Neanderthal

“ NEANDERTHAL (nā̇-än′der-täl) MAN. The name applied to a dolichocephalic early Quaternary type in Western Europe, based on the upper portion of a human skull found 60 feet beneath the surface by quarrymen in a ravine called Neanderthal, near the village of Hochdal, between Düsseldorf and Elberfeld, in Rhenish Prussia. Anthropologists have varied greatly in their judgment of this relic. The preponderance of opinion is toward the view that the Neanderthal skull represents the oldest known dolichocephalic folk of Europe. ”

“ The Neanderthal—with his Mousterian culture—seems to have invaded Europe from Asia toward the end of the third and last interglacial, anywhere from 80,000 to 125,000 years ago, and to have left from 15,000 to 100,000 years ago, depending on what authority you choose, and how that authority dates the last interglacial. Unlike his predecessors, the Neanderthal lived in caves; but that was probably because he was the first man in Europe to survive a glacial winter—tens of thousands of them. ”

“ The Heidelberg race was followed by the Neanderthal race, which entered Europe probably from Africa. All the physical features of Neanderthal man (Fig 31) , unite in constituting him a “distinct species of man.” Though he bore in his body the obvious marks of his simian origin—heavy, overhanging eyebrows, a markedly retreating forehead, large jaws and a diminutive chin—he nevertheless possessed a signal advantage over every earlier race of creatures. He had a large head, and in the cavern of his skull he carried the largest and best brain that had so far appeared in Europe. ”

“ Characters of the Neanderthal Race
The skulls and skeletons (49) of Neanderthal, Spy, Krapina, Le Moustier, La Chapelle, La Ferrassie, and Gibraltar have so many distinctive features in common that it is beyond question that they must be classed in a closely related group. The distinctive features of this group are:
First, features found also in the different existing races of man, but never in the anthropoid apes, and therefore human; second, features, all of which have never been found combined in any race of recent man, the group, therefore, represents a distinct species of man ”

“ In striking contrast with the fragmentary character of the remains just described are those of three distinct species of the genus homo, which are now to be briefly characterized.
Homo Neanderthalensis, the Neanderthal Man.
The well-established race known as Neanderthal man is represented by many individual skeletons of varying degrees of completeness and showing a considerable range of diversity. Specimens have been found in France, Spain, Belgium, Germany and Austria. This species of primitive man was of low stature about five feet three inches in the males and less in the females. ”

“ For these and other reasons Hrdlička, (77) who has recently made a broad comparative study of the chief Neanderthal remains of Europe, is of the opinion that the Neanderthals partly evolved into the lower races of Homo sapiens; being not only in some measure ancestral to such very primitive forms as the Brünn or Předmost race of Upper Palæolithic times, but even contributing to the higher race of the Crô-Magnons. He also holds that traces of Neanderthal blood and physiognomy are not lacking even among modern Europeans. ”

“ There is some reason to believe that the Neanderthals were degenerating physically and industrially during the very severe conditions of life of the fourth glaciation, but the consequent inferiority and diminution in numbers would not account for their total extinction, and we are inclined to attribute this to the entrance into the whole Neanderthal country of western Europe toward the close of Lower Palæolithic times of a new and highly superior race. ”

“ The Neanderthal man has already been described. Its structure is animal. Its history agrees with the generally received idea of primitive man as conceived by the geologist. The illustration (frontispiece) presents him bestial and ape-like. A powerful organization, and well adapted to those times. His bones tell of fearful conflicts. He lived to an old age, as the traces of every suture are effaced. His skull was very thick. The strong, prominent superciliary arches denote large perceptives, making him watchful and always on the alert. Those bones tell of a terrible conflict. ”

“ The Neanderthal skull, an extreme example of the primitive type, is pronounced by Professor Schaaffhausen to be the most brutal of all human skulls; though this impression is mainly due to the abnormal development of the superciliary ridges, in which it undoubtedly approximates to the chimpanzee or the gorilla. But it has an estimated capacity of 75 cubic inches, and a corresponding cerebral development in no degree incompatible with the idea that the remains recovered from the Neanderthal cave may be those of a skilled hunter; and one apt in the ingenious arts of the primitive tool-maker. ”

“ But on the other hand the jaws found at La Naulette and Malarnaud suggest the former existence of a lowlier and more bestial form of humanity. Support is [Pg 19] provided by the famous skull of the Neanderthal, but in regard to the latter, conclusive evidence (as distinct from presumption) is unfortunately lacking. Further confirmation is given by the Forbes Quarry skull from Gibraltar, but although its resemblance to that of the Neanderthal was clearly noted by Dr Busk and Sir William Turner [10] as long ago as 1864, the specimen was long neglected. ”

“ The suggestion is now advanced that a comparatively slight increase in activity might result in the production of such ‘Neanderthaloid’ characters as massive brow-ridges and limb bones. (Of existing races, some of the aborigines of Australia would appear to exemplify this process, but to a lesser degree than the extinct type, since the aboriginal limb bones are exempt.) Professor Keith adopts the view that the Neanderthal type is ancestral to the modern types. ”

“ The opinion that the Neanderthal race (Homo Neanderthalensis) is an extinct species which did not interbreed with the true men (Homo sapiens) is held by Professor Osborn, and it is the view to which the writer inclines and to which he has pointed in the treatment of this section; but it is only fair to the reader to note that many writers do not share this view. They write and speak of living “Neanderthalers” in contemporary populations. One observer has written in the past of such types in the west of Ireland; another has observed them in Greece. ”

“ We know nothing of the appearance of the Neanderthal man, but this absence of intermixture seems to suggest an extreme hairiness, an ugliness, or a repulsive strangeness in his appearance over and above his low forehead, his beetle brows, his ape neck, and his inferior stature. ”

“ Some bodies were naked, a coppery-black in color; on others the skin was covered by a sparse growth of hair. Noses that were mere nostril-slits; low foreheads, retreating flatly to a tangle of matted hair; protruding jaws which showed the white flash of canine teeth as the ape-like faces twisted and the creatures tugged at ropes of vines thrown over their shoulders.
The Neanderthal Man had not learned to use the wheel; and these man-animals, too, used only the sheer strength of their corded muscles as they hauled at the body of a beast. ”

“ In this respect the Neanderthal man is not like the anthropoid apes but has a relatively shorter shin-bone, because the gorillas have an index of 80.6 per cent, the chimpanzees of 82 per cent, the orangs and gibbons of above 83 per cent; thus all the anthropoid apes and the lower races of man have a relatively longer leg from the knee down than has the Neanderthal race. ”

“ In the skull, as in other parts of the anatomy of the Neanderthals, we should not expect to find every character intermediate between the anthropoids and recent man. The long Neanderthal face is somewhat similar to that of the Eskimo and is in contrast with the very short face of the existing Australians and Tasmanians. The depression at the root of the nose, just below the glabella, is very marked in all Neanderthals; there is less of the nose bridge than in any recent races, except those of the male Australians, yet the nose is not flattened but somewhat arched or aquiline. ”

“ Neanderthal skeleton. A most important feature of the specimen consists in the fact that the bones of the face have remained intact and in connection with the skull. But the mandible is wanting, and the molar teeth of the upper set are absent.
As may be gathered from the tracing published by Dr Sera (cf. Fig. 16) the upper part of the brain-case is imperfect. Nevertheless the contour has been restored, and the Neanderthal-like features of distinct brow-ridges, followed by a low flattened cranial curve, are recognisable at once. ”

“ The Patagonians, exposed without shelter or protection to a climate possibly not very dissimilar from that of Europe at the time during which the Neanderthal man lived, are remarkable for the stoutness of their limb-bones.
In no sense, then, can the Neanderthal bones be regarded as the remains of a human being intermediate between men and apes; at most they demonstrate the existence of a man whose skull may be said to revert242 somewhat towards the pithecoid type—just as a carrier, or a poulter, or a tumbler may sometimes put on the plumage of its primitive stock, the Columba livia. ”

“ And the mixed descendants of this improved Badonite stock appeared on the stage of action as an apparently new people—the Neanderthal race.
4. THE NEANDERTHAL RACES
The Neanderthalers were excellent fighters, and they traveled extensively. They gradually spread from the highland centers in northwest India to France on the west, China on the east, and even down into northern Africa. They dominated the world for almost half a million years until the times of the migration of the evolutionary races of color. ”

“ A number of important finds have been made during the present century, which have thrown a flood of light on the problem. In 1908 a skeleton was discovered in a grotto near La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France, which definitely established the fact that during the earlier or lower period of the Palæolithic Age a Neanderthal race existed on the Continent, and, as other remains testify, in England as well. This race became extinct. Some hold that there are no living descendants of Neanderthal man on our globe; others contend that some peoples, or individuals, reveal Neanderthaloid traits. ”

“ Nobody could find the particular breed of ape-man from which we were descended. Now science is inclined to lump most of them together in one way or another. There are many theories and many genealogies. Swanscombe man plays grandfather to Homo sapiens. Java man and Peking man become the forebears of the Mongoloid. Other men from Java father the Australian, and even the Neanderthal. The Neanderthals breed out their crudeness in some sort of union with Homo sapiens. Or all of them are admitted to the ranks of Homo, with Neanderthal a degenerate offshoot without issue. ”

“ The thickness of the bones in the rest of the Neanderthal skeleton, to which Professor Schaafhausen calls attention, also approximates to the anthropoid pattern. "No other human skull," says that able anthropologist, "presents so utterly bestial a type as the Neanderthal fragment. ”

“ Let it be supposed that the human remains from the caves of the Neanderthal and of Spy represent the race, or one of the races, of men who inhabited Europe in the Quaternary epoch, can any connection be traced between it and existing races? That is to say, do any of them exhibit characters approximating those of the Spy men or other examples of the Neanderthaloid race? Put in the latter form, I think that the question may be safely answered in the affirmative. Skulls do occasionally approach the Neanderthaloid type, among both the brunet and the blond long-head races. ”

“ The specimens of Neanderthal, Spy, La Naulette, Krapina, Le Moustier and La Chapelle, as we have seen, are the principal remains said to represent the Neanderthal type, which, according to Keith and others, is a distinct human species. ”

“ In all cases we find the thigh bone to be curved and this, together with the points of articulation, show that the knee was habitually bent and that this man walked in a semierect position. Those people known as the Neanderthal race spread out over the western half of Europe and we now know and have excavated very large numbers of the stations in which they lived. They were men—they were human—but they were much more like the anthropoids in many respects than is modern man. ”

“ This race, so called after the discovery of graves in Cannstadt, shows a strong similarity with, and must be considered as, an evolution from the Neanderthal type. The eyebrows of the male Neanderthal type skulls protrude (slightly reminding us of the Gorilla) making the smallness of the forehead still more noticeable. The hind part of the head is well developed. The bones are extremely strong, the skull is thick, and the proportion of length to breadth averages in both, the Neanderthal and Cannstadt types, 71·3. ”

“ The human remains regarded by eminent archæologists and osteologists as the oldest so far discovered are the fragments of the skeleton found in the Neanderthal cavern, near Düsseldorf, Germany; the fragments of a skull from Brüx, Bohemia; similar fragments of the Engis cave near Liége, Belgium; and the skeletons from a tumulus at Borreby, Denmark. The Neanderthal skull resembles that of Brüx, but is so extremely different in appearance from that of Engis, that according to Huxley it might be supposed to belong to a distant race of man- kind. ”