The famous Neanderthal skull was brought to light in 1857 by workmen in a limestone-quarry, near Düsseldorf, in the valley of the Neander, a small tributary to the Rhine. By these workmen a cavern was opened upon the southern side of the winding ravine, about sixty feet above the stream and one hundred feet below the top of the cliff. The skull attracted much attention from its supposed possession of many apelike characteristics; indeed, it was represented by some to be a real intermediate link between man and the anthropoid apes. The accompanying cut enables one to compare the outline of the Neanderthal skull with that of a chimpanzee on the one hand and of the highly developed European on the other. The apelike peculiarities of this skull appear in its vertical depression, in the enormous thickness of the bony ridges just above the eyes, and in the gradual slope of the back part of the head, together with some other characteristics which can only be described in technical language; so that it was pronounced by the highest authorities the most apelike of human crania which had yet been discovered. Unfortunately, the jaw was not found. The capacity of the skull, however, was seventy-five cubic inches, which is far above that of the highest of the apes, being indeed equal to the average capacity of Polynesian and Hottentot skulls.[DG] Huxley well remarks that “so large a mass of brain as this would alone suggest that the pithecoid tendencies indicated by this skull did not extend deep into the organization.”
[DG] Huxley’s Man’s Place in Nature, p. 181.
Fig. 81.—Skull of the Man of Spy. (From photograph.)
Upon extending inquiries, it was found that the Neanderthal type of skull is one which still has representatives in all nations; so that it is unsafe to infer that the individual was a representative of all the individuals living in his time. The skull of Bruce, the celebrated Scotch hero, was a close reproduction of the Neanderthal type; while, according to Quatrefages,[DH] the skull of the Bishop of Toul in the fourth century “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.” The discovery of Messrs. Fraipont and Lohest adds much to our definite knowledge of the Neanderthal type of man, since the Belgic specimens are far more complete than any others heretofore found, there being in their collection two skulls, together with the jawbones and most of the other parts of the frame. In this case also there is no suspicion that the deposits had been disturbed, so as to admit any intrusion of human relics into the company of relics of an earlier age. According to M, Lohest, there were three distinct ossiferous beds, separated by layers of stalagmite. All the ossiferous beds contained the remains of the mammoth, but in the upper stratum they were few, and probably intrusive. The implements found in this were also of a more modern type. In the second stratum from the top numerous hearths were found with burnt wood and ashes, together with the bones of the rhinoceros, the horse, the mammoth, the cave-bear, and the cave-hyena, all of which were abundant, while there were also specimens of the Irish elk, the reindeer, the bison, the cave-lion, and several other species. In this layer also there were numerous implements of ivory, together with ornaments and some faint indications of carving upon the rib of a mammoth, besides a few fragments of pottery.
[DH] Human Species, p. 310,
It was in the third, or lowest, of these beds that the skeletons were found. Here they were associated with abundant remains of the rhinoceros, the horse, the bison, the mastodon, the cave-hyena, and a few other extinct species. Flint implements also, of the “Mousterien” pattern (which, according to the opinion of the French archæologists, is characteristic of middle palæolithic times), were abundant Neither of the skeletons was complete, but they were sufficiently so to give an adequate idea of the type to which they belong, and one of the skulls is nearly perfect. According to M. Fraipont, “one of these skulls is apparently that of an old woman, the other that of a middle-aged man. They are both very thick; the former is clearly dolichocephalic (long-headed, index 70), the other less so. Both have very prominent eyebrows and large orbits, with low, retreating foreheads, excessively so in the woman. The lower jaws are heavy. The older has almost no projecting chin. The teeth are large, and the last molar is as large as the others. These points are characteristic of an inferior and the oldest-known race. The bones indicate, like those of the Neanderthal and Naulette specimens, small, square-shouldered individuals.” They were “powerfully built, with strong, curiously curved thigh-bones, the lower ends of which are so fashioned that they must have walked with a bend at the knees.” [DI]
[DI] Huxley, Nineteenth Century, vol. xxviii (November, 1890), p. 774.