THE DESCENT OF MAN 75 



the Homo primigenius. Now it is exceedingly 

 interesting to trace the steps by which this homo 

 primigenius, who was supposed to belong to some 

 distinct species, proved finally to be only a member 

 of some ancient race of men. 



The lecturer here displayed a lantern slide showing the 

 cranium of the Neandertal man (according to Schaafhausen), 

 and then, referring to Macnamara s cranial curves on another 

 diagram, he pointed out that, apart from size, there is no 

 essential difference between the cranium of a chimpanzee 

 and that of the Pithecanthropus. A comparison between 

 the capacity of the crania of the Neandertal man and of an 

 Australian negro respectively proved the difference to be 

 extremely slight, less than that existing between the crania 

 of an Australian black and of a modern Englishman. 1 



It is certain that there are great difficulties in the way of 

 basing any argument in favour of the descent of man from 

 beasts upon the crania that have been discovered. 



The subsequent history of the Neandertal 

 cranium belongs to the year 1905, when some very 

 interesting discoveries of skeletons were made at 

 Krapina in Croatia. Kramberger examined these 

 remains very exactly, and compared the crania 

 with the largest collection of fossil and recent 

 crania ever placed at the disposal of a scientist, 

 and he arrived at the following conclusion, which 

 was published in the last number of the Biologisches 

 Zentralblatt for 1905. Lest you should fancy that 

 I represent the matter subjectively, I will give you 

 some exact quotations. Kramberger sums up his 

 arguments in the following words : * There were 



1 See Modern Biology, pp. 476 and 480. 



