Cro-Magnon

“ A new race has appeared on the scene which replaced the Neanderthal folk, and had practically none of their primitive or degenerate, ape-like characteristics.24 The Cro-Magnon people have excited the wonder and admiration of all anthropologists. They were of tall stature, [Pg 31] had long legs, especially below the knee, giving swiftness in running. The forehead is broad and of good height, the features are rugged but attractive, and the brain is very large. They seem to represent a new race and new immigration, probably from Asia, which spread over Europe. ”

“ With these features, the type of which is in no way disagreeable, and allows of real beauty, this magnificent race combined a high stature, powerful muscles, and an athletic constitution. It seems to have been fitted in every way for struggling against the difficulties and perils of savage life.
II. We have already seen that the Cro-Magnon race was discovered immediately above that of Canstadt in the alluvial deposits of Grenelle. It is therefore very old, and was contemporary with the great mammals, now either extinct or emigrated. ”

“ Let it be clearly understood that they are not a degenerate type at all. The peasants are keen and alert; often contrasting favorably with the rather heavy-minded Alpine type about them.
The people we have described above agree in physical characteristics with but one other type of men known to anthropologists. This is the celebrated Cro-Magnon race, long ago identified by archaeologists as having inhabited the southwest of Europe in prehistoric times. As early as 1858 human remains began to be discovered by Lartet and others in this region. ”

“ He hunted reindeer and made use of their antlers as tools. For quite a time he was supposed to represent the peak of achievement by early man.
Before long, however, the Cro-Magnon became only a factor in a broader culture, described as the Aurignacian, and soon the Aurignacian suffered from scientific fission. ”

“ Another difficulty in the way of considering the Canstadt type as a real advance towards primitive man and the missing link, arises from the totally different and very superior type of Cro-Magnon being found so near it in time, as proved by the existence in both of the cave-bear, mammoth, and other extinct animals. ”

“ Probably no race of man in all history has so stimulated the imagination of scientists as that of Cro-Magnon Man. The origin of the race is lost in antiquity, although its arrival on the scene was supposed to have taken place between 35,000 and 20,000 B.C. It is established, however, that hordes of the white-skinned, strong-thewed cave-dwellers over-ran, long before the dawn of history, what today is southern Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. This section of the earth's surface was sparsely populated, at the time, by Neanderthal Man—the last of the sub-human fore-runners of Homo Sapiens. ”

“ The human remains of the Crô-Magnon grotto were those of a tall and handsome race of which the "Red Man" of Paviland was a representative. Other finds have shown that this race was widely distributed in Europe. The stature of the men varied from 5 feet 10-1/2 inches to 6 feet 4-1/2 inches on the Riviera, that of the women being slightly less. That the Crô-Magnons were people of high intelligence is suggested by the fact that the skulls of the men and women were large, and remarkably well developed in the frontal region. ”

“ In our enthusiasm we may easily overestimate his powers; but, as we study him and his work, we feel that here was a great race, and that now some great human possibilities are to be fully attained and made permanent. Apparently he had come from the plateau region of western Asia. Near his birthplace there must have been other peoples capable of great things. We remember that Susa was probably founded not much later than the beginning of the Magdalenian epoch in Europe. But the Cro-Magnon folk decreased in numbers, in stature, apparently also in ability and vitality. ”

“ We can hardly suppose the Cro-Magnon type to have sprung by slow evolution in the ordinary way of direct succession, from such a very different type as that of Canstadt during such a short interval of time as a small portion of one geological period. Again, it is very perplexing to find that the only Tertiary skulls and skeletons for which we possess really strong evidence, those of Castelnedolo, instead of showing, as might be expected, a still more rude and Simian aspect than that of Canstadt, show us the Canstadt type indeed, but in a milder and more human form. ”

“ The Cro-Magnon men and women are large of stature. Their skulls, like that of the Mentone Cave, are of a dolichocephalic type, and so far accord with the Esquimaux, rather than with any Turanian head-form. But it is important to note that in no other respect do they yield the slightest countenance to the theory favoured by some, that the cave-men of palæolithic Europe bore an affinity to the Esquimaux, and that in the latter we have the living representatives of post-glacial, if not still older man. ”

“ As though by signal, the prisoners threw themselves upon the handful of guards, and the room became a seething inferno of flailing arms and threshing legs, the four walls echoing muffled shouts, screams, curses.
Unmindful of the tumult about him, Katon knelt beside Tharn and the now weakly struggling Vulcar. Grasping the Cro-Magnon's steel-thewed wrists, he tugged with all his more than ordinary strength to loosen the awful grip.
"Stop it, Tharn!" he panted. "Let go! If he dies they will kill you!" ”

“ Then the wise hunter would not be able to kill even a little Neela. Wise old men cannot run fast."
Barkoo glared at him. "It was Sleeza," he snapped, then reddened at being trapped into a defense. He wheeled on the grinning Korgul. "Get a strong branch," he said sharply....
With the dead weight of the kill swinging from the branch between Korgul and Torbat, the four Cro-Magnon hunters set out for the distant caves of their tribe.
Soon they entered the mouth of a beaten elephant path leading into the depths of dense jungle to the west. ”

“ Tharn was no stranger to danger or sudden death. Life in the jungles and on the vast plains had little else to offer. Fear and panic were not likely to prolong life; Tharn knew not the meaning of either.
And so it was, that as the angry fighting-men rushed toward him, they were to find no terror-stricken creature at bay. Indeed, so savage was the bearing of their quarry that the Sepharians hesitated, then came to a full stop a few paces away.
They were many, at least a score, but the sight of the Cro-Magnon's brawny frame and rippling muscles gave a dubious aspect to the whole affair ”

“ When Tharn set out to rescue his beloved Dylara, he did not dream the whole Cro-Magnon world opposed him
Trakor, youthful member of the tribe of Gerdak, moved at a swinging trot along a winding game trail that led to the caves of his people. Through occasional rifts in the matted mazes of branches, leafs, creepers and vines of the semi-tropical forest and jungle, rays of the late afternoon sun dappled the dusty elephant path under his naked feet. ”

“ In the Upper Palæolithic the Neandertal species has disappeared. The first precursors of Homo sapiens, or modern man, have come on the scene. A sort of transition from Neandertal man may be presented by the Brünn type, but the prevailing race in western Europe during the Upper Palæolithic period is that of Cro-Magnon, a tall, lithe, well-formed people, as agile and swift as Neandertal man was stocky and strong. ”

“ Suddenly the cloud was gone from the moon's face and silver effulgence bathed the cliffside, leaving Tharn exposed to possible discovery. And so, crouching, the naked blade of his flint knife held ready, Tharn entered the lair of Gerdak, chief of a Cro-Magnon tribe.
As Tarlok, the leopard, stalks the wariest of grass-eaters, so did Tharn make his way into that black hole. No human ear would have been able to mark his passage as his naked feet, seemingly endowed with eyes of their own, threaded their way past one sleeping body after another. ”

“ Yet Late Pleistocene Period introduces us to more diversity in the way of human types. Only one race, however, that named after the rock-shelter of Crô-Magnon in the Dordogne, is represented by a fair number of specimens, namely, about a dozen. At this point we come suddenly and without previous warning on as pretty a kind of man as ever walked this earth. ”

“ The forearm and lower leg are long as compared with the upper arm and thigh; the pelvis high and small; the jaws prognathous, the nose flat, the eye orbits narrow. All these are Negro traits. This is important, in view of the fact that all the other ancient fossils of men are either more primitive than the living races or, like Cro-Magnon, perhaps ancestral to the Caucasian race.
No fossil remains of any ancestral Mongolian type have yet been discovered. ”

“ The pre-eminence of the men of the higher races grows at a rate corresponding with the progress of evolution. According to Broca's investigations, the superiority of the man's cranial capacity is fifty per cent, more among the French in general, and a hundred and twenty-one per cent, more among the Parisians, than it was in the Cro-Magnon race. ”

“ The human character, therefore, does not alter in nature; it does not become simian. The oscillations to which I allude may sometimes be observed in the same individual and even in the same bone. In the old man of Cro-Magnon, of whom I shall presently speak at some length, the femur is the broadest and thickest that M. Broca has ever measured in man, and we have found others of still greater size. Now, in the chimpanzee this same bone is broader and much thinner. Are we therefore justified in saying that the femur of Les Eyzies is partly simian and partly more than human? ”

“ Some of the finest examples of Magdalenian art have come from Bruniquel, on the Aveyron, near the boundary between Tarn-et-Garonne [Pg 437] and Tarn, where no less than four important sites have been excavated.
Fig. 239. Necklace of marine shells, from the cave of Crô-Magnon, mostly periwinkles, some related to species now living in the North Sea, Purpura, Turitella, and Fusus. After E. Lartet. The Crô-Magnon grotto dwellers used shells belonging to existing species, while in the deposits at La Madeleine and Laugerie Basse fossil shells are found. ”

“ He got only so far as granting that American man had a relationship with the Cro-Magnon and the Magdalenian, but he hinted at this relationship merely in man’s “early Old World ancestry.” [18]
The Mystery of the Missing Bones
So far as skeletal relics are concerned, the friends of early man in the New World would have been at something of a disadvantage even if Hrdlička had been less vocal and less violent. Until the edge of the Christian era, physical evidence is scanty in the Americas. The bones of early man are few and far between. ”

“ The Magdalenian retouch shows no influence of the Solutrean; it is even more blunt and marginal than the late Aurignacian. In compensation for this decadence in the art of retouch, the Crô-Magnons now show extraordinary skill in producing long, narrow, thin flakes of flint, struck off the nucleus with a single blow; these 'blades,' which are very numerous, are often not retouched at all; occasionally a few hasty touches are used to attain a rounded or oblique end ”

“ The chief source of the change which swept over western Europe lay in the brain power of the Crô-Magnons, as seen not only in the large size of the brain as a whole but principally in the almost modern forehead and forebrain. It was a race which had evolved in Asia and which was in no way connected by any ancestral links with the Neanderthals; a race with a brain capable of ideas, of reasoning, of imagination, and more highly endowed with artistic sense and ability than any uncivilized race which has ever been discovered. ”

“ The anthropometric criteria that are of most importance in the study of living races, more or less fail in regard to prehistoric man. The hair, complexion, and eye-color are not preserved. The head breadth, as indicated by the cephalic index, is substantially the same from Pithecanthropus to the last Cro-Magnons. Stature on the other hand varies from one to another ancient race without evincing much tendency to grow or to diminish consistently. Often, too, there is only part of a skull preserved. ”

“ Man's nearest relatives are the chimpanzee and the gorilla. Brutes and humans belong to one great family by common descent. Only by strong imagination can we picture to ourselves men of the Neanderthal race, who lived on earth at least 100,000 years ago. Except for the imperishable records on the walls of caves in France, have we any clear conception of the artistic race of Cro-Magnons, who inhabited France and Spain, in a subarctic climate, 30,000 years ago ”

“ There is nothing whatever of the Negroid in the Cro-Magnons and they are not in any way related to the Neanderthals, who represent a distinct and, save for the suggestions made above, an extinct species of man. ”

“ Magnan offered. "Now, I'd like to suggest community singing—"
"If we gave up fighting, we might live too long. Then what would happen?"
"Live too long?" Magnan looked puzzled.
"When estivating time comes there'd be no burrows for us. Anyway, with the new Qornt stepping on our heels—"
"I've lost the thread," Magnan said. "Who are the new Qornt?"
"After estivating, the Verpp moult, and then they're Qornt, of course. The Gwil become Boog, the Boog become Rheuk, the Rheuk metamorphosize into Verpp—"
"You mean Slun and Zubb—the mild-natured naturalists—will become warmongers like Qorn?" ”