Anthropological Survey in Alaska

SKULLS OF ESKIMO CHILDREN

A special effort in our work has been made to secure well-preserved skulls of children. As elsewhere, so among the Eskimo, more children die than adults, but conditions are not favorable for the preservation of their skeletal remains. Most of the bones are done away with or damaged by animals (foxes, dogs, mice, etc.), while others decay, so that generally nothing remains of the youngest subjects and but a few bones and a rare skull of the older children. The total number of such skulls in our collection now reaches 25. They are all of children of more than 2 but mostly less than 6 years old, and are all normal specimens. The principal measurements of their vault—a study of the face is a subject apart and needing more material—are given in the following tables.

Crania of Eskimo Children

Principal Cranial Indices in Children Compared With Those in Adults

The main interest centers in the comparison of the relative proportions of these skulls with those of the adults from the same localities. These comparisons, given in the smaller table, are of considerable interest.

The cranial index is considerably higher in the children. On analysis this is found to be due almost wholly to a greater relative breadth of the child's skull. During later growth the Eskimo cranium advances materially more in length than in breadth. A further expansion in breadth is evidently hindered by some factor outside of the bones themselves, for nothing appears in these that could constitute such a hindrance. And the only evident outside factor capable of producing such an effect are the strong pads of the temporal muscles.

The mean height index H×100
mean of L+B remains much the same in the children and adults, indicating that the relative increase during growth in skull length compensates for the lagging increase in breadth, while the proportion of the height to the mean of the length and breadth remains fairly stable.

The much greater growth in length than in breadth of the Eskimo skull from childhood onward is shown even better in the second part of the table by a direct comparison of the mean dimensions. The length of the adult skull is by over 9 per cent, the breadth by less than 4 per cent, greater than that in childhood in the same groups.

The adult Eskimo skull has also grown very perceptibly more in height than in breadth, though somewhat less so than in length. The result is a notably higher height-breadth index in the adult. Compared to that in childhood the adult Eskimo skull is therefore relatively markedly longer, higher, and narrower.

These facts are probably of more significance than might seem at first glance; for it is precisely by the same characters, carried still further, that some of the Eskimo differ from others. Let us compare two of our largest and best groups, those of St. Lawrence Island and Greenland:

The Greenland skull is longer, narrower, and somewhat higher. The differences are less than those between a child and an adult western Eskimo, but of the same nature. This apparently speaks strongly for the development of the Greenland type of Eskimo cranium from the western. On the other hand, the type of skull shown by the Eskimo child approaches much more closely than that of the Eskimo adult to the type of the skull of the Mongol.

The above are mere observations, not theories, and they carry a strong indication that mostly we are still floundering only on the borders of true anthropology, embracing all phases of life and development, which, if mastered, would give us with beautiful definition many now vainly sought or barely glimpsed solutions.

A highly interesting feature is the relatively great development in the Eskimo, between childhood and the adult stage, of the anterior half of the skull or basion-nasion dimension. This augments, it is seen, by even 3.4 per cent more than the length. This growth must involve some additional factor to those inherent in the bones themselves and in the attached musculature, and this can only be, it seems, the development of the anterior half of the brain. Evidently this portion of the brain between childhood and adult life grows in the Eskimo more rapidly than that behind the vertical plane corresponding to the basion. It is a very suggestive condition calling for further study, and thus far almost entirely wanting in comparative data on other human as well as subhuman groups.