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Bogal Snstftuttfin at (Grrat Britain,
WEEKLY EVENING MEETING,
>
Friday, February 7, 1862.
Sir Henry Holland, Bart. M.D. D.C.L. F.R.S. Vice-President,
in the Chair.
Professor T. H. Huxley, F.R.S.
On Fossil Remains of Man.
The purpose of the discourse was to give an explanation of the interest
attaching to two casts upon the table—the one that of a skull, dis
covered and described by Professor Schmerling, from the Cave of
Engis, in Belgium ; the other, discovered by Dr. Fuhlrott and de
scribed by Professor Schaaffhausen, from a cave in the Neanderthal,
near Dusseldorf—the former being the oldest skull whose age is
geologically definable, the latter the most aberrant and degraded of
human skulls.
The nature and extent of the cranial modifications exhibited by
the man-like apes and by man were discussed ; and their modifications
were shown to depend upon variations in the capacity and in the form
of the cranium, in the greater or less development of its ridges, and
in the size and form of the face. In respect of such differences, skulls
have been called dolichocephalic and brachycephalic, orthognathous
and prognathous, &c.
Neither orthognathism or prognathism are necessarily correlated
with brachycephaly or dolichocephaly. But the most extreme pro
gnathism is accompanied by a dolichocephalic cranium, while perfect
orthognathism may occur with extreme brachycephalism.
The known varieties of the skull have a certain geographical
distribution, which may be broadly expressed by drawing a line upon
a map of the world from Russian Tartary to the Gulf of Guinea,
and by regarding the two ends of that line as ethnological poles, while
another line, drawn at right angles to it, from Western Europe to
Hindostan, may be called the ethnological equator.
At the north-eastern pole are situated the people with the most
eminently brachycephalic and orthognathous skulls; at the south
western pole, those people who have the most eminently dolichocephalic
and prognathous skulls; while along the ethnological equator the
�2
Professor T. H. Huxley
[Feb. 7,
races of men are for the most part, oval-headed, or, if dolichocephalic,
they are orthognathous. Passing from the ethnological poles, in either
direction, there is a tendency to the softening down of the extreme
types of skull. Turning from this general view of cranial modifica
tion, which was expressly stated to be open to many exceptions in
detail, the question was next raised whether the distribution of cranial
forms had been the same in all periods of the world’s history, or
whether the older races, in any locality, possessed a different cranial
character from their successors.
No evidence of the existence of such older and different races has
yet been obtained from Northern Asia, from Africa beyond the shores
of the Mediterranean, or from Australia ; it may be that the Alfourons
and the mound-builders of the Mississippi valley are to be regarded
as ancient stocks which preceded modern immigration ; but definite
evidence is wanting with regard to these and similar cases. In North
ern and Western Europe, however, there is little doubt that several
races, different in cranial conformation and in civilization, have suc
ceeded one another. Below and beyond the traces of Roman civiliza
tion, archaeologists find evidence, first, of people who used iron, then
of those who employed bronze, and then of those who were acquainted
only with stone and flint (or bone) weapons and implements. How
far these various weapons may have been used at different epochs by
the same people, is a question yet to be decided; but that in some
parts of Europe, at any rate, they characterize people of different cranial structure, appears to be tolerably well made out.
The remarkable crania from tumuli of the stone period at Borreby,
in Denmark, figured by Mr. Busk, were cited as authentic examples
of the skulls of people of the epoch in which stone axes ground to an
edge were the chief weapons.
The evidence of the antiquity of these people afforded by the peat
bogs of Denmark, and the probability of their contemporaneity with
the makers of the “ refuse-heaps ” of Denmark, and of the pile-works
of Switzerland, were next considered. Ancient as the Borreby race
may be, they peopled Denmark subsequently to its assumption of its
present physical geography, and since its only great quadrupeds were
the urus, the bison, and deer.
The Engis skull, on the other hand, is of a date antecedent to the
last great physical changes of Europe, and its owner was a contemporary
of the mammoth, the tichorine rhinoceros, the cave bear, and the cave
hyaena, so that a vast gulf of time separates him from the Borreby men.
The skull was shown, however, by all its measurements, to be nearly
as well developed as that of an average European.
The Neanderthal skull, whose age is not exactly known, on the
contrary, is the lowest and most ape-like in its characters of any
human skull yet discovered, though it presents certain points of resemd
blance to the Borreby skulls.
Great as are the differences between the Engis, the Borreby, and
the Neanderthal skulls, the speaker stated that it would not be justiJ
�1862.]
on Fossil Remains of Man.
3
fiable to assign them even to distinct races of men; for by a careful
examination of the crania of one of the purest of living races of men,
—the Australian,—it is possible to discover skulls which differ from
one another in similar characters, though not quite to the same extent,
as the ancient ones.
Thus it appears that the oldest known races of men differed com
paratively but little in cranial conformation from those savage races
now living, whom they seem to have resembled most in habits ; and it
may be concluded that these most ancient races at present known were
at least as remote from the original stock of the human species as they
are from us.
[T. H. H.J
��
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Of fossil remains of man
Creator
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Huxley, Thomas Henry
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 3 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Sir Henry Holland in the Chair. Delivered at the weekly evening meeting Friday, February 7, 1862
Please note that this pamphlet contains language and ideas that may be upsetting to readers. These reflect the time in which the pamphlet was written and the ideologies of the author.
Publisher
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Royal Institution of Great Britain
Date
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1862
Identifier
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G5279
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Ethnology
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Of fossil remains of man), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Anatomy
Conway Tracts
Ethnology
Fossils