421 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Man 



(Address at Centenary of the American Pat- 

 ent System, Washington, D. C., 1891; Pro- 

 ceedings of the Congress, p. 404.) 



2O6O. 



The Neanderthal 



Skull Thoroughly Human No Link between 

 Man and Ape. Under whatever aspect we 

 view this [Neanderthal] cranium, whether 

 we regard its vertical depression, the enor- 

 mous thickness of its supraciliary ridges, its 

 sloping occiput, or its long and straight 

 squamosal suture, we meet with ape-like 

 characters, stamping it as the most pithe- 

 coid of human crania yet discovered. But 

 Professor Schaaffhausen states that the 

 cranium, in its present condition, holds 

 1,033.24 cubic centimeters of water, or about 

 63 cubic inches, and as the entire skull 

 could hardly have held less than an addi- 

 tional 12 cubic inches, its capacity may be 

 estimated at about 75 cubic inches, which is 

 the average capacity given by Morton for 

 Polynesian and Hottentot skulls. 



So large a mass of brain as this would 

 alone suggest that the pithecoid tendencies, 

 indicated by this skull, did not extend deep 

 into the organization ; and this conclusion is 

 borne out by the dimensions of the other 

 bones of the skeleton given by Professor 

 Schaaffhausen, which show that the absolute 

 height and relative proportions of the limbs 

 were quite those of an European of middle 

 stature. The bones are indeed stouter, but 

 this and the great development of the mus- 

 cular ridges noted by Dr. Schaaffhausen are 

 characters to be expected in savages.' The 

 Patagonians, exposed without shelter or pro- 

 tection to a climate possibly not very dis- 

 similar from that of Europe at the time 

 during which the Neanderthal man lived, 

 are remarkable for the stoutness of their 

 limb bones. 



In no sense, then, can the Neanderthal 

 bones be regarded as the remains of a 

 human being intermediate between men and 

 apes. At most, they demonstrate the ex- 

 istence of a man whose skull may be said to 

 revert somewhat toward the pithecoid type. 

 HUXLEY Man's Place in Nature, p. 253. 

 (Hum.) 



2O61. MAN, PRIMITIVE Adopts Orna- 

 ment before Clothing. Man has been de- 

 fined as the animal that is fond of finery. 

 Before he manifests any care for clothing, 

 unless compelled by the inclemency of his 

 climate, he thinks of his ornament. BAS- 

 TIAN Allgemeine Grundziige der Ethnologic, 

 p. 24. (Translated for Scientific Side- 

 Lights.) 



2O62. Camel the Insepa- 

 rable Companion of The One Great Essen- 

 tial of Patriarchal Life Long Historic Rec- 

 ord of an Animal "Ship of the Desert." In 

 the poetry of the East, the camel is desig- 

 nated as the land ship, or the ship of the 

 desert (Sefynet-el-badyet). The camel is, 

 however, not only the carrier in the desert, 

 and the medium for maintaining communi- 

 cation between different countries, but is 



also, as Carl Putter has shown [" Asien," 

 610, . . . " the main requirement of a 

 nomadic mode of life in the patriarchal 

 stage of national development, in the torrid 

 regions of our planet, where rain is either 

 wholly or in a great degree absent. No ani- 

 mal's life is so closely associated by natural 

 bonds with a certain primitive stage of the 

 development of the life of man as that of 

 the camel among the Bedouin tribes, nor 

 has any other been established in like man- 

 ner by a continuous historical evidence of 

 several thousand years." HUMBOLDT Views 

 of Nature, p. 51. (Bell, 1896.) 



2OO3. 



Fancy Sketch of 



What Remains Indicate. Carrying our 

 imagination back into the past, we see 

 before us on the low shores of the Da- 

 nish Archipelago a race of small men, 

 with heavy overhanging brows, round heads, 

 and faces probably much like those of 

 the present Laplanders. As they must evi- 

 dently have had some protection from the 

 weather, it is most probable that they lived 

 in tents made of skins. The total absence 

 of metal in the Kjokkenmoddings [kitchen- 

 middens] indicates that they had not yet 

 any weapons except those made of wood, 

 stone, horn, and bone. Their principal food 

 must have consisted of shell-fish, but they 

 were able to catch fish, and often varied 

 their diet by game caught in hunting. It is 

 evident that marrow was considered a great 

 delicacy, for every single bone which con- 

 tained any was split open in the manner 

 best adapted to extract the precious morsel. 

 AVEBURY Prehistoric Times, ch. 7, p. 229. 

 (A., 1900.) 



2064. 



Incapable of Ab- 



stract Conceptions The Infinite The In- 

 visible Personality Nearer and Simpler as 

 Well. Those who approach the subject with 

 the assumption that the idea of a divine Be- 

 ing or a superhuman personality must be a 

 derivative, and cannot be a primary concep- 

 tion, allow all their language to be colored 

 by the theory that vague perceptions of 

 " The Invisible " or " The Infinite " in rivers, 

 or in mountains, or in sun and moon and 

 stars, were the earliest religious conceptions 

 of the human mind. But this theory cannot 

 be accepted by those who remember that 

 there is nothing in Nature so near to us as 

 our own nature nothing so mysterious and 

 yet so intelligible nothing so invisible, yet 

 so suggestive of energy and of power over 

 things that can be seen. Nothing else in 

 Nature speaks to us so constantly or so di- 

 rectly. Neither the infinite nor the invisible 

 contains any religious element at all, unless 

 as conditions of a being of which invisibility 

 and infinitude are attributes. There is no 

 probability that any abstract conceptions 

 whatever about the nature or properties of 

 material force can have been among the 

 earliest conceptions of the human mind. 

 Still less is it reasonable to suppose that 

 such conceptions were more natural and 



