MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
As to the other human bones deposited at the British 
Museum with the skull and those now added, all that may 
be said is that they proceed from several skeletons of 
modern size and form; that some of them, at least, prob- 
ably came from other parts of the cave; and that there is 
no proof, and but a remote possibility, of any of them 
belonging to the skull. 
The skull itself is positively not the skull of any of the 
now known African types of man or their normal variants. 
Neither is it a pathological monstrosity, such as might 
be due to gigantism or leontiasis. It is a most remark- 
able specimen of which the age, provenience, history, and 
nature are still anthropological puzzles. 
Morphologically the skull is frequently associated now 
with the Neanderthal type of Europe. This may be 
fundamentally correct, but only to that extent. In its 
detailed characteristics the specimen in some respects 1s 
inferior, in others superior to anything known as yet of 
the Neanderthal man. 
The skull is monstrous, its frontal and most of the facial 
parts exceeding in primitiveness every other known speci- 
men of early man. The skullcap, on the other hand, from 
behind the frontal ridges is of a decidedly higher grade, 
equaling in many respects, and in some even exceeding, 
those of the more typical Neanderthal crania. 
The subject was plainly a very powerful male, of prob- 
ably over forty years of age. The skull is in no way 
pathological, though showing some diseased conditions; 
and it can not be conceived as a near-reversion. It 
represents a distinct, crude variety of man, which strange- 
ly combines many ancient, even pre-Neanderthal condi- 
tions, with others that are relatively modern. It could 
represent conceivably a very brutish individual develop- 
ment of the upper Neanderthal or the post-Neanderthal 
period. 
The most striking features of the skull are its huge 
supraorbital ridges. They are not far from twice as stout 
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