1 60 ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 



the organic life of the present time, the designation of fossil, as applied 

 to a bone, has no longer the sense it conveyed in. the time of Cuvier. 

 Sufficient grounds exist for the assumption that man coexisted with the 

 animals found in the diluvium; and many a barbarous race may, before 

 all historical time, have disappeared, together with the animals of the 

 ancient world, whilst the races whose organization is improved have 

 continued the genus. The bones which form the subject of this Paper 

 present characters which, although not decisive as regards a geological 

 epoch, are, nevertheless, such as indicate a very high antiquity. It may 

 also be remarked that, common as is the occurrence of diluvial animal 

 bones in the muddy deposits of caverns, such remains have not hitherto 

 been met with in the caves of the Neanderthal ; and that the bones, 

 which were covered by a deposit of mud not more than four or five feet 

 thick, and without any protective covering of stalagmite, have retained 

 the greatest part of their organic substance. 



These circumstances might be adduced against the probability of a 

 geological antiquity. Nor should we be justified in regarding the cra- 

 nial conformation as perhaps representing the most savage primitive 

 type of the human race, since crania exist among living savages, which, 

 though not exhibiting such a remarkable conformation of the forehead, 

 which gives the skull somewhat the aspect of that of the large apes, still in 

 other respects, as for instance in the greater depth of the temporal fossse, 

 the crest-like, prominent temporal ridges, and a generally less capacious 

 cranial cavity, exhibit an equally low stage of development. There is 

 no reason for supposing that the deep frontal hollow is due to any arti- 

 ficial flattening, such as is practised in various modes by barbarous 

 nations in the Old and New World. The skull is quite symmetrical, 

 and shows no indication of counter-pressure at the occiput, whilst, ac- 

 cording to Morton, in the Flat-heads of the Columbia, the frontal and pa- 

 rietal bones are always unsymmetrical. Its conformation exhibits the 

 sparing development of the anterior part of the head which has been so 

 often observed in very ancient crania, and affords one of the most striking 

 proofs of the influence of culture and civilization on the form of the hu- 

 man skull. The Abbe Frere,* whose collection of crania belonging to 

 the different centuries of our epoch is now placed in the Anthropolo- 

 gical Museum of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, came to the conclusion 

 that, in the most ancient crania, the occipital was the most, and the 

 frontal region the least developed ; and that the increase in the eleva- 

 tion of the latter marked the transition from barbarous to civilized man. 

 Blumenbach, also, met with an old Danish skull, whose facial angle 

 was no greater than it is in the Negro. In the sepulchral mounds near 

 Ambery in the Upper Palatinate, at Witterswyl in Switzerland, and in 

 other places in Germany, crania have been found exhibiting a surpris- 

 ingly slight development of the frontal region. f Hyrtl describes a 



* Serres. Gaz. Med de Paris, 1852, No. 31. 



f Jahresber. d. Sinsheim. Gesellsch. z. Erforsch. d. vaterl. Denkmale d. Vorzeit von 

 K. Wilhelmi, 1831-46. 





