Neanderthal Man 
27 
on the other face. The contemporary mammals include the 
mammoth (Elephas primigenius), bison (Bison prisons), reindeer 
(Bangifer tarandus), woolly rhinoceros (Bhinoceros antiquitatis), 
cave hyaena (Hymna spelcea), cave lion (Felis spelcsa), and many 
others. The climate of the time was therefore probably cold. 
Of the skeleton found in the Neanderthal cavern only the roof 
of the skull and a few ribs and limb-bones were preserved, now in 
one of the museums at Bonn, Germany. As shown by a plaster 
cast in Table-case 1, the roof of the skull differs from that of any 
ordinary modern human skull in having enormous bony brow- 
ridges, which produce a retreating forehead similar to that in the 
existing apes. The size of the brain-case, however, and the 
impression of the brain itself, so far as shown, are distinctly 
human. The bone is rather thick. 
The greater part of a smaller- skull of the same race was 
discovered in 1848 in a cavern at Gibraltar, and is now in the 
Museum of the Eoyal College of Surgeons. As shown by a 
plaster cast in Table-case 1, the characteristic brow-ridges over- 
hang a relatively large face. 
Until 1886 the geological age of the Neanderthal and Gibraltar 
human remains was uncertain, because no associated fossils had 
been obtained ; but in that year two more skeletons of the 
Neanderthal race were described by Professors Fraipont and 
Lohest from earth beneath undisturbed stalagmite at the mouth 
of a cavern in Spy, Namur (Belgium), where both Mousterian 
implements and the characteristic mammalian bones of the same 
period occurred in abundance. The bones of mammoth and 
rhinoceros were found not only with the human skeletons under 
the stalagmite but also in the earth above this sealing-up layer ; 
so there could be no doubt that the men were contemporary with 
the extinct animals mentioned — that the skeletons could not have 
been introduced into the old deposit by a burial of later date. As 
shown by the plaster casts in Table-case 1, the skulls are less 
incomplete than the original Neanderthal fragment, and both 
exhibit the characteristic bony brow-ridges with the retreating 
forehead. The jaws and teeth, so far as preserved, are typically 
human, and the only striking feature is the absence of a prominent 
bony chin. 
In 1908 another skeleton was found in the small cavern of 
La-Chapelle-aux-Saints in the Correze, south-west of France, 
and this was so well preserved that Professor Marcellin Boule's 
description of the specimen refers to almost every part and 
D 
