71. Human Racial Types in the Palæolithic
When it comes to defining the types of fossil man in the Palæolithic, a curious situation develops. Long before there was even a true Stone Age, in the early and middle Pleistocene, there lived the half-human Pithecanthropus and the primitively human Heidelberg race (§ [11], [12]). But for the whole first part of the Palæolithic, throughout the Chellean and Acheulean, no undisputed find of any skeletal remains has yet been made, although thousands of implements have been discovered which are undoubtedly human products.[9]
In the present state of knowledge the strongest case is that for the skull found at Piltdown in southern England. This is said to have been associated with “Pre-Chellean” tools, which would seem to establish the Piltdown type as the race that lived about the beginning of the Palæolithic (§ [13]). But the deposit at Piltdown had been more or less rolled or shifted by natural agencies before its discovery, so that its age is not so certain as it might be; and there is no unanimity of opinion as to whether the highly developed skull and the excessively ape-like jaw that were found in the deposit really belong together. With this doubt about the fossil itself, it seems most reasonable not to press too strongly its identification as the type of man that lived in Europe at the commencement of the Old Stone Age.
For the end of the Lower Palæolithic, in the Mousterian, conditions change, and skeletal remains become authentic and comparatively numerous. From this period date the skeletons of the Neandertal species of man: a short, thickset race, powerful in bones and musculature, slightly stooping at the knee and at the shoulder, with a thick neck and a large head (§ [14]). The brain was about as large as that of modern man, but the retreating aspect of the forehead was accentuated by heavy brow ridges.
In the Upper Palæolithic the Neandertal species has disappeared. The first precursors of Homo sapiens, or modern man, have come on the scene. A sort of transition from Neandertal man may be presented by the Brünn type, but the prevailing race in western Europe during the Upper Palæolithic period is that of Cro-Magnon, a tall, lithe, well-formed people, as agile and swift as Neandertal man was stocky and strong. The head and features were well proportioned, the skull and brain remarkably large, the general type not inferior to modern man, and probably already proto-Caucasian (§ [16]).
Grimaldi man, so far known only from one spot on the Mediterranean shore of Europe, was proto-Negroid, Aurignacian in period, and therefore partly contemporaneous with the Cro-Magnon race (§ [18]).
In summary, the types of man in Europe during the Old Stone Age have been as follows:
| Magdalenian | Cro-Magnon |
| Solutrean | Cro-Magnon; Brünn |
| Aurignacian | Cro-Magnon (Caucasian); also, locally Grimaldi (Negroid) |
| Mousterian | Neandertal (possibly without living descendants) |
| Acheulean | Unknown |
| Chellean | Unknown; Piltdown perhaps Pre-Chellean |
The interrelations of geology, glaciation, human types, periods of the Stone Age, and estimated time in years are brought together in the tables “Antiquity of Man” and “Prehistory” (Figs. [5] and [17].)[10]
Fig. 17. Earliest Prehistory of Europe. This table is an elaboration of the upper portion of [Figure 5]. Equal lapses of time are indicated by equal vertical distances. The general acceleration of development is evident.