THE BRAIN OF PREHISTORIC MAN 893 



lure. Notliing ix'iiiains Irom \\ liu'h to sui'inist' his at'tual customs or to suggest 

 his attitudes toward the woi^ld as he chd or chd not undi'istand it. Sir Arthur 

 keith sa\s that "A sur\e\ ol the eoiuohit i()iiar\' regions ol the brain leads 

 to the eonelusion that we are deahng here with a sini|)le and primitive 

 arrangement oi parts; hut not so simple or so primitixe as to make 

 us wish to place the Pilldown l)rain in a class apart Irom modern 

 human brains." 



The Dawn man, as his brain attests, had come a longdistance from that 

 parting ol the wavs at which the human and anthropoid stocks separated. 

 But it is equally certain that then' remained a great distance yet to be 

 traversed before such a brain coidd attain the development characteristic 

 ol the modern human cerebrum. 



The Brain of Neanderthal Max, Homo Primigexius 



Eoanthropus, as his name implies, is i:)resumed to mark the dawn ol man- 

 kind. But the lull day ol human existence was long m coming. Ages passed 

 during which it seems certain that se\eral dillerent races of primitive men 

 made their appearance, only to die out again. It is remarkable what slight 

 traces of their actual image these earliest inhabitants of Eurojx' have left. 

 There is, however, reliable c\ idence of at least one such race of ])rehistoric 

 Europeans, ihc Neaiidcrlbals. I-rom t heir scattered lossil remains they appear 

 to haw possessed man\ leatures in common. They were of relati\ely short 

 stature, proi)abl\ not a\eraging much more than live feet three inclu's in 

 height. Their limbs were powerful, theii' necks short and extremely muscular. 

 What distinguished them as a race was the shape of their heads and size of 

 their brains. The Neanderthal cranium shows a low retreating forehead and 

 a peculiarly low dome. The head seems llattened from abo\e downward, 

 giving the appearance know n as jjlatycephaly ( Hat head). The occipital as well 

 as the frontal portion of the skull is afTected by this llattening, so that the 



