Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and Art

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

First, features found also in the different existing races of man, but never in the anthropoid apes, and therefore human; second, features, all of which have never been found combined in any race of recent man, the group, therefore, represents a distinct species of man; third, features outside of the limits of variation in the recent races of man, and intermediate between them and the variation limits of the anthropoid apes.

Before looking at Neanderthal man as a whole, we may turn our attention especially to a number of these peculiar features of the race. All the earliest observers were impressed by the heavy, overhanging brows and retreating forehead. In recent man there is often a decided prominence above the eyes, from the glabella or median point above the nose outward toward each side, but generally the outer third of the margin of these prominences turns upward beneath the outer line of the eyebrows. In the Neanderthals, on the contrary, these prominences beneath the eyebrows surround the whole upper edge of the eye socket, extending outward around the external borders of the forehead, so that they may be called 'tori supraorbitales'; the extent of this prominent ridge above and to the sides forms a veritable roof over the eye sockets, which appear like two deep, lateral caverns. Such lateral prominences do occur, though rarely, in recent man; they are observed, for example, in certain Australians.

Fig. 113. Skulls of a chimpanzee (left), of La Chapelle-aux-Saints (centre), and of a modern Frenchman (right), showing the gradual disappearance of the eyebrow ridges and projecting face. After Boule.

The front view of the Neanderthal face, as seen in the female Gibraltar skull, in which these eyebrow ridges are by no means so prominent as in the male skulls, is no less remarkable for the great height of the face as compared with the flatness of the forehead. Placing the skull side by side with that of the Australian,[(50)] we observe at once the enormous difference in the proportions of the face and the cranium in these two types, although the Australian represents one of the lowest existing races of Homo sapiens; we observe in the Gibraltar skull the very wide space between the eyes and the very large size of the narial opening, which indicate a broad, flattened nose; there is a correspondingly long space between the bottom of the narial opening and the line for the insertion of the incisor teeth, indicating a very long upper lip.

The jaw is less powerful than that of the Heidelberg man. The Heidelberg jaw we have seen to be distinguished by its general strength and clumsiness and its lack of chin, or rather a chin without the slightest indication of a prominence; on the inside of this very thick, rounded chin plate, the characteristic chin spine (spina mentalis) is lacking; instead, a double groove is present as the point of attachment for the muscles which connect the chin and tongue with the hyoid bone; the ascending process for the attachment of the muscles of the jaw is seen to be unusually broad, 60 mm., in contrast to about 37 mm. in the recent jaw; finally, the condyle for attachment with the skull is particularly large.[(51)]

Fig. 114. Face view of the Gibraltar skull (left) and of a modern Australian skull (right), displaying the high, large visage of the former, which suggests that of the anthropoid apes. After Schwalbe. One-quarter life size. The comparative horizontal lines are across the (a) nasion, or root of the nose, the (b) lower edges of the orbits, and the (c) lower edge of the nasal aperture.

Like the Heidelberg jaw, that of the Neanderthals is distinguished by great thickness and massiveness. In general the contours are similar; in a few instances the chin process is suggested by a slight prominence, but in general the chin is strongly receding, and it agrees with that of Heidelberg in lacking the spina mentalis. In other characteristics there are decided differences in the Heidelberg and Neanderthal jaws. The form of the latter is now known from the specimens of Krapina, of Spy, of La Naulette, of Ochos, and of Šipka, and from the perfect examples of Le Moustier and La Chapelle. The Šipka specimen proves that even in a child ten years of age the jaw was remarkable for thickness and strength. Boule[(52)] entirely agrees with Gorjanovič-Kramberger[(53)] that the chin in the Neanderthal jaw was only in process of formation, and throughout life attained no more than an infantile form, that the Neanderthals may be ranked, however, as Homines mentales, whereas the Heidelbergs, in which the chin is entirely lacking, may be regarded as Homines amentales.

The proportions of the teeth in the Neanderthals are equally distinctive, especially in the size of the true grinders and cutting teeth. As in the Heidelberg jaw, they form a closely set row, from which the canine does not project as in the Piltdown dentition; in fact, the contour of the jaw and the proportions of the teeth are distinctly human when compared with the orang-like jaw of the Piltdown man. The grinding surface of the teeth has many layers of enamel, and the cusps are well developed. Unlike those of recent man, the incisors display folds of enamel on the inner or lingual surfaces, a condition rarely observed in the modern cutting teeth. In the teeth of the Heidelberg jaw, the pulp cavities are exceptionally large, whereas in the teeth of the Krapina race there is the unique feature that the molars have no normal roots, the roots having been more or less absorbed, a very rare occurrence in recent man. The dentition of La Chapelle is also distinctly human, but extraordinarily massive, corresponding with the general massiveness of the skull and masticating apparatus; in detail it is not that of civilized races, but an exaggerated form of the type called macrodont.[(54)] The elongation of the crown is also similar to what is termed hypsodont.