Neanderthals

“ Since the race was very widely distributed, we may speak of these people as the 'Neanderthals,' while races resembling the Neanderthal species may be characterized as 'Neanderthaloid.' The complete series of discoveries of members of this race is now very large indeed. ”

“ It is obvious that the needs and constructive powers of the Neanderthals, whose big clumsy hands lacked "the delicate play between the thumb and fingers characteristic of modern races", could not have been the same as those of the Crô-Magnons, and that the finely shaped implements of the Crô-Magnons could not have been evolved from the rough implements of the Neanderthals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From 45,000 to 30,000 years ago humans spread from Africa through the Middle East westward to Europe. This was a period of climate depletion and Neanderthals were decimated, some of them forced south to the Mediterranean. Maybe they had a different life than the newcomers. Swiddeners from Africa expanded in the same period, and remaining in the same areas. They had probably exploited different niches in the resources, and Neanderthal way of life must have suffered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have only indirect means of knowing the courage and activity of the Neanderthals in the chase, through the bones of animals hunted for food which are found intermingled with the flints around their ancient hearths. These include in the early Mousterian hearths, as we have seen, bones of the bison, the wild cattle, and the horse, which are followed at Combe-Capelle by the first appearance of the bones of the reindeer. ”

“ Hence, it would appear that the Neanderthals drove out from the caves a type of bear less formidable than the existing species but nevertheless a serious opponent to men armed with the small weapons of the Mousterian period. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Contemporary with this early race in the wilds of Europe, were the hippopotamus and rhinoceros, the cave bear and hyena, the woolly mammoth, the giant deer, the bison, the sabre-toothed tiger and other long since extinct creatures. These the Neanderthals hunted, eating their flesh, splitting the larger bones for the marrow, opening the skulls for the brains, making anvils of the large, flat bones, and in the cold winters clothing themselves with the skins. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Late in the nineteenth, science unwittingly came to our aid. The Neanderthal man emerged from dry bones as a beast, a manlike animal who had fallen to make way for Homo sapiens. And gradually those of us who had the dawn brain, the remembrance of glories far past, realized that we were not mad, but poor deluded men who thought ourselves different—we were different. We were the descendants and inheritors of the Neanderthal, he who came before man and was in many ways better, stronger, more savagely intelligent and possessed of much higher capabilities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At that time the various wandering groups had already made considerable progress both in physical and mental respects, as is seen in the Neanderthal skull, which is the oldest yet found in Europe, standing about midway between the Javanese ape-man and the present low races. All were still very much alike, presenting a sort of generalized human type which may be called Pleistocene man, a common undeveloped form, which did not begin to specialize—that is, to evolve the existing varieties until the several primitive groups had reached their respective homes as disclosed at the dawn of history. ”

“ Now we have a good knowledge of man as he was in the later stage of the Ice-Age—at least a million years later—and may thus institute a useful comparison and form some idea of the advance made.
In the later stages of the Pleistocene a race of men lived in Europe of whom we have a number of skulls and skeletons, besides vast numbers of stone implements. It is usually known as the Neanderthal race, as the first skeleton was found, in 1856, at Neanderthal, near Dusseldorf. ”

“ It puts under contribution all sciences which have man for their object, as anatomy, palæontology, psychology, archæology, history, and comparative religion. All the races of mankind that are now living, much as they differ in external appearance, such as colour of skin, character of hair, form of skull, face, and body, and stature, belong to one species, Homo Sapiens; but an earlier species of more brutal type, H. neanderthalensis, now completely extinct, is known from fossil remains found in Germany, Belgium, France, Gibraltar, and Croatia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In 1857, in a cave situated in that part of the valley of the Düssel, near Düsseldorf, which is called the Neanderthal, a skull and skeleton were found, buried beneath five feet of loam, which were pronounced by Professor Huxley and others to be clearly human, though indicating small cerebral development and uncommon strength of corporeal frame. In the Engis caves, near Liége, portions of six or seven human skeletons were found, imbedded in the same matrix with the remains of the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, hyena, and other extinct quadrupeds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the human bones and cranium from the Neanderthal exceed all the rest in those peculiarities of conformation which lead to the conclusion of their belonging to a barbarous and savage race. Whether the cavern in which they were found, unaccompanied with any trace of human art, were the place of their interment, or whether, like the bones of extinct animals elsewhere, they had been washed into it, they may still be regarded as the most ancient memorial of the early inhabitants of Europe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”