Early man in South America / by Aleš Hrdlička ; in collaboration with W.H. Holmes [and others].

  • Hrdlička, Aleš, 1869-1943.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Early man in South America / by Aleš Hrdlička ; in collaboration with W.H. Holmes [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    26/530 (page 4)
    the older remains should point in the direction of zoologic inferi- ority; -and that where important structural difl’erences pointing to an earlier evolutionary stage are not found in the human skeletal remains which are the subject of study, and especially where the given crania and bones show close analogies with those of a modern or even of the actual native race of the same region, the geologic antiquity of such remains may well be regarded as imperfectly sup- ported, in fact, as improbable. As to the evidence thut anatomic changes in man or, more precisely, in his skeleton, have taken place during the present epoch, particu- larly during historic times, the following points deserve attention; The earliest skeletal forms approximating closely to those of pres- ent man occur in Europe in the latter part of the paleolitliic epoch, assigned to the Upper Quaternary. They belong to the so-called Aurignacean and Solutrean cultural periods. Yet even here, as shown especially by the very important MaSka collection,^ there are numerous and important characters distinguishing the skulls as well as other bones from those of the wliites and even from those of the more primitive races of to-day. It is only when the Cro-Magnon and the latest Grimaldi skeletal remains are reached, both regarded as of the latest “ diluvial” age and possibly more recent, that we find forms corresponding closely to liistoric man. Numerous changes, however, have taken place in various groups of manldnd ever since the time of the Man of Cro-Magnon or of Gri- maldi. These have been more pronounced in some regions than in others but there are no examples of complete morphologic standstill. The inhabitants of Egypt have been repeatedly pointed to as an exam- ple of the stability of human characters. Their skeletal remains are now known for a period extending over 5,000 years. The Egi’ptians sprang apparently from a single physical type and wliile there were subsequent accessions to the population, they were in general of peo- ple of the same type. After reacliing the valley of the Nile this group of humanity continued to live relatively isolated and under much the same environment. For thousands of years they had in general the same occupations, the same diet, the same habits and customs, and changed but slightly in the grade of their ciUlization. Here were almost ideal conditions for maintaining stability of ])hysical type, and there is no doubt that a closer approximation to such sta- bility has been realized than in other knovm regions of the world. Yet, as the writer, who made a journey to Egypt largely for the jmr- pose of investigating this subject, has shown already in a preliminary 1 MaSka’s collection from Pfedmost, Moravia, as yet unpublished but being studied, embraces more than a dozen skeletons of man, contemporaneous with the mammoth, in a reiativoly excellent state of pres- ervation, from the Solutrean.