SING

XLIII

MORE ABOUT THE NEANDER MEN

INCE writing what precedes I have been able more than once to gratify my keen desire to examine the wonderful human skull from the Chapelle-aux-Saints in the Corrèze (Central France). The skull has been photographed, and an excellent figure of it is reproduced in our Fig. 65. But it is one thing to look at a picture of such a specimen, and another to take it into one's hands and closely examine it. The skull is in the care of my friend, Professor Marcelin Boule, who is at the head of the great collection of remains of extinct animals in the Jardin des Plantes.

It has been treated by him with great skill so as to render the bone firm and hard, whilst detached portions have been fitted into place, so that it is fairly complete (Fig. 65). The skull was found (together with many bones of the skeleton of the same individual) by two enthusiastic local archæologists buried at such depth and in such position in the cave known as the Chapelleaux-Saints as to leave no doubt as to its belonging to one of a race of men contemporary with the mammoth and hairy rhinoceros-a race which inhabited Europe in the great glacial period-called by prehistorians "the Moustierian period," which cannot be less than a hundred thousand years behind us, and probably is more.

The

chief importance of this skull lies in the fact not only that its position in the cave-deposits, and therefore its relative age, was carefully ascertained, but that it agrees in its very peculiar form with the Neanderthal skull (from the Rhineland), the Spy skulls (Belgium), and the Gibraltar skull. It, in fact, confirms the conclusion that at this period the caves of Western Europe were inhabited by a race of men with peculiar skulls, which may be called the Neander race in reference to the firstdiscovered skull of the kind. They were altogether different from the Reindeer Men, or Cromagnards, who came later upon the scene.

The fact was published some four months ago that the new Corrèze skull agrees with the celebrated skulltop (called a "calvaria" by anatomists) of the Neanderthal (Fig. 76) in the extraordinary shallowness or absence of "dome," in the retreating forehead, the thick prominent eyebrow ridges, and in the excessive “lowness,” or want of elevation of the back region. But further study of the new skull has enabled Professor Boule to show, as he demonstrated to me, that the outline of the new skull looked at from above coincides not merely approximately, but exactly with that of the Neanderthal skull. There is the same great length from eyebrows to occiput, and the same great breadth at a series of corresponding regions. The curious thing is that both these skulls are of enormous size—a good deal bigger in length and breadth than modern European skulls, and not small and ape-like, though they are far shallower (that is, less high in the dome) than any skulls of living men. I had, myself, always been astonished by the great breadth and length of the casts of the Neanderthal skull which we possess in England, and supposed that possibly the casts were carelessly made. Now Professor Boule shows that both the

FIG. 79.-Drawing one-third the size of nature, of the left side of the lower jaw of a modern European. Observe the small size as compared with the jaw in Figs. 80, 81, and 82, also the prominent chin: the small breadth of the up-turned ramus, and the deep bay or notch (not seen in the other lower jaws) separating the coronoid process from the condyle.

FIG. 80.-Outline (one-third the size of nature) of the skull of the Neander Man from the Chapelle-aux-Saints, with all fractures and defects made good. The bony sockets of the teeth and the teeth themselves (lost and atrophied by inflammatory disease in the actual skull) are here given their full size and healthy condition. The lower jaw is seen to be very similar to that from Heidelberg (Fig. 82). From a photograph taken by Professor Marcelin Boule from a cast of the actual skull. The cast was "made good" by modelling upon it the deficient parts.

FIG. 81. The skull of a male chimpanzee. Drawn one-third the natural size (linear) to compare with the human skulls and jaws here figured. The dotted lines and the letters a, b, c, d, e, and fhave the same signification as in Fig. 65, to which reference should be made. The flatness of the cranial dome and the reduction of the frontal boss (ɗ) are very marked. So are the relatively large size of the jaws and teeth. Compare the shape of the lower jaw with that from Heidelberg (Fig. 82), and with that of a modern European (Fig. 79).

FIG. 82.-The Heidelberg jaw, from a lower Pleistocene deposit, near Heidelberg. Observe the absence of chin and the great breadth of the up-turned part of the jaw. Compare with the lower jaws drawn to the same scale in Figs. 79, 80, and 81. One-third the size of nature.

Neanderthal and the Corrèze skull are so much larger in breadth and length than average European skulls, that in spite of its flat, depressed shape, the Corrèze skull (and consequently the Neanderthal skull, too) has a braincavity holding 1600 cubic centimetres, whilst the average modern European skull only holds 1500 to 1550. The estimate given by former observers for the Neanderthal skull was as low as 1200. This calculation was based on the diminution of volume caused by the flatness of the skull, and would be correct were the skull of the Neander race no longer or broader than an ordinary European skull. If we imagine a skull of the ordinary European proportionate height, but as long and as broad as the Neander skulls, then its volume would be something like 2000 cubic centimetres. This is a very remarkable result. The ancient Neander Men's brain was not smaller, but actually a little bigger than that of modern Europeans; it was bigger in regions where the modern European is small, and smaller where that is large!

If we had any sufficient knowledge of the mental qualities which belong to different regions of the brain (if, indeed, such localisation of qualities is possible), we might draw some interesting conclusions from this difference between the two races. But unfortunately our knowledge on that matter is very defective. We are not in a position to say that length and breadth of the brain either can or cannot compensate (so to speak) for shallowness. It is probable that the mental qualities of the two forms of brain were in important respects different, but that is all that can at present be said. No accredited brain student would, until more is known, venture to draw conclusions as to mental quality from such facts as mere breadth, length, and depth of the cranial cavity.