File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (18162133071).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo16amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
MEN OF THE OLD STONE AGE 323 Europe directly from the east, or even along the northern coast of the Mediterranean, but rather along the northern coast of Africa, where Chellean culture is recorded in associa- tion with mammalian remains belonging to the middle Pleistocene epoch." "Industry similar to the Chellean, but not necessarily of the same age, is distrii)uted all over eastern Africa from Egypt to the Cape." This then is a faint hint that the earliest type of human- ity to reach Europe came from Africa. For a vast span of time aftxM'waril we are completely in the dark as to the history of man in Europe, until there suddenly appears upon the scene, oc- cupying Europe from Gibraltar to Neanderthal, and from England to the Carpathians, the uncouth race of Neanderthal men, characterized by "an enormous head placed upon a short and thick trunk, with limbs very short and thick set, and very robust; the shoulders broad and stooping, with the head and neck habitually bent for- ward into the same curvature as the back; the hands ex- tremely large and without the delicate play between the thumb and the fin- gers characteristic of modern races." In spite of the big brain, this is a vastly different type of humanity from any races that we know today, and one that was unable to hold its own in competition with the supe- rior type of man which we distinguish as the species sapiens. I have quoted from Professor Osborn the hint that the earliest human beings to enter Europe came from Africa. The distribution of Mousterian remains —■ not forgetting that ^- IT"^
Text Appearing After Image:
The nimble-witted race (Homo sapiens, the same as the man of today) was evolved probably near the isthmus between Africa and Asia. It later superceded the Nean- derthal race in Western Europe. Afler restoration by J. H. McGregor the most primitive, and possibly the earliest, of them was found at Gibraltar—-suggests that the Neanderthal race may have followed the same route. It in turn was superseded by races of men of modern type, before whose nimbleness of mind and skill of hand neither the brutal strength nor the massive brain of the Neanderthal race availed to spare it from extinction. Such evidence as we possess points to the fact that the newcomers also "came through Phoenicia and along the southern coasts of the Mediterranean, through Tunis, into Spain." v.The reconstruc- tion of the wonder- ful story of Upper Palaeolithic man and his works is one of the greatest achievements of re- cent anthropologi- cal research, to which Professor Os- born has done full justice in his book. Somewhere in the neighborhood of the isthmus linking Africa to Asia, Homo sapiens was evolved; and from time to time fresh broods of the new type of intelligent and enterprising humanity left the parent stock and took possession of Asia, Africa and Europe, and even- tually of the rest of the world. The vanguard of this higher type of man in Western Europe brought with it the germs of the culture known as Aurignacian, which perhaps did not attain its maturity and its distinctive characteristics imtil the immi- grants had been settled for some time in southern France. One of their most remarkable practices was the mutilation of the fingers and the sil- houetting of these damaged members on the walls of caverns. This is one of the earliest

Note About Images