“The human bones include the cranium and lower jaw (broken, but the pieces nearly all present and easily replaced in exact position), a few vertebræ and long bones, several ribs, phalanges, and metacarpals, clavicle, astragalus, calcaneum, parts of scaphoid, ilium, and sacrum. The ensemble denotes an individual of the male sex whose height was about 1.60 meters. The condition of the sutures and of the jaws proves the skull to be that of an old man. The cranium is dolichocephalic, with an index of 75. It is said to be flatter in the frontal region than those of Neanderthal and Spy.” (Loc. cit., p. 574.)
The associated remains of fossil animals comprise the horse, reindeer, bison, Rhinoceros tichorinus, etc., and, according to Hrdlička, “indicate that the deposits date from somewhere near the middle of the glacial epoch.” (Loc. cit., p. 539.) The discoverers turned over the skeleton to Marcellin Boule of the Paris Museum of Natural History for cleaning and reconstruction. It is the first instance of a palæolithic man, in which the basal parts of the skull, including the foramen magnum, were recovered. Professor Boule estimates the cranial capacity as being something between 1,600 and 1,620 c.cm. He found the lower part of the face to be prognathic, but not excessively so, the vault like the Neanderthal cranium, but larger, the occiput broad and protruding, the supraorbital arch prominent and complete, the nasal process broad, the forehead low, and the mandible stout and chinless, though not sloping backward at the symphysis.
Alluding to the rectangular burial pit in the cave, Hrdlička remarks: “The depression was clearly made by the primitive inhabitants or visitors of the cave for the body and the whole represents very plainly a regular burial, the most ancient intentional burial thus far discovered.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, p. 539.)
The specimens of Neanderthal, Spy, La Naulette, Krapina, Le Moustier and La Chapelle, as we have seen, are the principal remains said to represent the Neanderthal type, which, according to Keith and others, is a distinct human species. As Aurignacian Man (assigned to the close of the “Old Stone Age,” or Glacial epoch), including the Grimaldi or Negroid as well as the Crô-Magnon type, are universally acknowledged to belong to the species Homo sapiens, we need not discuss them here. The same holds true, a fortiori, of Neolithic races such as the Solutreans and the Magdalenians. The main issue for the present is whether or not the Neanderthal type represents a distinct species of human being.
Anent this question, Professor MacCurdy has the following: “Boule estimated the capacity of the Chapelle-aux-Saints skull according to the formulæ of Manouvrier, of Lee, and of Beddoe, obtaining results that varied between 1,570 and 1,750 cubic centimeters. By the use of millet and of shot an average capacity of 1,626 was obtained. Judging from these figures the capacity of the crania of Neanderthal and Spy has been underestimated by Schaaffhausen, Huxley, and Schwalbe. By its cranial capacity, therefore, the Neanderthal race belongs easily in the class of Homo sapiens. But we must distinguish between relative capacity and absolute capacity. In modern man, where the transverse and antero-posterior diameters are the same as in the skull of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, the vertical diameter would be much greater, which would increase the capacity to 1,800 cubic centimeters and even to 1,900 cubic centimeters. Such voluminous modern crania are very rare. Thus Bismarck, with horizontal cranial diameters scarcely greater than in the man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, is said to have had a cranial capacity of 1,965 cubic centimeters.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1909, p. 575.)
As for the structural features which are alleged to constitute a specific difference between the Neanderthal type and modern man, v.g. the prominent brow ridges, prognathism, retreating forehead, receding chin, etc., all of these occur, albeit in a lesser degree, in modern Australian blacks, who are universally acknowledged to belong to the species Homo sapiens. Moreover, there is much fluctuation, as Kramberger has shown from the examination of an enormous number of modern and fossil skulls, in both the Neanderthal and the modern type; that is to say, Neanderthaloid features occur in modern skulls and, conversely, modern features occur in the skulls of Homo neanderthalensis (cf. “Biolog. Zentralblatt,” 1905, p. 810; and Wasmann’s “Modern Biology,” Eng. ed., pp. 472, 473).
All the differences between modern and palæolithic man are explicable, partly upon the basis of acquired adaptation, inasmuch as the primitive mode of life pursued by the latter entailed the formation of body-modifying habits very different from our present customs and habits (viz. those of our modern civilized life). But these modifications, not being inheritable, passed away with the passing of the habits that gave rise to them. In part, however, the differences may be due to heritable mutations, which gave rise to new races or varieties or subspecies, such as Indo-Europeans, Mongolians, and Negroes. And, if the evolutionary palæontologist insists on magnifying characters that are well within the scope of mere factorial mutation into a specific difference, we shall reply, with Bateson and Morgan, by denying his competence to pronounce on taxonomic questions, without consulting the verdict of the geneticist. Without breeding tests, the criterions of intersterility and longevity cannot be applied, and breeding tests are impossible in the case of fossils. As for an a priori verdict, no modern geneticist, if called upon to give his opinion, would concede that the differences which divide the modern and the Neanderthal types of men exceed the limits of factorial mutations, or of natural varieties within the same species. Here, then, it is a case of the wish being father to the thought. So anxious are the materialistic evolutionists to secure evidence of a connection between man and the brute, that no pretext is too insignificant to serve as warrant for recognizing an “intermediate species.”
Even waiving this point, however, there is no evidence at all that the Neanderthal type is ancestral to the Crô-Magnon type. Both of these races must have migrated into Europe from the east or the south, and we have no proof whatever of genetic relationship between them. True, attempts have been made to capitalize the fact that the Neanderthal race was represented by specimens discovered in what were alleged to be the older deposits of the Glacial epoch, but we have seen that the evidences of antiquity are very precarious in the case of these Neanderthaloid skeletons. Time-scales based on extinct species and characteristic stone implements, etc., are always satisfactory to evolutionists, because they can date their fossils and archæological cultures according to the theory of evolution, but, for one whose confidence in the “reality” of evolution is not so great, these palæontological chronometers are open to grave suspicion.
If the horizon levels are not too finely graded, the difficulty of accepting such a time-scale is not excessive. Hence we might be prepared to accept the chronometric value of the division of fossiliferous rocks into Groups, such as the Palæozoic, the Mesozoic, and the Cænozoic, even though we are assured by Grabau that this time-scale is “based on the changes of life, with the result that fossils alone determine whether a formation belongs to one or the other of these great divisions” (“Principles of Stratigraphy,” p. 1103), but when it comes to projecting an elaborate scheme of levels or horizons into Pleistocene deposits on the dubious basis of index fossils and “industries,” our credulity is not equal to the demands that are made upon it. And this is particularly true with reference to fossil men. Man has the geologically unfortunate habit of burying his dead. Other fossils have been entombed on the spot where they died, and therefore belong where we find them. But it is otherwise with man. In Hilo, Hawaii, the writer heard of a Kanaka, who was buried to a depth of 80 feet, having stipulated this sort of burial through a special disposition in his will. His purpose, in so doing, was to preclude the possibility of his bones ever being disturbed by a plough or other instrument. Nor have we any right to assume that indications of burial will always be present in a case of this nature. We may, on the contrary, assume it as a general rule that human remains are always more recent than the formations in which they are found.
Be that as it may, the evidences for the antiquity of the Neanderthaloid man prove, at most, that he was prior to the Crô-Magnon man in Europe, but they do not prove that the former was prior to the latter absolutely. Things may, for all we know, have been just the reverse in Asia. Hence we have no ground for regarding the Man of Neanderthal as ancestral to the race of artists, who frescoed the caves of France and Spain. In fact, to the unprejudiced mind the Neanderthal type conveys the impression of a race on the downward path of degeneration rather than an embodiment of the promise of better things. “There is another view,” says Dwight, “ ... though it is so at variance with the Zeitgeist that little is heard of it. May it not be that many low forms of man, archaic as well as contemporary, are degenerate races? We are told everything about progress; but decline is put aside. It is impossible to construct a tolerable scheme of ascent among the races of man; but cannot dark points be made light by this theory of degeneration? One of the most obscure, and to me most attractive of questions, is the wiping out of old civilizations. That it has occurred repeatedly, and on very extensive scales, is as certain as any fact in history. Why is it not reasonable to believe that bodily degeneration took place in those fallen from a higher estate, who, half-starved and degraded, returned to savagery? Moreover, the workings of the soul would be hampered by a degenerating brain. For my part I believe the Neanderthal man to be a specimen of a race, not arrested in its upward climb, but thrown down from a higher position.” (Op. cit., pp. 169, 170.)