Chapter LXV: Munsee Sacrum: Dimensions

LEGEND:
A = Number of specimens
B = Height[80]
C = Breadth, maximum
D = Index (B×100/H)

--------------------+---------------------+------------------------
| Males | Females
+---+-----+-----+-----+----+-----+------+------
|(A)| (B) | (C) |(D) |(A) |(B) | (C) | (D)
--------------------+---+-----+-----+-----+----+-----+------+------
| |_cm._|_cm._| | |_cm._|_cm._ |
Average |(6)| 10.7|11.6 |108.2| (7)| 9.9 | 11.7| 118.5
Average (including | | | | | | | |
damaged specimens)|All| — | — | — |(11)| — | 11.5|
Minimum (including | | | | | | | |
damaged specimens)|All| 9.9|11.3 |102.6|(11)| 8.9 | 11 | 104.7
Maximum (including | | | | | | | |
damaged specimens)|All| 11.5|12.0 |114.1|(11)|10.7 | 12.8| 126.0
--------------------+---+-----+-----+-----+----+-----+------+------

[80] Sacra of five segments only included; height measured with sliding compass, points of instrument applied to middle of promontory and to middle of anterior inferior border of V sacral vertebra.

Emmons, who a few years ago, with the writer’s assistance, conducted an examination of 217 Indian female pelves,[81] obtained as a total average of his specimens (which however include also sacra of more than five segments), for the height 10 cm., breadth 11.5 cm., and index 115.8—figures which stand in close accord with the above. In the Negro race and in the Australians the sacrum, as is well known, is relatively narrower; and in much larger degree this is also the case in the anthropoid apes. The relatively broad and short sacrum of the whites and the Indians may therefore be regarded as a feature of an advanced evolutionary character.

[81] A. B. Emmons, A Study of the Variations in the Female Pelvis, Based on Observations made on 271 Specimens of the American Indian Squaw, _Biometrika_, IX, 1913, pp. 34-57.