A Manual of the Antiquity of Man

by J. P. MacLean

Dr. Schmerling, Buchner, and Vogt are arrayed against Huxley. The first says, "I hold it to be demonstrated that this cranium has belonged to a person of limited intellectual faculties, and we conclude thence that it belonged to a man of a low degree of civilization."[30] "From the narrowness of the frontal portion it belonged to an individual of small intellectual development."[31] Buchner says, "In its length and narrowness, the slight elevation of its forehead, the form of the widely separated orbits and the well developed supra-orbital arches, it resembles, especially when viewed from above, the celebrated Neanderthal skull, but in general is far superior to this in its structure."[32] Carl Vogt "regards it, with reference to the proportion of length to breadth, as one of the most ill-favored, animal-like and simian of skulls."[33]

The cause of this wide difference of opinion may arise from the failure to observe the fact that the older the formation in which a skull is found, the lower is the type. The ordinary observer, judging by the cast of the skull, would see nothing ape-like about it, and certainly would fail to see any indications of a philosopher.

NEANDERTHAL SKULL.

The Neanderthal skull was taken from a small cave or grotto in-the valley of the Düssel, near Düsseldorf, situated about seventy miles north-east of the region of the Liége caverns. The grotto is in a deep ravine sixty feet above the river, one hundred feet below the surface of the country, and at a distance of about ten feet from the Düssel River. It is fifteen feet deep from the entrance (f), which is seven or eight feet wide. Before the cavern had been injured, it opened upon a narrow plateau lying in front. The floor of the cave was covered four or five feet in thickness with a deposit of mud or loam, and containing some rounded fragments of chert. Two laborers, in removing this deposit, first noticed the skull, placed near the entrance, and further in met with the other bones. As the bones were not regarded as of any importance, at the time of their discovery, only the larger ones have been preserved.

Fig. 9.
Section of the Neanderthal Cave.

a. Cavern sixty feet above the Düssel, and one hundred feet below the surface of the country at c.
b. Loam covering the floor of the cave near the bottom of which the human skeleton was found.
c, a. Rent connecting the cave with the upper surface of the country.
d. Superficial sandy loam.
e. Devonian limestone.
f. Terrace, or ledge of rock.

Some discussion has arisen in respect to the geological time of these bones. There was no stalagmite overlying the mud or loam in which the skeleton was found, and no other bones met with save the tusk of a bear. There is no certain data given whereby its position may be known. Professor Huxley declares that the bones "indicate a very high antiquity."[34] Buchner is very positive in his statement, and declares that "the loam-deposit which partly fills the caves of the Neanderthal and the clefts and fissures of its limestone mountains, and in which both the Neanderthal bones and the fossil bones and teeth of animals were imbedded, is exactly the same that, in the caverns of the Neanderthal, covers the whole limestone mountain with a deposit from ten to twelve feet in thickness, and the diluvial origin of which is unmistakable."[35] Dr. Fuhlrott says, "The position and general arrangement of the locality in which they were found, place it, in my judgment, beyond doubt that the bones belong to the diluvium, and therefore to primitive times, i. e. they come down to us from a period of the past when our native country was still inhabited by various kinds of animals, especially mammoths and cave-bears, which have long since disappeared out of the series of living creatures."[36]

The diluvial or glacial origin of the Neanderthal skull is still further confirmed by the discoveries made, in the summer of 1865, in the Teufelskammer. This cavern is situated one hundred and thirty paces from the one in which the human bones were found, and on the same side of the river.. In the loam-deposit of this cave were found numerous fossil bones and teeth of the rhinoceros, cave-bear, cave-hyena, and other extinct animals. "A great part of these bones, especially those of the cave-bears, agree in color, weight, density, and the preservation of their microscopic structure, with the human bones found in the Feldhofner Cave (in which the Neanderthal man was found), and both are covered with the same dendrites, or tree-like markings."[37]