The Antiquity of Man Part 8

c. The apex of the lamboidal suture.

d. The occipital protuberance.

e. The auditory foramen.)

"Hence, even in the absence of the bones of the arm and thigh, which, according to Professor Schaaffhausen, had the precise proportions found in Man, although they were stouter than ordinary human bones, there could be no reason for ascribing this cranium to anything but a man; while the strength and development of the muscular ridges of the limb-bones are characters in perfect accordance with those exhibited, in a minor degree, by the bones of such hardy savages, exposed to a rigorous climate, as the Patagonians.

"The Neanderthal cranium has certainly not undergone compression, and, in reply to the suggestion that the skull is that of an idiot, it may be urged that the onus probandi lies with those who adopt the hypothesis.

Idiotcy is compatible with very various forms and capacities of the cranium, but I know of none which present the least resemblance to the Neanderthal skull; and, furthermore, I shall proceed to show that the latter manifests but an extreme degree of a stage of degradation exhibited, as a natural condition, by the crania of certain races of mankind.

"Mr. Busk drew my attention, some time ago, to the resemblance between some of the skulls taken from tumuli of the stone period at Borreby in Denmark, of which Mr. Busk possesses numerous accurate figures, and the Neanderthal cranium. One of the Borreby skulls in particular (Figure 5) has remarkably projecting superciliary ridges, a retreating forehead, a low flattened vertex, and an occiput which shelves upward and forward.

But the skull is relatively higher and broader, or more brachycephalic, the sagittal suture longer, and the superciliary ridges less projecting, than in the Neanderthal skull. Nevertheless, there is, without doubt, much resemblance in character between the two skulls--a circ.u.mstance which is the more interesting, since the other Borreby skulls have better foreheads and less prominent superciliary ridges, and exhibit altogether a higher conformation.

"The Borreby skulls belong to the stone period of Denmark, and the people to whom they appertained were probably either contemporaneous with, or later than, the makers of the 'refuse-heaps' of that country.

In other words, they were subsequent to the last great physical changes of Europe, and were contemporaries of the urus and bison, not of the Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, and Hyaena spelaea.

"Supposing for a moment, what is not proven, that the Neanderthal skull belonged to a race allied to the Borreby people and was as modern as they, it would be separated by as great a distance of time as of anatomical character from the Engis skull, and the possibility of its belonging to a distinct race from the latter might reasonably appear to be greatly heightened.

"To prevent the possibility of reasoning in a vicious circle, however, I thought it would be well to endeavour to ascertain what amount of cranial variation is to be found in a pure race at the present day; and as the natives of Southern and Western Australia are probably as pure and h.o.m.ogeneous in blood, customs, and language, as any race of savages in existence, I turned to them, the more readily as the Hunterian museum contains a very fine collection of such skulls.

"I soon found it possible to select from among these crania two (connected by all sorts of intermediate gradations), the one of which should very nearly resemble the Engis skull, while the other should somewhat less closely approximate the Neanderthal cranium in form, size, and proportions. And at the same time others of these skulls presented no less remarkable affinities with the low type of Borreby skull.

"That the resemblances to which I allude are by no means of a merely superficial character, is shown by the accompanying diagram (Figure 6), which gives the contours of the two ancient and of one of the Australian skulls, and by the following table of measurements.

TABLE 5/1.

COLUMN 1: TYPE OF SKULL.

COLUMN 2 (A): The horizontal circ.u.mference in the plane of a line joining the glabella with the occipital protuberance.

COLUMN 3 (B): The longitudinal arc from the nasal depression along the middle line of the skull to the occipital tuberosity.

COLUMN 4 (C): From the level of the glabello-occipital line on each side, across the middle of the sagittal suture to the same point on the opposite side.

COLUMN 5 (D): The vertical height from the glabello-occipital line.

COLUMN 6 (E): The extreme longitudinal measurement.

COLUMN 7 (F): The extreme transverse measurement.*

(* I have taken the glabello-occipital line as a base in these measurements, simply because it enables me to compare all the skulls, whether fragments or entire, together. The greatest circ.u.mference of the English skull lies in a plane considerably above that of the glabello-occipital line, and amounts to 22 inches.)

Engis : 20 1/2: 13 3/4: 12 1/2: 4 3/4: 7 3/4: 5 1/4.

Australian, Number 1: 20 1/2: 13 : 12 : 4 3/4: 7 1/2: 5 4/10.

Australian, Number 2: 22 : 12 1/2: 10 3/4: 3 8/10: 7.9: 5 3/4.

Neanderthal: 23 : 12 : 10 : 3 3/4: 8 : 5 3/4.

"The question whether the Engis skull has rather the character of one of the high races or of one of the lower has been much disputed, but the following measurements of an English skull, noted in the catalogue of the Hunterian museum as typically Caucasian (see Figure 4) will serve to show that both sides may be right, and that cranial measurements alone afford no safe indication of race.

English : 21 : 13 3/4: 12 1/2: 4 4/10: 7 7/8: 5 1/3.

"In making the preceding statement, it must be clearly understood that I neither desire to affirm that the Engis and Neanderthal skulls belong to the Australian race, nor to a.s.sert even that the ancient skulls belong to one and the same race, so far as race is measured by language, colour of skin, or character of hair. Against the conclusion that they are of the same race as the Australians various minor anatomical differences of the ancient skulls, such as the great development of the frontal sinuses, might be urged; while against the supposition of either the ident.i.ty, or the diversity, of race of the two arises the known independence of the variation of cranium on the one hand, and of hair, colour, and language on the other.

"But the amount of variation of the Borreby skulls, and the fact that the skulls of one of the purest and most h.o.m.ogeneous of existing races of men can be proved to differ from one another in the same characters, though perhaps not quite to the same extent, as the Engis and Neanderthal skulls, seem to me to prohibit any cautious reasoner from affirming the latter to have been necessarily of distinct races.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 6. Outlines of Skulls]

(FIGURE 6. OUTLINES OF THE SKULL FROM THE NEANDERTHAL, OF AN AUSTRALIAN SKULL FROM PORT ADELAIDE, AND OF THE SKULL FROM THE CAVE OF ENGIS, DRAWN TO THE SAME ABSOLUTE LENGTH, IN ORDER THE BETTER TO CONTRAST THEIR PROPORTIONS.

a. The glabella.

b. The occipital protuberance, or the point on the exterior of each skull which corresponds roughly with the attachment of the tentorium, or with the inferior boundary of the posterior cerebral lobes.

e. The position of the auditory foramen of the Engis skull.)

"The marked resemblances between the ancient skulls and their modern Australian a.n.a.logues, however, have a profound interest, when it is recollected that the stone axe is as much the weapon and the implement of the modern as of the ancient savage; that the former turns the bones of the kangaroo and of the emu to the same account as the latter did the bones of the deer and the urus; that the Australian heaps up the sh.e.l.ls of devoured sh.e.l.lfish in mounds which represent the "refuse-heaps" or "Kjokkenmodding," of Denmark; and, finally, that, on the other side of Torres Straits, a race akin to the Australians are among the few people who now build their houses on pile-works, like those of the ancient Swiss lakes.

"That this amount of resemblance in habit and in the conditions of existence is accompanied by as close a resemblance in cranial configuration, ill.u.s.trates on a great scale that what Cuvier demonstrated of the animals of the Nile valley is no less true of men; circ.u.mstances remaining similar, the savage varies little more, it would seem, than the ibis or the crocodile, especially if we take into account the enormous extent of the time over which our knowledge of man now extends, as compared with that measured by the duration of the sepulchres of Egypt.

"Finally, the comparatively large cranial capacity of the Neanderthal skull, overlaid though it may be by pithecoid bony walls, and the completely human proportions of the accompanying limb-bones, together with the very fair development of the Engis skull, clearly indicate that the first traces of the primordial stock whence Man has proceeded need no longer be sought, by those who entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive development, in the newest Tertiaries; but that they may be looked for in an epoch more distant from the age of the Elephas primigenius than that is from us."

The two skulls which form the subject of the preceding comments and ill.u.s.trations have given rise to nearly an equal amount of surprise for opposite reasons; that of Engis because being so unequivocally ancient, it approached so near to the highest or Caucasian type; that of the Neanderthal, because, having no such decided claims to antiquity, it departs so widely from the normal standard of humanity. Professor Huxley's observation regarding the wide range of variation, both as to shape and capacity, in the skulls of so pure a race as the native Australian, removes to no small extent this supposed anomaly, a.s.suming what though not proved is very probable, that both varieties co-existed in the Pleistocene period in Western Europe.

As to the Engis skull, we must remember that although a.s.sociated with the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, tiger, and hyaena, all of extinct species, it nevertheless is also accompanied by a bear, stag, wolf, fox, beaver, and many other quadrupeds of species still living. Indeed many eminent palaeontologists, and among them Professor Pictet, think that, numerically considered, the larger portion of the mammalian fauna agrees specifically with that of our own period, so that we are scarcely ent.i.tled to feel surprised if we find human races of the Pleistocene epoch undistinguishable from some living ones. It would merely tend to show that Man has been as constant in his osteological characters as many other mammalia now his contemporaries. The expectation of always meeting with a lower type of human skull, the older the formation in which it occurs, is based on the theory of progressive development, and it may prove to be sound; nevertheless we must remember that as yet we have no distinct geological evidence that the appearance of what are called the inferior races of mankind has always preceded in chronological order that of the higher races.

It is now admitted that the differences between the brain of the highest races of Man and that of the lowest,* though less in degree, are of the same order as those which separate the human from the simian brain; and the same rule holds good in regard to the shape of the skull.

(* "Natural History Review" 1861 page 8.)

The average Negro skull differs from that of the European in having a more receding forehead, more prominent superciliary ridges, and more largely developed prominences and furrows for the attachment of muscles; the face also, and its lines, are larger proportionally. The brain is somewhat less voluminous on the average in the lower races of mankind, its convolutions rather less complicated, and those of the two hemispheres more symmetrical, in all which points an approach is made to the simian type. It will also be seen, by reference to the late Dr.

Morton's works, and by the foregoing statements of Professor Huxley, that the range of size or capacity between the highest and lowest human brain is greater than that between the highest simian and lowest human brain; but the Neanderthal skull, although in several respects it is more ape-like than any human skull previously discovered, is, in regard to volume, by no means contemptible.

Eminent anatomists have shown that in the average proportions of some of the bones the Negro differs from the European, and that in most of these characters, he makes a slightly nearer approach to the anthropoid quadrumana;* but Professor Schaaffhausen has pointed out that in these proportions the Neanderthal skeleton does not differ from the ordinary standard, so that the skeleton by no means indicates a transition between h.o.m.o and Pithecus. (* "The inferior races of mankind exhibit proportions which are in many respects intermediate between the higher, or European, orders, and the monkeys. In the Negro, for instance, the stature is less than in the European. The cranium, as is well known, bears a small proportion to the face. Of the extremities the upper are proportionately longer, and there is, in both upper and lower, a less marked preponderance of the proximal over the distal segments. For instance, in the Negro, the thigh and arm are rather shorter than in the European; the leg is actually of equal length in both races, and is therefore, relatively, a little longer in the Negro; the fore-arm in the latter is actually, as well as relatively, a little longer; the foot is an eighth, and the hand a twelfth longer than in the European. It is well known that the foot is less well formed in the Negro than in the European. The arch of the instep, the perfect conformation of which is essential to steadiness and ease of gait, is less elevated in the former than in the latter. The foot is thereby rendered flatter as well as longer, more nearly resembling the monkey's, between which and the European there is a marked difference in this particular."--From "A Treatise on the Human Skeleton" by Dr. Humphry, Lecturer on Surgery and Anatomy in the Cambridge University Medical School, page 91.)

There is doubtless, as shown in the diagram Figure 4, a nearer resemblance in the outline of the Neanderthal skull to that of a chimpanzee than had ever been observed before in any human cranium; and Professor Huxley's description of the occipital region shows that the resemblance is not confined to the mere excessive prominence of the superciliary ridges.

The direct bearing of the ape-like character of the Neanderthal skull on Lamarck's doctrine of progressive development and trans.m.u.tation, or on that modification of it which has of late been so ably advocated by Mr. Darwin, consists in this, that the newly observed deviation from a normal standard of human structure is not in a casual or random direction, but just what might have been antic.i.p.ated if the laws of variation were such as the trans.m.u.tationists require. For if we conceive the cranium to be very ancient, it exemplifies a less advanced stage of progressive development and improvement. If it be a comparatively modern race, owing its peculiarities of conformation to degeneracy, it is an ill.u.s.tration of what botanists call "atavism," or the tendency of varieties to revert to an ancestral type, which type, in proportion to its antiquity, would be of lower grade. To this hypothesis, of a genealogical connection between Man and the lower animals, I shall again allude in the concluding chapters. [11]

CHAPTER 6. -- PLEISTOCENE ALLUVIUM AND CAVE DEPOSITS WITH FLINT IMPLEMENTS.

General Position of Drift with extinct Mammalia in Valleys.

Discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes at Abbeville.

Flint Implements found also at St. Acheul, near Amiens.

Curiosity awakened by the systematic Exploration of the Brixham Cave.

Flint Knives in same, with Bones of extinct Mammalia.

Superposition of Deposits in the Cave.

Visits of English and French Geologists to Abbeville and Amiens.

PLEISTOCENE ALLUVIUM CONTAINING FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN THE VALLEY OF THE SOMME.