PREHISTORIC MAN 



497 



"early cave man" of Europe and the Near East and dominated those 

 regions during the great interglacial and the first part of the fourth glacial 

 ages. Solo man, from Java, was contemporary with Neanderthal, while 

 Rhodesian man from South Africa is of undetermined Pleistocene age. 1 

 The Neanderthaloid group of men probably descended from the Java- 

 Peking stock. 



Heidelberg man is known from a single jaw, found under 80 feet of 

 river deposits near Heidelberg, Germany. Dating apparently from the 

 interstadial of the second glacial 

 age, it may be 450,000 years old. 

 The jaw is extremely large and 

 massive, chinless and quite apelike 

 in appearance; but the teeth, the 

 open dental arch, and the short 

 tooth row are unmistakably human. 

 Except for its greater size and 

 very broad ascending ramus, this 

 jaw resembles that of Neanderthal 

 man, as do its teeth. On the other 



Fig. 30.7. The Heidelberg jaw, Homo heidel- 

 bergensis. (Redrawn from Howells, Mankind 

 So Far, by permission Doubleday & Com- 

 pany, Inc.) 



Fig. 30.8. The skeletons of Neanderthal 

 man and Homo sapiens compared. (After 

 Boule, redrawn.) 



hand it is not very different from the jaws of Java and Peking 

 man, except for being heavier and having smaller canines and a broader 

 tooth arch. Heidelberg man seems to have been descended from men of 

 Java-Peking type and may well have been an ancestor of Neanderthal 

 man. Unfortunately no implements were found with this fossil. 



Neanderthal man was the first discovered and is still the best known 

 of prehistoric men. A skull and other bones were found near Dusseldorf 

 in the Neander valley, Germany, in 1856, and since then many other 

 skeletons have been unearthed in various parts of Europe and Palestine 



1 The technical names of these fossil men are, respectively, Homo heidelbergensis, 

 H. neanderthalensis, H. soloensis, and H. rhodesiensis. 



