The Prehistoric World; Or, Vanished RacesAllen, Emory Adams
History
The Prehistoric World; Or, Vanished Races
Allen, Emory Adams
Archaeology; Indians; Prehistoric peoples
M. Quatrefages, of France, who is certainly a very high authority
on these points, thinks that the hunter tribes of the River Drift
belonged to the Canstadt race—“so named from the village of
Canstadt, in Germany, near which a fossil skull was discovered in
1700, and which appears to be closely allied to the Neanderthal
skull, discovered near Dusseldorf in 1857, and about which so
much has been written.”44 Quatrefages supposes that this type of
man is still to be found in certain Australian tribes. These are
not mere guesses, but are conclusions drawn from careful study by
eminent European scholars.45
It is well known that a competent naturalist needs but a single
fossil bone to describe the animal itself, and tell us its
habits. So also anthropologists need but fragments of the human
skeleton, especially of the skull, to describe characteristics of
the race to which the individual belonged.
Neanderthal Man.
This cut, though an ideal restoration, is a restoration made in
accordance with the results of careful study of fragmentary
skulls found in various localities in Europe. The head and the
face present a savage aspect; the body harmonized with the head;
the height was not more than five feet and a half; yet the bones
are very thick in proportion to their length, and were evidently
supplied with a powerful set of muscles, since the little
protuberances and depressions where the muscles are attached are
remarkably well developed.46 Huxley and Quatrefages have both
pointed out that representatives of this race are to be found
among some Australian tribes. Among the races of this great
island there is one, distributed particularly in the province of
Victoria, in the neighborhood of Port Western, which reproduces
in a remarkable manner, the characters of the Canstadt race.”47
Not the least interesting result of this discovery is the
similarity of weapons and implements. “With Mr. Lartet, we see in
the obsidian lances of New Caledonia the flint heads of the lower
alluvium of the Somme. The hatchet of certain Australians reminds
us, as it did Sir Charles Lyell, of the Abbeville hatchet.48
Yet some hesitate about accepting these interesting inferences,
thinking that the portions of the human skeleton thus far
recovered, which are beyond a doubt referable to this period, are
too fragmentary to base such important conclusions upon. This is
the view of Boyd Dawkins, who thinks “we can not refer them to
any branch of the human race now alive.”49 “We are without a
clew,” continues he, “to the ethnology of the River Drift man,
who most probably is as completely extinct as the woolly
rhinoceros or the cave bear.”50 Future discoveries will probably
settle this point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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