Note on the animal remains found at Cissbury / by Prof. Rolleston.

  • Rolleston, George, 1829-1881.
Date:
[1876?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Note on the animal remains found at Cissbury / by Prof. Rolleston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    climbing up and down the shafts of the flint-mines. The development on each femur of a third trochanter to receive the uppermost insertions of the gluteus maximus admits, I think, of being explained by a reference to the same practice, though the femora of the most eminently arboreal of the lower animals do not bear out this suggestion as regards the lower in the same way that they do as regards the upper limbs. The lined asp era is replaced by a depression from Ijelow the level of this third trochanter down nearly to that of the foramen nutritium of the femur, and for the distance corresponding with this depression the femur is much flattened and flanged out. The lower part of the lined aspera is much larger on the right side than the left, as though this woman had used the right lower limb by preference, as well as the right upper one. The tibiae are anteriorly platycnemic. Traces only of the lines of junction between the epiphysis of the clavicle and its shaft, between the two epiphyses of the radius and its shaft, between those of the fibula and its shaft, and between the cristce Hit and the body of the bone, are visible. The vertebrae are completed, and, what is somewhat surprising, the five bones of the sternum are all but completely anchylosed. There can, however, be no doubt as to the age of the woman to whom this skeleton belonged, inasmuch as the first vertebra of the sacrum is still unanchy- losed, and the wisdom-teeth, though present in both jaws, are very little, whilst the other teeth are very much, worn. As regards the limbs, the scapulae, the pelvis, and the clavicles of this skeleton, what Dr. Kuhff has said (“Revue d’Anthropologie,” iv. 3, 1875, p. 435), viz. that “plus s’on se rapproche dcs origines de l’homme, et plus l’on voit s’effacer les caracteres differentiels sexuels dans le squelette,” is the very reverse of the actual state of the case. As regards the cranial capacity it is otherwise, and the skull of this woman from the skeleton shaft at Cissbury, with a cubic capacity of 105 inches ( = 17327 cub. cent. = 61*5 oz. av. brain weight), exceeds the immense majority of male skulls cubed and recorded. Out of a large series from very various times and peoples cubed by myself, three only have exceeded this amount. One of these was a Roman of the Romano-British period in Britain, with a cubic capacity of 108 in.; a second was a skull from a British tumulus at Crawley, of probably the time between the evacua- tion of Britain by the Romans and its entire subjugation by the Saxons, with a capacity of 10675 cubic inches; the third is a modern European head, with nothing to note in its history, but with a capacity of 105’5 cubic inches. I have so very lately, in the pages of this Journal, vol. iv. p. 120, Oct., 1875, and elsewhere (“Address on Anthropology,”