"The Neanderthal cranium has certainly not undergone compression, and, in reply to the suggestion that the skull is that of an idiot, it may be urged that the onus probandi lies with those who adopt the hypothesis. Idiotcy is compatible with very various forms and capacities of the cranium, but I know of none which present the least resemblance to the Neanderthal skull; and, furthermore, I shall proceed to show that the latter manifests but an extreme degree of a stage of degradation exhibited, as a natural condition, by the crania of certain races of mankind.
"Mr. Busk drew my attention, some time ago, to the resemblance between some of the skulls taken from tumuli of the stone period at Borreby in Denmark, of which Mr. Busk possesses numerous accurate figures, and the Neanderthal cranium. One of the Borreby skulls in particular (Figure 5) has remarkably projecting superciliary ridges, a retreating forehead, a low flattened vertex, and an occiput which shelves upward and forward. But the skull is relatively higher and broader, or more brachycephalic, the sagittal suture longer, and the superciliary ridges less projecting, than in the Neanderthal skull. Nevertheless, there is, without doubt, much resemblance in character between the two skulls—a circumstance which is the more interesting, since the other Borreby skulls have better foreheads and less prominent superciliary ridges, and exhibit altogether a higher conformation.
"The Borreby skulls belong to the stone period of Denmark, and the people to whom they appertained were probably either contemporaneous with, or later than, the makers of the 'refuse-heaps' of that country. In other words, they were subsequent to the last great physical changes of Europe, and were contemporaries of the urus and bison, not of the Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, and Hyaena spelaea.
"Supposing for a moment, what is not proven, that the Neanderthal skull belonged to a race allied to the Borreby people and was as modern as they, it would be separated by as great a distance of time as of anatomical character from the Engis skull, and the possibility of its belonging to a distinct race from the latter might reasonably appear to be greatly heightened.
"To prevent the possibility of reasoning in a vicious circle, however, I thought it would be well to endeavour to ascertain what amount of cranial variation is to be found in a pure race at the present day; and as the natives of Southern and Western Australia are probably as pure and homogeneous in blood, customs, and language, as any race of savages in existence, I turned to them, the more readily as the Hunterian museum contains a very fine collection of such skulls.
"I soon found it possible to select from among these crania two (connected by all sorts of intermediate gradations), the one of which should very nearly resemble the Engis skull, while the other should somewhat less closely approximate the Neanderthal cranium in form, size, and proportions. And at the same time others of these skulls presented no less remarkable affinities with the low type of Borreby skull.
"That the resemblances to which I allude are by no means of a merely superficial character, is shown by the accompanying diagram (Figure 6), which gives the contours of the two ancient and of one of the Australian skulls, and by the following table of measurements.
TABLE 5/1. COLUMN 1: TYPE OF SKULL.
COLUMN 2 (A): The horizontal circumference in the plane of a line joining the glabella with the occipital protuberance.
COLUMN 3 (B): The longitudinal arc from the nasal depression along the middle line of the skull to the occipital tuberosity.