344 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL, 83 



approach to, or merge with, the modern (many parts of the Krapina, 

 La Ferrassie, La Quina skeletons). To which may be added a word 

 about the brain. 



The size and variation of the Neanderthal brain are comparable 

 with those of the Aurignacian, and even the present primitive man. 

 The idea that the Aurignacians were exceptional in this respect is, 

 if due regard be given to the factor of stature, erroneous. The 

 surface conformation of the brain, as shown by intracranial casts, 

 is of a low type in the Gibraltar, La Chapelle, and other specimens. 

 But this does not hold true of the Weimar or the Galilee brain. The 

 intracranial cast of the Galilee skull shows, in the words of Sir Arthur 

 Keith, that " in its mass and its markings it has reached at least to 

 the level attained by individuals in living races — such as that repre- 

 sented today by the aborigines of Australia " {Report on the Galilee 

 Skull, p. 106). And the brain of Spy No. 2, as well as that of the 

 Gibraltar child, were both large and well formed. 



RECAPITULATION 



In relation to what perhaps was its most important period, the 

 Mousterian, prehistory is found to have reached a position approaching 

 dogmatism. But this has only led into a blind alley, from which so 

 far there has been found no exit, notwithstanding much speculation. 

 It has been decided, on the weight of a limited initial group of speci- 

 mens, that Neanderthal man was a man of a different species ; that 

 he may possibly have originated from his European predecessors, but 

 that, after a long period of existence and after having spread far 

 and wide, he perished abruptly and completely, without leaving any 

 progeny, on the approach of a superior species, the Homo sapiens. 



This H. sapiens has been assumed to have come from elsewhere, 

 possibly from Africa or Asia; he was, somehow, cryptically, coeval 

 from far back with the pre-Neanderthaler and the Neanderthaler, 

 eventually to assert himself suddenly and completely, to take over the 

 human burden. He comes on the stage in body and brain largely 

 as man is today, and has, since the beginning of the Aurignacian, 

 undergone but slight alteration. 



A whole line of the foremost workers in prehistory are seen to have 

 beconie identified with these notions, which obliges every student to 

 give them earnest and respectful attention. But no notion or dogma 

 can possibly reach the status of a fact before it has been proven to 

 be such through full demonstration. Owing to scarcity of material, 

 such demonstration has hitherto in this case been impossible ; but the 



