38 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
ANCIENT MAN— A RE-CONSTRUCTION. 
An effort has been made recently to represent "primitive man" upon such 
a basis as the fossil skull-cap, found in the Neanderthal, in 1857, is alleged by 
some archaeologists to offer. The result of the effort is a bust of which the head 
and trunk at once suggest the gorilla, so much of brutal ferocity are impressed 
upon the facial lines, while attitude and cranial development approximate those 
of the fierce quadrumane. This ideal restoration has been on view at this office, 
together with a plaster cast of the fossil skull-cap, and so many inquiries have 
been made concerning our opinion of it, that the editor deems it suitable to oc- 
cupy a little space in these columns in answering the oft-repeated question : 
" What do you think of it ? " 
First. We are not satisfied with the manner of the restoration, as we think 
that the fossil relic has not received full justice at the hand of the restorer. Tak- 
ing the plaster cast as it has been furnished us, we are struck at once by its size; 
and by several peculiarities of structure which indicate an alliance to existing 
races whose crania are of the long or dolicocephalic type. If this skull-cap be a 
faithful relic of a ''primitive man," then "primitive" men possessed heads and 
brains fully as large as modern man, as we find him represented in races of low 
class, as a whole, and as represented by individuals belonging to the civilized races. 
The interior or brain space of the cast measures 6^ inches in length, 414 
inches in breadth at the ear openings, 2^ inches in vertical depth at the centre, 
2^ inches in depth in the frontal space, i^ inches back from the nasal root,, 
while the breadth in the same region is 3^ inches. 
Now taking from the collection of the Institute a skull of average capacity as 
found in white civilization, we measure its calvarium or skull-cap space interiorly, 
as we have just measured the cast of the Neanderthal, and find it to be 6^ inches 
long, 5 inches wide, 3 inches deep at the median region, 2}^ inches in the frontal 
space, and 3^ in frontal breadth. This skull, it should be mentioned, is of the 
broad type, while the fossil belongs to the narrow, A critical comparison of the 
Neanderthal with a like part of an average negro skull from the Western or 
Southern Coast of Africa, or with a Patagonian or Australian skull, would not 
result unfavorably for the "primitive man" as regards brain volume. Mr. Hux- 
ley allows its capacity to be 75 cubic inches. 
Second. Considerable stress is laid upon the projection of the supra-orbitar 
ridges by those who would find in this fossil some confirmation of their hypothe- 
sis of man's derivation from the lower animals. They point to them, and then to 
the great bony eminences over the eye-sockets in the gorilla head, and claim a 
direct relationship between the two organizations ; apparently forgetting the great 
difference in general structure between them, that whereas the ridges of the go- 
rilla are widely separated from the brain-pan, spread out laterally in a wide border 
of plate-like process, an inch or more, in the mature animal, beyond the brain. 
