him to the Anatomical Institute. I take this opportunity to express my particular gratitude to these two gentlemen for the valuable support they have given my work, both by their painstaking care in collecting all the skeletal material from the prehistoric graves which they have examined, and by placing at my disposal their extensive knowledge of the early history of Trøndelag and Northern Norway.

The material from the southern, eastern and western parts of the country is much more limited than that from the northern part for several reasons. It is of particular significance that the skeletons from Northern Norway were buried in sandy soil with a high calcium content which has preserved them excellently, while most of the skeletons from other parts of the country were buried in humus soil which has had a decalcifying effect. Another important explanation is that the cultivation of the southern and eastern parts of the country occurred at an earlier period, when interest for prehistoric finds, especially skeletons, was very slight among the rural population, and they were thus not preserved. In recent times a law demands expert examination of all prehistoric finds, and this has helped somewhat, but has unfortunately come too late in many instances.

I am much obliged to Mrs. Jeanne Mossige who has translated the manuscript to English.

[Indiana Jones]

The Stone Age



The Norwegian skeletal material from the Stone Age is very limited. If we confine ourselves to the skulls which can be dated to the Stone Age with certainty, the total is only four, namely the skull from the Megalithic grave near Svelvik on the Drammensfjord, a branch of the Oslofjord (No. 1), the skulls from Kråkerøy near Fredrikstad, close to the border of Swedish Bohuslän (No. 1 a), the skull from the dwelling-site at Nyelv, Finnmark (No. 8) and the skull of the young boy from the dwelling-site at Viste, near Stavanger. The latter skull, because of its scaphocephaly (Fürst, 1909), has little anthropological interest and will therefore not be discussed in the present paper.

In addition to the skulls mentioned there are 6 others whose dating to the Stone Age cannot be regarded as certain and which possibly date from the Early Bronze Age. To these belong the skull fragment from a cave-find at Kristiansund (No. 2), three skulls found within the city limits of Trondheim (Nos. 3, 4 and 5), two bog-finds from Trøndelag (Nos. 6 and 7) and the skull from Leka, likewise in Trøndelag (No. 9).

An isolated consideration of this scanty and wide-spread material is of limited interest. It is only in connection with the archaeological findings in our country and with the more abundant skeletal material known from the Stone Age in the other Scandinavian countries and Middle Europe that it can make a contribution to the history and origin of the Norwegian people.

It was long the general opinion among anthropologists and archaeologists that Norway, because of its peripheral geographical position, had been settled relatively late in the Stone Age by migration from the Danish and southern Swedish culture centers, and had only developed a characteristic arctic culture in the northern parts of the country, the “slate culture” as it has been called, which has been ascribed by many to the Lapps. Archaeological investigations during the last few decades have revolutionized our opinion on these matters and have revealed that the earliest settlement of Norway must be placed much farther back in time than previously assumed. This result is due chiefly to the investigations of the Norwegian geologist and archaeologist A. Nummedal. In 1909 -10 Nummedal made a number of finds of flint in Kristiansund on the coast of Romsdal, which represent the oldest human culture vestiges in this part of the country. The culture which has been designated the Fosna culture, is a coast culture with flint as its main material. With the continued investigations of Nummedal and others the extent of this culture could be followed from Glesvær south of Bergen to Tysfjord in Nordland. It has not been found farther south or north along the coast, but turns up again in the Oslo district and Østfold with finds which show connection to the Fosna culture.

There has been and still is a difference of opinion among archaeologists both as regards the dating of this culture and its relation to other cultures. Nummedal himself assumed at an early date that is was contemporaneous with the Danish Maglemose period and thus dated back to about 6000 B. C. Later investigators, emphasizing the archaic character of flint industry, have claimed even greater age, while others regard it as younger and contemporaneous with the Kitchen-midden culture. This disagreement as to dating may be partly due to the fact that the Fosna culture has extended over a very long period of time, according to recent investigations from a time before the Ancylus period into the period of the passage-graves. As regards the question of the origin of the Fosna culture and its relation to other cultures, two main interpretations have been set forth. According to one of these the Fosna culture is a later, southern continuation of the Komsa culture (see below) and has thus extended from the coast of the Arctic Ocean southward. According to the other interpretation it has, on the contrary, come from the south and spread northward along the coast. According to G. Gjessing (1945) the relation between the Ahrensburg culture and the Fosna culture is “an ascertained fact”. Like the former and the parallel Lyngby culture it must be assumed to have its origin in the Upper Palaeolithic Polish Swiderian.

Even more interest, if possible, than that aroused by the discovery of the Fosna culture was caused by Nummedal’s investigations in Finnmark in the years from 1925—35 which led to the discovery of the culture which has been given the name Komsa culture after a particular locality, or, in connection with French archaeological nomenclature “Le Finnmarkien”. Like the Fosna culture, the Komsa culture is also characterized by implements of carved stones with a hard structure similar to flint without any admixture of slate. But the technique as well as the shape of the implements reveal a more primitive character than those of the Fosna culture and in details they are very like those of the Palaeolithic cultures in Europe. As Nummedal stated in his first report on the Komsa finds, they contain implements from practically all the periods from Mousterian to Magdalenian inclusively. It is also true of the Komsa culture that the dating presents great difficulties. Komsa dwelling-sites are usually located on ridges or terraces along the beach and like the Fosna dwelling-sites lie entirely above the surface so that dating must be based exclusively on the geologic evidence, chiefly on the level on the dwelling-sites in relation to the old beach level. The generally prevailing opinion at present is that the culture is postglacial and arctic and that the oldest finds belong to an early period of the melting of the inland ice after the ice had receded from the coast but still covered the entire country within the fjords. How long this period lasted is an unsettled question. Bøe (1936) is of the opinion that it was of relatively short duration and ended during the early part of the Maglemose period in Denmark. According to Bøe it disappeared so suddenly that it calls to mind a migration like those of the Eskimos when they move because of changes in the ice with subsequent changes in hunting and fishing conditions.

As there is no archaeological evidence for Nordhagen’s (1933) hypothesis that the Komsa men were descendents of interglacial survivors, it must be assumed that they have wandered into Finnmark during late glacial or postglacial times. Archaeologists agree that this migration has come from the east. Bjørn (1930) found the Komsa culture to be most closely related to the Palaeolithic cultures in Siberia, Mongolia and Northern China, and believed that the origin of all these cultures was to be found in Central Asia, while Bøe, after reviewing all the different Stone Age cultures in Central and Western Europe, finds greatest agreement with the Komsa culture in the Upper Palaeolithic cultures from the Polish-Russian steppes. Southeast of Leningrad these cultures extend northward to the 55th or 56th degree of latitude. From here the distance to East-Finnmark is about 1000 km. Nature, in these regions, offers particularly favorable conditions for a northward migration along the riverbeds to the White Sea and further along the Kola coast to Finnmark.

Unfortunately all of the organic remains, with the exception of small quantities of charcoal, have been washed away in all the dwelling-sites from the Fosna and Komsa cultures, and we have thus no definite evidence as to what racial type our country’s oldest inhabitants belonged. Here we must rely on more or less well-founded conclusions on the basis of our knowledge of the Upper Palaeolithic men in Europe. If we assume with Bøe that the bearers of the Komsa culture immigrated to Finnmark from Eastern Europe, it will, on condition that this migration took place in the later part of the Upper Palaeolithic, be reasonable to direct our attention to the finds in Czechoslovakia known under the designation Brünn I—III, Předmost and Lautsch. These finds acquaint us with men who do not differ greatly from those who today inhabit many parts of the Scandinavian Peninsula. As Morant (1930) has shown, the mean cranial index of Upper Palaeolithic man is 72.6. In the above-mentioned find from Czechoslovakia the cranial index varies between 65.7 and 73.9 for men and between 70.2 and 77.8 for women. The idea which has been set forth from various sources that the dark brachycephalics of the Norwegian west coast are descendents of the bearers of the Komsa culture can therefore at present hardly be considered as resting on sound evidence. If we are going to venture upon the tempting road of hypothesis, we might connect the bearers of the Komsa culture with the type of Upper Palaeolithic man represented by the man from Chancelade whose skeleton was found in a bed-rock along with flints, incised reindeer bones and fragments of the Greenland seal. As demonstrated by Morant (1926 b) the Chancelade skull “is not more removed from the mean type of the modern inhabitants of Greenland than many individuals picked at random from that population are likely to be . . . . . We may therefore assume that in the Magdalenian period, a race of hunters existed in Southern Europe, which ultimately migrated northwards following the reindeer, or was pushed to the fringe by other and invading races”. The thought is not so remote that Komsa man belonged to the same palaearctic race as that from which the Eskimos are descended. Weidenreich’s (1943) female skull No. 103 of Choukoutien which he designated as “Eskimoid” shows that there were men of the Chancelade type in China in the Late Magdalenian also.

On the assumption that the Fosna culture, like the Lyngby culture, is a northern offshoot of the Ahrensburg culture, the question arises whether the skeletal parts from the Ancylus period in Scandinavia and Northern Germany can give us any information about the men of this period.

There is only one reliably dated find from the Scandinavian Peninsula from this time at Stångenäs, the parish of Bro, Bohuslän. It is the dome of a man which has been carefully investigated by Fürst (1925). The dome (Fig. 1) is destinguished by a not very large glabella, prominent browridges and a pronounced sulcus supra­glabellaris. Above this the forehead first ascends steeply but later arches evenly to the vertex, from here the profile line drops abruptly towards lambda where the pronounced tuber occipitale begins. The norma verticalis is distinguished by its great length (196 mm) and even breadth. The skull is dolichocranial (c. i. 71.9) and eurymetopic (the transverse fronto-parietal index 76.8). Fürst finds that the similarity between the Stångenäs skull and the male skull Cro-Magnon I is on the whole greater than with the younger Swedish Stone Age skulls, and at the same time it also approaches the Lower Aurignacian skull from Combe-Capelle. According to Fürst the Stångenäs skull has little in common with the Brünn and Brüx skulls.

The lowor jaw fragments from Mullerup and Svaerdborg bogs in Denmark which originate from the same period as the Stängenäs skull, have little anthropological interest since Arnborg (1925) has shown that the primitive characters which Nielsen (1921) finds in these fragments lie completely within the variation limits of modern man.

The skeletal finds from the Maglemose period which have been made in recent years in Denmark are of much greater interest. Hitherto there is a report on only one of these, namely the skeleton from Koelbjerg in Fünen. It dates from the early Maglemose period, about 7000 B. C. and is described in detail by Brøste and Fischer-Møller (1943). Both the skull and the bones of the body are exceptionally well preserved. The authors believe that it is the skeleton of a woman between 25 and 30 years of age. Seen from above, the skull (Fig. 2) has an ellipsoid form. The maximum length is 191 mm, the maximum breadth 141 mm and the c. i. 73.8. The forehead is broad, the transverse fronto-parietal index eurymetopic 71.6. "In the norma temporalis the nasion lies rather deep, the glabella and browridges are markedly protruding. The forehead slopes in an even arch to the bregma, the crown is horizontal. The occiput slopes in an even arch with oniy a slightly protruding tuber occipitale." The marks after the masticating muscles are very pronounced and the teeth are worn down considerably. The upper facial index is mesene bordering on euryene (50.4), the face prognathous, alv. P /_70°, fossae caninae deep. The nasal index is leptorhine (40.), the orbitae rectangular, medium in height, somewhat oblique with a low mesoconch index (76.2). The upper orbital border is massive and blunt with an indication of torus supraorbitalis on the left side. The lower jaw has a powerful chin, a low, broad ramus and everted gonial angles. Judging by the length of the long bones of the extremities, the authors calculate the stature of the Koelbjerg woman to be 157.8 cm. According to Pearson’s method of calculation employed in the present paper it would be somewhat less, 155.5 cm. The authors emphasize the points of similarity in the form of the roof of the Koelbjerg and Stångenäs skulls in consideration of the fact that they are of different sex, as well as the points of similarity exhibited by the Danish skull with several Cro-Magnon skulls, especially the female skull from Obercassel. "The result of the investigation is", say the authors, "that the Koelbjerg skeleton represents a type closely related to the reindeer hunters from the Magdalenian period, the Cro-Magnon race, which has left its mark on Denmark’s ancient population".

A comparison between the lengths and arcs of the Koelbjerg skull and the Upper Palaeolithic skull, which in the opinion of the authors is most closely related to it, the female skull from Obercassel, shows however very important differences as appears from the following list where the measurements of the Koelbjerg skull

are given first and those of the Obercassel skull second: L 191, 181; B 141, 129; B’ 101, 93; H’ 138, 134; Glabella U 530, 515; J 139, 124; G’H 70, 67; O2 32, 30. Only NB is smaller in the Koelbjerg skull (20) than in the Obercassel skull (24) and O1 is equal in both (42).

In consideration of both the absolute measurements and the entire form of the Koelbjerg skull, it is difficult to eliminate all doubt as to the correctness of the authors’ sexing and as to whether the skeleton is not rather that of a man. However this may be, there is no doubt that the skull exhibits a number of primitive characteristics and is of unusual interest because it forms a natural link between the Upper Palaeolithic and the "Nordic" type.

Regarding the other Danish skeletal find from the Maglemose period, the dome from Ravnstrup Mose, there is no information except that it resembles in its entire form the skulls from Koelbjerg, Korsør and Vedbaek (cf. below).

If we try to follow the tracks of the reindeer hunters from the edge of the glacier at Ahrensburg northward to Denmark through Sleswig-Holstein, the skeletal findings on which we must base our route and which have been described by Aichel (1933) are few and all are more or less uncertain in their dating. They are derived from older, chance finds in bogs and from finds made by labourers during the building of the Kiel Canal. Two of these skulls, B 33 and B 36, originate, according to Aichel on the basis of pollen analyses, from the early Ancylus period, a dating which according to G. Asmus (1937) is very doubtful. A third skull, B 1, probably belongs to the Litorina period but may be both younger or older. Because of its similarity to the two first-mentioned skulls, Aichel classifies it together with these, although with a question mark, in his Table p. 89. These tree skulls are all mesocranial with c. i. 76.7, 77.1 and 78.9 and are described by Aichel as “dinaric and plano-occipital”. Aichel regards these skulls as proof that piano-occipital brachycephalics migrated to North Europe not later than the early Ancylus period.

In consideration of Aichel’s pictures of the above-mentioned skulls (Plates XXIII—XXIV) and their uncertain dating, his bold conclusion is surprising. His illustrations of one of these “dinaric” skulls (B 33) with c. i. 77.1 reveals a skull with ovoid form in the norma verticalis, pentagonal in the norma occipitalis and a very pronounced tuber occipitale in the norma temporalis with lambdoid depression, but which has no similarity with plano-occipital brachycranial forms. Like the two other skulls which Aichel assigns to the same type, it falls naturally within the scope of variation of both Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic dolicho-mesocranial forms.

From North Germany proper two skulls are known, supposedly from the Ancylus period, found in Pritzerber Lake northwest of Brandenburg and described by Reche (1928). The two skulls which are very similar with the exception of a larger upper facial height, nasal and orbital height in one of them, are considered by Reche, under doubt, as female. Both skulls are long and narrow with c. i. 71.5 and 71.1.

In the norma verticalis they have ovoid to sphenoid form. The height is considerable and greater than the breadth, the height-breadth index 108.3 and 105.5. In the norma temporalis (Fig. 3) the well developed glabellar region bulges forward over the nasion, the forehead is high and rather steep, in No. I the profile line continues in an evenly curved arc, in No. II the line is slightly broken at the metopionand the bregma is partially slightly flattened. There is a slight lambdoid flattening but no sharp limitation of the occipital region. In the norma occipitalis both skulls exhibit a high, pentagonal form. The structure of the margo inferior aperturae pyriformis is remarkably primitive in both, showing a so-called sulcus obliquus communicans.

A comparison of the Pritzerber skulls with prehistoric European types reveals, according to Reche, considerable agreement with the female skull from Obercassel and particularly close relation to the skull from Chancelade and the group of Neolithic skulls from Silesia and Bohemia which can be designated as type II (cf. below).

It is considered superfluous to describe the various other skull finds from North and West Germany which, like the skulls from. Pritzerber Lake, were found by accident in the mud of rivers or their vicinity and which have been ascribed to Mesolithic time, but where there is no basis at all for an accurate dating. Nor is there any good reason to describe Kossinna’s (1927) “Dobertines” in detail. Among these Dobertines, which according to Kossinna represent the oldest people in North Germany and Scandinavia, he includes the 10—12 year old child which he has described under the designation homo Kiliensis, the above mentioned jaw fragments from Svaerdborg and Mullerup, the skull from Plau in Mecklenburg and the two skulls from the Pritzerber Lake. From North Germany the Dobertines were driven northward to Middle and North Scandinavia and finally to Finland by the “brave, migrating conquerors” whom Kossinna calls the Ellerbek men and who already belong to “der vollendeten nordischen langgesichtigen Langkopfrasse” (p. 148). In this connection it is sufficient to refer to Rydbeck’s (1934) criticism of Kossinna’s claims which concludes that Kossinna “unfortunately has shown a more imaginative than critical interpretation of these problems” (p. 36). As for the much discussed Plan skull which has given rise to so many hypotheses as to the origin of the brachycephalics of the North, we refer to the above-mentioned paper by G. Asmus which shows that the great age ascribed to the skull is far from proven, and that after the repeated reconstructions of the extremely defect skull no more can be said of how it really looked than that it was a Cro-Magnon-like form which, whether more or less mesocranial or even brachycranial, falls naturally within the scope of the Nordic Neolithic forms.

The Mesolithic period in North Europe which followed the Maglemose and which coincides with Litorina maximum is named after the Danish shell-heaps the

Kitchen-midden period or after the famous dwelling-site at Limfjord the Ertebølle period. The finds from this period show that living conditions in general are the same as in the Maglemose, hunting, fishing, the collection of shell-fish and various kinds of vegetable foods have sustained life. The Danish flint culture from the Ertebølle period is limited in extent outside of Denmark. It can be found along the western coast of the Baltic Sea in Holstein and also farther east from Fehmarn to Lübeck, also here and there along the coast of Mecklenburg as far as Rügen as well as in Skåne. The characteristic Danish kitchen-middens are not found farther north on the Scandinavian Peninsula, but a large number of dwelling-sites are known from the same geological level as the Danish kitchen-middens, and they are undoubtedly from the same archaeological period. These dwelling-sites are particularly numerous on the west coast of Sweden and around Oslofjord but are also found extensively in Oentral Sweden and along the southern and western coasts of Norway.

A problem which has been much discussed by the archaeologists and which has probably not yet reached a final solution is the relation between the Maglemose and the Ertebølle. While a number of Danish investigators have held that there is a natural connection between them and that the later culture arose from the earlier by a series of gradual changes, others claim that the typical midden culture was developed upon a different basis from that of the Maglemose, which necessitates the assumption that the new culture was produced by the coming of a new people who introduced new potentialities (compair Lindqvist, 1918). At that remote period one obviously cannot assume a large collective invasion at a single stroke. The migration must have been accomplished in small bands which always left room for older surviving forms by the side of the new. Comparison of different dwelling-sites gives precisely this picture of two different groups still existing side by side (Shetelig, 1937, p. 41).

Brøndsted (1938) takes an intermediate view between these two interpretations. In his opinion the Ertebølle civilization is developed partly on the basis of the Maglemose but not without conciderable external influence. This does not necessitate the assumption of the migration of new people as the bearers of this culture. The characteristics which distinguish it from the Maglemose can well be imagined to have their origin in culture spreading alone. There are no indications of massive migration but on the other hand the possibility of a certain population growth by means of gradual influx of new people cannot be eliminated (p. 120).

No skeletal remains from the Ertebølle period are known from the Scandinavian Peninsula. The skeleton of a young boy found in 1907 in the dwelling-site at Viste in Jæren (see p. 13) was originally assigned to the Ertebølle period. However later investigations render this dating doubtful as it appears that Mesolithic implement culture in Norway as well as in Sweden has persisted unchanged into the Neolithic.

Judging from the extent of the kitchen-middens in Denmark, one would expect to find abundant skeletal material from this period also. Skeletons have been found in many of the shell-heaps but the difficulty is that these skeletons have often been proved to be younger than the shell-heaps in which they are found, in other words they were buried here at a later date, or the shell-heap may be difficult to date. With the exception of the skeletal finds which can definitely be regarded as younger than the shell-heap as well as of those which are probably graves but where a critical consideration of the conditions under which they were found raises doubt as to whether the skeletons were buried at the same time as the shell-heaps were being formed, there are according to Brøndsted only three skeletons up to 1938 which are contemporaneous with the surrounding shell-heaps beyond reasonable doubt, namely the skeletons from Ertebølle, Kassemose and Bloksbjerg. The skull of the Ertebølle skeleton is unfortunately crushed and the skull from Blokshjerg has been pieced together from several fragments so that its calculated c. i. 78.8 can only be regarded as approximate. The Kassemose skull is very large. According to Nielsen the measurements are: L 195, B 160, and H’ 137 mm. It should thus have a breadth-length index of 82, a height-length index of 70.3 and a height-breadth index of 85.6. Further, according to Nielsen’s facial measurements it will be mesene, chamaerhine and mesoconch. Judging by the illustration of the skull which Brøndsted gives on p. 170, this skull is also pieced together from many fragments and some of its parts are extremely defective. It is therefore possible that a renewed examination of the skull, after a new juxtaposition of the fragments, might to some extent modify the picture of the skull, especially the face, based on Nielsen’s measurements. With a parietal breadth of 160 mm the Kassemose skull is the oldest known skull in which such a large breadth has been observed. For comparison it can be mentioned that with the exception of Solutré No. II, of uncertain breadth but hardly more than 155.5 mm, the largest breadth measured in any Upper Palaeolithic skull (Cro-Magnon No. III) is 151.5 mm, and even the breadth of the La Chapelle skull is not more than 156.2 mm (Morant, 1930, p. 140). The powerful glabellar region which protrudes above the deepset nasion gives the skull a primitive appearance.

Since Brønsted’s compilation of the Danish skeleton material from the Ertebølle period, three new finds have been made, only two of which have been published as yet, namely the finds from Dyrholm in Jutland and from Korsør in Zealand.

A large number of human bones were found at Dyrholm, spread out over the dwelling-site together with animal bones. The human bones, from a large number of individuals, are treated in the same manner as the animal bones. They are slit lengthwise, i. e. along the marrow and bear marks after cuts or blows. They prove that the Ertebølle people were cannibals and are thus of great historical interest. Anthropologically, however, they afford little information. The best preserved fragments are a defective dome of a child whose age is assumed to be about 10 years, and some of the squama occipitalis of an adult man. According to Fischer-Møller’s calculations the breadth-length index of the dome is about 80. The fragment of the man’s skull is distinguished by extreme thickness and a pronounced torus occipitalis (Degerbøl, 1942).

The Korsør find (Brøste, 1945) includes an unusually well preserved skeleton of an adult man. The cranium (Fig. 4) is very large and massive. C 1640 cc, L 197, B 144, H’ 143, G’H 77, and J 150 mm. The skull is dolichocranial (73.1), orthocranial (72.6), akrocranial (99.3), mesene (51.3), leptorhine (38.6) and mesoconch (81.8). In the norma temporalis the glabella and the brownridges protrude above the deepset nasion, the forehead slopes evenly, the crown is slightly arched and proceeds to the sloping occiput which has a lambdoid depression. The facial profile shows a powerful, protruding chin and an end-to-end bite. In the norma verticalis the skull has an almost ovoid form, its phaenozygosis is clear, in the norma occipitalis it

has the form of a house with an arched roof and vertical walls. The norma frontalis reveals a regular, large, high face with large orbitae of almost quadratic form, a high, narrow nose with a high bridge and a massive lower jaw with great symphyseal height, prominent chin, vertical broad ramus and everted gonial angles. According to the length of the long bones of the limbs, Brøste has calculated the stature of the Korsør man to be 166 cm, a little more than Nielsen has found for the Kassemose man (163 cm).

Bröste points out the excellent agreement which exists between the four well preserved Danish Skulls from the Mesolithic which have been found in recent years, the Koelbjerg and Ravnstrup skulls from the Maglemose and the Vedbaek and Korsör skulls from the Ertebølle. All four are dolichocranial with only slight deviations in the length and breadth measurements and the height of the cranium in relation to both length and breadth also shows excellent agreement, especially the Korsör and Koelbjerg skulls. This is also true of some of the facial measurements. Both the Koelbjerg and the Vedbaek skulls exhibit certain features which are characteristic of the Cro-Magnon race such as the form of the orbitae (orbital index 76.2 and 70.6) and certain other features of the facial skeleton. The Korsör skull however exhibits none of these features. The quadratic orbitae, the narrow nose and the high upper face have no primitive traits. On the whole we find in this Stone Age man “a bone structure which does not differ in any respect from what can be found today in Denmark in the large majority of our contemporaries” (p. 17).

Bröste is undoubtedly correct in that the Koelbjerg, and especially the Korsör skull in their entire form approach the Nordic or Germanic type. The points of similarity between the Korsör skull and several of our Norwegian skulls from the Iron Age, e. g. No. 48 (Pl. XLII), No. 57 (Pl. LI) and No. 80 (Pl. LXXI) are thus many. However that most of the present day Danish population has the same skull form must be regarded as more than doubtful as shown by investigations of this population. In this connection it is sufficient to refer to the fact that no large district in Denmark has a cephalic index under 80.

Investigation of the Ertebølle culture and its people is more difficult in SleswigHolstein than in Denmark because the lowering of the level of the land which took place during the Litorina period was followed by a rise of the level in Denmark while in Sleswig-Holstein and North Germany the subsidence continued down to the Neolithic. The old dwelling-sites which lay along the coast during the Ertebølle period therefore lie below the water level here, and the strati-graphic circumstances for most of the finds ascribed to this period are, like those of the Maglemose finds, more or less unreliable.

Of the skeleton material from Sleswig-Holstein, the following Nos. belong to the Litorina period “without doubt” according to Aichel: B 5 from Ellerbek, 11032 and 11245 b from the Kiel Bay at Ellerbek, B 34 from Fehmarn and B 10 from Kattelsby. Some other skulls “very probably” originate from the Litorina period, but may also be either younger or older. This is true of the above mentioned skull B 1 from the Kiel Canal, B 4 from Holtenau, B from the Kiel Canal, B 37 from Lauter-Au and B 38 from Reider-Au.

B 5 is a large skull with capacity 1585 cc, dolichocranial with c. i. 70.8, slightly prognathous, has a low face, strong arcus zygomatici, low orbitae, a deeply depressed nasion and a broad, low nose. Aichel finds that it approaches the Brünn type as regards the form and measurements of the brain case, but the face approaches the Cro-Magnon type. The two finds from the Kiel Bay consist of fragments, mostly of the frontal bone. They are very massive and have pronounced browridges. Naturally they allow of no conclusions as to the form of the skulls, but Aichel points out that both fragments fit in well with the skull B 5 from Ellerbek. The two skulls B 34 and B 10 are both long skulls. The length of the first is 190, of the other 199 mm and the c. i. is 73.8 and 68.3 respectively.

Of the less definitely datable skulls B 1, B 2 and B 38 are mesocranial with c. i. 76.7, 77.2, and 75.4, while B 4 and B 37 are dolichocranial with c. i. 71.8 and 69.0. The mean c. i. of Aichel’s eight skulls is 72.9. With the exception of B 1 which Aichel ascribes to the dinaric piano-occipital form which is discussed above, all of these skulls exhibit some connection either to the Brünn or the Cro-Magnon type according to Aichel.

If we glance over the available skeleton material from Scandinavia, SleswigHolstein and North Germany which either definitely belongs to the Ancylus and Litorina period or may be assumed to have its origin in a period not far from the Litorina, we find that most of the skulls are dolichocranial, others are mesocranial and one is brachycranial; but regardless of this variation in the cranial index, most of the skulls exhibit a structure closely related to the skull forms which we know from the Upper Palaeolithic of West and Central Europe, comprising the Aurignacian, Solutrean and Magdalenian periods and which also include both long-headed and round-headed examples with transitions in between.

Beside these skulls, two of the skulls which recent excavation has brought to light from Denmark’s Mesolithic, the skulls from Koelbjerg and Korsör, stand in a class of their own in several respects as the facial structure shows relationship to the skull form encountered in increasing numbers in Scandinavia’s Neolithic and Metal Ages and which is generally designated as the Nordic or Germanic type. This is especially true of the Korsör skull. How shall we interpret these forms? It is difficult to find more than two answers to this question. These skulls either represent stages in a transition of the Upper Palaeoithic type to the Nordic, or else they are the result of a cross between a new element which has come from the south and the original population of the Upper Palaeolithic type.

As regards the Koelbjerg skull, this exhibits exactly that combination of Palaeolithic and Nordic traits which justifies its being designated as a transitional form. Also the Korsør skull shows in the large size of the brain case (C 1640 cc), the heavy browridges and relief of muscle attachments, the lambdoid flattening, the flaring zygomata and the heavy mandible direct connection with the Upper Palaeolithic type. But at the same time it is distinguished from the large majority of the skulls of this group by the height and narrowness of the upper face, its extremely narrow nose and high orbitae. Facial form of similar type is not however completely unknown within the Upper Palaeolithic skull material. Thus Předmost III (Matiegka, 1934) has an upper facial height which is only slightly less than that of the Korsör skull (76 as compared to 77 mm) and its upper facial index is considerably higher (53.5 as compared to the Korsör skull’s 51.3). The female skull from Brünn III (Matiegka, 1929) also has a higher facial index (53.7) and its orbital index (81.0) is only slightly under that of the Korsör skull. However as regards this last index it must be remembered that it is usually higher in females than in males. Therefore it cannot be said that the structural deviations shown by the Korsör skull in relation to the majority of the Upper Palaeolithic skulls can be taken as proof that it represents a new and foreign element. On the contrary it is more logical to interpret these deviations as a further step in the transition of the Upper Palaeolithic type in the direction of the Nordic, the beginnings of which are represented by the Koelbjerg skull. In this connection it should also be pointed out that a gradual decrease in facial breadth along with increase in the height of the upper face with the nose and orbitae has also been observed in modern groups in the course of a period of time which is both much shorter and is not associated with the environmental changes which distinguish the Early Aurignacian from the Mesolithic.

The calculated height of the Korsör man (166 cm) is small compared with the calculated mean stature of the Upper Palaeolithic male (12—173 cm). The same is also true of the Koelbjerg skeleton on condition that it is also male. However the low stature of the two individuals cannot be ascribed any decisive significance as the Combe Capelle man for example was short with a stature of 160—162 cm.

The interpretation of the above described unique characteristics of the Koelbjerg and Korsör skulls as an indication of admixture of the original population with tribes which had wandered in from the south with high narrow faces and low stature cannot be eliminated from a morphological point of view, but on an archaeological basis it is not readily acceptable. It would necessitate a migration which would presumably have come from the Danube region and must then be interpreted as a forerunner of Neolithic in Denmark as early as the Ancylus period.

The skeleton material known at present from Scandinavia’s Mesolithic is still much too small and insufficiently investigated to afford a general view of the anthropology of the population at that time. All we can say is that in all the known skeletons we can recognize Upper Palaeolithic traits and that this material does not supply any definite evidence for the assumption that there was immigration of new elements in the Litorina period. It seems most logical to assume that the reindeer hunters of the Ahrensburg culture who lived along the southern border of the ice covering, followed the ice northward to Scandinavia as it gradually receded. We thus arrive at the conclusion that the people of the Fosna culture, as the first immigrants to Norway from the south, are probably descendents of the Upper Palaeolithic men in Central Europe, and that we must thus expect a palaeolithic element in the population of the Scandinavian Peninsula as previously claimed by several authors, probably most vehemently by Montelius (1919).

The picture presented by the study of the available skeleton material of the Mesolithic population of Scandinavia and the adjacent parts of North Europe agrees with the observation made by Nordman (1927) in regard to the simultaneous cultures. Nordman points out that the Kitchen-midden civilization with its corresponding cultures is not Pan-European but is a lagging, backward border culture contemporaneous with the superior Neolithic culture of the central countries such as the Danube region from which impulses and elements radiate out towards the periphery. Both domestic animals and agriculture extend as far as France’s Campignian as well as ornamentation which is far superior to the Nordic, the art of baking clay vessels reaches as far as South Scandinavia, while still farther away, within large areas of the Scandinavian Peninsula, in the eastern Baltic region and Finland, even pottery is unknown. The striking dissimilarities which distinguish the Kitchen-midden finds from the Maglemose are perhaps not as deeply rooted as they appear at first glance. The mode of living is the same, and as regards the implements, a continuity can be discerned even though the proportions between the types, micro- and macrolithic forms, change. Thus it is also striking that there is a continuity in the population itself, even though new cultural elements possibly and probably indicate admixture of new groups of peoples from other parts.

The Later Stone Age which follows the Kitchen-midden period marks the important milestone in Europe’s history when the hunting culture of the older Stone Age was replaced by pastoral industry and the cultivation of corn. “In the early Neolithic period this agricultural civilization advanced from the mouth of the Danube towards the cultural lands of middle Europe. This is the culture of the Bandpattern pottery. In the west along the Atlantic coast the Megalithic civilization appears, associated with sea-coasts and trading connections; these civilizations also originated ultimately from impulses from Mediterranean lands, from Egypt and Asia Minor.

Between these two principle groups a third eventually appears, the culture brought by the Battle-axe people, a mobile and varying culture which spread from central Europe over far-reaching areas” (Shetelig, 1937, p. 52).

It is difficult to assume that the radical change which takes place in Denmark somewhat before or around the middle of the 3rd millenium with the introduction of agricultural civilization can have taken place without the help of considerable immigration of peoples from the south. These newcomers must be assumed to have belonged to the same groups of people as the first cultivators of the soil in Middle Europe, the Band-pattern peoples. The graves of the oldest Danish agriculturists are simple earthen graves. But the form of the graves soon changes and we see the development of the great stone graves, the dolmens, passage-graves and stone cists which illustrate the influence of the west European Megalithic culture which subsequently sets its mark on the agricultural civilization. The Danish Megalithic culture shows such good agreement, not only in the structure of the graves but also in various other forms, with the corresponding culture in France and England that in the opinion of many archaeologists it suggests an immigration of western European people into Denmark, while others claim that the finds afford no proof of an influx of people from the west.

In the same period as the large dolmens and the oldest passage-graves a new people penetrates through Holstein and Sleswig from Middle Europe into Jutland. This is the Single-grave or the so-called Battle-axe people. They gradually extend their power and become masters of the entire peninsula, and they get reinforcements by sea from related tribes in Northeast Germany. Later on new tribes of the Single-grave people from Holstein and Sleswig force their way over to the Danish islands (Brøndsted). It can be demonstrated that the Megalithic and the Battle-axe people, at first sharply opposed, later assimilated which each other and became a unity. According to Brøndsted it must be assumed that it is the southern European Bell Beaker culture’s tremendous expansion from west to east which causes the group of peoples within the Northeast and North German Single-grave cultures to migrate northward across the sea. A question which arises in this connection is whether this Bell Beaker culture has also left traces in Denmark. The answer is affirmative. Typical bell beakers have been found in passage-graves both in Jutland and on Fünen and Zealand (Becker, 1936). According to Forssander (1936) the Bell Beaker culture falls on Middle European ground in the second half of the passage-grave time and the Bigum find in Jutland is from the time between the oldest part of the North European Battle-axe culture and the beginning of the stone cist time.

From Denmark the Megalithic culture spreads to Southern Sweden from Skåne to Mälaren and to Öland and Gotland and from Sweden further to Southern Norway, probably partly along the coast of Bohuslän to the region around the Oslofjord and partly over Värmland to the inner parts of Østfold. Whether it may also have come directly by sea from Denmark is still an open question (G. Gjessing). Outside of these limited regions of the Scandinavian Peninsula the primitive hunting cultures of earlier times persist and later gradually absorb the domestic animals and soil cultivation of the agricultural civilization.

The Battle-axe culture also extends from the Danish islands to Skåne and the region around the Oslofjord. But this Danish Battle-axe culture has little significance for the Scandinavian Peninsula compared with another form of the Battle-axe culture, characterized by faceted and boat-shaped axes. This culture is most closely related to southeastern Middle Europe and has reached Southern Sweden directly over the Baltic Sea without passing through Denmark. In Sweden the boat-axes are frequently encountered in single graves with a peculiar pottery which is related to the band-pattern pottery in Middle Europe.

Both the faceted and the boat-shaped axes are found in Norway, the first however only as a very limited feature. The Battle-axe culture enters into Norwy by two different channels, partly along the coast of Bohuslän to Østfold and the adjacent eastern part of the country, partly by way of North Sweden to the region around Trondheimsfjord.

In consideration of the various immigrations which archaeological investigations have revealed have taken place to the Scandinavian countries in the Later Stone Age, it is not surprising that investigations of the anthropological material from this period bring to light a population which, far from representing a common type, exhibits differences which can hardly be said to be less than those found in the population of today. A profitable analysis of this material can only be made on the basis of an exact knowledge of the anthropological characters of both the original population and the immigrants.

Our investigation of the limited skull material from Denmark’s and Sweden’s Preneolithic period led us to the result that the population at this time exhibited pronounced Upper Palaeolithic characteristics, however with a facial form which in both the Koelbjerg and the Korsör skulls approaches the form which is common in the Iron Age skulls. We assumed that the original population in Scandinavia belonged to the same type of men as the reindeer hunters of Middle Europe and in this connection we found that the Upper Palaeolithic men in the part of Europe directly to the south had not formed a homogenous race either as regards their skull form, but on the contrary exhibited considerable differences including both dolichocranial and brachycranial forms. As Morant (1930) has shown, the Upper Palaeolithic series is even rather less variable than some modern European series which are considered to he racially homogenous. When some investigators within this population have claimed to be able to distinguish between a number of different “races”, each based on a few and often defective and posthumously distorted skulls,

there is reason to emphasize that there appears to be no sufficient statistical justification for such a differentiation (Morant). It is quite another matter that during the long period of time included in the Upper Palaeolithic, local variations have probably arisen. For earlier investigators of the origin of the peoples of Northern Europe’s, two of these in particular have played an important role, namely the Cro-Magnon type and the Brünn type. These are also designated as the western and eastern types of Palaeolithic man. The form of the forehead has been considered an important differential character between them. A forehead which rises steeply above the sulcus supraglabellaris and bends rather sharply at the metopion is considered characteristic for the Cro-Magnon type, for the Brünn type a low, somewhat receding forehead.

A collective consideration of the Upper Palaeolithic skulls shows, according to Morant, that their means fall within the inter-racial ranges for modern races in the vast majority of absolute and indicial measurements compared. Definite exceptions to this rule were only found for six absolute measurements which show greater means than the largest modern racial one observed, and for the orbital and foraminal indices, which are both peculiarly low. The Upper Palaeolithic type resembles most closely the modern dolicocephalic races of Western Europe.

One of the richest sources of our knowledge of the physical characters of the bearers of the Band-pattern and the Battle-axe cultures is Reche’s (1909) investigations of the anthropology of the Neolithics in Silesia and Bohemia. According to Seger’s (1906) investigations it can be determined for these regions that the Band-pattern culture preceded the Battle-axe culture, which was brought to the country by foreign immigrants.

According to Reche’s tables, I have, insofar as possible, calculated the means of the characters in his series of male skulls of the Band-pattern and the Battle-axe peoples. These are presented in Table I with the range of the different characters. The number of skulls of the Band-pattern people which allow a determination of the basion-bregma height and measurements of the face is very small, and the means of these measurements are therefore of very limited value; however they are of interest in connection with the variations recorded in comparison with the corresponding values for the Battle-axe people.

The Battle-axe peoples are distinguished by a very long skull, its breadth is slight, yielding the low mean c. i. of 69.4, the height however is great, much greater than the breadth, the upper face is mesene bordering on leptene, the nose leptorhine and the orbitae mesoconch. The mean stature of 10 males is 164.6 cm with a range between 157 and 175 cm. The Band-pattern peoples have a skull which is both shorter, broader and lower. The mean c. i. is 74, but the group includes mesocranial forms

also with c. i. up to 78.6 in contrast to the Battle-axe people. In relation to the length, the height is greater than in the Battle-axe people, but the height is less, or only slightly greater than the breadth. The upper facial index is lower, the nasal index considerably higher than in the Battle-axe people while the orbital index in the two groups is not very different, either in the mean or variation. The mean stature of 8 males is 153.1 cm with variation between 145 and 163 cm, thus much lower than in the Battle-axe people.

In his material Reche distinguished between two skull types which he designates as Type I and Type II. The first includes skulls which are mesocranial, brachysteno­cranial (100 H’/B lesser than 100), mesoprosope, mesorhine to chamaerhine and which tend towards prognathy. The type is also distinguished by a characteristic structure of the nose. This is not only broad, but the ossa nasalia and the conjoining part of the processus frontalis maxillae bulges forward and can be described as inflated. The ossa zygomatica protrude forward. In the norma verticalis the skulls of this type have a broad ovoid to pear shape, sometimes with pronounced tubera parietalia, in the norma occipitalis they have a broad, pentagonal form with lateral surfaces which converge downward. Skulls of Type II are dolicho- to hyperdolichocranial, dolichostenocranial (100 H’/B more than 100), leptoprosope, meso- to leptorhine and orthognathous, sometimes hyperorthognathous. The hyperdolichocranial forms exhibit powerfully developed muscle attachments, a large plarium temporale, a prominent glabellar region with a very pronounced fossa supraglabellaris, powerful arcus zygomatici, a robust mandible with a broad ramus, often a torus occipitalis and thick cranial bones. In the norma verticalis the skulls have an elongated elliptical form with a broad, flat forehead, a long occiput and barely indicated tubera parietalia, in the norma occipitalis pentagonal form with parallel lateral surfaces. Type II is also distinguished by greater stature than Type I.

Both of these types are represented among both the Band-pattern and the Battle-axe skulls, but there is the difference that while about half of the former belong to Type I, this is true of only a few of the latter. Type II is characteristic of these. As regards the relationship of the two types to other known skull forms, Reche claims that the similarity between Type II and the North European or Scandinavian skulls is immediately apparent. The only characteristic which distinguishes it from these is its more pronounced dolichocrany. He concludes from this that its home is the north, and that it has penetrated southward and brought the corded-pottery to Middle Europe. He finds it more difficult to determine the relationship of type I to other known dolicho-mesocranial forms. As the type is particularly mon among the Band-pattern people who came to Middle Europe from the south and southeast, it is reasonable to ascribe the home of this type to these regions.

In an investigation from 1929 Sailer has compiled the most important indices for a total of 58 Band-pattern and 47 Battle-axe skulls on the basis of the literature to date and his own investigations of 6 Neolithic skulls from Thuringia. The majority of the Band-pattern skulls are from the famous graves at Rössen and Jordansmühl in Silesia, of the Battle-axe skulls from Gross-Tschernosek in Northwest Bohemia. Several of these skulls are more or less defective, for others the sex is uncertain and therefore, in the calculation of the means which I have made on the basis of his individual measurements, it has been impossible to take into account the possible sex differences. The means are presented in Table II.

Like the values calculation from Reche’s measurements, these means for the larger material show that the Battle-axe people are distinguished by a more pronounced dolichocrany than the Band-pattern people. Their skulls are also higher, both in relation to the lenght and especially in relation to the breadth, they have narrower nose and lower orbitae, while the difference in the upper facial index is less than it appears in Reche’s material. The table gives a clear impression of the great variation exhibited by the skulls of both groups.

According to Sailer the average type of the Band-pattern people shows almost complete agreement with the Cro-Magnon race and also agrees with the Neolithic’s Swedes as well as a good many of its Danes. The Battle-axe people on the contrary show the dominating influence of the Upper Palaeolithic’s strong dolichocranial Brünn and Chancelade races. That the Battle-axe people should have come from Jutland as assumed by Reche is considered by Sailer as out of the question, it is much more reasonable to suppose that their home was Southeastern Europe.

In a Neotithic material from Poysdorf in Austria consisting of 9 skulls, 4 of which are very defective, and which, judging from the grave goods reproduced, seem to belong to the Band-pattern culture, Lebzelter (1936) also finds two skull types which he designates as Types I and II. The later, consisting of 3 skulls, is distinguished like Reche’s Type II by extreme dolichocrany (c. i. 68, 70, 71), the basion-bregma height for the most part exceeds the parietal breadth (100 H’/B 106.5, 105.2, 106.1), in the norma verticalis the skulls have a long, elliptical form, without any lateral convexity. The skulls of Type I, like Reche’s Type I, have a higher c. i. (73—76, or, if a Band-pattern skull from Langenlois is included, to 79) and are pear-shaped in the norma verticalis. However they differ from Reche’s Type I in that they are not prognathous and they also lack the peculiarity of the nasal structure which Reche considers characteristic of the type.

According to Lebzelter the skulls of Type I suggest connection with the Brünn form on the one hand, especially Brünn III, and with the Norwegian Iron Age skulls on the other represented by our No. 102, and Lebzelter finds in this relationship an expression of the persistance of the Upper Palaeolithic Brünn race into the Neolithic and its connection with the Nordic race. Lebzelter finds the relationship of Type II to other forms more obscure. He finds some points of agreement with a typical Mediterranean skull from Sardinia.

Of the other Neolithic skeleton material from Middle Europe, the finds in Mecklenburg are of especial interest in connection with Scandinavia’s anthropology. This material, which has been compiled by Schliz (1909) and later by Asmund (1937) and is also discussed by Scheidt (1924) in his review of the Neolithic races, is derived in a small part from Megalithic graves (stone cists and passage-graves), for the most part from earthen graves. Of the latter, the skeletons which were found on the island of Tannenwerder in Ostorfer Lake at Schwerin comprise the majority. According to Beltz (1909) the furniture found in these graves belongs to the same period of the late Neolithic as the Nordic passage-graves and shows no relationship to the Single-grave culture. The Mecklenburgian Megalithic skulls, 10 in all, the dating of one of which is uncertain and one is derived from a grave with corded pottery, agree, according to Asmund, in all the main characteristics with the Danish and Swedish Megalitic material. Like these they are powerfully formed and show relationship to the Cro-Magnon type. They are of considerable length and medium to slight breadth with c. i. from 65 to 78. However they differ from the Swedish, and especially from the Danish skulls, by less height. While the mean height for the male Danish skulls is 138.8 mm and for the Swedish 136.4, four Mecklenburgian male skulls have a height of 130—136 mm and an average of 134.3 mm. In spite of the small height of the skulls in relation to their length, the height-breadth index is metrio- to akrocranial because of the slight breadth. Judging by the few available facial measurements the type seems to be euryene to mesene, mesoconch and mesorhine to chamaerhine, although in this material also there seem to be considerable variations in the facial form. One of the skulls (Burrow 2) is distinguished from the others by its Mediterranean form.

According to Schliz the 9 skulls from the earthen graves in Mecklenburg which were available at the time he made his investigations exhibit such a characteristic common trait that it justifies regarding them as a distinct type which he calls the Ostorf type. Of these 9 skulls, 8 are dolichocranial and only one mesocranial. In the norma facialis the skulls show a high, narrow forehead with a small distance between the tubera frontalia, ending in a pointed arch above with indications of a crista sagittalis, projecting arcus superciliares limited to the inner half of the margo orbitalis superior and almost horizontal upper orbital margins. The upper part of the face is broad with protruding zygomatic arches, the processus alveolaris maxillae on the contrary is narrow like the mandible which ends in a triangular protruding chin. The protruding nose under the deepset nasion is characteristic of the norma temporalis, also the pronounced superciliary arches, a forehead curve which rises obliquely up to the bregma and a regular, half-circle formed bulging of the occiput with no interruption at lambda and finally a pronounced prognathy. In the norma verticalis the skull has an ovoid form with a blunt pole corresponding to the middle of the forehead. In this the Ostorf type is clearly distinct from the Megalithic form with its straight forehead contour.

Schliz finds it difficult to classify this skull form under the other Nordic skull material. He does not find a combination of the peculiar characteristics of the Ostorf type in any of the skulls illustrated by Retzius. They also differ from both the Megalithic form and the Band-pattern skulls. The type is more similar to certain Eskimo skulls. The Mediterranean form which resembles it in the structure of the vault, differs from the Ostorf type by its narrow face, and yet Schliz finds that this again points back to the “Eurafrican” basic form which has led to the origin of the Mediterranean race. In a later publication Schliz (1915) return to the Ostorf type and states that with its narrow, long skull with rounded forehead and round occiput it follows the Brünn series.

Asmund, who has examined a much greater number of skulls from Ostorf than Schliz, finds that while they undoubtedly exhibit considerable mutual similarity, they nevertheless differ greatly from each other in their feature. Here also the same two types can be recognized as in Reche’s material. These two types however are connected by transitional types. Even skulls which must be regarded as the purest representatives of the two types exhibit certain of the other type’s characters. The Mecklenburg skulls of both types differ from the Silesian-Bohemian skulls in their smaller height. Of the 16 earthen grave skulls whose heights could be determined, only 5 have a height-breadth index of 100 or more. The tendency to prognathy which Reche finds in his Type I and which Schliz regards as characteristic for the Ostorf type as a whole, is found by Asmund in skulls of Type I. As regards the face, both long and broad forms are found in skulls of Type II as in Reche’s material, and the nose and orbita measurements exhibit similar variations.

While Reche considered the Silesian-Bohemian skulls of Type II as representatives of the Nordic race, Asmund finds in agreement with Scheidt that the Ostorf skulls of this type with their lesser height development occupy a unique position, but are nevertheless related to the Nordic passage-grave form by transitions. The transition forms which are found between Type I and Type II are, according to Asmund, an expression of the race mixture which had already taken place in the Neolithic in Mecklenburg. The sparse evidence of Cro-Magnon traits exhibited by the skulls from the earthen graves in contrast to the skulls from the Megalithic graves is interpreted as an indication that the peoples in the eastern and western parts of North Germany formed two sharply distinct population groups between which mixture occurred only exceptionally.

Like Reche, Asmund assumes that Type I is derived from the southeastern parts of Europe. Against Reche’s assumption that Type II is identical with the Nordic skull and has its origin in the north, Asmund points out the difference which exists between skulls of this type and the Danish and Swedish Stone Age skulls, a difference which is expressed not only in the stronger dolichocrany and considerably greater height in Type II, but also in the entire form of the skulls; while the skulls in the Nordic group very frequently exhibit Cro-Magnon traits, the Silesian-Bohemian skulls approach closer to Brünn III. On condition that Type II in Silesia and Bohemia can be regarded as bearers of the Corded-pottery culture, Asmund considers it logical to look for its original home in Central Germany. It is noteworthy that while Reche finds skulls of Type II mostly in graves which belong to the Corded-pottery culture, the same type or a very similar type is found in Mecklenburg’s earthen graves where Corded-pottery has not been found.

Other skulls from earthen graves in Mecklenburg are similar in structure to the Ostorf skulls, however with one exception, a skull from Wardow. This is the only brachycranial Stone Age skull from Mecklenburg. Its c. i. is 82.6. Its height cannot be determined because of a basis defect but the skull gives the impression of being high. It is hyperleptoprosope, leptorhine and mesoconch and thus exhibits a combination of characters similar to Nielsen’s Furfooz type (cf. below concerning the Danish skulls from the Neolithic).

The above discussed investigations of skeleton material from Middle Europe’s Neolithic show that even though the Band-pattern and the Battle-axe cultures, as first claimed by Schliz and Reche, are characterized by a predominance of certain skull types, this relationship between skull type and culture is not more rigid than that the same skull type can be found in graves which belong to different cultures, just as in many graves there may be transitional forms between these types. It is not surprising that this is the case, firstly in consideration of the normal variation of the related types, and secondly of the mixture which has undoubtedly taken place in many places during the Neolithic migrations, both between the immigrating tribes mutually and between them and the earlier inhabitants of the Upper Palaeolithic type.

In addition to the skull forms which, with the reservations made above, can be said to represent the mean types for the two above-mentioned Neolithic cultures in Middle Europe, we have also become acquainted with a skull form from the country bordering Scandinavia on the south in the earthen graves of Mecklenburg, a skull form which differs from both the Band-pattern and the Battle-axe culture’s forms in its lesser height, and which in several respects may be said to form a connecting link between them and the German Reihengräber form.

In our discussion of the cultural currents which reached North Germany and Scandinavia from Middle Europe in the Later Neolithic, we also mentioned the Bell Beaker Culture. The Bell Beaker physical type is known to us from burials in Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The skull material from these different countries exhibits considerable differences. In the Rhineland and Austria the majority is brachycranial, but in Bohemia and Poland mesocranial. Schliz (1909 a) who has examined 11 skulls from Middle Germany and Moravia describes them all as high, round skulls with steep forehead, steep occiput, powerful browridges, deepset nasion and a high face. According to Schliz the type shows great similarity with the skulls from Grenelle, the Danish Borreby form and the Swedish brachycranial Neolithic skull from Karleby (cf. below concerning the Swedish skulls). Of the 8 skulls where the face is preserved, 4 are chamaeprosope and 4 are leptoprosope, but all have a leptoprosope malar upper facial index. The orbital index alternates from chamaeconch to hypsiconch, while all the skulls are leptorhine. For the Bell Beaker skulls from Rhineland Coon (1939) has computed the following means: cranial index 81.6, upper facial index 54.2, orbital index 80.3, and nasal index 47.9.

The review of the Danish material from Neolithic which follows is based on Nielsen’s tables and illustrations in his publications from 1906, 1911 and 1915, the review of the Swedish material on the well-known works of G. Retzius (1899) and Fürst (1912) and Dahr’s (1943) recently published description of the skeletons from Västerbjers on Gotland.

As regards the Danish material, it should be remarked that Nielsen does not give a detailed description of his measurement technique. His tables are cluttered with typographical errors which I have tried to correct as far as possible. Nor do all of his measurements seem equally reliable. Among these special mention should be made of his computation of the auriculo-bregmatic height, which he has recorded as almost as large as the basion-bregmatic height for a number of skulls, and for some even larger than the latter. On the whole a revision of the Danish Neolithic material is necessary, and it is good news that it is already under way.

In his compilation of the material Nielsen has laid little emphasis on mean values and investigation of the variation of the various measurements, he records such a mean only for the cranial index. He lays all the more weight on “the visual determination of the collective, form determining measurements which fix the type”. Nielsen is undoubtedly right in that the general characteristics which even the most painstaking measurements are able to express, require the collective impression which can only be obtained visually as an important supplement in distinguishing different types within a highly variable material, but it is equally obvious that a classification based on subjective evaluation cannot dispence with the objective control afforded by figures.

Nielsen classifies his material into the following four type groups: 1. CroMagnon type, 2. Avigny type, 3. Orrouy-Furfooz type and 4. Møn-Borreby type. In a total of 210 skulls of adults and children he has succeeded in type classifying 162.

To the first of these types Nielsen assigns, in addition to the skulls which undoubtedly are of the same type as those found among France’s Cro-MagnonBaumes-Chaudes skulls, also forms which are known under names such as the Megalithic, the Nordic and the “Reihengräber” type and which are re-encountered in particularly large numbers in the Danish graves from the Iron Age. The type is thus very inclusive. The skulls which belong to it are large. The norma verticalis forms a long ovoid pointed at the back, the frontal part of the skull is powerfully built with prominent and conjoined supraciliar region, the sulcus supraglabellaris is marked, the forehead rises obliquely, often receding, the vertex is always posterior to the bregma. From the vertex the parietal arch falls obliquely downward and backward so that the occiput frequently protrudes with a more or less superiorly located tuber occipitale. The average c. i. is 74.5, height medium, the nasion deepset, the orbitae quadratic, oblique and “rather flat”. The face is leptoprosope. This type includes more than half of the material, namely 94.

The second type is so called because it resembles the French Avigny type. The norma verticalis in skulls of this type also forms a long ovoid with a pointed posterior, but the length is less than in the Cro-Magnon type. The breadth, however, is both absolutely and relatively greater and the average c. i. is therefore higher, 75.2. The supraciliar region is less developed, the forehead steeper, but not high, bends sharply backward. Here also the vertex is posterior to bregma and the occiput is prominent but at the same time broader, both in the norma verticalis and the norma lateralis. The face, like the cranium, is slighter and seems narrower in relation to the cranium. Judging by Nielsen’s illustration of a typical representative of the group (Fig. 8 a and b, p. 293. 1906) the nose is high and narrow and the orbitae are also high.

There are 21 skulls of the Avigny type among the 162 type classified skulls. The third group comprises exactly the same number as the preceding. It was given its name because of its similarity to the Orrouy-Furfooz type, but Nielsen adds that he might just as well have called it the Grenelle type. It is pronounced brachycranial with an average c. i. of 82.8, hypsicranial and leptoprosope. The norma verticalis shows a short ovoid. The forehead rises steeply, the superciliary region is for the most part only slightly developed, there is smooth transition of the forehead profile to the high parietal arch which drops more or less steeply to the neck. The occiput is thus not prominent as in the two preceding types, but concludes the profile line with a flat, slightly rounded line.

Both the measurements and the outer form afford such a sharp distinction between the first two types on the one hand and the Orrouy-Furfooz type on the other, that these two must be regarded as represensatives for two different races.

The fourth and last group, the Mön-Borreby type, includes 26 skulls. The Mön skulls are quite small and have a distinct, concentrated structure. The norma verticalis shows a short, roundish ovoid. The superciliary region is powerful with a pronounced sulcus supraglabellaris, the forehead is nicely curved and continues into the equally well curved parietal arch which has its vertex in bregma. The occiput continues the curve of the forehead and dome. The brain case on the whole is nicely rounded. The c. i. varies between 80.0 and 84.6 with the mean at 81.0. The nasion is deepset, the orbitae shallow and oblique, the face narrow.

While the Mön type is encountered in several graves, both on Mön, Zealand and Jutland, the Borreby type has only been found in the Borreby passage-grave and includes only 6 of the total of 25 well preserved skulls found here, 12 of which belong to the Cro-Magnon type, and 3 to the Orrouy-Furfooz type. in Nielsen’s opinion the Borreby type does not deserve to rank as a race designation, it is a family or tribal type. The noteworthy feature of this type is the high development of the forehead and facial region. The superciliary region is powerful, the sulcus supraglabellaris is broad and deep, the forehead is markedly receding and goes up and back in a flat arch, continuing in the rising parietal profile, the occiput is roundish and descends steeply with no tuber occipitale. The mandible

is massive with a steep ramus. The head as a whole is large and heavily built, brachycranial with an average c. i. of 80.4 with variation between 79.i and 83.3.

Before discussing Nielsen’s different types it is of interest to examine more closely the picture of the material presented by a study of his measurement tables. As mentioned above, Nielsen himself has only computed the mean c. i. for the entire material and presents the frequency distribution for adults and children (1915, p. 301). In my computations I have followed Nielsen’s sex determinations (of which more later) with the exclusion of the children’s skulls and the skulls which Nielsen has not sexed. The mean c. i. is computed for 133 men and 58 women. For the former the mean is 76.9, for the latter 76.3. The former corresponds exactly to the mean which Nielsen give for both 210 adults and children and 192 adults. The slight difference between Nielsen’s and my means for the entire adult material is probably due to my having employed the decimals in contrast to Nielsen.

As appears from Table III, 39 or 29.3% of the men have a c. i. under 75, 62 or 46.6% an index between 75 and 79.9 and 32 or 24.1% a higher index. Of 58 women, 21 have an index under 75, 27 an index between 75 and 79.9 and 10 a higher index. Dolichocrany is thus slightly more frequent and brachycrany rarer in the women. If both sexes are considered together, which may be regarded as justified since both the means and the frequency distribution are so close to each other, we find that 31.4% of the skulls fall within the limits of dolichocrany, 46.6% within mesocrany and 220/0 within the limits of brachycrany which corresponds well to the distribution Nielsen finds for the entire material (30%, 46.2% and 23.8 %).

If we divide the material into two groups, a dolicho-mesocranial with c. i. under 77.5 and a meso-brachycranial with c. i. 77.5 and higher, 117 skulls or 61.3% fall within the first group and 74 or 38.7% within the second.

The frequency curve for the c. i. (Fig. 5) exhibits a pronounced peak at index 76.5 both for the male skulls and for the material as a whole, thus corresponding to the mean, a smaller peak at index 74.5 and also smaller peaks at indices 79.5 and 82.5. The frequency distribution of the various indices seems to indicate that at least two different types are involved, a larger dolichocranial and a smaller brachycranial. The considerable accumulation in the index classes 76—78, in all 60 of 191, can hardly be explained as merely the result of overlapping of plus


and minus variants of the two main types, but must be assumed to be due to the presence of numerous forms resulting from crossing.

The height-length index is on the average 75.7 for men an 74.2 for women. Corresponding to the higher mean, over half of the male skulls show a hypsicranial index, while only 2/5 of the female skulls fall within this type. Reversely the female skulls show a relatively large number of chamae- and orthocranial forms (Table IV).


The height-breadth index also shows a higher mean for men than for women, the difference however is less than for the height-length index, and only slightly less than half of the female skulls have an akrocranial index. 37 of the 97 male skulls, but only 6 of the 39 female skulls have a height-breadth index of 100 or higher (Table V).

The two height indices clearly show correlation to the c. i. (Table VI). The height-length index increases, the height-breadth index decreases as the c. i. increases.

The transverse fronto-parietal index has an average of 69.9 for males and 70.3 for females. Like the two height indices, this index also shows marked correlation with the c. i., as the minimum frontal breadth comprises a larger percent of the maximum parietal breadth in the dolichocranials than in the brachycranials (Table VII).

Tables VIII—X present the means and frequency distributions of the upper facial index, the nasal and the orbital indices in the Danish material. It is seen that all of the indices exhibit unusually wide variation, the upper facial index from 42—62, the nasal index from 38—66 and the orbital index from 66—94.

The upper facial index shows a somewhat lower mean for men than for women. Exactly 1/4 of both the men and the women have an euryene index, while about 1/2 have a mesene and a little more than 1/4 a leptene index. The average nasal index is slightly higher for women than for men. The relative number of chamaerhines is also somewhat higher among the women. As usual these show a higher average orbital index than the men with a relatively larger number of hypsiconchs.

It is a question of considerable interest whether any definite relation can be observed in the Danish Stone Age material between the c. i. and the structure of the facial skeleton. Nielsen has answered this question by stating that a peculiarity of the long head with a c. i. of 77 and lower are the low orbitae. In contrast the


brachycephalic head has high orbitae, a long, narrow face and a narrow nose (1906, p. 286).

In order to elucidate this question I have computed the average upper facial index, nasal and orbital index for dolicho-, meso- and brachycranial skulls in men and women and the same means for skulls with c. i. under and over 77.5. The results are presented in Table XI. It will be seen that there is a considerable negative correlation between the c. i. and the upper facial index. The dolichocranials have longer and narrower faces than the mesocranials, and these in turn narrower than the brachycranials. The relationship of the nose is less clear. The dolichocranial men have a narrower nose than the meso- and brachycranials who exhibit less mutual difference, but for


the women the situation is the reverse, here it is the brachycranials who have the narrowest noses; however the number of both brachy- and dolichocranials is so small that the value of the means is limited. In men there is no difference in the orbital index between dolicho- and brachycranials, while the dolichocranial women have the lowest and the brachycranial the highest average index. When the material is divided at the limit 77.5 the dolicho-mesocranial group in both sexes has a lower average orbital index than the meso-brachycranial group, which is in agreement with Nielsen’s statement.

If, on the basis of our summary of the Danish skull material and the reproductions which Nielsen presents of some of his skulls, we try to obtain an idea of its nature, the first thing we notice is that it is extremely variegated. We find ultra-dolichocranial forms with a c. i. down to 63 and at the same time hyperbrachycranial with a c. i. up to 86; the facial measurements are equally varied. We also find the most varied combinations of c. i. and the different facial indices in the individual skulls. Nielsen is undoubtedly correct in saying that a large number of these skulls can be designated as Cro-Magnon forms in the widest sense. This opinion is also supported by Brøste and Fischer-Møller who, in the previously cited publication on the Koelbjerg skeleton, illustrate and present a number of measurements of four Danish Neolithic skulls.

As mentioned above, Nielsen also classifies under the Cro-Magnon type skulls of the form which he finds particularly numerously represented in the Danish Iron Age material and which are designated by other authors as the Nordic skull or the Reihengräber type. As previously emphasized by Fürst (1912, p. 59) it must be regarded as unpractical to use the designation Cro-Magnon form in the same sense as Nordic form or Reihengräber form. For the present we shall distinguish these latter dolichocranial forms from the Cro-Magnon, or, as we prefer to call it, the upper Palaeolithic type, as a distinct form. The pronounced Upper Palaeolithic characteristics exhibited by a large number of the skulls of Nielsen’s first group as well as some of the other groups, can naturally be explained as an inheritance from the original population. Both admixture with the Band-pattern and Battle-axe peoples from the south and a gradual increase in facial height among the Upper Palaeolithic people themselves (cf. above on the Koelbjerg and Korsør skulls) may possibly have given rise to the various dolicho-mesocranial transition forms between the Upper Palaeolithic and the Nordic type which Nielsen’s Cro-Magnon group seems to include according to his own description.

The slightly built dolicho-mesocranial forms which Nielsen ascribes to the Avigny group, are lacking in pronounced Palaeolithic characteristics. The male representative of the type illustrated by Nielsen (1906, Fig. 8, p. 293) is, in the opinion of the present author, more likely to be a female skull, and from Nielsen’s description of the type it seems highly probable that a good portion of this group consists of female skulls of other dolicho-mesocranial forms, a thought which had also occurred to Nielsen. If their more delicate structure is not due solely to their sex, it is most logical to ascribe the occurrence of this skull form in Denmark to the immigration of strains of the Band-pattern peoples. The considerable height which distinguishes several of the Danish dolichocranial skulls and which comes to expression in the material’s high means for the basion-bregma height as well as the height-breadth index (Table XII) is a feature which would seem most logically to be connected with the immigration of the Battle-axe people from Middle Europe.

As pointed out by Bröndsted, the Danish skeletal material suffers from the fault that it cannot be classified definitely throughout the different periods of the Neolithic, and that not a single measurable skeleton has been found in any of the numerous Jutlandish single-graves. All the usable material is derived from common graves. However there are 4 measurable skulls from passage-graves which, according to Bröndsted, most probably originate from the time before the immigration of the Battle-axe people. These four skulls are all dolichocranial with c. i. 67.0—73.4, have a chamaeconch orbital index, 62.3—71.1, and low to medium high face, upper facial index 45.7 and 51.7.

These circumstances regarding the classification of the material render it impossible to state accurately which characters of the individual skulls can be ascribed to the Band-pattern people and which to Battle-axe people. The type which Nielsen designates as the Orrouy-Furfooz type because of its similarity to Belgian Neolithic forms shows, in its entirety, great similarity to the Middle German and Moravian Bell Beaker skulls. I can here point to the similarity between the skull of the Orrouy-Furfooz type which Nielsen has reproduced in his Fig. 4 (1906, p. 289) and the Bell Beaker skull reproduced by Schliz in Figs. 28—30, P1.X. This similarity makes it reasonable to assume a relationship between the occurrence of this skull form and the introduction of the Bell Beaker culture into Denmark.

As for the last of Nielsen’s types, the Mön-Borreby type, the Borreby type is the most characteristic. Some authors have stated that the “Borreby type” has caused more confusion than clarity in prehistoric race research, an opinion which is not shared by the present author. This extremely characteristic skull form canot, as Nielsen has done, be interpreted as an isolated family type; as shown by Fürst it also occurs in passage-graves in Sweden and here it can be followed down to the Iron Age, while several of its characteristic features are found again in Norway in the present population in the southwestern part of the country (Schreiner, 1941).

That this massive type with the highly developed superciliary region, the powerful glabella which protrudes above the deepset nasion, the low quadrangular orbitae, the deep, heavy lower jaw with the prominent chin, the great symphysial height and the broad, vertical ramus is closely related to the Upper Palaeolithic types is beyond doubt. With the occurrence of skulls of the Borreby type in the same grave-chamber as skulls of the Cro-Magnon and Furfooz types, it is natural to look for the origin of this form in crosses between the original population and brachycephalic Neolithic strains.

Finally, as regards Nielsen’s Mön type, it is, according to the description, hardly doubtful that this type also bears marked evidence of Upper Palaeolithic admixture. The representative for the type reproduced by Nielsen (1906, Fig. 7, p. 292) is presented below in Fig. 10 b for comparison with our Neolithic skull from Svelvik and a Swedish skull. Characteristic of all three skulls is the variously developed tuber occipitale which is marked off from the evenly curved parietal region by a lambdoid depression. The considerable variation in the cranial index exhibited by the representatives of the type might indicate a varying admixture of brachycranial forms.

In our attempt at an analysis of the Danish skull material we have, as regards the brachycranial forms, only referred to those which for several reasons may possibly have some connection with the immigration of Bell Beakers. The variation exhibited by the Danish brachycranial skulls according to Nielsen’s measurements is no contradiction to this assumption, as the Bell Beakers from Middle Europe, like the Band-pattern and Battle-axe peoples, are not anthropologically homogeneous. However other possible explanations of the occurrence of brachycranial forms in Denmark’s Neolithic must also be taken into consideration. As mentioned above, the Kassemose skull was brachycranial. If its dating to the Kitchen-midden period can be relied upon (cf. p. 22), brachycranial forms of the Upper Palaeolithic type in Denmark occurred already in the Mesolithic and may have gone over to the Neolithic people. Besides the Kassemose skull, no other brachycranial forms from


Europe’s Mesolithic are known except those in the.collection of skulls from the Ofnet cave. Others interpreted as brachycranial forms from this period have not been able to stand up under more careful scrutiny (Vallois, 1937). Scheidt (1923) finds Upper Palaeolithic characteristics also in the Ofnet skulls, as Nielsen in his brachy­cranials of the Orrouy-Furfooz type finds similarities with the Grenelle-Furfooz “races”. However in contrast to Nielsen’s skulls of this type, the brachycranial Ofnet skulls are low vaulted, the face is eury- or mesoprosope and the orbitae low.

That brachycephalic peoples may also have come as far as Scandinavia in the Neolithic from the eastern Baltic countries is a possibility to which we shall return in connection with the discussion of the Swedish skulls.

A comparison between the skull material compiled by Retzius and Fürst from Sweden’s Neolithic with Nielsen’s Danish material reveals both similarities and differences between the two groups. If we first consider the male skulls which are greater in number (Table XII), they are on the average 3 mm longer and at the same time both narrower and lower than the Danish. Their cranial index is about 2 units lower, their height-length index three units and height-breadth index nearly one and a half units lower. Corresponding to the slighter parieta! breadth the minimum frontal breadth is also lower. The upper facial height is greater, the jugal breadth less and the upper facial index two units higher. Both the nasal breadth and the orbital breadth are insignificantly higher in the Swedish skulls, but at the same time both the nasal and the orbital heights are considerably larger so that the nasal index is lower and the orbital index higher than in the Danish skulls. As for the female skulls, their mean length is lower than the Danish, but as their breadth is also considerably lower the relation as concerns the c. i. is the same as for the men. In the women also the height is considerably lower than in the Danish material. Like the men they also have on the average a narrower face and nose, while as regards the orbital index they do not differ from the Danish women.

A consideration of the frequency distribution of the cranial indices (Table XIII) shows that the Swedish skulls, corresponding to their lower means, include a relatively larger number of dolichocranial and a smaller number of brachycranial forms than the Danish. While 31% of the latter are dolichocranial and 22% brachycranial (Table III), over half of the Swedish skulls are dolichocranial and only 6 of 68 brachycranial. The lesser height of Swedish skulls, both in relation to length and breadth, is clearly apparent both in the means of the two height-length indices and in their frequency distribution (Tables (XIV—XV). While half of the Danish skulls are hypsi- and akrocranial, less than a quarter of the Swedish are hypsicranial and only a little more than a third akrocranial. On the other hand the number of chamae- and tapeinocranial forms is correspondingly relatively larger among the Swedish skulls.

In his review of the Swedish skulls from the Neolithic which he has examined, a total of 43, Retzius emphasizes the considerable difference which exists between them, a difference which shows that the Stone Age people in Sweden obviously comprised a population which was the result of a mixture of several racial elements. He finds that the following three types can be distinguished:

1. The true dolichocranial type, represented by his Nos. 1, 2, 9, 18 and 27 with c. i. 68,5—73. In the norma verticalis they have a narrow, oval form, narrow forehead, pronounced tuber occipitale, very slightly developed tubera frontalia and parietalia. In the norma lateralis the height is rather low with chamaecranial or


low orthocranial index, low forehead and in the male skulls a well-developed glabella and browridge area. The face is rather narrow but not particularly high, slightly prognathous, or orthognathous, the nose and palate are narrow, the orbitae low.

2. Mesocranial types. These are difficult to characterize because of their extreme variability. They probably include mixtures between dolicho- and brachycranial forms. As a particularly characteristic form within the mesocranial group, Retzius points out skull No. 33 from Skåne. It has a c. i. of 78, a height-length index of 81.1 and a height-breadth index of 103. In the norma verticalis it has a broad, almost quadratic oval form with a pronounced tendency toward brachycrany. There is strong development with heavy relief of muscle attachments, strong processus zygomatici, large jugal breadth and a heavy mandible with a broad, steep ramus, prominent chin, great symphysial height and flaring gonial angles. The illustration of the skull shows a marked lambdoid flattening and a strongly developed glabellar region. Its upper facial index is euryene (48.1), nasal index mesorhine bordering on chamaerhine (47.8) and orbital index low mesoconch (78). A good many other mesocranial forms such as Nos. 3, 4, 16 and 41 center around this skull. As the mesocranial forms show transitions to both true dolichocranial and brachycranial, Retzius considers it most reasonable to interpret them as mixtures of these two forms.

3. Brachycranial types. Only 3 of these were available to Retzius and of only one of these was the facial skeleton intact. This (No. 21) is sharply distinguished from both the dolichocranial and mesocranial types. The skull which is reproduced by Retzius in Plates XX VII and XXVIII has a c. i. of 85.5. The forehead is relatively narrow, and the transverse fronto-parietal index is as low as 64.3. The tubera frontalia and parietalia are not very well developed. On the picture the occiput shows an even curvature. The face is broad and low with an euryene upper facial index (ca. 48). The bones of the face are not strongly developed and the muscular relief on the vault is slight. The mandible, like that of the mesocranial skull No. 33, has a broad, steep ramus, a prominent chin and everted gonial angles. Of the two other brachycranial skulls, the one (No. 32) which has a c. i. of 84.2 resembles the above described type example. However it differs from the latter in the form of the occiput which is not evenly rounded but shows a marked limitation between the occipital and the nuchal planes. The last of the 3 skulls (No. 39) has a considerably lower c. i. than the two others, namely 81.7. It is larger, higher and more massive than the others and is distinguished by a powerful development of the glabella and the superciliary region.

The Neolithic skulls described by Fürst originate from five different parts of Sweden, Bohuslän, Öland, Västergötland, Skåne and Gotland. Most of them were found in Megalithic graves. The material includes a total of 33 skulls and skull fragments, two of which are skulls of children and one of a boy about 16 years of age. Many of the skulls are extremely defective and allow of only few or no reliable facial measurements.

As a result of his investigation of this material, Fürst claims that the dolichomesocranial Nordic type is the dominant type in the Megalithic graves in the three first-mentioned areas, and also occurs in Skåne and Gotland. This type exhibits many common features with the Cro-Magnon type at the same time as it differs from it in several respects, especially in the structure of the facial skeleton. In addition to this Nordic type, especially in Skåne and Gotland, there are brachycranial forms and forms which must be interpreted as the product of mixture of the two types.

Just as the Megalithic culture came to Scandinavia from the West, especially from Britain, Fürst also finds that the Swedish Megalithic skulls show good agreement with the English Long Barrow skulls, even though these must be regarded as a purer race than both the Swedish and the Danish skulls from the same period. Fürst assumed originally that the dolicho-mesocranial bearers of the Megalithic culture, when they first came to Denmark, encountered a brachycephalic people and mixed with them. The more frequent occurrence of brachycranial forms in Denmark, Skåne and Gotland than in the more peripheral parts of Sweden could, in his opinion, be explained on the assumption that the Megalithic people, during their immigration to Scandinavia, encountered a denser original population in the first mentioned parts of Sweden and in Denmark. However after he had examined the Stångenäs skull in 1925 he had to admit that this hypothesis was less tenable.

If we look back at the results of the investigations of Retzius and Fürst, we find that the Swedish skull material is closely related to the Danish in its composition. In both the basic strain consists of a dolicho-mesocranial block which we can designate as Proto-Nordic. On the whole it is distinguished from the corresponding Danish material by a smaller breadth in relation to the length and a smaller absolute height of the skull. In addition to this there is a brachycranial block which is relatively much smaller than in the Danish material. It includes skulls, some of which have a very high cranial index, of a variable type. Between these two groups there is a considerable number of mesocranial forms, in which sometimes the Proto-Nordic, sometimes one of the brachycranial forms is the most pronounced.

The skulls included in the first group are in part highly different. In some the Upper Palaeolithic features are very pronounced. This tendency is sometimes in the direction of the so-called Cro-Magnon form such as Retzius’ No. 1, sometimes in the direction of the narrower Brünn form like his Nos. 9 and 12. Several of these dolicho-mesocranial forms like Fürst’s Nos. 18 and 29 exhibit great similarity with the Reihengräber forms of the Iron Age. Others of the skulls show no, or only a weak, trace of Upper Palaeolithic admixture. They are smaller and more delicately constructed than the other skulls in the same group and resemble the Danish skulls of Nielsen’s Avigny type. Examples of such skulls are Retzius’ Nos. 22 and 23 and Fürst’s No. 21, all female skulls from Västergötland. These skulls have a maximum length of 176, 172 and 173 mm and a maximum breadth of 132, 129 and 132 mm, while the corresponding means for female Neolithic Swedish skulls are 178.8 and 134 mm respectively. Their c. i. is 75, 75 and 76.3. The last of these skulls is reproduced in Fig. 15 c, p.76 of the present publication.

In their absolute measurements these skulls are closer to the Mediterranean than to the Nordic type. It is not without interest in connection with the described peculiarities of these skulls from Västergötland that in Central Sweden there is a group of stone cists which show an interesting detail, the endstone being pierced in a round-oval opening, a vestige of the original entrance to the grave-chamber. These graves, Forssander’s Skogsbo type, differ from the cist types which are found in the southern part of Sweden, but agree with stone cists of similar character from England, Belgium and France, especially the region around Paris. According to Montelius (1907) and Forssander (1933, pp. 158—160) the idea for this type of grave construction must be assumed to have come directly to the west coast of Sweden from England or France.

As for the dolicho-mesocranial forms it is also true of the brachycranials that they exhibit a highly variable degree of Upper Palaeolithic admixture. This admixture is more or less pronounced in all of the three brachycranial male skulls in Retzius’ material. It is especially prominent in Nos. 32 and 39. It is somewhat less pronounced in Fürst’s very brachycranial female skull No. 23 from Västergötland. This latter skull, with its small absolute measurements (L 172, B 138, H 126 mm), its delicate structure and its facial form, is closer to the above-described dolico-mesocranial female skulls from the same region, especially Fürst’s No. 21. Even though its cranial index is 80.2 it is more logical to interpret it as a variant of the same type. It is mesene bordering on leptene, mesorhine and mesoconch.

Of the brachycranial Swedish skulls in addition to the above-mentioned, only Retzius’ male skull No. 21 from Karleby and Fürst’s two female skulls Nos. 2 and 11 have facial skeletons. However in the last of these it is so defective that accurate measurements cannot be made. The male skull is, as mentioned above, euryene, the nasal index is mesorhine (48) and the orbital index chamaeconch (72.7). The female skull from Hvellinge is mesene (53.1), chamaerhine (53.1) and chamaeconch bordering on mesoconch (75.9).

The material is obviously much too small to allow of any definite conclusions as to the Swedish brachycranial elements’ relation to other brachycranial groups. However no significant differences can be detected between the Swedish and Danish brachycranial forms, even though the former possibly have a more pronounced Palaeolithic character than the latter, judging by Nielsen’s description and sparse illustrations. As to Fürst’s pronounced brachycranial female skull No. 2, it is derived from the same grave as the male skull No. 1 which exhibits a pronounced Borreby type and it is probably, as also suggested by Fürst, reasonable to regard it as a female variant of the type in which the brachycranial element in this mixed form is more dominant than in the male skull with a cranial index of 79.3. Schliz (1910, pp. 214—215), in his discussion of the Bell Beaker skulls from Middle Europe.


points out their similarity to Retzius’ skull No. 21 from Karleby and also to Nielsen’s Orrouy-Furfooz type.

As a type within the mesocranial forms Retzius points out skull No. 33 with a c. i. of 78. The sagittal contour of this skull is presented in Fig. 6, superimposed on the sagittal contour of the above-mentioned No. 21 with c. i. 85.5. In the latter the Upper Palaeolithic features which are so pronounced in the first skull are weaker, but otherwise the two skulls exhibit a marked form relationship. The maximum length of the mesocranial skull is 183 mm, of the brachycranial 180 mm. The difference is due to the stronger development of the glabella in the former. The maximum breadth is the same in both, 154 mm. The vertical height from basion is greater in the mesocranial skull, but the auricular height is much the same in both (119 and 118 mm). The minimum frontal breadth however is greater in No. 21 (99 mm) than in No. 33 (95 mm). The upper facial index and the nasal index are practically the same in both, while the orbital index is somewhat higher in the mesocranial skull (78) than in the brachycranial (72.7).

In comparing these two skulls it is reasonable to interpret the first as the product of a cross between Proto-Nordic dolicho-mesocranial forms with Upper Palaeolithic traits and brachycranial forms, possibly of the Bell Beaker type. The mesocranial skull No. 33 is close to the Borreby type, even though it has a steeper forehead than the most characteristic representatives of the latter such as Fürst’s No. 1 from Hvellinge and Nielsen’s Borreby V and VIII.

The illustrations of the Swedish mesocranial skulls confirm entirely Retzius’ statement that they exhibit all transitions between true dolichocranial and brachycranial forms and that no distinct mesocranial type can be distinguished in the Swedish material.

An extremely valuable addition to the Swedish Neolithic material are the skeletons found in a burial place during the years 1935—39 at Västerbjers on Gotland which have been examined and described in detail by Dahr (1943). The burial place probably originates from the last half of the passage-grave period (2000—1800 B. C.) and coincides with the Boat-axe culture on the Swedish mainland. The graves are earthen graves and the grave furniture shows a mixed culture very like the Ostorf culture (cf. above p. 34) and strongly suggests continental influence. The newly found graves on an island in Lake Onega in Northern Russia which probably belong to the same period as the Västerbjers graves show a remarkable resemblance to the latter. However no direct connection between the Onega graves and the Västerbjers graves can be assumed, according to Stenberger. In his opinion both are more likely the result of cultural currents from the eastern part of the continent in the last half of the Neolithic.

As appears from a comparison between Dahr’s means for 11 male and 12 female skulls from Gotland with the means which I have computed for Retzius’ and Fürst’s materiel (Table XII), the Gotland skulls have a somewhat higher mean value for a number of the absolute measurements, while in their various indices they differ significantly from other Swedish skulls only in their low nasal index.

According to Dahr, the material in general exhibits common characteristics even though certain individual skulls show deviations which may indicate that several racial types are represented. A certain type dominates. It has a long vault with medium breadth, c. i. 74—76, and is relatively low, the height-length index is usually below 74. Especially in males the glabella protrudes dominantly over the deepset nasion and the superciliary region is highly developed. Above the glabella the profile curve of the forehead forms a flat arch which goes smoothly over to the parietal region. The vertex is usually posterior to bregma. Most frequently there is a marked lambdoid flattening or depression. Below lambda the skulls form a prominent tuber occipitale. The face is broad, but of considerable height, so that the upper facial index usually lies above 53. The orbitae are of a rounded quadratic form, not very high and slightly oblique. The apertura pyriformis is high and remarkably narrow.

After his examination of the Gotland skulls Fürst came to the result that they exhibited a considerable degree of heterogeneity and could be classified into at least four different types. Dahr disagrees in this and emphasizes that only one of Fürst’s skulls, the brachycranial female skull from Visby (No. 11), shows deviations from the type which Fürst calls “Nordic”. However this skull is so poorly preserved that it is impossible to determine its character more accurately, and the eventuality cannot be eliminated that it may represent a chance modification of the main type.

According to Dahr, even a superficial observation of the material immediately reveals that the dolicho-mesocranial skull form which predominates in the earthen graves on Gotland is closely related to the Nordic skull type from Västergötland’s and Bohuslän’s Megalithic graves. Their characteristics as described by Fürst agree in all details with most of the skulls from Västerbjers. But even if the same "Nordic race" dominates in both collections of skulls, the possibility cannot be excluded that it is mixed with different racial elements in the two districts. However a comparison between the two groups justifies the conclusion that not only the same race dominates in the Gotland Dwelling-site culture as in the Middle Swedish Megalithic culture, but also that the modifications which eventually may have taken place, e. g. by mixture with other races, has not led to any significant differences in the anthropology of the bearers of both cultures.

That the Swedish Neolithic skulls show such considerable agreement with the Danish is not surprising in consideration of the facts that the oldest populations of the two countries must have been closely related and that the Neolithic invaders came to Southern Sweden partly via the Danish islands and belonged to the same strains as those who remained in Denmark. That the Swedish skulls on the whole seem to bear stronger Upper Palaeolithic traits than the Danish is most logically to be regarded as a result of the circumstance that the original population of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as a more peripheral region, comprised a larger percent of the population in relation to the invaders than in Denmark. One of the reasons for the rarer occurrence of brachycranial forms in the Swedish than in the Danish Neolithic may be that the Bell Beaker culture has had less influence in Sweden than in Denmark. It is natural to ascribe other differences between the skulls of the two countries to the above-mentioned circumstance that the Battle-axe people who immigrated to Sweden were only in a small part the same as the Danish while most of the bearers of the Boat-axe culture came directly to Öland, Gotland and Southern Sweden via the Baltic Sea and probably belonged to a more eastern group of the Battle-axe peoples than the Danish.

The contact with more easterly parts of the continent, which is indicated by the extent of the Boat-axe culture to the Scandinavian Peninsula, makes it necessary to discuss some of the results of anthropological research in East Prussia, the Baltic and Western Russia. There are also other circumstances which suggest including these parts of the European continent in our review, for example the above-mentioned similarity between the graves at Västerbjers on Gotland and at Onega, and the finding of the skeleton of the large species of dog (canis Inostranzewi) in a passage-grave on Öland described by Fürst (1912, p. 65). This species of dog is unknown on the Scandinavian Peninsula but occurs in Neolithic settlements at Ladoga.

Perret (1943) has examined 16 skulls of adults from East Prussia, of which three are female skulls, which derive from the end of the Neolithic or the Early Bronze Age. The grave furniture includes some Megalithic, some Corded pottery. Of the 16 skulls, 7 have a cranial index under 70, three an index between 70 and 75, three an index between 75 and 79 and three an index over 80, two of which are over 86. The mean c. i. is 73.4.

According to Perret, three different skull forms can be distinguished within this material. The first agrees in all its characters with Ecker’s Reihengräber type. The second shows close relationship to the Cro-Magnon type. Between these two groups there are various transitional forms. The third group is clearly distinguished from the two others by its broad and short skull, this is especially true of the two skulls with a c. i. over 86. The tubera frontalia and parietalia are very prominent. The skull is angular, low to medium high. The bridge and body of the nose are rather fiat, the face broad, the mandible has everted angles, the facial angle is somewhat prognathous and the chin receding. According to Perret the form is closest to Nordenstreng’s East Baltic type. These three skull forms have been found in graves from both Megalithic and Corded cultures, however the Reihengräber and Cro-Magnon types seem to occur preferably in graves which belong to the Corded culture.

As appears from Perret’s measurements and illustrations, the East Prussian skulls reveal many points of similarity with the skulls from the Mecklenburgian earthen graves. The mean c. i. in both groups is approximately the same (Table XVI). The mean height-length index is slightly lower in the Mecklenburg skulls, but the range is about the same in both groups. It is common to both that the basionbregma height is less than the parietal breadth. In this respect they are markedly distinct from the Corded people from Silesia and Bohemia and deviate also, although to a lesser degree, from the Band-pattern people in the same regions (Table I), while on the other hand they show connection with the Scandinavian, especially the Swedish skulls. The difference in the mean upper facial index is no greater, in consideration of the small number of Prussian skulls examined, than that it


may be due to chance. As it appears, the range of this index is also practically the same for both groups.

While Asmund in the material from the Mecklenburgian earthen graves, in contrast to the situation in the more western Megalithic graves, only found sparse Upper Palaeolithic traits, Perret claims to have found features in several skulls in the East Prussian material which he relates to the Cro-Magnon type. As an example of such skulls he mentions Domschin 3, of which he says that it cannot be excluded “dass hier ein reiner Cro-Magnon-Schädel vorliegt” (p. 359). The skull is very defective and allows of only a few reliable measurements. The brain case is long and narrow, L 197, B 130 mm. The auriculo-bregmatic height is 113 mm. The glabella and superciliary region are slightly developed, the forehead evenly rounded and the occiput pointed. The capacity is assumed by Perret to be 1430 cc. Of the various facial indices, only the orbital index could be determined. It is recorded as 67.4 L and 80.9 R. As appears from the illustration of the skull, the low index on the left side is due to the posthumous deformation of the skull. The skull can hardly be said to differ significantly from the two other skulls from the same region and like these exhibits close connection with the dolichocranial skulls of Proto-Nordic type which occur in the earthen graves of Mecklenburg and Gotland as well as in the Scandinavian, especially the Swedish Megalithic graves.

That there is only one brachycranial form with c. i. 82.6 among the 19 Mecklenburgian skulls, while among the 16 East Prussian skulls there are three, two of which have a c. i. over 86, might indicate that brachycranial forms occur more frequently in the eastern than in the western Baltic countries. While the brachycranial skull from Mecklenburg (Wardow) is, according to Asmund, hyperleptoprosope, leptorhine and mesoconch, of the two Prussian brachycranials of which the facial skeleton is preserved one is euryprosope, chamaerhine and mesoconch, the other mesoprosope, leptorhine and chamaeconch. As in the dolichocranial forms the facial form of the brachycranials in Perret’s material also seems to be highly variable. These few and variable brachycranial skulls are obviously an insufficient basis for a race diagnosis. Neither their high cranial index nor the entire form of the skull, as for example in the Briesen skull, are in favor of Perret’s interpretation that his brachycranial group agrees with the so-called East Baltic skull form. Nor can any form relationship be acknowledged between the brachycranial Prussian and the Scandinavian skulls of Nielsen’s Orrouy-Furfooz type.

Our knowledge of the peoples of the Baltic Neolithic is based on Virchow’s (1877) descriptions of skeletal findings at Salis Roje in Livonia. These originate from the latter part of the Neolithic. The skeletons lay in two layers. In the deepest layer there were 6, one of which was a child, in the superficial layer there were 28, two of which were children. Unfortunately Virchow’s description is not accompanied by any illustrations of the skulls. There is a significant difference in the skull forms of the two layers. Of the 6 skulls in the deepest layer, four have a c. i. over 80, of which two are over 85, and one of the two mesocranial forms has an index as high as 79.6. The mean cranial index of the five adult skulls is 82, the mean height-length index 73.9 and the mean height-breadth index 90.4. The two skulls with the highest c. i. (86.1 and 85.3) are both mesoprosope and prognathous, the first is leptorhine and hypsiconch, the other mesorhine and mesoconch.

Of the 26 adult skulls in the superficial layer, four have a c. i. over 80, the highest index is 83.9, 15 skulls are mesocranial and 7 dolichocranial. The mean cranial index is 77, the mean height-length index very nearly the same as for the skulls in the deeper layer, 73.2, but the mean height-breadth index is considerably higher, 95.2. Only four of the skulls have a height-breadth index over 100, three of these have a c. i. under 72, the fourth a c. i. of 76.1. The mean nasal index for 6 men is 49.4, for 11 women 49.9, the mean orbital index for 8 men 78.4 and for 11 women 81.8.

Compared with the skulls from Mecklenburg and East Prussia the skulls from Salis Roje show a marked increase in the mean cranial index. The mean parietal breadth is greater, at the same time the vault height is increased, but relatively less than the breadth so that the mean height-breadth index is very much the same as in the Prussian skulls. As in East Prussia, hyperbrachycranial forms also occur in Livonia and they seem to belong to the same type. The accumulation of brachycranial forms in the deepest layer of the grave is striking in relation to the total number of skulls, a circumstance which may be due to the fact that they originate from an older part of the population where brachycephalic elements were more strongly represented than in the younger. At present it is hardly possible to bring the hyperbrachycranial skull form from the Baltic countries into closer connection to any other known form from West or Middle Europe, and it is therefore most reasonable to assume that it is of eastern origin. The only skull from the Scandinavian Neolithic which exhibits any similarity to this type is Fürst’s skull No. 11 from Visby in Gotland with c. i. 85.1. However, as previously pointed out by Dahr, the skull is so defective that a more accurate determination of its type cannot be made.

From Northwest Russia there is the well-known find from the mouth of the Volkhov in Lake Ladoga. It includes 10 skulls, 5 male, one female, two probably female and two of undertermined sex. The facial skeleton is lacking in 7 of the skulls and is very defective in the other three. The find presumably originates from the Late Neolithic. All of the skulls are dolicho- or subdolichocranial with a mean cranial index of 73.4 and a range between 67.7 and 77.4. As pointed out by Bogdanof (1882) who has described the skulls, they do not exhibit any common form type. The forehead is very variable, both in its sagittal curvature and its breadth, and the glabellar region and the tubera parietalia also exhibit very variable development. However the lastmentioned differences are largely related to the sex difference. The vault height could be determined for 6 skulls, four dolichocranials and two mesocranials. The mean height-length index of these 6 skulls is 74.1, the mean height-breadth index 100.4.

Bogdanof’s illustrations of the two best preserved skulls, Nos. 1 and 7 on his Plates I—TV and which are reproduced here in Figs. 7—8 are of great interest. No. 1 has a cranial index of 76.5, a height-length index of 73.3 and a height-breadth index of 96.4. As regards the form of the brain case, this skull is closely related to the Reihengräber type. Its low, horizontal orbitae and great zygomatic breadth show its connection to the Upper Palaeolithic forms. No. 7 has a cranial index of 73.1, a height-length index of 74.7 and a height-breadth index of 102.3. Its resemblance to the Upper Palaeolithic skulls of the Cro-Magnon type is striking. Both of these skulls fall naturally within the series of both Danish and Swedish Neolithic skulls.

In his lecture in 1892 Bogdanof emphasizes as the result of 15 years of study of Russian skull material that the oldest population in Central Russia was dolichocephalic and most probably resembled the Scythians. In the oldest graves the true dolichocranial skull form occurs more frequently than in the younger, where it is mixed with subdolichocranial forms. The same dolichocranial forms as those found in the western and northern parts of Russia are encountered again in other European countries such as Austria, Germany, Sweden and probably also in Denmark. Bogdanof considers it probable that the dolichocephalic peoples came to Russia from the countries around the Black Sea, where dolichocephaly is still predominant among the population. Along the Dnieper they penetrated into White Russia and continued northward to Novgorod and to Sweden, while other strains wandered to the northwest along the Vistula and Danube.


In our investigation of the skull form of the peoples from whom Scandinavia nay have received population elements in the Neolithic, we have hitherto limited ourselves to the adjacent parts of the continent. However there is also the possibility that invaders may have come across the sea from the west, principally from the British Isles. Such a migration to Sweden’s west coast has also been assumed on archaeological grounds by Montelius and Forssander as mentioned above. Fürst also mentions this possibility and points out the similarity between several of the Swedish Megalithic skulls and the British Long Barrow skulls, and the agreement in stature which exists between the Swedish and the British Megalithic peoples.

In Table XII together with the means for the Danish and Swedish Neolithic skulls, the means for the English and Scottish Neolithics according to Morant (1926 a) are also presented. These are distinguished by their extreme length, which exceeds that of both the Danish and Swedish skulls. Since the breadth at the same time is less than that of the Scandinavian skulls, their mean cranial index (71.7) is considerably lower than that of the latter. However 13 female skulls have a higher index and approach the Swedish women. The basion as well as he auricular height is the same as in the Swedish skulls, nor does the minimum frontal breadth deviate much from the latter. Because of their greater length and slighter breadth the height-length index is lower, the height-breadth index and the transverse fronto-parietal index higher than in the Swedish skulls. Their upper facial index and nasal index agree with the Swedish, but their orbital index is somewhat lower although the difference can hardly be regarded as significant in consideration of the small number of individual measurements. As we have no new illustrations of the British Long Barrow skulls it is not possible to carry out further comparison between them and the various forms of the Scandinavian naterial than that which is based on the recorded measurements.

In our review of the Neolithic skulls from different parts of North and Middle Europe, we have repeatedly encountered forms which are designated by the authors is Nordic, Scandinavian and Reihengräber type. We saw these forms in the Danish material in Nielsen’s Cro-Magnon-Baumes-Chaudes type, and in Retzius’, Fürst’s and Dahr’s Swedish material, among the skulls from Mecklenburg, East Prussia, Austria and the river of Ladoga, and also probably among the British Long Barrow skulls. Many of these skulls show such good agreement with those which characterize the Scandinavian Iron Age type that there can be no doubt that the same skull form is involved. In the course of time many theories have been set forth as to the origin of this skull form. Reche (1909) found proof in the similarity between his Type II from the Silesian-Bohemian Corded culture and the Scandinavian skulls that the bearers of this culture came from the north and belonged to the Northern European race. From their home in the north these peoples must then have wandered southward. A similar theory that the “pure” Nordic race originated in the north and in the course of time became “contaminated” by mixture with inferior brachycephalic peoples has, as we have seen, been set forth as scientific truth during recent years in certain circles. A study of the available skull material gives us a different picture. It shows that the peoples of the north originally belonged to the same Upper Palaeolithic type as those of Middle Europe and during the Neolithic they became mixed with a series of invaders whose original home was Southeast Europe or possibly Asia Minor. These invaders have been ascribed various degrees of significance by different authors for the development of the Nordic skull form. Thus Sailer (1929) found almost complete agreement between the skulls from the Band-pattern culture in Rössen and Jordansmühl and Swedish Neolithic skulls, and also between the former and a large number of the Danish. Similarly Dahr (1943) regards it probable that we have, in the skull material from Västerbjers which he designates as Nordic and no different from the other Swedish material, the same skull form as in the Band-pattern peoples on the Elbe and Saale. He believes that the cradle of the Nordic peoples who took possession of the Scandinavian Peninsula and here retained their type more purely and less changed than in their developmental areas on the continent, is to be found in these regions. Lebzelter (1936) also finds close relationship to the Nordic skull forms in the skulls from the Band-pattern graves in Austria.

These authors are undoubtedly correct in that both the Danish and Swedish skulls from the Neolithic show such good agreement with the dolicho-mesocranial forms which dominate in the Band-pattern cultures of the continent, that we must be justified in finding a relationship between them and ascribe to the Band-pattern peoples, the first agriculturists of the north, a significant role in the development of the Nordic type. However it must be emphasized that they, no more than any of the other groups of peoples who have been bearers of the Neolithic cultures of the continent can be regarded as the only ancestors of the Nordic peoples. The great variation exhibited by the Reihengräber form which is considered as typically Nordic, a circumstance to which we will return later in the discussion of our material from the Iron Age, and which is also revealed by a study of the Neolithic skulls of this type, indicates that we must look for its origin in a blending of various types. Archaeological findings concerning the Neolithic migrations to the north also agree in this. The assumption that the Nordic skull form is the result of mixtures of a number of different types is alone sufficient to explain why individual skulls exhibit Upper Palaeolithic traits of such varying strength, why some show greater agreement with the Band-pattern people, others with skulls from the Battle-axe cultures and still others with the Mecklenburgian Ostorf skulls and the British Long Barrow skulls.

The low vault and the receding forehead which are characteristic of several of the skulls of the Nordic type in the Swedish material, indicate that the Battle-axe people whom we know from the Silesian-Bohemian Corded graves and who are distinguished by their high vault have had less influence on the development of the Neolithic population of Sweden than of Denmark, a fact which also agrees with the archaeological evidence of the extent of the axe peoples.

We are logically led to the assumption that the Boat-axe people, who have left such marked traces on the Neolithic culture of the Scandinavian Peninsula and who therefore must be assumed to have contributed a considerable addition to the population, have had a lower brain case than the more westerly axe peoples. We may perhaps regard the form of the Ladoga skull No. 1, which resembles several of the Swedish skulls of the Nordic type to such a high degree, as a confirmation of this. It also seems natural to assume that Sweden had more intimate connection with the Ostorf culture than Denmark.

In our investigation of the development of the Nordic skull form there is also reason to bear in mind that as early as in Denmark’s Mesolithic there were skull forms which indicate that the Nordic type seems to have been able to develop independently of crosses, by modification of Upper Palaeolithic forms. It must further be taken into consideration that also among the Upper Palaeolithic skulls there are both high and low vaulted forms as well as skulls with steep and broad or receding, narrow foreheads, and that the latter, the so-called Brünn forms, must be said to be close to the Nordic Reihengräber form, more so than the former, the so-called Cro-Magnon forms.

Thus we see that the lines of development which must be assumed to lead to the formation of the Nordic skull type are probably numerous, and that the forms included in this classification can by no means be regarded as a genetic entity.

[Indiana Jones]

The Norwegian Skulls

No. 1. Plate I. The stone cist at Svelvik contained the skeletons of 3 individuals, all men. The explosive charge which accidentally opened the grave chamber scattered the skeletal parts and destroyed most of them. Of the skulls, only the present calvarium was saved. It belonged to a man between 20 and 25 years of age. All of the sutures are open. The synostosis between the body of the sphenoid bone and the basilar part of the occipital bone was just completed. Judging by the length of the humerus, femur and tibia the stature of this young man can be set at 165-166 cm. As seen in the illustrations, the skull has several severe defects. In the norma verticalis it has an oval form with a rather broad, straight forehead, evenly curved lateral parts and a very pronounced tuber occipitale. In the norma temporalia the skull shows a very characteristic contour line (Fig. 9). The nasion is deepset, the glabella and arcus superciliares protrude markedly. From a pronounced sulcus superglabellaris the profile ascends rather steeply to the level of the metopion, thence more slowly to the vertex which lies 25 mm behind bregma. From here it descends, first gradually and then more steeply, to lambda. The pronounced tuber occipitale begins from a lambdoid depression. Ito convexity is not interrupted by any protuberantia occipitalis externa and the transition between the occipital plane and the nuchal plane is smooth. The powerfut glabella is also prominent in the norma frontalis. On the sides it is connected with the high arcus superciliares which extend to the middle of the upper orbital edge. The breadth development of the frontal bone is medium. The tubera frontalis are not very prominent. The middle part of the sqnama shows an even transversal vaulting, the upper part like the adjacent parts of the parietal bones, is slightly flattened so that this part of the roof of the skull is slightly keelformed. The facial part of the skull is broad and very low, the orbitae are small, rectangular with rounded corners and the longitudinal axis runs obliquely outward and downward. The interorbital breadths are very large. The apertura pyriformis is low and broad, the fossae caninae of medium depth. Particularly characteristic of the face is the very low height of the alveolar region of the maxilla. The distance between the deepest point en the lower edge of the aperture pyriformis and the point of the alveolar septum between the two incisors on the same side is only 15 mm and the distance between the lower orbital edge and the alveolar edge over the middle of


the 2nd premolar on the left side is 88 mm. The norma occipitalis forms a rather high and broad pentagon with parallel lateral surfaces, a rounded base and a weak sagittal keel. The most pronounced structural characteristic of the basis ia the size of the foramen magnum. It has a length of 39 mm and a breadth of 33 mm. The inclination angle of the foramen (No. 34 of Martin's list) is 14.5—15°.

The following characteristic features of the skull can be pointed out: mesocranial bordering on dolichocranial (100 B/L 75.8). height slightly lower than the breadth (100 H'/B 98.6), orthocranial bordering on hypsicranial (100 H'/L 74.7), heavy glabella and browridges, high vaulted forehead, a sagittal curve which falls steeply from the vertex to lambda, pronounced lambdoid flattening, round tuber occipitale, a very large foramen magnum, the face is hyperchamaeprosope, hyperchamaeconch and hyperplatyrhine, the alveolar region of the maxilla is very low.

Skull forms related to the Svelvik skull occur both in the Swedish end Danish Neolithic material. In addition to the Svelvik skull, Fig. 10 also illustrates the


profiles of a Danish skull (Udby II, No. 52) after Nielsen and a Swedish skull (Lockegården, No. 4) after Retzius. In the form of the brain case both of these skulls exhibit so many similarities with the Svelvik skull that it must be justified to classify them in the same type. At shown by a comparison of the available measurements for all three skulls (Table XVII), they differ from each other in several measurements, especially those of the face.

The Swedish skull is both longer and broader than the two others, but has approximately tha same height. The breadth and height of the Danish skull agree very well with the corresponding measurements of the Svelvik skull, while its length is considerably less than that of the two other skulls. Like the Svelvik skull, the Swedish skull has a subdolichocranial index (76.6), while the Danish skull's cranial index (80.2) lies en the border between meso- sod brachycrany. The malar breadth (GB) is almost the same in all three skulls, hewever the upper facial height is considerably less in the Svelvik skull than in the Danish and especially the Swedish skull. All three skulls are distinguished by their broad, rectangular orbitae. The orbital height is the same in the Udby and Svelvik skulls but greater in the Swedish skull. All three skulls have a low, broad nose.

The Udby skull belongs to the type of Danish skulls which Nielsen designates as the Møn type (cf. above) and which he interprets as a hybrid belween brachy- and dolichocraniel forms, The Lockegård skull is classified by Retzius in his mesocranial group. It is true of alt three of these skulls that they exhibit several Upper Palaeolithic traits. This is perhaps especially true of the Svelvik skull. The robust bones of the extremities, the high radio-humeral and intermembral index, the slight lumbar curvature and the low, broad, transversely rounded costae (Schreiner, 1923) are characters which point in the same direction as the cranial form. That a brachycranial element is involved in this type, as assumed by Nielsen, is quite logical in consideration of the sharp limitation between the rounded anterior part of the head and protruding tuber occipitale and further the variation of the cranial index.

No. 1a. Fig. 11. Of this skeleton the skull cap, the lower jaw, all the long bones of the extremities and some parts af the pelvis and other bones are preserved. They belonged to en adult men with a stature of about 172 cm. The skull is very large, L 207 mm, B 158 mm and ßOH about 125 mm. Its capacity can be computed to the very high figure of 1852 cc. As appears from Fig. 11a, the skull shows metopism. As is usually the case in complete metopism, the glabella is relatively poorly developed, the browridges on the contrary are heavy end extend beyond the middle of the horizontal margines supraorbitales. In the norma verticalis the skull has a rounded, pentagonal form. The sagittal curve rises from the sulcus supraglabellaris first steeply up to the metopion, then bends with a slight incline backward to bregma and the vertex. In the region around bregma the


curvature is very slight. From the vertex. which lies about 45 mm hehind bregma, the sagittal curve falls rather steeply toward lambda where there is a marked flattening and then continues into the smoothly carved line of the occiput. In the norma occipitalis the skull has a pentagonal form with sides which converge downward. Because of the numerous defects only a few measurements of the skull can be made. A comparison between these (Table XVIII) and the corresponding measurements of the Svelvik skull shows that the skull from Kråkerøy exceeds the former in all lengths. However the cranial index in almost the same for the two skulls, the same is also true of their transverse frontal index, while the transverse fronto-parietal index is higher in the Svelvik skull. Similarly its auricular height is greater, both in relation to the maximum length and especially in relation to the parietal breadth. As appears from the illustrations of the two skulls in the norma temporalis, the sagittal curve is more prominent in the region around the vertex in the Svelvik skull. The frontal arc in the Kråkerøy skull is considerably larger in relation to the parietal arc, and it also lacks the pronounced lambdoid depression and sharply limited, chignon-like tuber occipitale of the Svelvik skull. There is also a considerable difference between the two skulls in the curvature of the frontal bone. Morant (1927) proposed that the flatness of the frontal bone be measured by drawing a subtense from the vertex of the curvature in the nasion-bregma chord and expressing the height of the subtense by the ratio between this height and the length of the chord. This flatness index amounts to 21.1 in the Svelvik skull but to 25.6 in the Kråkerøy skull. The latter figure corresponds almost exactly to that which can be computed for the Cro-Magnon skull No. 1 on the basis of Morant's Fig. XLII, with which the present skull shows great similarity on the whole. It must also be interpreted as a more pronounced representative of the so-called Cro-Magnon type than the smaller Svelvik skull. The considerable stature of the man also corresponds to the skull form.

The mandible (Fig. 12) is powerfully built with a prominent chin, pronounced mental tubercles and everted gonial angles. In relation to the massive corpus, the antero-posterior breadth of the rami is small. Characteristic of the ramus is its long coronoid process and deep mandibular notch. The three molars remain in the jaw on both sides while the other teeth have fallen out post mortem. In


Table XIX the most important measurements of the jaw are recorded. With the exception of the measurements of the ramus, most of the values found are considerably higher than the means which Morant (1936) gives for Anglo-Saxons and Cleaver (1937) for Spitalfields and Farringdon Street. Because of the great beight of the coronoid process, the angle of the condylar-coronoidal line with the ramus tangent is unusually large.

No. 2. Plate II. As appears from the pictures, only a small part of the skull has been preserved, namely the occipital and parietal region with the mandible and small parts of both maxillae. As shown by the heavy relief of the muscle attachments en the occipital bone and the powerfully framed mandible, the skull in male. Judging by the wear of the teeth the man's age must be about 50.

In the norma occipitalis the skull has a pentagonal form with slightly rounded upper lateral corners. The norma lateralis shows an evenly curved squama occipitalia and a marked lnmbdoid flattening. Very few accurate measurements can be made. The maximum parietal breadth can probably be placed around 140 mm, the mastoidal breadth at 107 mm and the vertical auricular height at
116 mm. The arc bregma to lambda in 129 mm, the arc lambda to opisthion 119 mm. The corresponding chords are 116 and 98 mm respectively which gives a sagittal parietal index of 89.9 and a sagittal occipital index of 82.4. In breadth and height the skull thus agrees with No. 1, while the parietal arc is 6 mm greater which may possibly indicate that the length of the skull has been greater than that of the Svelvik skull. It lacks the pronounced tuber occipitale of the latter.

The left ramus of the mandible is defective and the right ramus also has a small defect at the everted gonial angle. The limited number of measurements which could be made were all taken on the right side: zz 46.5, rb' 36, m2p1 28, h1 82.5, m2h 27 mm, M /_123°, R /_73°, C' /_77°. The minimum antero-pesterior bradth of the ramus (rb') is greater in this mandible than in the preceding, the same is also true of the chord between the anterior margins of the right and left foramina mentalia (zz). The other lengths however are smaller. The mandibular angle (M /_) is also less, and especially the angle of the condylar-coronoidal line with the ramus tangent (R /_). which in the jaw of the preceding skull had no excessively high value beceuse of the extreme height of the coronoid process.

Nos. 3—7. Plates III-VII. These five skulls from Trøndelag show such good agreement that it is natural to describe them together. That which distinguishes them both from the above-described three skulls and most of our skulls from the Bronze and Iron Ages, are their small absolute measurements end their smoothness. They represent a more delicate type.

In the present author's investigation of Norwegian skull material from Medieval times it was emphasized that the skulls from Trondheim were distinguished from the skulls not only in the eastern provinces of the country, but also from most of the other Norwegian groups by their low means of the absolute measurements. Their capasity, arcs and linear measurements both of the calvaria and the face were considerably under those of most of the other groups. Only in the orbital measurements, especially the orbital height, did their means equal or exceed the others.

It is remarkable that these skulls frem Trøndelag's Stone Age (or Early Bronze Age?) coincide with the Medieval material. In Fig. 13 the sagittal contours of skull No. 3 together with a male Medieval skull from the same city, are reproduced, in Fig. 14 the sagittal contours of the female skull No. 6 from the Leines March and a female Medieval skull from Trendbeim. In Figs. 15 and 16 some photographs of the Stone Age skulls are placed alongside of photographs of some Medieval skulls. Together with the figures in Plates III—VII these pictures give a good impression of the agreement.

The female Megalithic skull from Slutarp in Västergötland which Fürst reproduces in his Plate XII and which is here presented in Fig. 15c shows greet similarity with our Trøndelag skulls. The metopic male skull of the same author on his Plate III from Mysinge on Öland is also close to the same type. The same is also true of the skull from Nyelv (No. 8) which will be described is mere detail below.

Table XX gives a summary of the principal absolute measurements and indices for the skulls described here. For comparison the means for our Medieval skulls


from Oslo and Trondheim are also recorded. Tho table illustrates tho above-mentioned differences in the absolute measurements between the Oslo and Trondheim skulls and shows the considerable agreement of the Stone Age skulls from Trøndelag with the Medieval material from Trondheim in this respect. Several of them even differ to a greater degree from the Oslo skulls than do the Medieval skulls from Trondheim.

The Stone Age skulls have a somewhat lower cranial index than the means for the Medieval skulls. The male skulls agree in heigth-length index with the latter, while the female skulls, because of their greater absolute height, have higher values both for this index and for the height-breadth index. The minimum frontal breadth with the exception of the small female skull No. 6, is greater in the Stone Age skulls than in the Medieval skulls, while the maximum frontal breadth is less. Both the transverse frontal index and the traseverse fronto-parietal


index are therefore considerably higher in the Stone Age material. In their malar facial index the Stone Age skulls differ little from the Medieval skulls, while the orbital index in both males and females is lower, principally due to a smaller orbital height.

Our earlier investigations of Norwegian skull material from the Middle Age led to the result that the Oslo material as a whole belonged to the Nordic type. The material from Trondheim also undoubtedly included numerous representatives of this same skull form. However the explanation of the smaller size and more delicate structure which characterized this material as a whole was an open question. It is possible that the above-described skulls from Trøndelag's Stone Age may provide the explanation. Their entire structure is very like that of the Mediterranean type and exhibits no marked Upper Palaeolithic traits as do the previously described skulls Nos. 1—3.

As is known, the Mediterranean skull form exhibits such great similarity to the Nordic that in individual cases it can hardly be distinguished from the latter except by its smaller absolute measurements and its more delicate structure, since both the calvarian and facial indices in both fall within the name range ef variation. Except for their higher orbital index and greater parietal breadth in relation te the length end height, the Medieval skulls from Trondheim differ in their indices only slightly from the Oslo skulls. However they differ from them markedly in their smaller absolute measurements and in this they agree with the Stone Age skulle from Trøndelag as mentioned above. This peculiarity of the Trondheim skulls may be explained by the assumption that there is stronger Mediterranean admixture than in any other hitherto examined Norwegian material. The above described skulls from Trøndelag's Stone Age indicate that this admixture dates back very far. The isolated position of the Trondheim material in relation to southern and western groups, compared with the occurrence of similar forms in Sweden and the previously mentioned (pp. 29—30) archaeological demonstration that the Swedish Stone Age culture spread to Norway via two different routes, partly up over Bohuslän to the South-Eastern parts and partly over Middle Sweden to the Trondheimsfjord, suggests that the invaders who followed the northern route brought the above-described skull form to Trøndelag. It can be regarded as highly probable that this skull type originated in the Mediterranean area. It to possible that its appearance on the Scandinavian Peninsula has some connection wilh the immigration to Sweden of Megalithic peoples from the west, proof of which Montelius and Forssander claim to find in the structure of the cist-graves of Forssander's Skogsbo type (cf. p. 61).

The assumption of Mediterrsneon admixture in the population of Trøndelag may possibly also explain certain traits in the somatology of the present population, in the first place their pigmentation. In contrast to the situation in most other parts of Norway, the dolicho-mesocephalics in Trøndelag are more seldom blonde than the brachycephalics, and the dolichocephalics more frequently have black hair than the meso-brachycephalics, just as brown and dark mottled eyes are related to a lower mean cephalic index then blue and light mottled.

Of the five individuals from Trøndelag's Stone Age, there are skeletal parts of the extremities only for the male No. 3. These exhibit a delicate structure with no pronounced relief of the muscle attachments as compared to the corresponding bones of the young man from Svelvik and the older man from Kråkerøy. The right femur is the only bone which is not defective. It is long and strikingly straight. It thus attains a considerable maximum length (464 mm). The thickness-length index of the shaft is 20.9 as compared to the average 25.3 for the three femora from the stone cist at Svelvik and 23.3 for the Kråkerøy man's two femora. The measured femur length corresponds to a stature of about 168.5 cm, a very considerable height. For the male population of Trondheim in the Middle Age I find a mean stature of 168.3 cm, calculated by the same method.

No. 8. Plates VIII —IX. As seen in the illustrations of the skull, the entire face and most of the basis is lacking. The thickness of the cranial bones and the relief of the muscle attachments on the occipital bone indicate, besides the entire form of the skull, that it belonged to a man.

In Table XX are presented the measurements which were possible of the skull cap together with the measurements of the Stone Age skulls from Trøndelag. It appears that the absolute measurements of the skull, with the exception of the auriculo-bregmatic height, are closer to the means of the Medieval skulls from Trondheim than to the means of the Oslo skulls. Its cranial index is somewhat higher than that of the Stone Age skulls from Trøndelag, but lower than the mean for the Medieval skulls from Trondheim, and like the Stone Age skulls it is distinguished by a high transverse fronto-parietal index, even though this, because of the greater parietal breadth, does not attain the same high value as in the Swedish skull from Mysinge. In its auriculo-bregmatic height the Nyelv skull agrees with the female skull No. 7. The considereble height also causes the computed capacity to be relatively high.

The type similarity between the Nyelv skull, the Stone Age skulls from Trøndelag end certain Medieval skulls from Trondheim appears both from the sagittal contours which are reproduced in Fig. 11 and from the comparison of the photographs of these skulls.

The skull cap from Nyelv is also of great interest in that it shows pronounced indications of trepanation and is the first specimen exhibiting evidence of thie surgical operation having been performed in Norway.

In the right os parietale all the way into the sutura sagittalis and a little more than two cm above lambda there is a ca. 6 cm long and almost 4.5 cm broad depressed field with an irregularly formed hole in the center (Plate IX. Fig. 1). The field is broadest anteriorly. Farthest back a little of the sutura sagittalia is visible at the bottom of the field. Along the edge of the hole the bone is thin as paper, it increases gradually in thickness both forward and backward, so that here the field is only indistinctly limited from the surrounding skull roof. In toward the median line of the skull and outward toward the side, the thickness however increases more rapidly, and the difference in depth between the bottom of the field and the surrounding skull roof is therefore clearly marked.

While the surface of the skull outside the field in smooth and has a yellowish brown color, within the field there are deep, branched vein furrows and between them numerous fine vein holes which penetrate the bone. The color is also lighter. While the field gradually grows narrow posteriorly, it spreads out anteriorly to the sides. One centimeter to the left of the sutura sagittalis there is an oval, 2.4 cm long and half as wide, very shallow depression in the left os parietale. The bottom of this slight depression has a slightly darker color and in less shiny than the surrounding bone. Examination with a magnifying glass reveals that this is due to dense, small vein holes.

The internal surface of the skull roof shows no more indication than the external of fracture. Corresponding to the depressed field on the external surface it shows a branching of the furrows after the art. meningica media which is stronger than on the other side. Along the median line there is also a denser accumulation of holes for the veins of the skull than both farther forward and backward (Plate IX, Fig. 2). Where the smaller depression in the left os parietale is clearly visible on the external surface of the skull, the internal surface shows no alterations.

According to information received from Nummedal who exhumed the skull, the hole in the roof was originally smaller and round. During exhumation the very thin bone surface adjacent to the hole was partly broken.

Both the form and structure of the part of the skull described above definitely indicate that this in a case of trepanation. The operation wan performed with the name scraping technique which is known from several prehistoric trepanations in our neighboring countries, especially in Denmark, and on the South Sea Islands. Judging by the form of the trepanation field we can conclude that the scraper was wielded from the right front obliquely backward and inward to the median line. The patient probably lay on his back with his head in the operator's lap.

The peculiarity of this trepanation is that the trepanation hole in any case was small in relation to the size of the field of the skull roof which is scraped down to the tabula interna. It is obviously impossible to have any correct notion of why the hole was not made larger. It may be that the operator was afraid of injuring the brain, and there in also the possibility that the patient, at this stage of the operation, refused to have the treatment continued. But it is also possible that the aim of the operator was to perform an operation more like that of the known scarification (T-sincipital) from France's Neolithic than like the true trepanation. Similar cases of incomplete trepanation in connection with scarification have also been encountered in French skulls.

According to the structure of the bone in the hottom of the scraped area it can be concluded that the patient lived for quite a while after the operation. The deep vein furrows and the numerous vein holes in the scraped area show that the operation wan followed by a considerable reactive inflammation. The increase in the arterial furrows on the inside of the scraped area near the midline shows that the dura mater was also inflamed. The development of such deep vein furrows as those seen in the bottom of the field shows that the inflammation was of a high degree and was chronic.

The depression found on the surface of the skull in the left parietal bone is probably due to the fact that the operator began here but for some reason or other gave up and chose the other side. The form and surface of the defect indicate that it is due to scraping.

We cannot know the cause of the operation in this case. As mentioned above the skull shows no signs of fracture nor does it present any other pathological alterations than those due to the operation. We must therefore assume that it was performed bacause of some disease which caused convulsions, insanity, or severe pains in the head, the diseases which, in addition to fracture of the skull, all the way to the present time among the medicine men of primitive peoples have been the most important indications for trepanation.

Two pieces of a mandible were found together with the skull. Both have the same color and surface texture as the skullcap. The masticatory surfaces of the three teeth which remain in one of the pieces (the two premolars and the first molar) show considerable wear, no caries. The broken ends of the two pieces do not fit together, but both the color and the dimensions of the fragments indicate undoubtedly that they belong together. They show no marks after animal teeth or signs which indicate that the jaw was split with an implement. The size both of the actual jaw fragments and of the tooth show that the jaw belonged to a male skull of under medium size by Norwegian standards. As shown above, the measurements of the skull roof are also relatively small. There is therefore nothing to indicate that the two jaw fragmente and the skull roof did not belong to the same individual, as the circumstances under which the find was made also seem to show.

Judging by the extent of trepanation both in Sweden and Denmark from the Stone Age and down to the Viking Period, there is reason to suppose that it was not unknown in Norway either. That there has hitherto been no proof that this was actually the case is not surprising in consideration of the scarcity of our prehistoric skeletal material. That the first case of prehistoric trepanation should be found in Finnmark however is very unexpected when it is remembered that the northernmost case from our neighbouring country is from the southern part of Middle Sweden.

That a Stone Age skull from East Finnmark combines a structure like that described above with trepanation performed according to southern Scandinavian technique must naturally arouse considerable attention. It is not very likely that an independent trepanation technique developed in Finnmark during the Stone Age similar to that of the South Sea Islands and South America. It is much more logical to assume that it has come from the south. This is also supported by the fact that the technique is exactly the same as that which is known from Sweden's and Denmark's Stone Ages. We can regard it as improbable that a small group of trappers could count among their numbers a medicine man who was capable of performing such an operation after all the rules. Where such an operation can be performed, there is reason to presuppose a cultural milieu which stands on a corresponding level in other respects also. But in this case there only seem to be two possibilities. Either the operation was performed in Finnmark, and if this is so we must assume that at the end of the Steno Age, during a period when the climate in northern Scandinavia was milder than at any time later, there was a primitive community there wbich was culturally of south Scandinavian origin, or else the man whose skull was found in Nyelv was trepanned some place farther south and died while in Finnmark.

As for the latter alternative, it must be admitted that it is improbable that a man who has suffered from a disease for which he has been trepanned, and who perhaps bore evidence uf the operation all his life, would have ventured upon a journey to the arctic coasts. It therefore seems that the first alternative, that the man belonged to a Nordic Stone Age community in Fianmark, is the most probable.

The assumption of Norwegian settlements in Finnmark as early as in the later part uf the Neolithic, from about 2000 B.C. is also supported by several finds. Thus the archaeologist Bjørn (1930 b) emphasizes as the most importent results of the investigations of finds from dwelling-sites from the Later Stone Age made by Nummedal to that date and placed at his disposition, that the archaeological material "clearly shows that a considerable portion of the implement culture in Finnmark in the later part of the Stone Age has its roots in the south and is a strong link in connecting this distant part of the country both geographically and culturally with the more central districts of the country" (pp. 25—26). This interpretation is also shared by Nummedal (1938) who emphasizes in his publication on the Nyelv find that it is related to many dwelling-site finds in Sweden from the same period. On the other hand Gjessing (1935) claims that these scattered finds along the northern coast of Norway are fascinating evidence of the extent of trade during the Stone Age but do not require the presupposition of any ethnic dislocation.

The form characteristics of the Nyelv skull, as appears from the above description, indicate an ethnological relationship with the population of Trøndelag end some of the Swedish Stone Age populations, and the trepanation of the skull also suggests connection with the south. If the Nyelv man died on a journey to Finnmark, which I regard as very unlikely as stated above, it would be logical to assume that he came from Trøndelag or Sweden. If his home was in Finnmark, we are led to the assumption, in conclusion to Nummedal's demonstration of the connection between the implement culture of Finnmark and the Swedish dwelling-site finds, that the dwelling-sites at Nyelv were a northerly offslaoot of the contemporary Swedish ones.

A striking feature of the find at Nyelv is that no remains of the rest of the skeleton were found along with the skullcap and the mandible fragments. Thus it seems to be no ordinary burial, but simply an interment of the head alone. As pointed out by Gjessing (1945 p. 145) it is reasonable to suppose that this interment is connected with a cult in some way or other. In this case it is similar to the ceremonies which Broca (1867) believes to have been responsible for his "trépanation posthume", namely that the heads of individuals who have embodied spirits and have therefore been trepanned, are the possessors of a magic power.

[Indiana Jones]

The Nordic Skull and the Nordic Race, a Retrospect



The designations "Nordic skull" and "Nordic race" were first employed and carefully described by Fürst in his publications from 1910 and 1912. In the latter he writes (p. 60): "Diesen nordischen dolichocephalen Schädeltypus, den ich oben mehrmals geschildert habe, kännen wir in denselben Formen in Schweden von der megalithischen Steinzeit über die Bronze- bis in die Eisenzeit verfolgen und finden auch, dass er bis in die neuste Zeit als typischer Schädel fur unsere nordischen Länder und speziell für Schweden sich bewährt hat, wenn auch die Dolichocephalie im Norden wie auch in den deutschen Ländern mit Rückgang seiner relativen Anzahl bedroht ist. Wenn aber der Rassentypus mit Dolichocephalie, hoher Korpergrösse, blauen Augen und hellen Haaren in der hochsten Prozentzahl in der Welt gewiss auf der skandinavischen Halbinsel existiert und wenn diese Dolichocephalen überhaupt die oben erwähnte Schädelform besitzen, so halte ich es fur richtig, dass wir diese Schädelform die nordische Schädelform und die Rasse, die diese repräsentieren die nordische Rasse nennen."

These designations of Fürst are similar to several which have been used earlier. Thus the Norwegian geologist and archaeologist A. M. Hansen in his book "Oldtidens nordmænd" (Ancient Norwegians) in 1909 called the type which is predominant in the Scandinavian countries "the tall Nordic long-skulled race", and Fürst (1905) had previously used the term "the Northern-Germanic skull" himself after the Norwegian anthropologist C. F. Larsen (1901).

The basis of the term "Nordic race" is in part its geographical association with the north, in part its inclusion of the three characteristics dolichocephaly, tall stature and fair complexion.
If we disregard the two latter characters and ask what traits in addition to dolichocrany typify the Nordic skull, the study of older and more recent literature shows that on this point there is no absolutely agreement between the various authors.

Fürst gives the following description: "Es ist dieser schöne, lange nordische Schädeltypus mit wohlentwickelten Glabella und Arcus superciliares, zuerst steil so langsam steigender Stirnprofillinie und hervortretendem Tuber occipitale, Langgesicht und rektangulären Augenhöhlen, hoher, schmaler Nase, Orthognatismus, kräftigen Kinn und einer typischen Norma verticalis, wo die Ellipse vorn durch die breite Stirn abgeflacht und hinten durch das Tuber occipitale zugespizt wird" (pp.55-56). The cranial index for the type usually lies under 75, but may also fall within the lower grades of mesocrany, it is associated with low values of the height-length index.

Our knowledge of the skull form which Fürst characterizes in this manner in 1912 dates back to the years 1838-43 when the famous Swedish zoologist and archaeologist Sven Nilsson's well-known work "Skandinaviska Nordens Urinvånare" was published. Already in an earlier publication from 1835 Nilsson had stated that it should be easy to determine the race to which the people who had used implements of stone and animal bones in Sweden had belonged if one examined the skeletons, and especially the skulls which are found in the old graves together with implements. This is what Nilsson tried to do in the above-mentioned work on the aboriginals of Sweden, the second chapter of which bears the title "A Comparison Between the Skulls Found in Our Prehistoric Graves and Those of Now Living Races". As a basis for his comparison he first characterizes the skull form of the present Swedish population, illustrated in three figures.

It is of particular interest that Nilsson, in characterizing the skulls which are long oval from above, employs the relationship between the breadth and length and also the relationship between the auricular height and the length. The maximum length is related to the maximum parietal breadth as 4 to 3 or as 9 to 7, the auricular height comprises two-thirds of the length. As individual, more chance differences between skulls of this type Nilsson mentions the variable development of the arcus superciliares, the depression above the bridge of the nose, the variations in the length, curvature and prominence of the nasal bone, the curvature and prominence as well as the breadth of the nasal aperture.

The description given by Sven Nilsson of the skull form of the Swedish population is of unusual interest, not only because it is the first and in a concise manner emphasizes a number of the most striking peculiarities of this skull form, but especially because, by using the relation between the skull's maximum breadth or auricular height and its maximum length to characterize the type, it may be said to form the groundwork for later skull measurements and index calculations, a method which was soon to attain further development in the works of Nilsson's compatriot and pupil Anders Retzius.

On the suggestion of Nilsson, Retzius made a comparative investigation of the crania of various races in order to elucidate further the questions which Nilsson had sought to answer concerning the early inhabitants of Sweden. The first results of these investigations were presented by Retzius at a meeting of natural scientists in Stockholm in 1842 in his later so famous lecture "Om formen av Nordboernes cranier" (On the Shape of the Skulls of the Scandinavian North), published in the records of the meeting. The most important features of the description here given by Retzius of the Swedish skulls are the following: The form of the skull as seen from above is oval. The maximum length is about one-fourth larger than the greatest breadth so that the length is related to the breadth as 1000: 773 or about 9: 7. On the average the maximum length is 190 mm, the maximum breadth 147 mm, the horizontal circumference through the glabella 540 mm and the vertical height 135 mm. The transverse frontal arc of most of the skulls is somewhat straight, the arcus superciliares are usually well developed. Posterior to the maximum breadth, which usually falls below and somewhat in front of the tubera parietalia, the skull grows narrower toward the occiput ending in a prominent, rounded tuper occipitale. In the norma lateralis this appears as a ledge which is limited above by a depression over the point of the lambda suture, which is one of the significant traits of skulls of this type. The surface on which the cerebellum rests is almost horizontal, lies in the bottom of the skull and is slightly convex. The tuber occipitale is located rather far back of the edge of this surface. The limit for the attachment of the musculi cervicis lies below and in front of the very prominent tuber occipitale. The angle between the occipital and the nuchal planes is almost a right angle and in adult men forms a marked protuberantia occipitalis externa. The foramen magnum has an oval form with a mean length of 36 and a mean breadth of 29 mm. The face extends slightly beyond the brain-case. In some skulls the zygomatic arches extend almost directly backward and do not bend sideward until near the insertion on the temporal bones, in others they form an almost regular arc with its maximum convexity in the center. The maximum bizygomatic breadth is usually 130-135 mm. The shape of the orbitae varies considerably; in some of the skulls it forms an outward and downward slanting rhombus with rounded corners, in others the form is oval to cicular. The face is high, the distance between the nasion and the incisors' alveolar margin in men is on the average 77 mm; the fossa malaris in most of the skulls is rather deep. The mandible is high and powerfully built, the chin prominent.

Retzius found the same characteristic form as in the modern Swedes in a number of crania from older periods, both from the Medieval and Iron Ages, and thus he concludes that this skull form is an inheritance from ancient Swedes.
In his lecture at the meeting of natural scientists in Kristiania in 1844 "On the Shape of the Skull in Different Peoples" Retzius gives an account of his continued investigations of the skull form of the peoples of Europe and he points out that in Norwegians, Danes, Dutchmen, Belgians, Germans, Englishmen, Scots and Irishmen he has found the same form as in the Swedes. In a number of publications in subsequent years Retzius writes further on this subject.

One of the most significant contributions to the further investigation of the characteristics and distribution of the Germanic skull form is Alexander Ecker’s well-known work "Crania Germaniae meridionalis occidentalis" from 1865. It contains descriptions with numerous measurements and illustrations of a total of 83 more or less complete skulls from old graves in Baden, Würtemberg, Bavaria, Hessen and Nassau. The material is derived partly from Frankish and Allemanic "Reihengräber" from the 5th-8th centuries in South Germany, partly from large round burial mounds "Hügelgräber" from the time of the Roman rule in Germania.

With his interpretation of the Reihengräber type as the characteristic skull form of the Germanic peoples of the Merovingian Era in Germany, Ecker's work has had a considerable influence on all later investigations of Germanic graves both in Germany and neighbouring countries. Ecker's description of the type agrees in all main points with that previously given of the Swedish skulls by A. Retzius. Ecker emphasizes also that he has made a comparison between the skulls from the South German graves and modern Swedish skulls, and that the comparison shows complete agreement between these and the Reihengräber form. Hence he comes to the conclusion that the modern Swedes and the old Franks and Allemanns represent branches of the same race, an interpretation which agrees with that of Retzius in 1856 where he states that the Franks, Burgundians and Goths together with the Scandinavian peoples belonged to the Germanic dolichocephalic orthognathous race.

In several respects Retzius' description of the Germanic skull type is more detailed than Ecker's, however in other respects the latter makes valuable contributions to the characterization of the type. This is true both of his excellent description of the forehead and occipital form and especially his emphasis of the characteristic pentagonal form of the skull in the norma occipitalis. Concerning the form of the facial skull in the Reihengräber type, Ecker states only that the face is narrow.

Ecker's investigations and the treatise by Rütimeyer and His, "Crania Helvetica", published the year before the appearance of "Crania Germanica", led to the same significant result that while the present population of South Germany and Switzerland is brachycephalic, and long skulls occur within this population only as rare exceptions, the grave finds from the Roman Iron Age to the Merovingian Era reveal contrasting craniological data, as brachycrany at that time was just as exceptional as dolichocrany is now. Compared with Retzius' above mentioned demonstration that the skull form of Sweden's population has remained unaltered for the last 1000 years, the results of Rütimeyer, His and Ecker for Middle Europe were extremely surprising. They gave rise to a long series of investigations of skeletal remains from prehistoric and later times both in Germany and neighbouring countries. It is beyond the scope of the present work to discuss the numerous publications which deal with the various collections of crania from Germanic graves, all the more so as this literature is treated in detail both in one of the present author’s earlier publications (1927) and by a number of other authors, most recently by Hug (1940). The most important result of these investigations is that the skull form which is common in these Germanic graves as regards the form of the braincase shows good agreement with that which Retzius found characteristic for the cranium of the peoples of the north and Ecker for the Reihengräber type, but as regards the form of the face the skulls exhibit extreme differences. In some cases the face is big and narrow, in others low and broad, the nose may vary from narrow to broad, the orbitae from low to high and may exhibit the most variable forms, and the face may vary from orthognathous to prognathous. It is thus obvious that the Reihengräber peoples do not represent a homogeneity. If the Reihengräber skull is regarded as the prototype of the Nordic skull it must be said that Fürsts`s characterization of its facial form (cf. above) does not hold generally but is characteristic only for a particular variant within the type.

Most of the skull material which is dealt with in the present work is derived from those periods of the Iron Age which are designated as the Migration, the Merovingian and the Viking Periods. The investigation has shown that the skull form which is predominant in this material is the Nordic or Reihengräber type, the northern people's skull form of Nilsson and A. Retzius, and that our material from this period shows good agreement in structure both with the contemporary Danish, Swedish, British and German skull forms and with the Medieval skulls from Oslo. The explanation of the variations exhibited by this skull form, especially in structure of the face, is to be sought for in the fact that the so-called Nordic race, which in its skeletal structure is characterized especially by its skull form and tall stature, must be assumed to have been developed through the mixture of peoples which took place in Europe during the Neolithic when one wave after the other of peoples from the eastern Mediterranean lands and the region around the Caspian Sea wandered northward into a region that was sparsely populated by the men of the Upper Palaeolithic, and came to the Scandinavian Peninsula from Middle Europe by various routes.

The various skull forms from the Upper Palaeolithic of Europe which bear names after the site at which they were found, such as Cro-Magnon, Brünn, Chancelade, Solutré, Grimaldi and Combe-Capelle, have been identified with just as many races by a number of earlier authors, and the special relation of the Nordic race to one or the other of these has been postulated. Such a classification of the Upper Palaeolithic forms into different races rests for the present on much too slight a basis as pointed out by Morant and Matiegka, and temporarily it is probably safer, like Morant, to regard them as local variations within a population which is rather less variable than many modern European series. Among the skulls of the Nordic type forms can be found which show agreement with the Cro-Magnon as well as the Brünn and Combe-Capelle skulls although none of these forms can be said to represent the dominant element.

There is no evidence to contradict the possibility that during the long period of the Upper Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic a transformation of certain skull forms of Upper Palaeolithic type in the direction of the Nordic type may have taken place, in that the skulls have got a more delicate structure and a higher and narrower face. The Danish cranial finds from the Maglemose and Ertebølle Periods in recent years indicate that such a transformation really has taken place in certain regions. However a large number of our skulls of Nordic type exhibit characters which definitely point back to similar traits in the Neolithic invaders, chiefly the Bandpattern and various Battle-axe peoples.

In the present skull material from the Scandinavian countries, the development of the Nordic type can be followed directly. In addition to Neolithic skulls, which in their entire structure hardly differ from Upper Palaeolithic forms and which probably belonged to the original population, there are skulls which, with their small absolute measurements and delicate structure, differ markedly from the former, and which are naturally interpreted as belonging to Neolithic invaders of Mediterranean origin. And finally, among these, there are a number of skulls which have every right to be designated as Nordic, and in which we sometimes find dominating traits from the former, sometimes from the latter.

Most of the known skulls from the Upper Palaeolithic are dolichocranial, and Morant has calculated their mean cranial index to 72.6 for males and 75.3 for females. The Band-pattern skulls are also on the average dolicho-mesocranial, while the skulls of the Battle-axe peoples are more pronounced dolichocranial. While the face in the Upper Palaeolithic men is usually low and broad, in the Neolithic invaders it is higher and medium broad to narrow. That the populations which are derived from a mixture of these elements for the most part have a long narrow brain-case and highly variable facial forms is just what we could have expected, similarly that there will be considerable variation in the entire skull form according to which of the above-mentioned elements dominates quantitatively in the mixture.

In addition to the mainly dolichocranial invaders of Scandinavia, a mainly brachycranial element is added in the later part of the Neolithic, the Bell Beaker people, who, even though they must be assumed to have been fewer in number than the former, have probably contributed to an exceeding degree in complicating the anthropological situation in the north. In the opinion of the present author they may have given rise to the so-called Borreby type by admixture with the Upper Palaeolithic forms, and to various mesocranial forms by admixture with the other invaders. The border between these and the Nordic skull is poorly defined, and it is hardly possible to have any well-founded opinion as to whether a mesocranial index can be ascribed to brachycranial admixture or whether it should be interpreted as a variation within the dolichocranial group. In any case it would be rash to conclude that every mesocranial index is due to Bell Beaker admixture, as both the Battle-axe peoples and especially the Band-pattern peoples in addition to a majority of dolichocranial forms also include mesocranial forms.

If we follow the ordinary definition of "Nordic race" and consider its three most important characters as a long, narrow skull, high stature and blonde complexion, we can say that at the end of the Neolithic a large part of the population exhibited the two first traits. However, skeletal investigations afford no information as to pigmentation. The first reliable find of a combination of skeletal structure of the Nordic type with blonde hair is from the oak coffin graves from Denmark's Early Bronze Age.

Where shall we search for the origin of this blonde complexion? We know nothing of the pigmentation of the Upper Palaeolithic men. They are assumed by most authors to have been dark. According to their undoubted Mediterranean origin it is logical to assume that the Band-pattern peoples and the Megalithic peoples of Western Europe were characterized by dark hair and brown eyes. This is also suggested by the present pigmentation of the dolichocephalics in large parts of the Megalithic regions on the Atlantic coasts. Our skull finds from Trøndelag's Neolithic or Early Bronze Age compared with the pigmentation of the present population also seem to indicate the correctness of this assumption. It thus seems most logical to assume that the blonde complexion was associated with the Battle-axe peoples. That the blonde complexion is a result of a depigmentation due to the climatic conditions of the north seems improbable. If cold, snow, the long, dark winter, the light summer and the sea air either alone or in combination had a depigmenting effect, the strong pigmentation of the Lapps and the Eskimos would be difficult to understand.

When we, in the preceding discussion of the various skeletal finds, have designated a skull as "Nordic", we only mean that the form of the brain-case falls within the range of the Reihengräber type. It may exhibit more or less pronounced Upper Palaeolithic traits, it may be more or less closely related to the Bandpattern or the Battle-axe type. Whether the people to whom the skulls belonged were of "Nordic race" cannot be determined, as their pigmentation is not known. Reversely if we take our point of departure in the present population of Norway, we find many individuals with Nordic skull form and high stature. Some of them have blonde hair and blue eyes, it is these who are called "pure Nordic" or "100 % Nordic". But others have dark hair and blue eyes or brown hair and pigmented eyes. They are "only partly Nordic". And in addition there are many who are mesocephalic or even brachycephalic. If they are blonde they may be considered as a variation of the "Nordic race", if they are dark they are "un-Nordic". If we regard this classification in the light of the history it seems obvious that the term "Nordic race" designates only a particular phaenotype within the populations which have developed in the north during and after the Neolithic. Since this type in our time has its greatest concentrated distribution in the central parts of the Scandinavian Peninsula, it is logical to assume that this is due to the fact that the Neolithic invaders in these areas belonged mostly to the eastern Battle-axe peoples who were probably closest to the Nordic type of all the Neolithic peoples.

In addition to the blonde dolichocephalics, there is in certain parts of our country as well as in the other Scandinavian countries, a largely blonde brachycephalic population whose skull form shows relation to the Borreby type. If our assumption that the latter represent the product of admixture between Upper Palaeolithic and Bell Beaker forms, possibly with more or less admixture of other forms, is correct, it seems logical to assume that the blonde complexion also has another source than that mentioned above. What this source may have been can at present only be guessed at. It is possible that the Bell Beaker peoples included a considerable number of blonde elements, nor it is impossible that the same was true of the descendents of the Upper Palaeolithic men.

Our comparison between the skulls from the Iron Age and from the Medieval Age of Oslo has shown that these consist chiefly of the same types. When the latter on the average have a somewhat shorter length and greater breadth, this may of course be due to greater mobility of the population in the Middle Age which has led to an admixture of the population of the South-Eastern parts with peoples from other parts of the country, where the skull forms was of a somewhat different type than the mean type of the Iron Age, or that this parts of the country even from ancient times differed somewhat from the rest, but the main cause probably lies in a tendency toward increase of the breadth of the skull at the cost of its length similar to that encountered as an ordinary phenomenon in other parts of Europe also.

A question which is barely touched upon in the present work is the occurrence of brachycranial forms in the north and their possible relations. We have noticed the similarity between the Danish brachycranials of Nielsen's Orrouy-Furfooz type and the Bell Beaker skulls, and in this similarity we believe there is evidence for the assumption of a connection between the Bell Beaker peoples' appearance in the north and the occurrence of brachycrany. At the same time it is pointed out that brachycranial forms, if the dating of the Kassemose find to the Mesolithic is tenable, have already occurred in Denmark before the Neolithic immigrations at a time when, from the rest of Europe, we only know brachycranial forms from the Ofnet cave in Bavaria. However with those suggested possibilities for the relations of the Scandinavian brachycranials the question is far from solved. In this connection it is sufficient to point out that judging by the investigations which have been made of the skull forms in East Prussia and the Baltic in the Neolithic, it is an obvious possibility that Southern Sweden with its contact with these countries across the Baltic Sea may have acquired considerable brachycephalic elements, and that this contact may also be one of the causes of the combination of brachycephaly and blonde complexion in a large portion of the population of the north. A primary prerequisite of a profitable discussion of these questions is the investigation of an extensive skull material from prehistoric as well as modern times, both from the Scandinavian countries and their neighbours to the south and east, supported by investigations of the present population in regions where brachycephaly is common. It should be one of the aims of Nordic anthropology to contribute to the fulfillment of this program.

[Ulysses]

Зачем ?
http://www.theaprici...NIIContents.htm

Хотя пусть будет и у нас на форуме - для быстрой ссылки.

[Indiana Jones]

Ulysses

Конечно же можно удалить, но...не лучше было бы, если б у нас была копия этой работы...
SNPA случайно не сносили несколько раз? :dolf_ru_889: