Thomas Huxley 1862

Thomas Henry Huxley, 'A Lecture on the Fossil Remains of Man, delivered at the Royal Institution, February 7th, 1862...', The Lancet, 15 February 1862, pp. 166-7.  Original version.

 IT is the object of this lecture to explain why those persons who look at Man from a scientific point of view as the great final term of animal development, regard two skulls not very long since discovered as the most venerable and the most interesting specimens of humanity. Of those two skulls (of which casts were on the table), the one belongs to the oldest man of whom we hare any knowledge, and the other seems to be the lowest and most degraded in rank of any which can claim humanity. In order to explain how these skulls progress that interest, why one of them may be regarded as the most ancient relic of man, and what are their relations to the existing races, many preliminary details must be reviewed.

And first, a few words as to the terms much used by the student of craniology - High Organisation and Low Organisation, Elevation and Degradation. The variations to which these terms are applied are best seen in running through the mammalian scale, and comparing the brain-receptacle of man with those of lower animals. Degradation is a relative term. In comparing the brain-case of man with those of the great Anthropoid apes, the relative differences which indicate degradation can easily seen. First of all, they differ in absolute capacity: the human cranium has absolutely the greatest contents in man, we observe that the brain case is large, the facial element small. In a gorilla the cranium is small, and quite outweighed by the vast development of jaw, and of the massive bony

prominences over the orbit and those to which the muscles, and especially those muscles which move the head and jaws, take attachment. In the chimpanzee we have, similarly, a small cranium, large jaw, and very prominent supra orbital ridges, so that the eyes are deep set, and the face projects, outweighing the head. Thus we observe a gradually diminishing brain case, and an increase of facial development and of the bony ridges over the eye, which overhang the face and obscure the characters of the skull. These are the characters of degradation.

It is the more necessary to consider carefully the features of the skull of man in the present inquiry, because we have little else than the skulls left from which to decipher the nature of those early men of whom we speak.

Among the races of men, as they vary, we find a certain approximation to one of two types. If, on the one hand, we take a skull such as that of the negro, we find it long and narrow. The longitudinal diameter greatly predominates, so that the transverse is not more than from six-tenths to seven-tenths of the longitudinal measurement. This type of skull is known as the " dolichocephalic" or long-headed - and the negro is of a long-headed race, although long headed only in this technical anatomical sense, and by no means fitted to compete in the contests of life with the " long-headed" and astute members of European society. Examine, on the other hand, the skull of a Turk or a Tartar, and we shall observe another type of conformation. The transverse measurement here more nearly approaches the longitudinal, of which it constitutes from eight-tenths to more than nine-tenths. This is the brachycephalic character. These characters have been systematically examined and explained by Retzius. The standard of brachycephalism is when the transverse is eight- tenths or more of the longitudinal diameter.

These differences are, however, quite apart from physiological distinctions of character. We may find, for example, such as the Caffre and the Calmuc, with very opposite measurements, but yet very similar in morals and manners, or rather in the total want of both morals and manners.

Next, if we take the skull of a Turk, Greek, or European, we may observe that the face hardly projects beyond the level of the forehead; but in an African skull the face projects, the nose projects, and so does the jaw. These are the characteristic differential qualities, of which the first is known as orthognathism - a character of elevation; and the second as prognathism - a character of degradation. On these the illustrious Camper, with the luminous and far reaching intelligence for which he was distinguished, founded his facial angle, and saw his way to a scientific craniology. The indications so furnished are valuable, but insufficient.

In inquiring into the shape and structure of the skull, ethnologists have at the same time connected these varieties with geographical distribution. It may be greatly doubted whether these varieties of form can be mapped out with the accuracy that has been assumed. But certain broad and sure results have been obtained which may be safely stated. If we trace a map of the world, and draw a line from Russian Tartary to the Bight of Benin at the northern and eastern end we shall find that the brachycephalic type prevail. Here are the Mongolian races, the Turks and Tartars, who are the most perfect specimens of brachycephalism. At the southwestern extremity, the Bight of Benin, are found the dolichocephalic people, of the purest negro type. Furthermore, at the northeast extremity of the line, we find orthognathous people, and at the south - western extremity of the line we find the tribes who are most eminently and markedly prognathous. This is one of the broadest and most indisputable truths which ethnology has contributed to science.

This distinction accompanies a prodigious constraint to the conditions of life. At the northern extremity of the line we have a cold, dry, and barren climate - at the southern, a country heated, steaming and crowded with a rank and reeking vegetation. They are the two ethnological poles. In whichever direction you pass you will find that as you go to the west and the south from the northern pole you get amongst a long - headed people, with faces more or less projecting; and as you pass towards the north and the east from the southern pole, you become mixed up with tribes gradually approximating to the type of brachycephalism. Pass southward from the northern pole through Cochin China, and we find a gradual tendency to prognathism. take the other pole, and pass West Africa northward or to the east, and an opposite tendency to orthognathism is perceived, until we come to a people, along a line from the British Islands to Hindostan, oval- headed, more or less prognathous or orthognathous, and standing half way in the scale.

This is a broad statement, open to many exceptions and variations, but affording a fair view of the cranial characters of the tribes of men as they are distributed over the earth. But has this distribution been always the same? Has the human frame been invariable. Does paleontology, in its application to ethnology, show here also incessant changes and successions? or does it exhibit a uniform state of things through all the ages in which we have traces of man? The answer differs in different regions. There are no materials for saying that Asia was ever inhabited by a different race; none as to the Polynesian Archipelago or the Australian continent - none as to North America or the extreme southern parts of America. But there is a certain amount of evidence that, in the valley of the Mississippi there once existed a race differing from the recent Indian tribes; that the marvellous race of men who constructed those great mounds, replete with proofs of an older civilisation, were of another type. These mounds do not afford much evidence of this matter; but when skulls are found there they are those of a round headed people. But pass from America to the old World, and the indications of older races than those now occupying the territory are well marked.

Passing beyond the middle ages, we find everywhere traces on the earth of the great Roman race. Leaving them behind, we come, in Western Europe, to the relics of a long-headed people, the parents of the Germanic race, and allied to the Scandinavian races. They were workers in iron, and their epoch of occupation lasted a long time. Before these we find the evidences of the preexistence of a smaller race of long - headed men, like the Hindoos; not workers in iron, but in bronze, and who possessed a certain cultivation and domesticated for their use certain animals. Archaeologists can go further than this. Behind these there is a third race - a ruder people, in whose tombs are found certain weapons, but no domesticated animals; they are characterised by fashioning for themselves weapons of stone, flint, serpentine, and the like materials. They buried their warriors in the tumuli sitting, and, each provided with his heavy axe, ready to meet either friend or foe when he passed through the solemn portals of death into the blessed regions, of which they formed their own rude and savage notions. These weapons were always made of the same stony material, and always ground to a sharp edge. The Danish archaeologists who have examined very carefully the cranial character of the human relics here interred have found that they belonged to a much rounder headed people than those of the succeeding period. Mr. Busk, who has personally repeated, and added to, those investigations in Denmark, has confirmed these statements. These skulls are rather below the average bulk, they are somewhat rounded, the transverse amounting to eight-tenths of the longitudinal diameter, and some of them are remarkable for the flatness of the forehead and the prominence of the supra-orbital ridges; the jaws are large, but not prognathous. These characters belong to all the skulls of the men of the stone epoch.

How far is this stone epoch distant from us in time? This is a question always difficult to answer, and to which a cautious reply must needs be given. Distant it was indeed - far beyond any records of history. But some singular means exist of estimating the space of time which separates those races from us. Denmark possesses great peat-bogs in various parts of the country, in which are embedded forests of trees. In the more superficial layers of the soil are embedded fallen trunks of beech-trees - great trunks of beech like those which now adorn the surface of the country and are its chief and most graceful decoration. Beneath these beech trees we come to a lower forest - a forest of oak-trees, fallen with their tops to the centre, of noble size-oaks which had taken centuries to grow, and which have been centuries in the ground. Dig deeper again, and you come to another forest of large and splendid pine trees - noble trunks of three feet in diameter, of great age and magnificent proportions. Now, in the memory of man there has been nothing in Denmark but beech trees. Past the memory of man grew and flourished those giant oaks they had centuries of growth, and for centuries they have been buried. Past these centuries we must look down the vista of ages for the time when the pine-trees stood erect, and slowly gathered their bulk, and fell into the lowest part of this deep peat, to be again covered with the wrecks of succeeding epochs of vegetation.

Now, in the beech forests of the bog we find only traces of the men of iron; amongst the oaks, only of the men of bronze; and amongst the pines, only of the men who worked in stone, and nothing but stone. Beneath the pines we find only peat, and no remains of man of any kind whatever.

What is meant by this lapse, not so much of time, but of facts ? We cannot number the ages that saw the rise and fall of these monarchs of the vegetable world, and the succession of these races of man. But great as the range of time thus traversed must have been, it is inappreciable when compared with the chronology of geology. Contrasted with the distance of the earlier geological epochs, it is as the diameter of our earth compared to our distance from one of the fixed stars.

In the time of the men of the stone epoch the physical geography of Europe was as it is now. What was dry land then is dry land now, the caves and fissures which are now high and dry were then high and dry: but beyond that epoch lies the age when the physical features of the land were very different. What is now sea and seashore was then dry land, covered with thick forests, what is now the channel of a river was then far distant from any water-course. It is in caves such as these that, associated with the bones of mammalians now extinct, and of others that could only have existed under totally different climatal conditions - associated with the bones of the Elephas primigenius, the urus, and the great cave-bear, we find those wonderful stone axes which have been lately so carefully examined and discussed - stone axes not polished and ground, but hacked and chipped to a sharp edge. These are the work of human hands, yet they are found in European soil, together with the remains of the mammoth, the cave bear, the hyena, and hairy rhinoceros. What manner of man was this?

An approximative answer may be given from the result of the examination of the two human skulls which form the subject of the present inquiry. The one of them was found by Schmerling in 1833, in the Cave of Engis, near Liege, in the Valley of the Meuse, high and dry, covered with a deposit of red earth and beneath stalagmite. In the same position, and at the same time, were found associated with these human skulls bones of the cave-bear and its contemporaries. The skulls of the man and of these early animals were alike in condition, and equally deprived of their gelatine. Now the anatomist cannot, in virtue of his science, enter into any discussion as to the age of these skulls and the age of the strata in which they were found. This is the province of the geologist, and I take the evidence of Sir Charles Lyell on this point. Sir Charles has revisited this cave, and re-examined the ground in which the relics were discovered, and he has staked his reputation as a geologist on the coexistence of the skull of the man with the bones of the animals. I take the evidence of Sir Charles Lyell as conclusive, and assume that the man who made those stone axes was coeval with the brutes, and that here is the skull of one of that race. No axes were found in this precise cave, but the shaped flints which have been found belong to this epoch. In this cave stone flakes were found but no shaped axes. It is certain, however, that the two belong to the one period. This is the skull of one of those primeval men who flourished when over England ranged the bison, the cave bear, and the hairy rhinoceros.

What are the characters of this brain-case? What are the deviations from the highest human character of skull? What are its relations to the present race of men? It is a skull not badly shaped; it is long; the transverse diameter is considerably less than the longitudinal diameter - the forehead is fairly and well developed. But the supra-orbital ridges are rather prominent. This is, indeed, a character of degradation; but a vast number of European skulls have the same peculiarity. Schmerling thought the skull one of low race; but others have ranked it high. And Schmerling certainly condemned it on insufficient grounds. Every variety of peculiar dolichocephalic skulls may be found in a large collection, such as that of the College of Surgeons; and there may be seen a skull from Mozambique in one case, while opposite to it is an equally degraded cranium of very marked form, indeed one of the worst that I have seen, and which is that of a Celtic Highlander. In fact, extremely exceptional conditions may be observed amongst perfectly recent skulls. I should mention in connexion with the Engis skull, that with the adult skull were found others, some of quite young persons.

The second cranium, known as the Neanderthal skull, was found in a cave in the valley of that name, overlooking the Dussel, a tributary of the Rhine. There is no definite record of the age of this skull. It was buried in the mud, and with it were bones of the extremities. It

is the lowest and most degraded of all human skulls. There is a marvellous low forehead; the supra-orbital ridge are enormous, and the skull flat and low, the supra-occipital ridges are not overhung at all. This skull is degraded, and of so low a type that the inspection of a cast of it suggested to me the question whether it was not deformed or abnormally modified. I caused, therefore a careful examination to be made of the interior of the skull, in order to ascertain whether the lateral sinuses were normally placed. I found that they were, and photographs of the interior of the skull show that the channels and markings of the interior of the cranium have the ordinary relations. The depressed vertex, shallow forehead, and sloping occiput, - the signs of degradation which it bears are the indication of the depressed and low character of the brain which it enclosed.

Taking these two skulls of the Engis and Neanderthal Caves as the oldest known vestiges of man, I asked What are the relations which can be observed between them and the skulls of existing races? Did they belong to two different races ? They present, indeed, very strongly marked differences of shape; and looking at the two skulls of Engis and of the Neanderthal, it would be difficult to find any other two which differ from each other more strongly. But I am not willing to draw any definite conclusion as to their specific variety from that fact. I inquire rather, are not the variations amongst the skulls of a pure race to the full as extensive?

I take the pure Australian as an example for this inquiry; and here we may observe how great is the range of variation of that pure race. The Engis skull may be easily matched by an Australian skull. The following table shows how closely the measurements approximate:-

With the Neanderthal skull, however, we shall not find much more difficulty, for in the College of Surgeons there are a number of skulls of Southern Australians, and one or two of these are wonderfully near the degraded type of the Neanderthal skull. The differences are inconsiderable; and, except that in the supra-orbital ridges and the occipital ridges the Neanderthal skull retains characters of degradation which go beyond those of the South Australian, or any other that I have met, the resemblance is perfect. Seeing that formation in a pure race, such as the Australian, are so great it cannot be safely inferred that these two skulls, which vary very little more, are even of different races.

It is remarkable that the habits of these men of the age of stone clearly resembled, in several respects, those of the Australian savage tribes. The evidence of the mode of life of the ancient men consists in the great collection of bones found with traces of their industry bones of the urus, the bison, and other creatures, which they split, to extract the marrow from them and which they worked up into implements. These bones &c. are found also amongst the piles at the bottom of some of the lakes in Switzerland. The Australian savages similarly utilise the bones of the kangaroo, and their universal weapon is the rudely-fashioned stone axe; while the nearly allied people of New Guinea build houses on piles like those of the ancient population of the Swiss lakes. So that in that most remote epoch, at the present day, we may believe that savage man was a creature of similar habit and mode of life.

These conclusions have not been arrived at by an easy or uncontested path. Those who believed, from the evidence of their senses, that there were men the contemporaries of the Elephas primigenius and his co-mates, had to breast a tempest of stormy opposition. And now that men are generally agreed to accept these facts, we find that this has been after all only a battle of outposts, and that we must go far back beyond even these primeval times to meet with the oldest of men.