[XLIII]
MORE ABOUT THE NEANDER MEN
Since writing what precedes I have been able more than once to gratify my keen desire to examine the wonderful human skull from the Chapelle-aux-Saints in the Corrèze (Central France). The skull has been photographed, and an excellent figure of it is reproduced in our [Fig. 65.] But it is one thing to look at a picture of such a specimen, and another to take it into one’s hands and closely examine it. The skull is in the care of my friend, Professor Marcelin Boule, who is at the head of the great collection of remains of extinct animals in the Jardin des Plantes.
It has been treated by him with great skill so as to render the bone firm and hard, whilst detached portions have been fitted into place, so that it is fairly complete ([Fig. 65]). The skull was found (together with many bones of the skeleton of the same individual) by two enthusiastic local archæologists buried at such depth and in such position in the cave known as the Chapelle-aux-Saints as to leave no doubt as to its belonging to one of a race of men contemporary with the mammoth and hairy rhinoceros—a race which inhabited Europe in the great glacial period—called by prehistorians “the Moustierian period,” which cannot be less than a hundred thousand years behind us, and probably is more. The chief importance of this skull lies in the fact not only that its position in the cave-deposits, and therefore its relative age, was carefully ascertained, but that it agrees in its very peculiar form with the Neanderthal skull (from the Rhineland), the Spy skulls (Belgium), and the Gibraltar skull. It, in fact, confirms the conclusion that at this period the caves of Western Europe were inhabited by a race of men with peculiar skulls, which may be called the Neander race in reference to the first-discovered skull of the kind. They were altogether different from the Reindeer Men, or Cromagnards, who came later upon the scene.
Fig. 79.—Drawing one-third the size of nature, of the left side of the lower jaw of a modern European. Observe the small size as compared with the jaw in Figs. [80], [81], and [82], also the prominent chin: the small breadth of the up-turned ramus, and the deep bay or notch (not seen in the other lower jaws) separating the coronoid process from the condyle.
[Transcriber’s Note: The original image is approximately 2¼ inches (6cm) high and 1½ inches (3.5cm) wide.]
