Man and the Glacial PeriodWright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
History
Man and the Glacial Period
Wright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
Glacial epoch; Prehistoric peoples
It was in the third, or lowest, of these beds that the skeletons
were found. Here they were associated with abundant remains of the
rhinoceros, the horse, the bison, the mastodon, the cave-hyena, and a
few other extinct species. Flint implements also, of the "Mousterien"
pattern (which, according to the opinion of the French archæologists, is
characteristic of middle palæolithic times), were abundant Neither of the
skeletons was complete, but they were sufficiently so to give an adequate
idea of the type to which they belong, and one of the skulls is nearly
perfect. According to M. Fraipont, "one of these skulls is apparently
that of an old woman, the other that of a middle-aged man. They are both
very thick; the former is clearly dolichocephalic (long-headed, index
70), the other less so. Both have very prominent eyebrows and large
orbits, with low, retreating foreheads, excessively so in the woman. The
lower jaws are heavy. The older has almost no projecting chin. The teeth
are large, and the last molar is as large as the others. These points
are characteristic of an inferior and the oldest-known race. The bones
indicate, like those of the Neanderthal and Naulette specimens, small,
square-shouldered individuals." They were "powerfully built, with strong,
curiously curved thigh-bones, the lower ends of which are so fashioned
that they must have walked with a bend at the knees."[DI]
[Footnote DI: Huxley, Nineteenth Century, vol. xxviii (November, 1890),
p. 774.]
Other crania from various Quaternary deposits in Europe seem to warrant
the inference that this type of man was the prevalent one during the
early part of the Palæolithic age. As long ago as 1700 a skull of
this type was exhumed in Canstadt, a village in the neighbourhood
of Stuttgart, in Würtemberg. This was found in coexistence with the
extinct animals whose bones we have described as so often appearing in
the high-level river-gravel of the Glacial age. But the importance of
the discovery at Canstadt was not appreciated until about the middle
of the present century. From the priority of the discovery, and of the
discussion among German anthropologists concerning it, it has been
thought proper, however, by some to give the name of this village to the
race and call it the "Canstadt race." But, whatever name prevails, it
is important in our reading to keep in mind that the man of Canstadt,
the man of Neanderthal, and the man of Spy are identical in type, and
probably in age. Similar discoveries have been made in various other
places. Among these are a lower jaw of the same type discovered in 1865
by M. Dupont, at Naulette, in the valley of the Lesse, in Belgium, and
associated with the remains of extinct animals; a jawbone found in a
grotto at Arcy; a fragment of a skull found in 1865 by Faudel, in the
loess of Eguisheim, near Colmar; a skull at Olmo, discovered in 1863, in
a compact clayey deposit forty-five feet below the surface; and a skull
discovered in 1884 at Marcilly.
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