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[[underline]] Chapter XVIII. [[/underline]]     401.

   Professor Wood Jones' findings showed that in general these prehistoric skulls resembled those of the modern/ [[insertion]] northern [[/insertion]] Chinese peasantry; but they displayed certain slight yet distinct differences from the latter. Thus they were rather more rugged and less smoothly rounded, their teeth and [[strikethrough]] [[in?]] [[/strikethrough]] jaws larger, and the impressions of the muscles used in mastication greater in area, than in modern Chinese crania. Also the sexual differentiation of the male skulls, particularly in the development of the supraorbital ridges, was more marked in the ancient examples.
   Two of the latter showed evidence of what seemed to be trepanation; for both were perforated, in each case through the left parietal bone, by roughly ovoid holes elongated in the major axes of the crania. These orifices had obviously been produced during life, since healing had already taken place about their edges. Their dimensions were, in the one case 28 [[underline]] mm. [[/underline]] by 11 [[underline]] mm. [[/underline]], in the other 40 [[underline]] mm. [[/underline]] by 12 [[underline]] mm. [[/underline]] The practice is a well known one, in other lands as well as in prehistoric China.
   These skulls from Wa Cha Hsieh were, Professor Wood Jones felt, unmistakably "Chinese" in type. On this point particularly, his conclusions were in close harmony with those of Father Teilhard de Chardin, of the late Dr. Davidson Black, [[superscript]] (359) [[/superscript]] and of Dr. Paul H. Stevenson (on the views
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 [[superscript]] (359) [[/superscript]]  For Dr. Black's views regarding the prehistoric skulls found by Dr. J.G. Andersson in northwestern China and southern Manchuria, see his paper, "The human skeletal remains from the Sha Kuo Tun cave-deposits in comparison with those from Yang Shao and with recent North China skeletal material", [[underline]] Palaeontol. Sinica, [[/underline]] ser. D, vol. I, fasc. 3 (Peking, 1925), page 98; and his "A note on the physical characters of the prehistoric Kansu race", [[underline]] Mems. Geol. Survey of China [[/underline]], ser. A, no. 5 (Peking, 1925), [[underline]] passim. [[/underline]]
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of the last named, see pp. 247 [[underline]] sq.[[/underline]]), and showed pretty conclusively that there had been no fundamental break in racial continuity in the population of northern China since her Neolithic period, some thousands of years ago.