The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

The body appears to have harmonised with the head. The few bones of the limbs, preserved more or less intact, indicate a stature of only 1m.68 to 1m.72 (5ft. 6in., to 5ft. 8in.); yet their proportions are athletic. They are very thick relatively to their length, and the protuberances and depressions serving for muscular attachments are remarkably developed. Moreover, the tibia discovered in a quarry at Clichy by M. Bertrand, presented the flattened form which has been designated platycnemic, and the ribs of the Neanderthal skeleton were sensibly more rounded than is generally the case.

III. As far as we know at present, the Canstadt race is undoubtedly the most ancient European one. It disputed the ground with the great extinct mammals, with the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave bear, and the cave hyæna. It belongs, therefore, to the earliest ages of the quaternary epoch. In the opinion of M. Schaaffhausen, it may be traced to an earlier period still, and is identical with tertiary man surviving the latest geological revolution.

The naturalist who has made us so well acquainted with the Neanderthal man, only invokes, in support of his opinion, what he calls the typical inferiority of this man, and of those who are connected with him. This reason would to many be an insufficient motive for the view which he has taken. But I have observed above, that we are justified in assuming that man followed into Europe the great mammals which were driven by the cold into more southern countries. There can, then, be nothing strange in the idea that the race, to which everything points as having been the most ancient upon our soil, should also have been the one to accomplish the migration. But were the Saint-Prest, the Monte Aperto, and especially the Thénay men only its pioneers? The future alone can answer this question either in the affirmative or negative.

However this may be, the remains of human industry indicate a well-marked progress since the earliest ages. Tools and arms became more numerous and perfect. Deer’s antlers and bear’s jaw-bones are worked into weapons and tools; in addition to scrapers and borers, the form of which becomes more and more marked, we find knives, chisels, and hammers, set in handles: hatchets of much greater size, sometimes comparatively thin, flat upon one side but retouched upon the other, sometimes thick and rudely cut on both sides, with or without a handle, belong to the moustierien and acheuléen types of M. de Mortillet; they assume definite forms by which we are able to recognise several modifications characteristic of certain localities; the arrow is larger and the lance has become a formidable weapon. In the midst of the lowest quaternary alluvial deposits, we meet with small heaps of coscinopora globularis, and other small chalk fossils, all pierced either naturally or artificially. The only possible explanation is to consider these polypi and shells as having once formed necklaces or bracelets, the thread of which has disappeared. Thus, the taste for adornment, so largely developed in modern savages, was displayed as early as this period.

If we compare the industries, still very modest, with those of the present day, we shall be able to form for ourselves an approximate idea of what the race of Canstadt was when it occupied perhaps nearly the whole of Europe. With M. Lartet we see in the obsidian lances of New Caledonia, the flint heads of the lower alluvium of the Somme; the hatchet of certain Australians reminds us, as it did Sir Charles Lyell, of the Abbeville hatchet. It is with the latter and with the Bosjesmans, that I should be tempted to connect the Neanderthal man and his fellows. Like them, he seems to have most frequently led a wandering life. But few of his dwellings, or places of meeting, are known to us, such as the Naulette cavern. Nothing seems to indicate that he had places of burial such as we find later. Everything tends to show, moreover, that he lived entirely as a hunter, and there is nothing to justify us in supposing that he was acquainted with agriculture, which is carried to such a remarkable pitch by certain Melanesian negroes.

IV. Judging from the geological distribution of the remains which have been met with up to the present time, the Canstadt race during the quaternary period principally occupied the basins of the Seine and the Rhine, and extended perhaps as far as Stängenäs in the Bohuslän; certainly as far as the Olmo in central Italy; as Brux in Bohemia; as the Pyrenees in France, and probably as far as Gibraltar.

This race is not restricted in point of geological time. The attention roused by the strange characters of the Neanderthal cranium was the means of instituting widespread investigations, which have rapidly drawn this specimen from the isolation in which, at first, it seemed to be placed. B. Davis, Busk, Turner, King, Carter Blake, Pruner Bey, Vogt, Huxley and Hamy have been particularly successful in these investigations, and have brought to light relations which are now generally adopted.

The result obtained from all these labours is that the Canstadt type, sometimes remarkably pure, and sometimes again more or less modified by crossings, is found in the dolmens and in the cemeteries of the Gallo-Roman period, in those of the Middle Ages, and in modern tombs from Scandinavia to Spain, from Portugal to Italy, and from Scotland and Ireland to the valley of the Danube, in the Crimea at Minsk, and as far as Orenbourg in Russia. This area of habitation comprises, we see, the entire space of time which has elapsed from the quaternary period to the present day, and the whole of Europe.

The remark has with justice been made by M. Hamy, that there probably exist in India, in the midst of populations driven back by the Aryan invasion, representatives of the Neanderthal type. Nevertheless, to find them with any degree of certainty, we must go as far as Australia. Our investigations have on this point confirmed those of Huxley. Among the races of this great island there is one, distributed particularly in the province of Victoria, in the neighbourhood of Port Western, which reproduces in a remarkable manner the characters of the Canstadt race.