Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and ArtOsborn, Henry Fairfield
History
Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and Art
Osborn, Henry Fairfield
Art, Primitive; Prehistoric peoples; Stone age
Verneau,(18) in his description of the Crô-Magnon type, emphasizes the
_disharmonic_ form of the head, for the dolichocephalic form of the skull
is combined with a face very broad for its height, and this, in fact, is
the unique and most distinctive feature of the Crô-Magnon race. The
cheek-bones are both broad and high. It is curious that in this face, so
broad across the cheek-bones and cheek arches, the space between the eyes
is small, the nose is narrow and aquiline, and the upper jaw is noticeably
narrow; it is no less remarkable that this upper jaw projects forward,
while the upper part of the face is almost vertical, as in the highest
types of _Homo sapiens_. The eye sockets, which are remarkably broad, are
rather shallow, and their angles are but slightly rounded off, so that the
form suggests a very long rectangle; the mandible is thick and strong, and
the chin massive, triangular, and very prominent; the marks of muscular
attachment denote great muscular development around the thick, strong
jaws, in which the parts for the attachment of the vertical muscles are
unusually large. I would add, says Verneau, to these essential
characteristics the surprising capacity of the cranium, which Broca
estimated as at least 1,590 c.cm. The majority of these features are found
in almost all of the skulls of the Crô-Magnon race in the Grottes de
Grimaldi. The top view of the skull is unusual on account of the extreme
prominence of the eminences of the parietals, which give the skull a
pentagonal effect when seen from above. The eyebrow ridges show decided
prominences above the orbits but disappear completely in the median line
and at the sides and thus differ totally from those in the Neanderthal
head.
DISCOVERIES CHIEFLY OF THE CRÔ-MAGNON AND GRIMALDI RACES[AM]
REFERRED TO AURIGNACIAN TIMES
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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