Science from an Easy ChairLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
Science from an Easy Chair
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history; Science
We know a little more about the skull of the Neander race since Huxley
wrote, owing to the further discovery of specimens. The Australian’s
skull has usually a more projecting upper jaw and upper front teeth than
has the Neander Man’s. The Neander skulls stand alone in the great
breadth of the orbits and of the nasal region as compared with all known
skulls. They are also alone (the Gibraltar skull and the new French
specimen are the only ones which show it) in the contour of the upper
jaw. In other human skulls there is a broad depression of the surface—a
nipping-in, as it were—behind the root of the canine tooth on each
side. This is absent in the Neander race; the bone here is flat, and
not in-pushed. This absence of “modelling,” absence of the canine
“fossa” or valley (as it is called), is seen in the larger apes as well
as in the Neander Men. This point does not show in our figures. Some
writers think it probable that the Neander Men of the late Glacial Age
were the ancestors of the Cromagnards of the Reindeer Age, and also that
the artistic Cromagnards were transformed, after many thousand years,
into the comparatively dull and inartistic people of the Neolithic
period. It seems to me, on the contrary, more probable (as is held by
some of the French prehistorians) that the Reindeer Men died out, and
were replaced by the Neolithic herdsmen who migrated into Western Europe
as the climate became milder. The notion that the Esquimaux of to-day
are the Reindeer Men of France who have migrated northwards with their
reindeer, following the receding ice, has been entertained, but is
regarded by the most careful inquirers as untenable. As to the earlier
change of race, I hold that it is not possible to contend that the
Neander Men developed into the Cromagnards of the Reindeer Age actually
in the south of France. If the lower race or species gave rise to the
higher, the enormous transformation did not occur here nor in Europe at
all, nor during the later Pleistocene period. Human skulls of the
Reindeer Age are known which present an approach to the characters of
the Neander race, such as the heavy bony eyebrows. But it seems that
this is accounted for by the survival of some Neander families alongside
of the powerful Cromagnard men and the interbreeding of the two. The
Cromagnards had probably lived with their reindeer in some more southern
area during the late Glacial Age, and arrived in southern France as the
climate improved and became suitable to their accustomed quarry. How and
where they developed from a lower type of men we have at present no
indication.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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