the organic life of the present time, the designation of fossil, as applied to a bone, has no longer the sense it conveyed in the time of Cuvier. Sufficient grounds exist for the assumption that man coexisted with the animals found in the diluvium; and many a barbarous race may, before all historical time, have disappeared, together with the animals of the ancient world, whilst the races whose organization is improved have continued the genus. The bones which form the subject of this Paper present characters which, although not decisive as regards a geological epoch, are, nevertheless, such as indicate a very high antiquity. It may also be remarked that, common as is the occurrence of diluvial animal bones in the muddy deposits of caverns, such remains have not hitherto been met with in the caves of the Neanderthal; and that the bones, which were covered by a deposit of mud not more than four or five feet thick, and without any protective covering of stalagmite, have retained the greatest part of their organic substance.
These circumstances might be adduced against the probability of a geological antiquity. Nor should we be justified in regarding the cranial conformation as perhaps representing the most savage primitive type of the human race, since crania exist among living savages, which, though not exhibiting such a remarkable conformation of the forehead, which gives the skull somewhat the aspect of that of the large apes, still in other respects, as for instance in the greater depth of the temporal fossse, the crest-like, prominent temporal ridges, and a generally less capacious cranial cavity, exhibit an equally low stage of development. There is no reason for supposing that the deep frontal hollow is due to any artificial flattening, such as is practised in various modes by barbarous nations in the Old and New World. The skull is quite symmetrical, and shows no indication of counter-pressure at the occiput, whilst, according to Morton, in the Flat-heads of the Columbia, the frontal and parietal bones are always unsymmetrical. Its conformation exhibits the sparing development of the anterior part of the head which has been so often observed in very ancient crania, and affords one of the most striking proofs of the influence of culture and civilization on the form of the human skull. The Abbé Frère,[1] whose collection of crania belonging to the different centuries of our epoch is now placed in the Anthropological Museum of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, came to the conclusion that, in the most ancient crania, the occipital was the most, and the frontal region the least developed; and that the increase in the elevation of the latter marked the transition from barbarous to civilized man. Blumenbach, also, met with an old Danish skull, whose facial angle was no greater than it is in the Negro. In the sepulchral mounds near Ambery in the Upper Palatinate, at Witterswyl in Switzerland, and in other places in Germany, crania have been found exhibiting a surprisingly slight development of the frontal region.[2] Hyrtl describes a
