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skulls was quite human, but the brain was bigger behind and lower in front
than the human brain. Their intellectual faculties were differently arranged.
They were not ancestral to the human line. Mentally and physically they were
upon a different line from the human line.
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Skulls and bones of this extinct species of man were found at Neanderthal
among other places, and from that place these strange proto-men have been
christened Neanderthal Men, or Neanderthalers. They must have endured in
Europe for many hundreds or even thousands of years.
At that time the climate and geography of our world was very different from
what they are at the present time. Europe for example was covered with ice
reaching as far south as the Thames and into Central Germany and Russia; there
was no Channel separating Britain from France; the Mediterranean and the Red
Sea were great valleys, with perhaps a chain of lakes in their deeper
portions, and a great inland sea spread from the present Black Sea across
South Russia and far into Central Asia. Spain and all of Europe not actually
under ice consisted of bleak uplands under a harder climate than that of
Labrador, and it was only when North Africa was reached that one would have
found a temperate climate. Across the cold steppes of Southern Europe with its
sparse arctic vegetation, drifted such hardy creatures as the woolly mammoth,
and woolly rhinoceros, great oxen and reindeer, no doubt following the
vegetation northward in spring and southward in autumn.
Such was the scene through which the Neanderthaler wandered, gathering such
subsistence as he could from small game or fruits and berries and roots.
Possibly he was mainly a vegetarian, chewing twigs and roots. His level
elaborate teeth suggest a largely vegetarian dietary. But we also find the
long marrow bones of great animals in his caves, cracked to extract the
marrow. His weapons could not have been of much avail in open conflict with
great beasts, but it is supposed that he attacked them with spears at
difficult river crossings and even constructed pitfalls for them. Possibly he
followed the herds and preyed upon any dead that were killed in fights, and
perhaps he played the part of jackal to the sabre-toothed tiger which still
survived in his day. Possibly in the bitter hardships of the Glacial Ages this
creature had taken to attacking animals after long ages of vegetarian
adaptation.
We cannot guess what this Neanderthal man looked like. He may have been very
hairy and very inhuman-looking indeed. It is even doubtful if he went erect.
He may have used his knuckles as well as his feet to hold himself up. Probably
he went about alone or in small family groups. It is inferred from the
structure of his jaw that he was incapable of speech as we understand it.
For thousands of years these Neanderthalers were the highest animals that the
European area had ever seen; and then some thirty or thirty-five thousand
years ago as the climate grew warmer a race of kindred beings, more
intelligent, knowing more, talking and co-operating together, came drifting
into the Neanderthaler's world from the south. They ousted the Neanderthalers
from their caves and squatting places; they hunted the same food; they
probably made war upon their grisly predecessors and killed them off. These
newcomers from the south or the east-for at present we do not know their
region of origin-who at last drove the Neanderthalers out of existence
altogether, were beings of our own blood and kin, the first True Men. Their
brain-cases and thumbs and necks and teeth were anatomically the same as our
own. In a cave at Cro-Magnon and in another at Grimaldi, a number of skeletons
have been found, the earliest truly human remains that are so far known.
So it is our race comes into the Record of the Rocks, and the story of
mankind begins.
The world was growing liker our own in those days though the climate was
still austere. The glaciers of the Ice Age were receding in Europe; the
reindeer of France and Spain presently gave way to great herds of horses as
grass increased upon the steppes, and the mammoth became more and more rare in
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southern Europe and finally receded northward altogether’
.
We do not know where the True Men first originated. But in the summer of
1921, an extremely interesting skull was found together with pieces of a
skeleton at Broken Hill in South Africa, which seems to be a relic of a third
sort of man, intermediate in its characteristics between the Neanderthaler and
the human being. The brain-case indicates a brain bigger in front and smaller
behind than the Neanderthaler's, and the skull was poised erect upon the
backbone in a quite human way. The teeth also and the bones are quite human.
But the face must have been ape-like with enormous brow ridges and a ridge
along the middle of the skull. The creature was indeed a true man, so to
speak, with an ape-like, Neanderthaler face. This Rhodesian Man is evidently [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]