Broca's occipital crochet for distinguishing the skulls of different races by measuring the inclination of the plane of the occipital foramen, by Mathieu, Paris, 1870-1890

Pierre Paul Broca was a surgeon and anthropologist, and like others of his day was primarily interested in identifying racial types underlying human populations. In order to do this he devised over 40 measuring instruments, including pelvimeters, torsiometers and craniostats. This particular device measured the inclination of the occipital bone at the back of the head, believed to be an indication of ethnicity. Even after publication of The Origin of Species, Broca believed that humans did not share a common ancestry and that non-Europeans with ‘inferior’ crania could not achieve civilisation