Fig. 124. Restoration of the head of the Neanderthal man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, in front view, after model by J. H. McGregor. One-quarter life size.

The total aspect of Neanderthal man may be characterized in the following manner:[(67)] An enormous head placed upon a short and thick trunk, with limbs very short and thick-set, and very robust; the shoulders broad and stooping, with the head and neck habitually bent forward into the same curvature as the back; the arms relatively short as compared with the legs; the lower leg, as compared with the upper leg, shorter than in any of the existing races of men; the knee habitually bent forward without the power of straightening the joint or of standing fully erect; the hands extremely large and without the delicate play between the thumb and fingers characteristic of modern races; the resort to a squatting position while occupied in flint-making and other industries. Thus the ordinary attitudes characteristic of Homo neanderthalensis would be quite different from our own and most ungainly. The heavy head, the enormous development of the face, and the backward position of the foramen magnum, through which the spinal cord connects with the brain, would tend to throw the upper part of the body forward, and this tendency, with the lesser curvature of the neck, the heavy shoulders, and the flattened form of the head, would give this portion of the body a more or less anthropoid aspect.

Geographic Distribution of Mousterian Stations

The Neanderthal race of Mousterian times established stations all over western Europe, of which upward of fifty have already been discovered, as compared with the fifty-seven or more Acheulean stations known. At some points the old open camps of the Acheulean flint workers were still visited, as along the Thames, the Somme, and the Marne. Thus Abbeville, St. Acheul, Montières, and Chelles, in northern France, show a succession of Mousterian industry following the Acheulean, the Chellean, and, at St. Acheul, even the Pre-Chellean. These may well have been summer stations, visited at favorable seasons of the year because of their abundant supply of flint. About 125 miles to the east of St. Acheul, in Belgium, on a small tributary of the Meuse, is the grotto of Spy, which, together with Mousterian implements, has yielded two human fossil skeletons of the Neanderthal race.

In southern Devonshire is the famous cavern of Kent's Hole, near Torquay, discovered as long ago as 1825 by MacEnery and described in 1840 by Godwin-Austen.[(68)] It is interesting to note that teeth of the sabre-tooth tiger (Machærodus latidens) have been found in this cavern, leading Boyd Dawkins to believe that this animal survived to late geologic times: it will be recalled as a contemporary of the early Chellean flint workers at Abbeville. The animal life of Kent's Hole, as originally described by Godwin-Austen, included remains of "elephant, rhinoceros, ox, deer, horse, bear, hyæna, and a feline animal of large size"—fauna now known to belong to the period of the fourth glaciation.[AI]

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Fig. 125. Geographic distribution of the principal Mousterian industrial stations in western Europe, attributed to the Neanderthal race.

To the south are three stations, one of which, La Cotte de St. Brelade, on the present isle of Jersey, then part of the mainland, has yielded Mousterian flakes and thirteen human teeth of Neanderthal type.

Still farther to the south, in the Dordogne region, is found the type station described on a previous page, of Le Moustier, the centre of a group of eight sites crowded along the north and south shores of the Vézère, which have become famous for the knowledge they yield of the successive stages in the development of the Mousterian implements, beginning with the primitive culture station of La Micoque, and including La Ferrassie, Le Moustier, La Rochette, Pataud, La Mouthe, Laussel, and finally the Abri Audit, which marks the closing stage in the development of the Mousterian industry and, in the opinion of many archæologists, its transition to the Aurignacian. At several of these places important discoveries have been made, both of human fossils and of noteworthy transitions in the progress of invention. Circling round this Vézère group are the stations of Petit-Puymoyen, La Quina, where implements of the closing stage of Mousterian industry have been found as well as a human fossil of the Neanderthal type, and La Chapelle-aux-Saints, which has yielded the only complete skeleton of a Neanderthal man so far discovered.