Abstract
UP to the present, the dearth of knowledge regarding the people of Peru has been due to the almost complete lack of anthropological examination of the living subject and to the nature of the material available, consisting largely of skulls accidentally or artificially deformed, normal specimens from this region being rare in our existing collections. We knew in a general way that Peru, shortly before the conquest, was peopled by at least three or four Indian races: the Aymara and Quichua in the central and southern highlands; the Huancas in the north; the Yungas or Chinchas along the coast, besides several still unclassified tribes in the north-eastern and northern territories. From recent accessions of material collected by the American museum, we are now able to differentiate the Aymara, representing a dolicocephalic type, from the middle coast people, who are brachy-cephalic. Further information has now been collected by Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, curator of physical anthropology in the United States National Museum, who has recently made a hasty tour through the coastal region and a more careful examination of two important sites, Pachacamac and Chan-chan or Gran Chimu. The results of his investigations are published in vol. lvi., No. 16, of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections.
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Peruvian Anthropology . Nature 87, 59–60 (1911). https://doi.org/10.1038/087059c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/087059c0