THE BRAIN OF PREHISTORIC MAN 901 



gvrc on tlu' left sidr is nioif complex in its arraiigcnicnt than \n eitlirr the 

 Javan or Piltdown man. In it mav he reeognized the pars orhilalis, the pars 

 triangularis and the pars basalis, all eharacteristic features of Broea's speech 

 area in Homo sapiens ( Mg. 400). 



Sueh iVontal de\elopnu'nt is indieali\e ol psyehie powers m acUaiueot 

 the still more primitive raees of man and also ol a eaj)acit\ lor speech u hich 

 seems to be approaching niodi-rn standards. Neanderthal man possessed a 

 degree of reasoning ability and judgnunt which he doubtless applied with 

 advantage to the organization of his eiiorts and the rt'gulation ol lile. His 

 acknowledged capacitx for spec'ch shows that his was not an existence ol iso- 

 lation but rather that the economic \ ahu' of communal li\ ing had been appre- 

 ciated and utilized. His acKanccs in the mastery of his en\ ironnuMil may 

 be understood from the better de\elopnu'nt ol his frontal lobe. He had conu- 

 to recognize some of the eliineiils ol human superiority as compared with 

 other living creatures. In his contests with the beasts of pre\ he had gained 

 a certain degree of ascendancy, enough at li-ast, m his later cultural |jeriods, 

 to dispossess his carnixorous enemies from their caverns. These shelters he 

 took over for his ow n abode and thus gave the embryonic sense of ow nership 

 a new impetus. He buried his dead in a manner showing belief in a life here- 

 after. In such customs as these he reveak^d not onl\ a fertile imagination, 

 but that per\asive conception which in time created an egoistic sLiperiority 

 dei'ined wortin of |)er|:)eluat ion after death. 'Set, even with all these human 

 acKanct's, his frontal prolieiencies kTt something to be desiicd. lie ll\(.'d and 

 prospered for \ast jjeriods of time but Uc lailed to de\ clop those C|ualitics 

 which guaranteed to his kind terrestrial permanency. At length another 

 race invaded his dominions and the Neanderthal, doubtless not without a 

 struggle, disappeared before these new people. That he was unable to cope 

 with the iiuaders bespeaks some serious omission in his frontal develop- 

 ment, an omission which the newcomers had already overcome. Delensive 



