The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and MankindWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
World history
These Cro-Magnards were a tall people with very broad faces, prominent
noses, and, all things considered, astonishingly big brains. The brain
capacity of the woman in the Cro-Magnon cave exceeded that of the
average male to-day. Her head had been smashed by a heavy blow. There
were also in the same cave with her the complete skeleton of an older
man, nearly six feet high, the fragments of a child’s skeleton, and the
skeletons of two young men. There were also flint implements and
perforated sea-shells, used no doubt as ornaments. Such is one sample of
the earliest true men. But at the Grimaldi cave, near Mentone, were
discovered two skeletons also of the Later Palæolithic period, but of a
widely contrasted type, with negroid characteristics that point rather
to the negroid type. There can be no doubt that we have to deal in this
period with at least two, and probably more, highly divergent races of
true men. They may have overlapped in time, or Cro-Magnards may have
followed the Grimaldi race, and either or both may have been
contemporary with the late Neanderthal men. Various authorities have
very strong opinions upon these points, but they are, at most, opinions.
The whole story is further fogged at present by our inability to
distinguish, in the absence of skeletons, which race has been at work in
any particular case. In what follows the reader will ask of this or
that particular statement, “Yes, but is this the Cro-Magnard or the
Grimaldi man or some other that you are writing about?” To which in most
cases the honest answer is, “As yet we do not know.” Confessedly our
account of the newer Palæolithic is a jumbled account. There are
probably two or three concurrent and only roughly similar histories of
these newer Palæolithic men as yet, inextricably mixed up together. Some
authorities appear to favour the Cro-Magnards unduly and to dismiss the
Grimaldi people with as little as possible of the record.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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