a 
‘senting a grotesque profile. 
Wisc. en; ae : 3 
divine ;” they very rarely studied it. Only onestudy of a 
head has been found; it is a very small drawing, repre- 
Two other drawings, pretty 
much alike, represent the forearm terminating in a hand 
with four fingers, the thumb being hidden. I have already 
told you that the pieces of sculpture are much more rare 
than thedrawings. There are not more than half a dozen, 
and they all come from Lower Laugerie. One of them, 
belonging to the Marquis de Vibraye, represents a woman, 
another represents a reindeer (see Fig, 23). 
V.—Race 
To complete the study of this interesting people, I 
should now like to be able to characterise the race to which 
they belonged. The human bones that have been col- 
lected up to the present time are not, unfortunately, 
sufficiently numerous to satisfy our curiosity. However 
they suffice to prove that this race was very different 
from the succeeding ones, and to prove above all how 
much the learned anthropologist Retzius and his disciples 
were deceived, ia stating that all the population of Western 
Europe, before the comparatively recent epoch of the 
Indo-European emigrations, belonged to the type of shart 
heads or brachycephats. 
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Fic. 31. 
Fig. 28,—Skull of the wom in of Cromagnon 
The tibias, instead of being triangular and prismatic 
like our own, are flattened like those of the gorilla (see 
Fig. 24. The upper part of the cubitus, very powerful and 
arched, supports a very small sigmoidal cavity, and its 
characteristics again recall the shape of the gorilla. But 
the conformation of the femur differs radically from that 
of the monkey tribe. The femur of anthropomorphal 
monkeys is flattened from front to back—that is to say, 
much wider than it is thick, and it does not present, on its 
posterior surface, that longitudinal elevation which in man 
is called the rough dine. In the existing human races, the 
thickness of the femur is in general rather greater than 
its width, but the difference is inconsiderable. At Cro- 
magnon this bone is much thicker than it is wide (see Fig. 
25). The rough line, enormously developed, is no longer 
a simple elevation ; it is a regular bony column, thick 
and projecting, which considerably augments the solidity 
of the bone and the extent of the muscular insertions. In 
this respect, therefore, the Cromagnon race differs much 
more from the Simian type than do the existing races. 
The skeletons of these robust Troglodytes bear the traces 
of their deeds of violence. One of the femurs of the old 
man presents, towards the lower extremity, a cavity such 
NATURE 
Fic. 23, 
ront view. Fig. 30.—Sku!l of the oll man of Cromagnon: front view. Fig. 3r. —Skull of the old 
man of Cromagnon, Norma verticalis 
427 
M. Elie Massenat discovered, some months ago, at 
Lower Laugerie, the skeleton of a man who appears to 
have been buried in a landslip. But the anatomical de- 
scription of this precious skeleton has not yet been pub- 
lished ; and I regret it the more, that it is the only dis- 
covered remains of the Trozlodytes of the latest epoch. 
The skulls and bones, of which I show you the models, 
belong toa much earlier date. They were found in the 
ancient burying ground of the station of Cromagnon, of 
which the geological, paleontological, and archzolozical 
characters have been ascertained with the greatest nicety 
by M. Louis Lartet. This sepulchre, henceforth cele- 
brated, contained the remains of at least five people. 
But only three skulls, two male and one female, were 
sufficiently well preserved to make useful studies. One of 
the men had attained a great age ; the other man and the 
woman were adults ; neir them laya young child. Their 
stature was very lofty, and far superior to our own. The 
length of the femur of the old man indicated a heig“1t of 
more than 180m. The volume of the bones, the ex- 
tent and roushness of the surfaces of muscular insertion, 
the extraordinary development of the branch of the jaw- 
bone, where the masticatory muscles are inseited, prove 
an athletic constitution. 
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Fic. 30. 
as is sometimes produced by our musket balls. It is 
evidently the result of an old wound. It was evidently a 
human hand, armed with a flint weapon, which produced . 
a long penetrating wound on the skull of the woman. 
The width of the opening shows that the weapon must 
have reached the brain. ‘This inglorious murder of a 
woman does not shed lustre on the people of Cromagnon. 
The study of their industry has already proved that their 
social status was not above that of other savage nations. 
An examination of their skulls confirms this notion, 
With them, the sutures of the anterior region of the 
cranium are very simple, while those of the posterior 
region are rather complicated ; besides which the former 
have a manifest tendency to close long before the latter. 
These two characteristics are observable in people and 
in individuals who live principally an animal life. The 
Cromagnon Troglodytes were then savages. But these 
savages were intelligent, and open to improvement ; side 
by side with the proofs of inferiority I have just given, we 
find among them sure signs of a powerful cerebral organi- 
sation. The skulls are large. Their diameters, their 
curves, their capacity, attain, and even surpass, our 
medium skulls of the present day, Their form is very 
