Note 567 — Chapter XII

Papuan skulls are generally very dolichocephalic (av. ceph. ind. 73), and the presence of brachycephalic skulls in the series of New Guinea origin is certainly of significance, only their proportion is very slight. Out of 500 New Guinea skulls described I have been able to find only 36 brachycephalic, or seven per cent. More than half of these skulls come from one and the same locality, the Kiwai and Canoe Islands in the delta of the Fly. Either a Malay colony may therefore be assumed there, a remnant of Negritoes, or that it was a centre of the custom of deforming the head, a custom which in fact obtains in the neighbourhood of the mouth of the Fly. On this question see my summary of 1882 cited above, and Haddon, loc. cit.; Schellong, “Anthr. d. Papus,” Zeit. f. Ethn., p. 156, 1891; J. Chalmers, “Anthropometr. observ., etc.,” Journ. Anthr. Inst., vol. xxvii. (1897).