THE NEANDERTHAL PHASE OF MAN ' 



By Ale§ HrdliCka 



[With four plates] 

 I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 



In choosing my subject for the Huxley lecture, it was only natural 

 to reflect what he, in whose honor the lecture is given, would have 

 chosen; and I felt that with his interest, keen mind, and extensive 

 knowledge he would doubtless have preferred some of the most un- 

 settled and difficult problems of man's antiquity and evolution. And 

 he could hardly find to-day one offering more difficulties, and the 

 clearing of which is of more importance to science, than that of 

 Neanderthal man; a subject which, moreover, was one of his first 

 concerns. 



Huxley, as early as 1863, published, as one of his essaj^s on the 

 Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (8vo, London), under the 

 subtitle On Some Fossil Remains of Man (pp. 118-159), a note- 

 worthy discussion on the Neanderthal skull. In this essay, at that 

 early date, and in opposition to the authority of Rudolf Virchow, 

 Huxley recognized that there was no reason for regarding the skull 

 as pathological; that it unquestionably represented typical race 

 characters; and that this race was inherently related to man of to-day. 



Since Huxley, the Neanderthal skull and Neanderthal man have 

 been written about extensively, but often with but little originality. 

 New finds belonging to the period have become numerous — almost 

 more numerous than legitimate new thoughts. To-day it is no more 

 the question of a single skull, but of a large and important section 

 of man's antiquity, documented ever more geologically, paleonto- 

 logically, and anthropologically. But the distressing part is that 

 the more there is the less we seem to know what to do with it. 

 Speculation there has been indeed enough, but the bulk of it so far 

 has led not into the sunlight, but rather into a dark, blind alley 

 from which there appears to be no exit. 



1 The Huxley Memorial Lecture for 1927. Reprintod by permission, with minor altera- 

 tions by the author, from the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. LVII, 

 July-December, 1927. 



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