MORE ABOUT THE NEANDER MEN 403 



chief importance of this skull lies in the fact not only 

 that its position in the cave-deposits, and therefore its 

 relative age, was carefully ascertained, but that it agrees 

 in its very peculiar form with the Neanderthal skull 

 (from the Rhineland), the Spy skulls (Belgium), and 

 the Gibraltar skull. It, in fact, confirms the conclusion 

 that at this period the caves of Western Europe were 

 inhabited by a race of men with peculiar skulls, which 

 may be called the Neander race in reference to the first- 

 discovered skull of the kind. They were altogether 

 different from the Reindeer Men, or Cromagnards, who 

 came later upon the scene. 



The fact was published some four months ago that 

 the new Correze skull agrees with the celebrated skull- 

 top (called a " calvaria " by anatomists) of the Neander- 

 thal (Fig. 76) in the extraordinary shallowness or 

 absence of " dome," in the retreating forehead, the thick 

 prominent eyebrow ridges, and in the excessive " lowness," 

 or want of elevation of the back region. But further 

 study of the new skull has enabled Professor Boule to 

 show, as he demonstrated to me, that the outline of 

 the new skull looked at from above coincides not 

 merely approximately, but exactly with that of the 

 Neanderthal skull. There is the same great length from 

 eyebrows to occiput, and the same great breadth at a 

 series of corresponding regions. The curious thing is 

 that both these skulls are of enormous size a good deal 

 bigger in length and breadth than modern European 

 skulls, and not small and ape-like, though they are far 

 shallower (that is, less high in the dome) than any 

 skulls of living men. I had, myself, always been 

 astonished by the great breadth and length of the casts 

 of the Neanderthal skull which we possess in England, 

 and supposed that possibly the casts were carelessly 

 made. Now Professor Boule shows that both the 



