Some time after the publication of the translation of Professor
Schaaffhausen's Memoir, I was led to study the cast of the Neanderthal
cranium with more attention than I had previously bestowed upon it,
in consequence of wishing to supply Sir Charles Lyell with a diagram,
exhibiting the special peculiarities of this skull, as compared with
other human skulls. In order to do this it was necessary to identify,
with precision, those points in the skulls compared which corresponded
anatomically. Of these points, the glabella was obvious enough; but when
I had distinguished another, defined by the occipital protuberance
and superior semicircular line, and had placed the outline of the
Neanderthal skull against that of the Engis skull, in such a position
that the glabella and occipital protuberance of both were intersected by
the same straight line, the difference was so vast and the flattening of
the Neanderthal skull so prodigious (compare Figs. 22 and 24, A.), that
I at first imagined I must have fallen into some error. And I was
the more inclined to suspect this, as, in ordinary human skulls, the
occipital protuberance and superior semicircular curved line on the
exterior of the occiput correspond pretty closely with the 'lateral
sinuses' and the line of attachment of the tentorium internally. But
on the tentorium rests, as I have said in the preceding Essay, the
posterior lobe of the brain; and hence, the occipital protuberance, and
the curved line in question, indicate, approximately, the lower limits
of that lobe. Was it possible for a human being to have the brain thus
flattened and depressed; or, on the other hand, had the muscular ridges
shifted their position? In order to solve these doubts, and to decide
the question whether the great supraciliary projections did, or did
not, arise from the development of the frontal sinuses, I requested Sir
Charles Lyell to be so good as to obtain for me from Dr. Fuhlrott, the
possessor of the skull, answers to certain queries, and if possible a
cast, or at any rate drawings, or photographs, of the interior of the
skull.
(FIGURE 24.--The skull from the Neanderthal cavern. A. side, B. front,
and C. top view. One-third the natural size, by Mr. Busk: the details
from the cast and from Dr. Fuhlrott's photographs. 'a' glabella; 'b'
occipital protuberance; 'd' lambdoidal suture.)
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