Human Origins

-Mixed Northern and Southern Species-Reindeer Period-Correspondence of Human Remains with these Three Periods-Advance of Civilization-Clothing and Barbed Arrows-Drawing and Sculpture-Passage into Neol

ults-Quatrefages and Hamy-Races of Canstadt-Cro-Magnon-Furfooz-Truchere-Skeletons of Neanderthal and Spy-Canstadt Type oldest-Cro-Magnon Type next-Skeleton of Cro-Magnon-B

been found not in one locality or in one formation only, but in all the deposits of the Quaternary age, from the earliest to the latest, and in association with all the phases of the Quaternary period, from the extinct mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and cave-bear, to the reindeer, horse, ox, and other existing animals. No geologist or pal?ontologist, who approaches the subject with anything like competent knowledge, and without th

Celt (type o

deposits of the

c Celt in

are, United St

n not only existed, but existed in considerable numbers, and alread

nares in Spain, and the Tiber in Italy. Still more numerously also in the caves and glacial drifts of these and other European countries. Nor are they confined to Europe. Stone implements of the same type have been found in Algeria, Morocco, and Egypt, and in Natal and South Africa. Also in Greece, Syria, Palestine, Hindostan, and as far east as China and Japan, while in the New World they ha

int Celt (type

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f Quartzite from N

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tually be proved that, with a few exceptions, wherever man could have existed during the Quaternary period, there he did exist. The northern portions of Europe which were buried under ice-caps ar

erposition of strata, and partly by the changes of fauna. In the case of existing rivers which have excavated their present valleys in the course of ages, it is evident that the highest deposits are the oldest. If the Somme, Seine, or Thames left remains of their terraces and patches of their silts and gravels at heights 100 feet or more above their present le

t deposits of rivers and lowest, of caves will be the oldest, and will b

ternary fauna is characterized by a preponderance of three species, the mammoth (Elephas pri

teristic. Then comes a long period when a strange mixture of northern and southern forms occurs. Side by side with the remains of Arctic animals such as the mammoth, the glutton, the musk ox, and the lemming, are found those of

se to some extent. But there are some facts which militate against this theory; for instance, the hyena caves, which seem to show a continuous occupation by the same African species for long periods. Nor is it easy to conceive how the hippopotamus could have travelled

f the Quaternary age, until towards its close with the coming on of the second great glacial period, when the southern forms disappear, and the reind

moth and cave-bear, there being some difference of opinion as to which came first, though probably they

em to a point or edge, while the butt-end is left rough to be grasped by the hand; scrapers with a little chipping to an edge on one side; very rude arrow-heads without the vestige of a barb or socket; and flakes struck off at a blow, which may have served for knives. As we ascend to later deposits we find these primitive types constantly improving. The celts are chipped all over and the butt-ends adapted for haftings, so also are t

ous proficiency in the arts of sculpture and drawing. In the later reindeer period, when herds of that animal and of the wild horse and ox roamed over the plains of Southern France and Germany, and when the mammoth and cave-bear, though not extinct, were becoming scarce, tribes of pal?olithic savages who lived in the caves and rock shelters of the valleys of Southern France and Germany, and of Switzerland and Belgium, drew pictures of their chases and of the animals with which they were surrounded, with the point of a flint on pieces o

iation until modern conditions of climate are fairly established, and the existing fauna has completely superseded that of the Quaternary, the older characteristic forms of which having either become extinct or migrated. How does this affect the most characteristic of all Quaternary forms, that of man? Can we trace an uninterrupted succession from the earliest Quaternary to the la

been introduced by commerce and conquest, without any fundamental change in the race using them. Still less can language be appealed to as a test of race, for experience shows how easily the langua

IT OF

f Mammoth's ivory; from Cave of

F A MAN WITH SERPEN

Les Eyzies. R

EER F

yngen, near Schaff

een different races. But the primitive types have continued unchanged, and no one has ever seen a white race of Negroes, or a black one of Europeans. And this has certainly been the case during the historical period, or for at least 7000 years, for the paintings on old Egyptian tombs show us the ty

t they will be few and scanty, and will become constantly fewer and more imperfect as we ascend the stream of time to earlier periods. It must be remembered also that even these scanty specimens of early man are confined almost entirely to one compara

stent, especially those of the skull and stature, and they exist in ample abundance throughout the historic, prehistoric, and neolithic ages, to enable us to draw very certain conclusions. Thus at present, and as far as we can see back with certainty, the races which have inhabited Europe m

evidence by which to test them beyond the historical period. But the form of skulls, jaws, teeth, and othe

the length, the skull is said to be dolicocephalic or long-headed; if it equals or exceeds 83 per cent. it is called brachycephalic, i.e. short or broad-headed. Intermediate indices between 75 and 83 per c

proportion of the frontal to the posterior regions of the skull, the stature and proportions of the limbs

the Origin of the Aryans, and Professor Huxley's article on the same subject in the Nineteenth Century for November 1890, give a summary of the latest researches on the subject. We shall have to re

wo broad-headed. Of these two were fair, and two dark, and one, apparently the oldest in Western Europe and in the Mediterranean region, and probably represented by the Iberians, and now by the Spanish Basques, was short, dark, and long-headed; a second short, dark, and broad-headed, who are probably represented by the ancient Ligurians, and survive now in the Auvergnats and Savoya

In modern and historical times we find, according to Canon Taylor, "all the anthropological tests agreeing in exhibiting two extreme types-the African, with long heads, long eye-orbits, and flat hair; and the Mongolian, with rou

ve of tall and short long-heads, and tall and short broad-heads.

thic period that the custom of burying the dead became general, and even then it was not universal, and in many nations even in historical times corpses were burnt, not buried. It was connected doubtless with ideas of a future existence, which either required troublesome ghosts to be put securely out of the way, or to retain a shadowy

er safe to rely on the antiquity of skulls and skeletons found in association with pal?olithic implements and extinct animals, unless the exploration has been made with the greatest care by some well-known scientific observer, or the circumstances of the case are such as to preclude the possibility of later interments. Thus in the famous cavern of Aurignac there is no doub

races, so that we have three out of the four European types clearly defined in the British islands and traceable in their descendants of the present day. But when we attempt to go beyond the Iberians of the neolithic age in Britain, we are completely at fault. We have abundant remains of pal?olithic implements, but scarcely a single undoubted specimen of a pal?olithic skeleton, and it is impossible to say whether the men who feasted on the mammoth and rhinoceros in Kent's cavern, or who left their rude implements in the high-level gravel of the chalk downs, were tall or short, long-headed or round-headed. On the contrary, there seems a great hiatus between the neolithic and the pal?olithic periods, and, as Geikie has shown, this appears to be the case not in England only but in a great part of Europe. It would almost seem as if the old era had disappeared with the last gl

his work of Debierre's, and in Hamy's Pal?ontologie humaine, Quatrefages' Races humaines, an

atrefages and Hamy, into four races: 1st, the Canstadt race; 2nd, the Cro-Ma

mburg, though it is better known from the celebrated Neanderthal skull, which gave rise to so much discussion, and was pronounced by so

ar Namur two skeletons with the skulls complete, which presented the Neanderthal type in an exaggerated form. They were found under circumstances which leave no doubt as to their belonging to the earliest Quaternary deposit, being at the bottom of the cave, in the lowest of three distinct strata, the two uppermost of

walked with a bend at the knees. Their long depressed skulls had very strong brow-ridges, their lower jaws, of brutal depth and solidity, sloped away from

g regard merely to the anatomical structure of the man of Spy, he possesse

ain he

n of the Quaternary age is the stock whence existing races have sprung, he has travelled a very great way. From the data now obtained, it is permissible

ave been found in the oldest deposits of caves and river-beds, notably in the alluvia of the Seine valley near Paris, where three distinct superimposed strata are found, each with different human types, that of Canstadt being the oldest. Wherever explorations have been carefully made it see

stral forms, which occasionally crops up both in the human and in animal species. It is thought by many that these earliest pal?olithic men may be the ancestors of the tall, fair, long-headed race of Northern Europe; and Professor Virchow states that in the Frisian islands off the North German coast, where the original Teutonic type has been least affected by intermixture, the Frisian skull unmistakably approaches t

keleton of an old man, which was found entire in the rock shelter of Cro-Magnon in the valley of the Vezere, near the station of Moustier, which gave the type of some of the oldest and rudest stone implements of the age of the mammoth. The skelet

ges and generally bestial characters have disappeared; the brain is of fair or even large capacity; the stature tall; th

h the quaternary into the neolithic period, being found in the caves of the reindeer age, and in the dolmens. It is thought by so

resembling the modern Lapps. This has been subdivided into the several races of Furfooz, Grenelle, and Truchere, according to the degree of brachycephaly and other features; but practically we ma

f the European races, and resembling those of the native American men in recent times. But this affords absolutely no clue as to the existence of other pal?olithic types in Asia, Africa, India, Australia, and other countries, forming quite three-fourths

ers essentially from any other in many particulars, which are all

he main features. It diverges, however, from the known types of Quaternary man in Europe and from the American type, as completely as it does from those of modern man, and it is impossible to suppose that it can be derived from them, or they from it, in the way of direct descent.

nd Bushman differ in the length of skull, colour, hair, prognathism, and other particulars. But they all agree in the one respect which makes it impossible to associate them with any known Quaternary type, either as ancestors or descendants, viz. that of dwarfish stature. As a rule the Bushmen and Negritos do not average above four feet six inches, and the females three inches less; while in some cases they are as low as four feet-i.e. they are quite a foot shorter than the average of the higher races, and nearly a foot and a half below that of the Quaternary Cro-Magnon and Mentone skeletons, and of the modern Swedes and Scotchmen. And they are small and slightly built in proportion, and by

timate which is confirmed by the amount of geological work and changes of flora and fauna which have taken place. In each case also the positive evidence takes us back to a state of things which gives the most incontrovertible proof of long previous existence; in the historical case the evidence of a dense population and high civilization already long prevailing when written records began; in the case of pal?olithic man, that of his existence in the same state of rude civilization in the most remote regions, a