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
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 Professor Schaaffhausen, which show
that the absolute height and relative proportions of the limbs, were
quite those of an 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 Pouter, or
a Tumbler, may sometimes put on the plumage of its primitive stock, the
_Columba livia_. And indeed, though truly the most pithecoid of known
human skulls, the Neanderthal cranium is by no means so isolated as it
appears to be at first, but forms, in reality, the extreme term of a
series leading gradually from it to the highest and best developed of
human crania. On the one hand, it is closely approached by the flattened
Australian skulls, of which I have spoken, from which other Australian
forms lead us gradually up to skulls having very much the type of the
Engis cranium. And, on the other hand, it is even more closely affined
to the skulls of certain ancient people who inhabited Denmark during the
"stone period," and were probably either contemporaneous with, or later
than, the makers of the "refuse heaps," or "Kjokkenmöddings" of that
country.
The correspondence between the longitudinal contour of the Neanderthal
skull and that of some of those skulls from the tumuli at Borreby, very
accurate drawings of which have been made by Mr. Busk, is very close.
The occiput is quite as retreating, the supraciliary ridges are nearly
as prominent, and the skull is as low. Furthermore, the Borreby skull
resembles the Neanderthal form more closely than any of the Australian
skulls do, by the much more rapid retrocession of the forehead. On the
other hand, the Borreby skulls are all somewhat broader, in proportion
to their length, than the Neanderthal skull, while some attain that
proportion of breadth to length (80: 100) which constitutes
brachycephaly.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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