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"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.
Skulls belonging to this last variety of the human race are more common, I may remark, than specimens like the Neanderthal cranium, a cast of which you will find on the table in the Museum. Whether the average talent be high or low, the Colleges of the land must make the best commodity they can out of such material as the country and the cities furnish them.
A second expert declares that the roots beat all records. They are of the kind that goes with an immensely powerful jaw, needing a massive brow-ridge to counteract the strain of the bite, and in general involving the type of skull known as the Neanderthal, big-brained enough in its way, but uncommonly ape-like all the same. Finally, the banqueters have left plenty of their knives lying about.
He declared the narrow and less arched forehead, the elliptical form, and the unusually large frontal cavities of the “Neanderthal skull” found in the Wupperthal in 1856, to be simply pathological features, which occur as such in certain examples of homo sapiens.
Ans. 20,000,000; in case life began 500,000,000 years ago? Ans. 166,666,666. If the Piltdown "man" had a normal skull capacity of 1070 c.c., as claimed, how long ago did he live, if life began 60,000,000 years ago? Ans. 17,200,000 years. If 500,000,000 years ago? Ans. 143,333,333 years. If the Neanderthal man had a capacity of 1408 c.c. Ans. 3,680,000; if 500,000,000 years? Ans. 30,666,666.
It was clear, therefore, that I had not erred in my interpretation, and that the posterior lobe of the brain of the Neanderthal man must have been as much flattened as I suspected it to be. In truth, the Neanderthal cranium has most extraordinary characters. It has an extreme length of 8 inches, while its breadth is only 5.75 inches, or, in other words, its length is to its breadth as 100:72.
A considerable portion of both torso and limbs were covered with short hair, and their physical proportions were in many aspects apelike, though not so much so as were Ahm's. They carried themselves in a more erect position, although their arms were considerably longer than those of the Neanderthal man.
Its prognathism or protrusion is extreme, and the canine teeth were very strong, while the molars were evidently large and increased in size backward, a non-human characteristic. At La Denise, in the upper Loire, France, have been found the frontal bones of a man like the Neanderthal man in type, the forehead being depressed and retreating, and the superciliary ridges large and thick.
Though with the keenest interest we ransack every nook and corner of the earth's surface for information about him, we are all the while aware that what we are studying is human zoology and not history. Our Neanderthal man is a specimen, not a character. We cannot ask him the Homeric question, what is his name, who were his parents, and how did he get where we found him.
Laing's own conclusions from skulls and human remains which he takes to be those of tertiary man, show man to be as obstinately unlike the "dryopithecus" as ever, in fact, the reputedly oldest skulls are a decided improvement on the Carnstadt and Neanderthal type. Even then man seems to have been the same flint-chipping, tool-making, speaking animal as now.
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