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

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

In brief, the Australian type of head has nothing in common with that of the Neanderthals except in a small number of characteristics in the region of the forehead and of the nose. The distinguishing traits of the Neanderthal head and face are platycephaly, a retreating forehead, flattening of the occiput or lower portion of the skull, prominence of the supraorbital ridges, chin retreating or lacking, projection of the entire face owing to the peculiar form of the upper jaw, and the relatively small size of the frontal lobes of the brain. In fact, concludes Boule: "All these modern so-called 'Neanderthaloids' are nothing but varieties of individuals of Homo sapiens, remarkable for the accidental exaggeration of certain anatomical traits which are normally developed in all specimens of Homo neanderthalensis. The simplest explanation of these accidents in most cases is atavism or reversion. We cannot assert that there has never been an infusion of Neanderthaloid blood in the groups belonging to species Homo sapiens, but what seems to be quite certain is that any such infusion can have been only accidental, for there is no recent type which can be considered even as a modified direct descendant of the Neanderthals."

This opinion is confirmed by the latest and most exhaustive researches of Berry and Robertson,[(60)] who conclude that neither Australians nor Tasmanians have any direct relationship with Homo neanderthalensis; the superficial points of cranial resemblance are explicable solely on the grounds of the remoteness of the ancestry. The Australians and Tasmanians are descendants not of the Neanderthal stock but of a late Pliocene or early Pleistocene stock, which, following Sergi, may be called Homo sapiens tasmanianus, of which the Tasmanian aboriginal, now extinct, was the almost unchanged offspring. In respect to 'low' characters, as shown in the diagram, Fig. 117, the Spy-Neanderthal skulls stand quite close to the Tasmanians and Australians, and the Gibraltar skull stands midway between this type and Pithecanthropus with respect to twelve different characters of comparison.

It is interesting to note[AH] that the Tasmanians were found in a stage of flint industry very similar to that practised by the Neanderthals in Mousterian times; their flints were made from artificially produced flakes, including a few examples[(61)] that exhibited a neatness of edge trimming and resultant regularity of outline, whereas the greater part were characterized by an unskilful trimming and irregular outline; the low status of the Tasmanian implements can most correctly be described by the word Pre-Aurignacian, that is, of Mousterian or of an earlier stage, but not by any means 'Eolithic.'

Fig. 118. The Neanderthaloid skull of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, with the right half removed to show the shape of the brain, as restored by J. H. McGregor. One-quarter life size.

Fig. 119. Outline of the left side of the Neanderthaloid brain of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, compared with similar brain outlines of a chimpanzee and of a high type of modern man. One-third life size.

The brain of Neanderthal man was known to be of large size even when estimated from the original skullcap of the Neanderthal type. Darwin was compelled to admit that the famous skull of Neanderthal was well developed and capacious, and Broca offered an ingenious explanation of the otherwise inexplicable fact that the mean capacity of the skull of the ancient cave-dweller is greater than that of many modern Frenchmen, namely, that the average capacity of the skull in civilized nations must be lowered by the preservation of a considerable number of individuals, weak in mind and body, who would have been promptly eliminated in the savage state, whereas among savages the average includes only the more capable individuals who have been able to survive under extremely hard conditions of life. The skulls of La Chapelle and of Spy afforded an opportunity of determining this very interesting problem, and the results entirely confirm the earlier estimates of Schaaffhausen and of Broca as to the great cubic capacity of the Neanderthal brain. The estimates in descending order are as follows: