And now at the present time we have twenty or more individuals of this
Neanderthal type to compare. The latest discoveries are perhaps the
most interesting, because in two and perhaps other cases the man has
been properly buried. Thus at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, in the French
department of Correze, a skeleton, which in its head-form closely
recalls the Gibraltar example, was found in a pit dug in the floor
of a low grotto. It lay on its back, head to the west, with one arm
bent towards the head, the other outstretched, and the legs drawn up.
Some bison bones lay in the grave as if a food-offering had been made.
Hard by were flint implements of a well-marked Mousterian type. In
the shelter of Le Moustier itself a similar burial was discovered.
The body lay on its right side, with the right arm bent so as to support
the head upon a carefully arranged pillow of flints; whilst the left
arm was stretched out, so that the hand might be near a magnificent
oval stone-weapon chipped on both faces, evidently laid there by design.
So much for these men of the Neanderthal type, denizens of the
mid-palaeolithic world at the very latest. Ape-like they doubtless
are in their head-form up to a certain point, though almost all their
separate features occur here and there amongst modern Australian
natives. And yet they were men enough, had brains enough, to believe
in a life after death. There is something to think about in that.
Without going outside Europe, we have, however, to reckon with at least
two other types of very early head-form.
In one of the caves of Mentone known as La Grotte des Enfants two
skeletons from a low stratum were of a primitive type, but unlike the
Neanderthal, and have been thought to show affinities to the modern
negro. As, however, no other Proto-Negroes are indisputably
forthcoming either from Europe or from any other part of the world,
there is little at present to be made out about this interesting racial
type.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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