VII. On the cranial and facial characters of the neandertal race

Abstract

Abstract So long as the Neandertal skull was the only known example of its kind, the precise value of the evidence it affords as to the history of the human race was open to question, since among the hordes of primitive men who occupied the soil of Europe in early palæolithic times there were probably many individuals distinguished by characters more or less out of the common, and to one of these exceptions the Neandertal skull might by some odd chance have belonged. Now, however, since our knowledge has been enlarged by the discovery of similar skulls or fragments of skulls at Spy, Krapina, and elsewhere, the Neandertal calvarium no longer stands alone, and we are at present in possession of sufficient material to pursue our investigations into these oldest of human remains with the confident assurance that we have to do, not with extreme forms or exceptional sports, but with fairly average examples of a once existent race. Under the stimulus of renewed interest awakened in consequence, the Neandertal skull, and others related to it, have been made the subject of fresh studies, of which the elaborate memoirs of Schwalbe are the first fruits.

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