Discovery of the Neanderthaloid Races

The open-air or nomadic life of all the tribes of western Europe from Pre-Chellean nearly to the close of Acheulean times was very unfavorable to the preservation of human remains. It is possible that the bodies of the dead and of the aged were thrown out to the hyænas which surrounded the stations, as among some of the tribes of Africa to-day, but it is equally possible that they were interred in some manner. Skeletons buried near the surface in the river sands or gravels of the 'terraces' would not have been preserved. We have seen that the preservation of the Heidelberg and Piltdown remains was entirely due to chance, the bones having been washed down and mingled with those of the animals; nor has any evidence been found in the grotto of Krapina of ceremonial burial or of respect for the dead, but on the contrary there is some evidence of cannibalistic customs. Even before the close of early Mousterian times all this was changed. Perhaps the closer association enforced by the more rigorous climate indirectly produced greater respect for the dead and led to the custom of burial or the orderly laying out of the remains of the dead in the floors of the partly protected grottos and caverns, to which custom we owe our present knowledge of the structure of Neanderthal man in Mousterian times.

The first discovery of a Neanderthaloid was made in 1848, eight years before the type of the Neanderthal race came to light. This was the Gibraltar skull(26) found by Lieutenant Flint, near Forbes Quarry, on the north face of the Rock of Gibraltar. It consists of a well-preserved skull, with the parietal bones only missing and the face and base of the cranium remarkably complete. In 1868 it was presented by Busk to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London, where it lies to-day. The exact site of the discovery can no longer be positively identified; it was probably found in a still existing cave, and although its archæologic age cannot be determined, yet as its anatomical features are those of the Neanderthal race, and as all the remains of this race which can be dated with certainty are of Mousterian age, it probably belongs to the Mousterian period. Of recent years its great importance in the history of man has been revealed in the studies of Sollas, Keith, and Schwalbe. Thus it has come to be ranked among the Neanderthaloids and is considered of a particularly primitive form, because of the extremely small size of the brain. This feature and the slight development of the supraorbital ridges, so characteristic of the Neanderthaloids, are explained by the theory that the skull belonged to a female.

Sera(27) considers the Gibraltar skull to be the most ape-like of all human fossils and thinks it should not be classed with the Neanderthaloids at all, but should be regarded as Pre-Neanderthaloid; this view is shared by Keith. Boule, however, believes that this skull is of the same geologic age as that of Spy, La Chapelle, La Ferrassie, and La Quina; everything leads us to believe,(28) he remarks, that the skull of Gibraltar is a female skull of Neanderthal type. He elsewhere refers to the skulls of Gibraltar, of La Quina, and of La Ferrassie II as probably those of female Neanderthals.

The type skull of this great extinct race of men is that of Neanderthal—certainly the most famous and the most disputed of all anthropologic remains—appreciated by Lyell and Huxley, but passed over by Darwin, and finally established by Schwalbe as the most important missing link between the existing species of man (Homo sapiens) and the anthropoid apes. In 1856(29) some workmen were engaged in clearing a small loam-covered cave about six feet in height, the so-called Feldhofner Grotto, in the cretaceous limestone of the valley known as the Neanderthal, on the small stream Düssel flowing between Elberfeld and Düsseldorf. They discovered some human bones, probably a complete skeleton representing an interment, which, unfortunately, were allowed to be scattered and crushed. Doctor Fuhlrott rescued the parts that remained, including the now famous skullcap, both thigh-bones, the right upper-arm bone, portions of the lower arm, bones of both sides, the right collar-bone, and fragments of the pelvis, shoulder-blade, and ribs. All the bones were perfectly preserved and are now to be found in the provincial museum of Bonn.

The discovery made a great sensation, but at first the age of these fossils remained doubtful; some 150 paces from the grotto, in a similar small cave were found bones of the cave-bear and rhinoceros. In 1858 Schaaffhausen's memoir(30) appeared, in which he gave the first detailed description of these remains as belonging to a primitive original race differing in every point from recent man, and he never wavered from this standpoint. In 1863(31) Busk, Huxley, and Lyell also placed this skeleton in its true intermediate position between man and the anthropoid apes. The determined opinion of Virchow that this was not a normal type of man exerted so great an influence that not until the classic work of Schwalbe,(32) between 1899 and 1901, did this skeleton assume its commanding importance for all time, and even this was subsequent to the discovery of two other Neanderthaloid races.

At first, quite erroneously, this was associated with the so-called race of Cannstatt, but long before Schwalbe's work it was recognized by King,(33) in 1864, as a distinct species of man (Homo neanderthalensis) 'the man of the Neander valley.' Not long after the discovery of the Neanderthaloids of Spy, in Belgium, Cope,(34) in 1893, proposed the same specific name of Homo neanderthalensis. In 1897 Wilser(35) suggested the name of Homo primigenius, which has been widely adopted in Germany, while among French authors the same species of man is sometimes known to-day as Homo mousteriensis. This variety of names serves at least to record the unanimous opinion that this mid-Pleistocene man belongs to a distinct species.

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.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE REMAINS OF THE NEANDERTHALS

(Compare Fig. 104)

In the year 1887 the Belgian geologists Fraipont and Lohest(36) discovered in a grotto near Spy, not far from Dinant on the Meuse, the remains of two individuals which are now distinguished as Spy I and Spy II. In the same stratum with the skeletons, beneath a layer of tufaceous limestone, flint implements of Mousterian age were embedded, together with remains of the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave-bear, and cave-hyæna. This discovery is one of the most important in the history of anthropology, because it definitely dated the Spy men as belonging to the period of Mousterian industry, and also because the authors immediately recognized these men as belonging to the race of Neanderthal and of Cannstatt, which at the time were supposed to be the same. Here for the first time the proportions of the cranium and the brain, the very primitive features of the lower jaw and of the teeth, the low stature, and several ape-like characters of the limb bones became known; here were observed the prominent supraorbital ridges of the Neanderthal type, the receding forehead, the cranial profile inferior to that of the lowest existing Australian races, the narrow, dolichocephalic skull. The limbs were found to have retained the anthropoid disproportion between the thigh-bone and the shin-bone, and the important discovery was made that this short, massively built, heavy-browed, dull-visaged Neanderthal man was unable to stand absolutely erect, the structure of the knee-joint being such that the knees were constantly slightly bent. In other words, the Spy man had not yet fully acquired the erect position of the lower limbs.

This discovery may be said to have established the Neanderthals in all their characters as a very distinct low race, but twenty-two years elapsed before this was further confirmed by the finding of another and still earlier type of Neanderthaloid at Krapina, in northern Croatia, Austria-Hungary, as described at the close of Chapter II (p. 181 above); a type which with its local variations was soon determined as unquestionably belonging in the same group with the man of Neanderthal and the men of Spy.

Many years before, namely, in 1866, the Belgian anthropologist Dupont(38) had discovered the remains of another member of this race in a grotto on the bank of the River Lesse, near La Naulette, not far from Furfooz, in northern Belgium. This is now known as the La Naulette jaw and is found to be of Neanderthal type. It was associated with bones of the woolly mammoth, the rhinoceros, the reindeer, and a few fragments of other human bones.

Again, in 1882, Mas̆ka(39) found in a cave near Šipka, in Moravia, south of Sternberg, and six miles east of Neutitschein, fragments of a child's lower jaw, extraordinarily strong, thick, and large, and showing the incoming of the permanent teeth. From this very same region is the jaw of Ochos, Moravia, found by Rzehak(40) about 1906. Only the alveolar part of the jaw was found, but it served to demonstrate the very wide geographical distribution of the Neanderthal race.

At this time the Dordogne region, long known to be an intensive centre of Mousterian industry, from the time of Lartet's discovery of Le Moustier, in 1863, had not yielded a single skeleton, or any anatomical evidence of the type of man which in Mousterian times inhabited it. But beginning in the spring of 1908 there came in succession a whole series of such discoveries, mostly of ceremonial burials, at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, at the type station of Le Moustier itself, at La Ferrassie, another station on the lower Vézère, and at La Quina.

In October, 1910, was discovered the skull known as La Ferrassie II, of late Mousterian age; it is probably that of a female, and the remains were arranged in what was presumably a special form of ceremonial burial, because the bones, instead of being laid out straight in a certain direction, were in a crouching or flexed position.

The Le Moustier skeleton was found by Hauser in the lower grotto of Le Moustier, in the Vézère valley, in the spring of 1908, and carefully removed with the aid of Professor Klaatsch.(41) It belonged to a youth some sixteen years of age. The most interesting feature of the discovery was the manner in which the skeleton was laid out.(42) The head rested on a number of flint fragments carefully piled together—a sort of stone pillow; the dead lay in a sleeping posture, with the head resting on the right forearm. An exceptionally fine coup de poing was close by the hand, and numerous charred and split bones of wild cattle (Bos primigenius) were placed around, indicative of a food offering. The flints were believed to belong to the Acheulean stage, which underlies the layer of true Mousterian industry, long known in this locality; but by French archæologists and by Schmidt these implements are regarded as of the earliest Mousterian age, in which it is well known that the Acheulean coup de poing still persisted. Unfortunately, the skeleton was not very well preserved and, while Klaatsch was entirely justified in classifying it with the Neanderthaloids, it should be regarded not as a distinct species (Homo mousteriensis hauseri) but rather as a member of the true Neanderthal race (Homo neanderthalensis). It also proves to be a rather stocky individual, robust and of low stature: the arms and legs are relatively short, especially the forearm and the shin-bone.

At the same time that the skeleton of Le Moustier was being disinterred, the Abbés A. and J. Bouyssonie, and L. Bardon(43) were exploring the Mousterian culture of the grotto near La Chapelle-aux-Saints, a few miles to the eastward of Le Moustier, and came upon a skeleton which has proved to be by far the finest of all the Neanderthaloid fossils, including a remarkably well-preserved skull, almost the entire back-bone, twenty ribs, bones of the arm and of the greater part of the leg, and a number of the bones of the hands and feet. This was also a ceremonial burial of an individual between fifty and fifty-five years of age, most carefully laid out in an east-and-west direction in a small, natural depression. With it were found typical Mousterian flints, also a number of shells and remains chiefly of the woolly rhinoceros, the horse, the reindeer, and the bison. The finding of a mature skull with the bones of the face in position, and in a relatively perfect state of preservation without distortion of the entire cranium, afforded for the first time the opportunity of finally determining not only all the skeletal characters and proportions of Neanderthal man but also the actual size and proportions of the brain. This superb specimen was sent to the Paris Museum, and Boule's preliminary descriptions(44) and finally his almost faultless monograph(45) aroused world-wide interest in the Neanderthal race.

A year later a third Neanderthal skeleton was discovered in the cave of La Ferrassie not far from Le Bugue, Dordogne, by Peyrony. The bones were badly shattered, and the proofs of ceremonial burial were not perfectly clear, but at a glance the skeleton was clearly recognized from the characters of the skull, and particularly from those of the forehead, as belonging to the Neanderthal race.

In the succeeding year, 1910, in the cavern of La Quina, Department of Charente, to the north of the Vézère region(46) were found the foot bones of a man precisely resembling the La Chapelle type, and again in 1911 several parts of the skeleton of another entirely typical member of the Neanderthal race were discovered in the earliest Mousterian strata. The skull bones were somewhat separated at the sutures. This was certainly not a case of ceremonial burial. Like the Gibraltar skull, this is supposed to be that of a female.

Of especial geographic interest is the discovery by Nicolle and Sinel(47) of thirteen human teeth in a Mousterian cavern on St. Brelade's Bay, on the Island of Jersey,(48) which furnishes proof of the extension of the Neanderthal race to the Channel Islands, when these were, in all probability, still a part of the mainland. The teeth were associated with bones of the woolly rhinoceros, of the reindeer, and of two varieties of the horse, as well as with evidences of Mousterian hearths and flint implements. The distinctive features of the Neanderthal grinding-teeth are the stout size, deep implantation, and expanded form of the roots, which, with the heavy jaw, point to the toughness of the food and to the muscular strength exerted in mastication. The roots, instead of tapering to a point below, as in modern man, form a broad, stout column, supporting the crown, adapted to a sweeping motion of the jaw. This special feature alone would exclude the Neanderthals from the ancestry of the higher races.

Thus, through a long series of discoveries, beginning in 1848 and rapidly multiplying during the last few years, we have found the materials for a complete knowledge of the skeletal structure of the men, women, and children of the Neanderthal race; we know the relative brain development as well as the stature of the sexes; we have determined that this race, and this only, extended over all western Europe during late Acheulean and the entire period of Mousterian times, and we have also learned that it was a race imbued with reverence for the dead and therefore probably animated by the belief in some form of future existence.

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; third, features outside of the limits of variation in the recent races of man, and intermediate between them and the variation limits of the anthropoid apes.

Before looking at Neanderthal man as a whole, we may turn our attention especially to a number of these peculiar features of the race. All the earliest observers were impressed by the heavy, overhanging brows and retreating forehead. In recent man there is often a decided prominence above the eyes, from the glabella or median point above the nose outward toward each side, but generally the outer third of the margin of these prominences turns upward beneath the outer line of the eyebrows. In the Neanderthals, on the contrary, these prominences beneath the eyebrows surround the whole upper edge of the eye socket, extending outward around the external borders of the forehead, so that they may be called 'tori supraorbitales'; the extent of this prominent ridge above and to the sides forms a veritable roof over the eye sockets, which appear like two deep, lateral caverns. Such lateral prominences do occur, though rarely, in recent man; they are observed, for example, in certain Australians.

The front view of the Neanderthal face, as seen in the female Gibraltar skull, in which these eyebrow ridges are by no means so prominent as in the male skulls, is no less remarkable for the great height of the face as compared with the flatness of the forehead. Placing the skull side by side with that of the Australian,(50) we observe at once the enormous difference in the proportions of the face and the cranium in these two types, although the Australian represents one of the lowest existing races of Homo sapiens; we observe in the Gibraltar skull the very wide space between the eyes and the very large size of the narial opening, which indicate a broad, flattened nose; there is a correspondingly long space between the bottom of the narial opening and the line for the insertion of the incisor teeth, indicating a very long upper lip.

The jaw is less powerful than that of the Heidelberg man. The Heidelberg jaw we have seen to be distinguished by its general strength and clumsiness and its lack of chin, or rather a chin without the slightest indication of a prominence; on the inside of this very thick, rounded chin plate, the characteristic chin spine (spina mentalis) is lacking; instead, a double groove is present as the point of attachment for the muscles which connect the chin and tongue with the hyoid bone; the ascending process for the attachment of the muscles of the jaw is seen to be unusually broad, 60 mm., in contrast to about 37 mm. in the recent jaw; finally, the condyle for attachment with the skull is particularly large.(51)

Like the Heidelberg jaw, that of the Neanderthals is distinguished by great thickness and massiveness. In general the contours are similar; in a few instances the chin process is suggested by a slight prominence, but in general the chin is strongly receding, and it agrees with that of Heidelberg in lacking the spina mentalis. In other characteristics there are decided differences in the Heidelberg and Neanderthal jaws. The form of the latter is now known from the specimens of Krapina, of Spy, of La Naulette, of Ochos, and of Šipka, and from the perfect examples of Le Moustier and La Chapelle. The Šipka specimen proves that even in a child ten years of age the jaw was remarkable for thickness and strength. Boule(52) entirely agrees with Gorjanovič-Kramberger(53) that the chin in the Neanderthal jaw was only in process of formation, and throughout life attained no more than an infantile form, that the Neanderthals may be ranked, however, as Homines mentales, whereas the Heidelbergs, in which the chin is entirely lacking, may be regarded as Homines amentales.

The proportions of the teeth in the Neanderthals are equally distinctive, especially in the size of the true grinders and cutting teeth. As in the Heidelberg jaw, they form a closely set row, from which the canine does not project as in the Piltdown dentition; in fact, the contour of the jaw and the proportions of the teeth are distinctly human when compared with the orang-like jaw of the Piltdown man. The grinding surface of the teeth has many layers of enamel, and the cusps are well developed. Unlike those of recent man, the incisors display folds of enamel on the inner or lingual surfaces, a condition rarely observed in the modern cutting teeth. In the teeth of the Heidelberg jaw, the pulp cavities are exceptionally large, whereas in the teeth of the Krapina race there is the unique feature that the molars have no normal roots, the roots having been more or less absorbed, a very rare occurrence in recent man. The dentition of La Chapelle is also distinctly human, but extraordinarily massive, corresponding with the general massiveness of the skull and masticating apparatus; in detail it is not that of civilized races, but an exaggerated form of the type called macrodont.(54) The elongation of the crown is also similar to what is termed hypsodont.

The grinding-teeth do not all show this massive size and columnar form, for about fifty per cent of the Krapina teeth have distinct roots and are more like normal modern grinders. In the Neanderthaloids of Spy the teeth are small and the roots are of moderate size.(55)

This study of the forehead and of the eyebrow ridges, of the great depth of the face, and of the peculiarly high, square form of the eye sockets prepares us for a profile view of the skull of La Chapelle in contrast with that of the most highly developed and intellectual European type, namely, the profile of the distinguished American palæontologist, the late Professor Edward D. Cope, who bequeathed his skull and skeleton for purposes of scientific study and comparison. In La Chapelle we at once notice the platycephaly, or flattening of the skullcap, the retreating forehead, the great prominence of the eyebrow ridges resembling that of the anthropoid apes, the lengthening of the face as compared with the flattening of the cranium, the great prominence or prognathism of the face as a whole, and the special prominence of the rows of cutting teeth as compared with the vertical or indrawn line, and the recession of the tooth row in the Cope profile. This comparison also brings out the striking contrast between the high chin prominence of Homo sapiens and the deeply receding chin of the Neanderthals. The contrast is hardly less remarkable in the superior view of the skull in which the Neanderthal type is seen to be extremely dolichocephalic, the back of the skull being relatively broad and the front narrowing in the region of the forebrain until it suddenly expands in the prominent supraorbital processes.

As shown in the diagram on page 8, Fig. 1, the greatest length of the Neanderthal skull is found on the horizontal line directly through the brain chamber, known as the glabella-inion line, a line drawn from a prominence between the eyebrow ridges to a point at the back of the skull known as the external occipital protuberance, or inion. This is also the longest line in the skulls of Spy and of La Chapelle, as well as of the anthropoid apes,(56) but in the north Australian skull, Fig. 1, owing to the greater expansion of the upper part of the brain, the greatest length of the skull is at a point considerably above the glabella-inion line. The median section of the skull of the chimpanzee, of the Neanderthal, and of the north Australian displays in a very striking manner the generalization made by Schwalbe, in 1901, that the Neanderthal skull is truly an intermediate or half-way form between that of the anthropoid apes and that of Homo sapiens. We observe in this illuminating section the growth of the dome of the skull, that is, the great brain-bearing cavity above the glabella-inion line g-i, by noting the contrast in the length of the vertical line of the cranial height, as compared with the space below the glabella-inion line indicated by the letters. This very important vertical line terminates below at the opening, where the spinal cord enters the base of the brain (see Fig. 1).

In many characteristics the Neanderthal skull is shown to be nearer to that of the anthropoid apes than to that of Homo sapiens. This conclusion arrived at by Schwalbe, in 1901,(57) has been more than confirmed by Boule's masterly study(58) of the very complete skull of La Chapelle. After his detailed review, he concludes: As to the unity of the Neanderthal head form, these features are not peculiar to the skull of La Chapelle; in every case they are also found in the skulls of Neanderthal, Gibraltar, Spy, Krapina, La Ferrassie, which witness to the homogeneity of that human fossil type called Neanderthal. These features show a structural affinity between the fossil men of the Mousterian period and the anthropoid apes. It must be noted that many of these features may be found also in recent human skulls of the inferior races, but that they are very rare, very scattered, very isolated, and occur only as aberrations. It is the accumulation of all these features in every skull of a whole series which constitutes an assemblage entirely new and of great importance. 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. This feature is not characteristic of all the anthropoid apes, and in this respect the Neanderthals, Australians, and Tasmanians are more different from the anthropoid apes than are some of the white races; thus the Neanderthal nose, far from resembling that of the anthropoids, differs from it more than does that of some recent human types.(59) Many anatomists, following Huxley, have described the Australian and Tasmanian skulls as more or less Neanderthaloid, and some authors have gone so far as to regard these races as surviving Neanderthals. It is true that some of the skulls in these existing races are extraordinarily platycephalic and show a retreating forehead, that others show supraorbital ridges almost as prominent as in the Neanderthals, that sometimes the prominence of the occipital inion is very marked, that certain jaws show a very retreating chin. Thus one or another of these Neanderthal features has been observed in these lower existing races, but all of these characteristics have never been combined in one race as constant features, and invariably associated, as in all the skulls of the Neanderthals known to us.

In brief, the Australian type of head has nothing in common with that of the Neanderthals except in a small number of characteristics in the region of the forehead and of the nose. The distinguishing traits of the Neanderthal head and face are platycephaly, a retreating forehead, flattening of the occiput or lower portion of the skull, prominence of the supraorbital ridges, chin retreating or lacking, projection of the entire face owing to the peculiar form of the upper jaw, and the relatively small size of the frontal lobes of the brain. In fact, concludes Boule: "All these modern so-called 'Neanderthaloids' are nothing but varieties of individuals of Homo sapiens, remarkable for the accidental exaggeration of certain anatomical traits which are normally developed in all specimens of Homo neanderthalensis. The simplest explanation of these accidents in most cases is atavism or reversion. We cannot assert that there has never been an infusion of Neanderthaloid blood in the groups belonging to species Homo sapiens, but what seems to be quite certain is that any such infusion can have been only accidental, for there is no recent type which can be considered even as a modified direct descendant of the Neanderthals."

This opinion is confirmed by the latest and most exhaustive researches of Berry and Robertson,(60) who conclude that neither Australians nor Tasmanians have any direct relationship with Homo neanderthalensis; the superficial points of cranial resemblance are explicable solely on the grounds of the remoteness of the ancestry. The Australians and Tasmanians are descendants not of the Neanderthal stock but of a late Pliocene or early Pleistocene stock, which, following Sergi, may be called Homo sapiens tasmanianus, of which the Tasmanian aboriginal, now extinct, was the almost unchanged offspring. In respect to 'low' characters, as shown in the diagram, Fig. 117, the Spy-Neanderthal skulls stand quite close to the Tasmanians and Australians, and the Gibraltar skull stands midway between this type and Pithecanthropus with respect to twelve different characters of comparison.

It is interesting to note[AH] that the Tasmanians were found in a stage of flint industry very similar to that practised by the Neanderthals in Mousterian times; their flints were made from artificially produced flakes, including a few examples(61) that exhibited a neatness of edge trimming and resultant regularity of outline, whereas the greater part were characterized by an unskilful trimming and irregular outline; the low status of the Tasmanian implements can most correctly be described by the word Pre-Aurignacian, that is, of Mousterian or of an earlier stage, but not by any means 'Eolithic.'