I30 
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
supposition of its being more ancient. . . . When, on 
my return to England, I showed the cast of the cranium 
to Professor Huxley, he remarked at once that it was the 
most ape-like skull he had ever beheld." 
To Sir Charles Lyell the discovery of the skeleton was 
an isolated and puzzling event. He never guessed it 
was the first representative of a distinct race inhabiting 
Europe during a definite part of the Pleistocene period. 
We see, too, how narrowly the Neanderthal remains 
escaped destruction at the hands of the workmen, and 
how Huxley became interested in fossil man through Sir 
Charles Lyell. Huxley's contribution to our knowledge 
of Neanderthal man ^ is certainly one of the most complete 
and incisive analyses ever made of this peculiar fossil man. 
His final judgment was to the effect that, ape-like as many 
of the characters of the skull were. Neanderthal man was 
merely an extreme variant of the modern type of man, 
not a separate species or type. A contemporary of 
Huxley's, Dr William King, Professor of Anatomy in 
a remote college — Queen's College, Galway, Ireland — 
reached an opposite conclusion ;^ but his quietly worded 
verdict was rendered ineffective partly by the vigour and 
emphasis of Huxley's statement, and partly because at 
that period men were not prepared for a prehistoric 
world peopled by different species and different genera of 
mankind. " So closely," Professor King wrote, " does 
the fossil cranium resemble that of the chimpanzee as to 
lead one to doubt the propriety of generically placing it 
with man. . . ." He was inclined to regard the Neander- 
thal remains as representing not a new species, but a 
new genus of mankind. He was content, seeing that 
only the vault of the skull was known, to create a new 
species — Homo neanderthalensis — for the reception of the 
new species of man discovered by Dr Fuhlrott at 
Neanderthal. Professor King did not know, however, 
1 Man's Place in Nature, 1863. See also Natdral History Review, 
1864, vol. iv. p. 429. 
- " The Reputed Fossil Man of the Neanderthal," Quart. Journ. of 
Science, 1864, vol. i. p. 88. 
