The Neanderthal skull : its peculiar conformation explained anatomically / by Joseph Barnard Davis.

  • Joseph Barnard Davis
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Neanderthal skull : its peculiar conformation explained anatomically / by Joseph Barnard Davis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    In these particulars, and in the great gap, separating it from the body of the frontal bone, the Neanderthal calvaria may be said, at first view, to be suggestive of the crest of the Gorilla. But there is no real resemblance between the two; for the latter crest is a solid buttress of bone, and does not correspond to the hollow super- ciliary ridge. It will thus be seen that there is nothing either of a simious character or that might not have been expected in the low forehead of the Neanderthal skull, in which the brain had to grow and expand under a plate of bone which appears to have been in a great degree in one solid piece. It was impossible to raise this plate of bone upwards; and the result, as will be seen, was a development in another direction. In the middle region of the calvaria, the sagittal suture being closed, the contained cerebral substance could only expand at the sides, in the situation of the squamous sutures; and here the Neanderthal calvarium seems not to lack development. But in the posterior region its greatest expansion took place, precisely because in this part was the open lambdoidal suture, which admitted of the growth of the brain. In the figures of this imperfect calvarium the superior occipital scale is seen to be bulged out, and the whole of what remains of the occipital bone is full and large—the compensatory result for the contracted anterior regions. The extreme length of the Neanderthal calvarium is given by Professor Huxley, and is eight inches, which is a very unusual length. In skulls in which such a length occurs, it is most frequently the result of synostosis. That such is the case in the Neanderthal example there is not any doubt. This feature is the unequivocal effect of premature ossification of longitudinal sutures. I have no intention to enter into the question of the antiquity of the Neanderthal calvarium, a question which rests on other grounds than the anatomical considerations I have been led to discuss. It seems highly probable that an extreme antiquity belongs to the remains; but the peculiar conformation which the calvarium presents cannot justly be adduced as an argument in favour of this antiquity, for synostotic calvaria of like conforma- tion, and only differing in degree, or in some modification of form, do occasionally occur, and that among modern races. I have confined myself to the anatomical question of the meaning of the peculiar form of this Neanderthal example, which I am satisfied
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