Contributions to the craniology of the people of the empire of India / by Sir Wm. Turner.

  • Turner, Wm. (William), Sir, 1832-1916.
Date:
1899-1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Contributions to the craniology of the people of the empire of India / by Sir Wm. Turner. 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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    as well as with the straight-haired Siamese who have entered the peninsula from the north, so as to lead to a modification in the physical characteristics of the people and the production in certain districts of a mixed race. As regards the cranial configuration, the skull of the frizzly-haired Panghan, described by Professor Virchow, was brachycephalic; and the figure which he has reproduced obviously represents a type of skull resembling that of the Andaman Islanders. The skull form, therefore, confirms the view of the presence of a Negrito people in the Malay peninsula. Of the two skulls which I have described, the one from the Kintah district, from its locality and the nature of the interment, must be regarded as of an aboriginal race and not a Malay. The skull was dolichocephalic, a proportion which belongs neither to the Negrito nor to the Malay. From Dr Scott’s description of the people, to whom he gives the general name of “ Sakai,” it would seem that the hill-tribes in this district had long and not frizzly hair, a skin not black but lighter in colour than the Malay, which, conjoined with the dolichocephalic skull, gave race characters difi’ering materially from the Negritos. These people, however, have, like the Negritos, a low stature. The skull from Pahang, on the other hand, differed so materially in its proportions and general appearance from the Kintah specimen, that it cannot, I think, have belonged to the same tribe or race,—the proportion of the length-breadth index, though numerically mesaticephalic, 7 9'4, was essentially brachy cephalic, though the parieto-occipital slope was not abruptly steep. In the form of the vertex and the proportions of the nose it differed from the Kintah skull, but its injured condition did not admit of a complete comparison being made. I hesitate, therefore, to give an opinion on the race to which it had belonged. From the consideration of the whole question there seems to be little doubt that in the hill regions of the Malay peninsula two aboriginal races are met with, distinguished from each other by the colour of the skin, the characters of the hair, and the form of the cranium, though both possess in common a low stature.