Neanderthal Man was an almost purely meat eating hunter, living in caves or rather in their entrances. He was dolichocephalic and not unlike existing Australoids, although not necessarily of black skin and was, of course, in no sense a Negro.
The skull was characterized by heavy superorbital ridges, a low and receding forehead, protruding and chinless under jaw and the posture was imperfectly erect. This race was widely spread and rather numerous. Some of its blood may have trickled down to the present time and occasionally one sees a skull apparently of the Neanderthal type. The best skull of this type ever seen by the writer belonged to a very intellectual professor in London, who was quite unconscious of his value as a museum specimen. In the old black breed of Scotland the overhanging brows and deep-set eyes are suggestive of this race.
Along with other ancient and primitive racial remnants, ferocious gorilla-like living specimens of Paleolithic man are found not infrequently on the west coast of Ireland and are easily recognized by the great upper lip, bridgeless nose, beetling brow with low growing hair and wild and savage aspect. The proportions of the skull which give rise to this large upper lip, the low forehead and the superorbital ridges are certainly Neanderthal characters. The other traits of this Irish type are common to many primitive races. This is the Irishman of caricature and the type was very frequent in America when the first Irish immigrants came in 1846 and the following years. It seems, however, to have almost disappeared in this country. If, as it is claimed, the Neanderthals have left no trace of their blood in living populations, these Firbolgs are derived from some very ancient and primitive race as yet undescribed.
In the Upper Paleolithic, which began after the close of the fourth and last glaciation, about 25,000 years ago, the Neanderthal race was succeeded by men of very modern aspect, known as Cro-Magnons. The date of the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic is the first we can fix with accuracy and its correctness can be relied on within narrow limits. The Cro-Magnon race first appears in the Aurignacian subdivision of the Upper Paleolithic. Like the Neanderthals, they were dolichocephalic but with a cranial capacity superior to the average in existing European populations and a stature of very remarkable size.
It is quite astonishing to find that the predominant race in Europe 25,000 years ago, or more, was not only much taller, but had an absolute cranial capacity in excess of the average of the present population. The low cranial average of existing populations in Europe can be best explained by the presence of large numbers of individuals of inferior mentality. These defectives have been carefully preserved by modern charity, whereas in the savage state of society the backward members were allowed to perish and the race was carried on by the vigorous and not by the weaklings.
The high brain capacity of the Cro-Magnons is paralleled by that of the ancient Greeks, who in a single century gave to the world out of their small population much more genius than all the other races of mankind have since succeeded in producing in a similar length of time. Attica between 530 and 430 B. C. had an average population of about 90,000 freemen, and yet from this number were born no less than fourteen geniuses of the very highest rank. This would indicate a general intellectual status as much above that of the Anglo-Saxons as the latter are above the Negroes. The existence at these early dates of a very high cranial capacity and its later decline shows that there is no upward tendency inherent in mankind of sufficient strength to overcome obstacles placed in its way by stupid social customs.
All historians are familiar with the phenomenon of a rise and decline in civilization such as has occurred time and again in the history of the world but we have here in the disappearance of the Cro-Magnon race the earliest example of the replacement of a very superior race by an inferior one. There is great danger of a similar replacement of a higher by a lower type here in America unless the native American uses his superior intelligence to protect himself and his children from competition with intrusive peoples drained from the lowest races of eastern Europe and western Asia.
While the skull of the Cro-Magnon was long, the cheek bones were very broad and this combination of broad face with long skull constitutes a peculiar disharmonic type which occurs to-day only among the very highly specialized Esquimaux and one or two other unimportant groups.
Skulls of this particular type, however, are found in small numbers among existing populations in central France, precisely in the district where the fossil remains of this race were first discovered. These isolated Frenchmen probably represent the last lingering remnant of this splendid race of hunting savages.
The Cro-Magnon culture is found around the basin of the Mediterranean, and this fact, together with the conspicuous absence in eastern Europe of its earliest phases, the lower Aurignacian, indicates that it entered Europe by way of north Africa, as its successors, the Mediterranean race, probably did in Neolithic times. There is little doubt that the Cro-Magnons originally developed in Asia and were in their highest stage of physical development at the time of their first appearance in Europe. Whatever change took place in their stature during their residence there seems to have been in the nature of a decline rather than of a further development.