17. The Brünn Race

Several remains have been found in central Europe which have sometimes been considered as belonging to the Neandertal race and sometimes to the subsequent Cro-Magnon race, but do not belong clearly with either, and may perhaps be regarded as distinct from both and possibly bridging them. The type is generally known as the Brünn race. Its habitat was Czecho-Slovakia and perhaps adjacent districts; its epoch, postglacial, in the Solutrean period of the Upper Palæolithic (§ [70]). The Brünn race, so far as present knowledge of it goes, was therefore both preceded and succeeded by Cro-Magnon man.

1871BrüxBohemiaSkull cap
1880PredmostMoraviaParts of 20 skeletons
1891BrünnMoraviaSkeleton, 2 skulls

The Brünn race belongs with modern man: its species is no longer Homo Neandertalensis, but Homo sapiens, to which we also belong. The heavy supraorbital ridges of the earlier type are now divided by a depression over the nose instead of stretching continuously across the forehead; the chin is becoming pronounced, the jaws protrude less than in Neandertal man. The skull is somewhat higher and better vaulted. In all these respects there is an approach to the Cro-Magnon race. But the distinctively broad face of the Cro-Magnon people is not in evidence.

A skull of uncertain geologic age, found in 1888 at Galley Hill, near London, is by some linked with the Brünn race. The same is true of an unusually well preserved skeleton found in 1909 at Combe-Capelle, in Périgord, southern France. The period of the Combe-Capelle skeleton is Upper Palæolithic Aurignacian. This was part of the era of the Cro-Magnon race in western Europe; and as the Combe-Capelle remains do not differ much from the Cro-Magnon type, they are best considered as belonging to it.