The same uncertainty overhangs the age of the interments in the cave of Gailenreuth, in Franconia, from which Dr. Buckland[164] obtained a human skull of the same broad type as that from Sclaigneaux, along with fragments of black coarse pottery, one of which is ornamented with a line of finger-impressions. The skull is remarkable for the great width of the parietal protuberances, and the flattening of the upper and posterior region of the parietal bone. Its measurements are given in the Table, [p. 236], from which it will be seen that it belongs to the same class of skulls as those from the neolithic caves and tumuli of France.
Cave of Neanderthal.
The extraordinary skull found in 1857 in the cave of Neanderthal,[165] by Dr. Fuhlrott, with some of the other bones of the skeleton, was not associated with any other animals from which its age could be inferred. “Under whatever aspect,” writes Professor Huxley, “we view this cranium, whether we regard its vertical depression, the enormous thickness of its supraciliary ridges, its sloping occiput, or its long and straight squamosal suture, we meet with ape-like characters, stamping it as the most pithecoid of human crania yet discovered. But Prof. Schaaffhausen states that the cranium, in its present condition, holds 1033·24 cubic centimetres of water, or about 63 cubic inches, and as the entire skull could hardly have held less than an additional 12 cubic inches, its capacity may be estimated at about 75 cubic inches, which is the average capacity given by Morton for Polynesian and Hottentot skulls.
So large a mass of brain as this would alone suggest that the pithecoid tendencies, indicated by this skull, did not extend deep into the organization, and this conclusion is borne out by the dimensions of the other bones of the skeleton, given by Prof. Schaaffhausen, which show that the absolute height and relative proportions of the limbs were quite those of a European of middle stature. The bones are indeed stouter, but this, and the great development of the muscular ridges noted by Dr. Schaaffhausen, are characters to be expected in savages. The Patagonians, exposed without shelter or protection to a climate possibly not very dissimilar from that of Europe at the time during which the Neanderthal man lived, are remarkable for the stoutness of their limb-bones.
In no sense, then, can the Neanderthal bones be regarded as the remains of a human being intermediate between men and apes; at most they demonstrate the existence of a man whose skull may be said to revert somewhat towards the pithecoid type—just as a carrier, or a poulter, or a tumbler may sometimes put on the plumage of its primitive stock, the Columba livia.”
This skull, like the preceding, belongs to the dolicho-cephalic division, reaching the enormous length of twelve inches, with a parietal breadth of 5·75.
A long-skull found near Ledbury Hill in Derbyshire, and belonging to the river-bed type of Prof. Huxley, comes so close to this one of Neanderthal, that were it flattened a little and elongated, and possessed of larger supraciliary ridges, it would be converted into the nearest likeness which has yet been discovered.[166]
The Caves of France.—Aurignac.
In the cave of Neanderthal, the question of the antiquity of the human remains is not complicated by the juxtaposition of extinct pleistocene animals or of palæolithic implements. Those caves, however, in France which claim especial attention, Aurignac, Bruniquel, and Cro-Magnon, are equally famous for their interments, and the palæolithic implements which they have furnished, along with the remains of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and other extinct animals.
They have both been inhabited by palæolithic man, and been used some time for burial. Does the period of habitation coincide with that of the burial? This important question has been answered almost universally in the affirmative, and the interments are viewed as evidence of a belief in the supra-natural among the most ancient inhabitants of Europe, as well as offering examples of their physique.