The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

Finally, the Canstadt race has had representatives in America also. One of the drawings published by MM. Lacerta and Peixoto leaves no room for doubt on this point. It represents almost the whole of the upper part of a cranial vault found in the province of Ceara, the resemblance of which with that of Eguisheim is very striking. Unfortunately, the Brazilian naturalists say nothing about the situation of this precious fragment at the moment of its discovery, and we do not know whether the cranium in question is a fossil or whether it belongs to the present epoch.

V. All these facts, which I have been obliged to sum up in a few lines, raise an important problem, and lead to an interesting conclusion.

Are we, in the first place, justified in connecting ethnologically the crania of a more or less Neanderthal type, discovered in the Antipodes as well as in Europe, with the races, the remains of which have been preserved by the quaternary alluvium? Is not the reproduction of this type purely accidental? Do not the most ancient crania owe their remarkable characters to some pathological condition, to a simple deviation from the normal development, and particularly to a premature union of the bones of the cranium?

These several opinions have been maintained, and the latter in particular has had adherents. It rests principally upon the condition of the ossified sutures of the Neanderthal cranium. But these same sutures may be observed in the Canstadt cranium. M. Sauvage found in the almost infantine frontal bone of La Denise all the Neanderthal characters, although the medio-frontal suture as yet only existed in part. It is entirely open in the cranium of the young man, discovered in a Poitou tumulus, described by M. Pruner Bey, and which it is impossible not to connect with the preceding.

Thus we cannot attribute to the premature ossification of the sutures, the form of the crania of the men of Canstadt. For a much stronger reason, the clearly marked characters of the forehead and face which remain cannot support this theory, and we must allow that the whole constitutes a true ethnical type.

Since we meet with this type disseminated through time and space, always fundamentally the same, and sometimes reappearing in all its primitive purity, we are forced to choose between the two following interpretations; we have here either an example of atavism, the importance of which is attested by its generality: or else the reproduction of these exceptional forms, in the midst of the most varied populations and under the most different conditions of life, is due to mere chance.

The laws which govern the formation and maintenance of animal and vegetable races, and from which man cannot escape, do not allow the admission of the latter conclusion. This is why M. Hamy and I have regarded the Canstadt race as one of the elements of modern populations. In Europe it has blended with succeeding races, but asserts its past existence by the marks which it impresses, even at the present day, upon some rare individuals. In Australia, perhaps, it has some direct descendants in the tribes of North Western.

VI. The epithets brutal and simian, too often applied to the Neanderthal cranium, and to those which resemble it, the conjectures made with regard to the individual to whom they belonged, might lead us to think that a certain moral and intellectual inferiority was naturally connected with this form of cranium. It can easily be shown that this conclusion rests upon a most worthless foundation.

At the Paris Congress, M. Vogt quoted the example of one of his friends, Dr. Emmayer, whose cranium exactly recalls that of Neanderthal, and who is nevertheless a highly distinguished lunacy doctor. In passing through the Copenhagen Museum, I was struck by the Neanderthal characters presented by one of the crania in the collection; it proved to be that of Kay Lykke, a Danish gentleman, who played some part in the political affairs of the 17th century. M. Godron has published the drawing of the skull of Saint Mansuy, Bishop of Toul in the 4th century, and this head even exaggerates some of the most striking features of the Neanderthal cranium. The forehead is still more receding, the vault more depressed, and the head so long that the cephalic index is 69·41. Lastly the skull of Bruce, the Scotch hero, is also a reproduction of the Canstadt type.