Man's Place in Nature, and Other EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Man's Place in Nature, and Other Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Apes; Ethnology; Human beings -- Origin; Indo-Europeans
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 24.--The skull from the Neanderthal cavern. A. side,
B. front, and C. top view. One-third the natural size. The outlines from
camera lucida drawings, one-half 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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