ON SOME FOSSIL REMAINS OF MAN 333 



stock, the Columba livia. And indeed, though truly the most 

 pithecoid of known human skulls, the Neanderthal cranium 

 is by no means so isolated as it appears to be at first, but 

 forms, in reality, the extreme term of a series leading gradu- 

 ally from it to the highest and best developed of human 

 crania. On the one hand, it is closely approached by the 

 flattened Australian skulls, of which I have spoken, from 

 which other Australian forms lead us gradually up to skulls 

 having very much the type of the Engis cranium. And, 

 on the other hand, it is even more closely affined to the 

 skulls of certain ancient people who inhabited Denmark 

 during the ' stone period/ and were probably either con- 

 temporaneous with, or later than, the makers of the ' refuse 

 heaps/ or ' Kjokkenmoddings ' of that country. 



The correspondence between the longitudinal contour 

 of the Neanderthal skull and that of some of those skulls 

 from the tumuli at Borreby, very accurate drawings of 

 which have been made by Mr. Busk, is very close. The 

 occiput is quite as retreating, the supraciliary ridges are 

 nearly as prominent, and the skull is as low. Furthermore, 

 the Borreby skull resembles the Neanderthal form more 

 closely than any of the Australian skulls do, by the much 

 more rapid retrocession of the forehead. On the other 

 hand, the Borreby skulls are all somewhat broader, in 

 proportion to their length, than the Neanderthal skull, 

 while some attain that proportion of breadth to length 

 (80 : 100) which constitutes brachycephaly. 



In conclusion, I may say, that the fossil remains of Man 

 hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us appreciably 

 nearer to that lower pithecoid form, by the modification 

 of which he has, probably, become what he is. And con- 

 sidering what is now known of the most ancient races of men ; 

 seeing that they fashioned flint axes and flint knives and 

 bone-skewers, of much the same pattern as those fabricated 

 by the lowest savages at the present day, and that we have 

 every reason to believe the habits and modes of living o) 

 such people to have remained the same from the time 

 of the Mammoth and the tichorhine Rhinoceros till now, I 

 do not know that this result is other than might be 

 expected. 



Where, then, must we look for primeval Man? Was 

 the oldest Homo sapiens pliocene or miocene, or yet more 

 ancient? In still older strata do the fossilized bones oi 



