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

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

Conclusion as to the Relationships of the Palæolithic Races

Thus in southern, central, and northern Europe the close of Upper Palæolithic times is marked by the invasion of new Eurasiatic races, all in a Pre-Neolithic stage of industry and art. It is not improbable that these races were advance waves from the same geographic regions as the Neolithic tribes which followed them.

From the earliest Palæolithic to Neolithic times it does not appear that western Europe was ever a centre of human evolution in the sense that it gave rise to a single new species of man. The main racial evolution and the earlier and later branches of the human family were established in the east and successively found their way westward; nor is there at present any ground for believing that any very prolonged evolution or transformation of human types occurred in western Europe.

We should regard as wholly unproved the notion that either of these Palæolithic races of western Europe gave rise to others which succeeded them in geologic time; the only sequence of this sort to which some degree of probability may be attached is that the Heidelberg race was ancestral to the Neanderthal race.

In most instances, such races as the Piltdown, the Crô-Magnon, the Brünn, the Furfooz-Grenelle, and the Mediterranean arrived fully formed, with all their mental and physical attributes and tendencies very distinctly developed. There is some evidence, but not of a very conclusive kind, that the modification of certain of these races in western Europe was partly in the nature of a decline; this was apparently the case both with the Neanderthals and with the Crô-Magnons.

We may therefore imagine that the family tree or lines of descent of the races of the Old Stone Age consisted of a number of entirely separate branches, which had been completely formed in the great Eurasiatic continent, a land mass infinitely larger and more capable of producing a variety of races than the diminutive peninsular area of western Europe.

A review of these races in descending order, in respect to stature, the cephalic index, and brain capacity, is presented in the following table:

	Frontal Angle	Height of Skull	Cephalic Index	Brain Capacity	Height		Comparative Length of Arm and Leg
				c.cm.	ft.	in.
Recent.
(H. sapiens).
European (average).	90	59	...	1400-1500	5	7	69.73%
Upper Palæolithic.
Ofnet Race
(brachycephalic)	...	...	86.21	1400	...		...
Ofnet Race
(dolichocephalic)	...	...	70.50	1500	...		...
Crô-Magnon Race
(old man of Crô-Magnon type)	...	...	73.76	1590	6		...
Grimaldi	...	...	? 63-	1775-1880	5	10½-	66.05%
(Crô-Magnons)			? 76.27	...	6	4½	-69%
Chancelade	...	...	72.02	1700	4	11	...
Aurignac	...	...	65.7	...	5	3	...
Grimaldi Race.
Grimaldi type (negroid)	...	...	69.27	1580	5	1	63.12%
Brünn Race.
Brünn I	75	51.22	65.7 or 68.2	1350	...		...
Lower Palæolithic.
Neanderthal Race
(H. Neanderthalensis).
La Chapelle	65	40.5	75	1626	5	3	...
Spy II	67	44.3	75.7	? 1723	5	3	...
Spy I	57.5	40.9	70	? 1562	5	4	...
La Ferrassie I	...	...	...	...	5	5	68%
La Ferrassie II	...	...	...	...	4	10½	68%
La Quina	...	...	...	1367 (approx.)	...		...
Krapina D	66	42.2	? 83.7	...	...		...
Neanderthal	62	40.4	73.9	1408	5	4	...
Gibraltar	66 or 73-74	40	77.9	1250 or 1296	...		...
Pre-Neanderthaloids
Piltdown Race.
Piltdown	...	...	? 78 or ? 79	? 1300 ? 1500	...		...
Trinil Race
(Pithecanthropus)	52.5	34.2	73.4 or 70	850-1000 900	5	7	...
Anthropoid Apes.
Apes (maximum)	56	37.7	...	600	...		104% (chimpanzee minimum.)

The chief authorities for these measurements are Schwalbe, Dubois, Keith, Smith, Woodward, Boule, Sollas, Sera, Klaatsch, Fraipont, Makowsky, Verneau, Testut, and Broca.