The Galley Hill Man and Ettore Majorana

While reading this description of the Galley Hill Man’s skull it struck me as being eerily similar to uber Amud, Ettore Majorana:

The skull, which is reminiscent in a general way of some living varieties of European man, is extremely dolichocephalic, with a cranial index of 69; although warped by earth pressure, it has not changed its basic form. The length of the vault is very long, 204 mm. as reconstructed by Keith, and the breadth correspondingly narrow. The vault height, known only from the auricular projection since the basal portion of the skull is missing, is on the low side of medium. This skull has an extremely protuberant Occiput with the greatest length well to the bottom; a well-developed frontal region, and a moderately sloping forehead. At the same time the forehead is very broad, making the parietal walls nearly parallel. The browridges are of moderately strong development. The face, unfortunately, is missing in Galley Hill as in all similar specimens. Yet the temporal segment of the right zygomatic arch remains, and this, although thin, shows that the arch as a whole was well curved.

Fortunately, more than half of the mandible has been preserved, and its conformation makes it Certain that there was no prognathism. The body of this mandible is rather narrow and of only moderate symphysial height; the chin of medium prominence judged by niodern standards. The ascending ramus is wide, and the sigmoid notch shallow. The teeth, while fully human, retain some primitive features in the development of the pulp cavities, in the length-breadth proportions of the molars, and in their relative size, for the third molar is the largest.

http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/chapter-II03.htm

Majorana cannot be described as having quite the broadness of forehead that is seen on Heaviside and Tesla (creating the parallelism of parietal walls). On the other hand, sidelong pictures of Heaviside and Tesla do not indicate the extraordinary dolicocephalism, having only moderate occipital protrusion.

Majorana’s neck posture reminds me of polymath’s neanderthal reconstruction. He says it’s due to the position of the foramen magnum.

The larger physiognomic picture is that of a hyperplasic ectomorph:

The Galley Hill man was of short stature, about 160 cm. His long bones, which include a humerus as well as a femur and tibia, although robust, were not heavy. The length of the tibia is 77 per cent of that of the femur, and this proportion is modern and European, unlike those of many of the later peoples of the Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic. From the muscular markings on their surfaces, it is apparent that he was a man of considerable bodily strength, but at the same time of fairly light build. The section profiles of the long bones, the positions of the condyles, and the facets, all bear witness to a life in open country, and to the habit of squatting.

ibid.