Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882
Various
Science -- Periodicals
Limiting the comparison to that on which the writer quoted bases his
conclusions--apparently the superficial extent of the roof plate--its
greater extent as compared with that of a gorilla equaling, probably, in
weight the entire frame of the individual from the Neanderthal cave, is
strongly significant of the superiority of size of brain in the
cave-dweller. The inner surface moreover indicates the more complex
character of the soft organ on which it was moulded; the precious "gray
substance" being multiplied by certain convolutions which are absent in
the apes. But there is another surface which the unbiased zoologist
finds it requisite to compare. In the human "calvarium" in question, the
mid-line traced backward from the super-orbital ridge runs along a
smooth track. In the gorilla a ridge is raised from along the major part
of that tract to increase the surface giving attachment to the biting
muscles. Such ridge in this position varies only in height in the female
and the male adult ape, as the specimens in the British Museum
demonstrate. In the Neanderthal individual, as in the rest of mankind,
the corresponding muscles do not extend their origins to the upper
surface of the cranium, but stop short at the sides forming the inner
wall or boundary of what are called the "temples," defined by Johnson as
the "upper part of the sides of the head," whence our "biting muscles"
are called "temporal," as the side-bones of the skull to which they are
attached are also the "temporal bones." In the superficial comparison to
which Mr. Grant Allen has restricted himself in bearing testimony on a
question which perhaps affects our fellow-creatures, in the right sense
of the term, more warmly than any other in human and comparative
anatomy, the obvious difference just pointed out ought not to have been
passed over. It was the more incumbent on one pronouncing on the
paramount problem, because the "sagittal ridge in the gorilla," as in
the orang, relates to and signifies the dental character which
differentiates all _Quadrumana_ from all _Bimana_ that have ever come
under the ken of the biologist. And this ridge much more "strikingly
suggests" the fierceness of the powerful brute-ape than the part
referred to as "large bosses." Frontal prominences, more truly so
termed, are even better developed in peaceful, timid, graminivorous
quadrupeds than in the skulls of man or of ape. But before noticing the
evidence which the teeth bear on the physical relations of man to brute,
I would premise that the comparison must not be limited to a part or
"fragment" of the bony frame, but to its totality, as relating to the
modes and faculties of locomotion.
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