United States or Kuwait ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The two skulls which form the subject of the preceding comments and illustrations have given rise to nearly an equal amount of surprise for opposite reasons; that of Engis because being so unequivocally ancient, it approached so near to the highest or Caucasian type; that of the Neanderthal, because, having no such decided claims to antiquity, it departs so widely from the normal standard of humanity.
"The Neanderthal skull, with which also I am acquainted only by means of Professor Schaaffhausen's drawings of an excellent cast and of photographs, is so extremely different in appearance from the Engis cranium, that it might well be supposed to belong to a distinct race of mankind.
As to the ape-like skull of Engis Cave, and the human skeleton found near Dusseldorf in a cavern, we think it would not be difficult to find full as bad skulls on living shoulders, and equally bad forms in skeletons now walking about. To us they are no evidence that the first man was a gorilla or a chimpanzee, nor does his or Darwin's argument convince us that all vertebrates were once fishes.
"Supposing for a moment, what is not proven, that the Neanderthal skull belonged to a race allied to the Borreby people and was as modern as they, it would be separated by as great a distance of time as of anatomical character from the Engis skull, and the possibility of its belonging to a distinct race from the latter might reasonably appear to be greatly heightened.
Schmerling had found in the cave of Engis, in Westphalia, fossil bones of even greater significance. Schmerling's explorations had been made with the utmost care, and patience. At Engis he had found human bones, including skulls, intermingled with those of extinct mammals of the mammoth period in a way that left no doubt in his mind that all dated from the same geological epoch.
In 1860, when I revisited Liege, twenty-six years after my interview with Schmerling, I found that several of the caverns described by him had in the interval been annihilated. Not a vestige, for example, of the caves of Engis, Chokier, and Goffontaine remained.
Spring, one of the professors of the university, to whom we are indebted for a valuable memoir on the human bones found in the cavern of Chauvaux, near Namur, to have a cast made of this Engis skull. He not only had the kindness to comply with my request, but rendered a service to the scientific world by adding to the original cranium several detached fragments which Dr. Mr.
Schmerling, too, had already found similar fragments in the Engis Cave, mixed with flint weapons of the rudest description; and his discoveries have been strikingly confirmed by those recently made at Spy, near Namur, and by others made by M. Fraipont.
And at the same time others of these skulls presented no less remarkable affinities with the low type of Borreby skull. Engis : 20 1/2 : 13 3/4 : 12 1/2 : 4 3/4 : 7 3/4 : 5 1/4. Australian, Number 1 : 20 1/2 : 13 : 12 : 4 3/4 : 7 1/2 : 5 4/10. Australian, Number 2 : 22 : 12 1/2 : 10 3/4 : 3 8/10 : 7.9 : 5 3/4. Neanderthal : 23 : 12 : 10 : 3 3/4 : 8 : 5 3/4.
"This is a brief enumeration of the remains of human bones collected in the cavern of Engis, which has preserved for us the remains of three individuals, surrounded by those of the Elephant, of the Rhinoceros, and of Carnivora of species unknown in the present creation."
Word Of The Day