René Verneau

“ The Australian skulls in the European museums appear to arrange themselves into two homogeneous series, which do not, however, indicate a distinction of race, as M. Topinard believes, but seem to be determined by differences of sex. The man differs more from the woman in this than in any other race. ”

“ In it there exist, as Huxley has already remarked, individuals and even a whole race, although it is disappearing, that present the cranial forms of which the Neanderthal man affords the most pronounced example. ”

“ The prognathism of this race is so sharp that in the norma verticalis the alveolar border and a part of the bones above project in front of the skull. The facial angle of Camper varies between 73° and 76°. The Papuan woman is generally less dolichocephalous and hypsistenocephalous than the man.
Pure or more or less mixed Papuans are found in Ternate, Ceram, and Timor, in Malaysia. The pure type occurs in New Britain, and at Yanikoro in the New Hebrides, but in other parts of Melanesia it is mixed with the Negrito-Papuan or the Polynesian type. ”

“ The modifications in the face are more complicated. Papuans are found at the extremities of Polynesia, as far north as the Sandwich Islands, as far south as New Zealand, and as far east as Easter Island, where they have been carried by voluntary or accidental migrations, or in slavery. ”

“ We are not, then, authorized to believe that the Neanderthal skull was one of an idiot, or of any exceptional being not possessing the ethnic characters of the race which lived at the same epoch with him. If there still exists a race offering the same characteristics, there is no reason why that race may not have existed in a geological age anterior to our own. The Australian skull of the Neanderthaloid type, which is found, according ”

“ The medial prominence of the forehead is quite marked, the lateral ones are nearly effaced. The parietals present an analogous disposition: their inner borders rise along the sagittal suture so as to form a kind of roof, while the bosses are hardly indicated. ”