Pagina:Scientia - Vol. IX.djvu/128

120 scientia

The capacity of the Chancelade skull is 1700 cubic centimetres, and thus surpasses the average cranial capacity of the existing Eskimo (1540 ??.), which is itself unusually high. It would appear, therefore, either that the Chancelade skull is not an average example of its kind, or that the Magdalenian Eskimo possessed a higher cranial capacity than their existing descendants. Individuals with a capacity approaching the average are in every race by far the most numerous, and thus, judging from the doctrine of probabilities alone, the chances are in favour of the latter alternative.

The cranial capacity of the Crô Magnon race was also very great; it ranged from 1500 to 1715 cubic centimetres.

Thus, both the races which occupied the soil of Europe during Magdalenian times would appear to have been endowed with larger brains than the average of any existing civilized nation.

In the ‘’Solutrian age’’, to which we now pass, two races also coexisted. This at least is the conclusion to which Piette was led by a study of the famous statuettes belonging to this period. One of these races, according to Piette, was allied to the existing Bushmen or Hottentots, and the mural paintings found in many of the eaves of Southern Prance and Northern Spain certainly find their closest parallel in the similar works of art executed by the Bushmen. Confirmation of this view is afforded by two skeletons (one of a woman, the other of a not fully adult man) found in the Grottes des Enfants, Mentone ; they have been described by Verneau, who refers them to a « negroid » race. The cranial capacity of the boy or young man is 1540 c.c., very much above the average of existing Bushmen (1330 c.c.) or indeed of any existing negro race.

The next older stage is the Mousterian. Apart from a lower jaw of doubtful age to be mentioned presently, it has afforded the oldest-known skeletal remains of Man. The Neanderthal calotte and other bones belong to it, the two skulls and fragmentary skeletons from Spy, the remains of about a dozen individuals from Krapina, the skull and other bones from La Chapelle-aux-Saintes, another fragmentary skeleton from the lower ???? of Le Moustier, and in all probability the Gibraltar skull. The study of this rich material has afforded very consistent results, and we are now able to form a very