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Show 158 with, or later than, the makers of the 'refuse heaps,' or 'Kjokkenmoddings' of that country. Fw. 32.-Ancient Danish skull from a tumulus at Borreby; one-third of the natural size. From a camera lucida drawing by Mr. Busk. The correspondence between the longitudinal contour of the Neanderthal skull and that of some of those skulls from the tumuli at Borreby, very accurate drawings of which have been made by Mr. Busk, is very close. The occiput is quite as retreating, the supraciliary ridges are nearly as prominent, aud the skull is as low. Furthermore, the Borreby skull 159 resembles the Neanderthal form more closely than any of the Australian skulls do, by the much more rapid retrocession of the forehead. On the other hand, the Borreby skulls are all somewhat broader, in proportion to their length, than the Neanderthal skull, while some attain that proportion of breadth to length (80: 100) which constitutes brachycephaly. In conclusion, I may say, that the fossil remains of Man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form, by the modification of which he has, probably, become what he is. And considering what is now known of the most ancient Races of men; seeing that they fashioned flint axes and flint knives and boneskewers, of much the same pattern as those fabricated by the lowest savages at the present day, and that we have every reason to believe the habits and modes of living of such people to have remained the same from the time of the Mammoth and the tichorhine Rhinoceros till now, I do not know that this result is other than might be expected. "\¥here, then, must we look for primreval Man? Was the oldest Homo sapiens pliocene or miocene, or yet more ancient ? In still older strata do the fossilized bones of an Ape more anthropoid, or a Man more pithecoid, than any yet known await the researches of some unborn paleontologist? Time will show. But, in the meanwhile, if any form of the doctrine of progressive development is correct, we must extend by long epochs the most liberal estimate that has yet been made of the antiquity of Man. UU THE END. G. NORMAN, PRINTER, MAYDEN LANE, OOVENT GARDEN. |
