[Illustration: FIG. 117. Scale of ascent indicated in the skull form of eleven races of fossil and living men, based on the result of twelve different characters of comparison. At the bottom stands the anthropoid ape, and above this _Pithecanthropus_, the ape-man of Java. A wide range is observed between the Neanderthaloid skulls of Gibraltar and of Spy-Neanderthal. Not far above these in the scale of ascent stand the modern Australians and the recently extinct Tasmanians. Above these low races are found the fossil Upper Palæolithic races of Galley Hill, Brüx, Brünn, and Předmost. At the top stand the modern European races, beside which the Upper Palæolithic Crô-Magnon race takes a high rank. After Büchner.] In brief, the Australian type of head has nothing in common with that of the Neanderthals except in a small number of characteristics in the region of the forehead and of the nose. The distinguishing traits of the Neanderthal head and face are platycephaly, a retreating forehead, flattening of the occiput or lower portion of the skull, prominence of the supraorbital ridges, chin retreating or lacking, projection of the entire face owing to the peculiar form of the upper jaw, and the relatively small size of the frontal lobes of the brain. In fact, concludes Boule: "All these modern so-called 'Neanderthaloids' are nothing but varieties of individuals of _Homo sapiens_, remarkable for the accidental exaggeration of certain anatomical traits which are normally developed in all specimens of _Homo neanderthalensis_. The simplest explanation of these accidents in most cases is atavism or reversion. We cannot assert that there has never been an infusion of Neanderthaloid blood in the groups belonging to species _Homo sapiens_, but what seems to be quite certain is that any such infusion can have been only accidental, for there is no recent type which can be considered even as a modified direct descendant of the Neanderthals." This opinion is confirmed by the latest and most exhaustive researches of Berry and Robertson,(60) who conclude that neither Australians nor Tasmanians have any direct relationship with _Homo neanderthalensis_; the superficial points of cranial resemblance are explicable solely on the grounds of the remoteness of the ancestry. The Australians and Tasmanians are descendants not of the Neanderthal stock but of a late Pliocene or early Pleistocene stock, which, following Sergi, may be called _Homo sapiens tasmanianus_, of which the Tasmanian aboriginal, now extinct, was the almost unchanged offspring. In respect to 'low' characters, as shown in the diagram, Fig. 117, the Spy-Neanderthal skulls stand quite close to the Tasmanians and Australians, and the Gibraltar skull stands midway between this type and _Pithecanthropus_ with respect to twelve different characters of comparison.