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Michigan Mound Builders
In short, quality may here, as in other instances, compensate for deficiency in quantity. So we find the cranium of the Peruvian, who possesses a high degree of civilzation and refinement, equaled in capacity by that of the New Hollander or Hottentot, while it is exceeded by that of the degraded, brutal North American Indian to the extent of nine cubic inches. Still the crania of the Mound-builders, it must be acknowledged, present characteristic, which, in the language of Foster, " indicate a low intellectual organization, little removed from that of the idiot." And this skull from the Detroit river mound must be placed in the same category. Prof. Wyman, in the sixth annual report of the Peabody Museum, in referring to this skull, goes on to say: " In ordinary skulls the ridges of the temporal muscles on the two sides of the head are separated by a space of from three to four inches, seldom, less than two, while in the Detroit mound skull this space measures only three-quarters of an inch; and in this respect it presents the same conditions as the skull of a chimpanzee."
Michigan Mound Builders
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