| Neanderthal race | —La Chapelle | 1620 | c.cm. |
| "" | —Neanderthal | 1408 | " |
| "" | —La Quina | 1367 | " |
| "" | —Gibraltar | 1296 | " |
Thus the variations between the largest known brain in one member of the Neanderthal race, the male skull of La Chapelle, and the smallest brain of the same race, the supposed female skull of Gibraltar, is 324 c.cm., a range similar to that which we find in the existing species of man (Homo sapiens).
Fig. 2. The skull and brain-case, showing the low, retreating forehead, prominent supraorbital ridges, and small brain capacity, of Pithecanthropus, the java ape-man, as restored by J. H. McGregor.
As another test for the classification of primitive skulls, we may select the well-known frontal angle of Broca, as modified by Schwalbe, for measuring the retreating forehead. The angle is measured by drawing a line along the forehead upward from the bony ridge between the eyebrows, with a horizontal line carried from the glabella to the inion at the back of the skull. The various primitive races are arranged as follows:
| PER CENT | ||
| Homo sapiens, with an average forehead | frontal angle | 90 |
| Homo sapiens, with extreme retreating forehead | "" | 72.3 |
| Homo neanderthalensis, with the least retreating forehead | "" | 70 |
| Homo neanderthalensis, with the most retreating forehead | "" | 57.5 |
| Pithecanthropus erectus (Trinil race) | "" | 52.5 |
| Highest anthropoid apes | "" | 56 |
For instance, this illustrates the fact that in the Trinil race the forehead is actually lower than in some of the highest anthropoid apes; that in the Neanderthal race the forehead is more retreating than in any of the existing human races of Homo sapiens.
Archæology of the Old Stone Age[I]
The proofs of the prehistory of man arose afresh, and from an entirely new source, in the beginning of the eighteenth century through discoveries in Germany, by which the Greek anticipations of a stone age were verified. For a century and a half the great animal life of the diluvial world had aroused the wonder and speculation of the early naturalists. In 1750 Eccardus[(17)] of Braunschweig advanced the first steps toward prehistoric chronology, in expressing the opinion that the human race first lived in a period in which stone served as the only weapon and tool, and that this was followed by a bronze and then by an iron period of human culture. As early as 1700 a human skull was discovered at Cannstatt and was believed to be of a period as ancient as the mammoth and the cave-bear.[J]
France, favored beyond all other countries by the men of the Old Stone Age, was destined to become the classic centre of prehistoric archæology. As early as 1740 Mahudel[(18)] published a treatise upon stone implements and laid the foundations both of Neolithic and Palæolithic research. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the problem of fossil man had awakened wide-spread interest and research. In Buckland's[(19)] Reliquiæ diluvianæ, published in 1824, the great mammals of the Old Stone Age are treated as relics of the flood. In 1825 MacEnery explored the cavern of Kent's Hole, near Torquay, finding human bones and flint flakes associated with the remains of the cave-bear and cave-hyæna, but the notes of this discovery were not published until 1840, when Godwin-Austen[(20)] gave the first description of Kent's Hole. In 1828 Tournal and Christol[(21)] announced the first discoveries in France (Languedoc) of the association of human bones with the remains of extinct animals. In 1833-4 Schmerling[(22)] described his explorations in the caverns near Liége, in Belgium, in which he found human bones and rude flint implements intermingled with the remains of the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave-hyæna, and the cave-bear. This is the first published evidence of the life of the Cave Period of Europe, and was soon followed by the recognition of similar cavern deposits along the south coast of Great Britain, in France, Belgium and Italy.