Neanderthal Man

...And did he make his way from Africa to what we call Europe by one or other of the land-bridges at the Straits of Gibraltar and at Sicily which we know to have existed...

...The operations in the Sahara are still in their extreme infancy and we must wait for further information before we can hope to see the full import of these discoveries...

...Further, the Mongolian expedition of the American Museum has found skulls of this race among the remains of the "dunedwellers," and a Russian explorer has found others in the Crimea...

...Nothing but excavations such as those now being conducted can throw light on matters concerned with the early history and wanderings of man...

...That is shown to be true, even of Roman times, by the great deserted city of Timgad, once a centre of high culture, now uninhabitable—or again the city of Siwa, once the centre of the worship of Jupiter Ammon, now inhabited by a rapidly disappearing tribe of Arabs...

...Then a number of other similar specimens were found, including the celebrated Gibraltar skull and those at the Chapelle aux Saintes, so that it became clear that there was in early days a race of men possessing the characteristics belonging to the first skull—chiefly very heavy brows which probably gave their possessors a fierce and lowering look...

...Did he cross Palestine from Asia, as Abraham was to do later...

...Negroid skeletons have been found in South Europe, and according to Professor Dixon of Harvard, there is a strong streak of Negroid blood in the Nordics...

...Controversy raged at first over the original specimen which was supposed to be all sorts of things, from the skull of an idiot to that of a quite modern man...

...The first of these is wholly, the latter only partially, deprived of water supply by the drying up of the Sahara owing to movements of the land...

...Until quite recently it was believed that these Neanderthals were to be found only in Europe—a view which must now be discarded in the light of recent discoveries, notably that of the Galilee skull found by Mr...

...It must be remembered that, for the ethnologist, Europe does not end with the Mediterranean, which, from his point of view, is a mere incidental inland lake...

...But previous to Roman times the Sahara was fertile and even forested, and the remains of that age are to be found in the oases where are marooned crocodiles and hippopotami...

...But he and others have changed their minds and now tell us that Neanderthal man died out, or perhaps was exterminated by what is supposed to have been the superior race of Cro-Magnon...

...NEANDERTHAL MAN '"PHE race, called Neanderthal from the fact that -*• the first recorded specimen was found in the valley of the little river, Neander, near Diisseldorf, has been much discussed lately, due to the interest in the discoveries in connection with it...

...But one fact emerges—that wherever searches are made, it is man who appears and not an intermediate creature...

...The very puzzling skull known as the Rhodesian skull is said to present some of the characters of the race, but everything concerned with that specimen is so wrapped in uncertainty that no conclusions are safe...

...Then it was thought that these people were the ancestors of all the inhabitants of Europe, and this view is strongly put forward by Sir Arthur Keith in his earlier books...

...Turville-Petre, an account of which appeared in these columns a short time ago...

...It ends with the northern limit of the Sahara, and that limit is now very much further north than it once was...

...The Pond expedition, excavating recently in the Sahara, now have come upon implements which they say are characteristic of this race...

...In that period, Neanderthal man may well have colonized this area...