CHAPTER V.
POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD—FOSSIL HUMAN SKULLS OF THE NEANDERTHAL AND ENGIS CAVES.
HUMAN SKELETON FOUND IN CAVE NEAR DÜSSELDORF—ITS GEOLOGICAL POSITION AND PROBABLE AGE—ITS ABNORMAL AND APE-LIKE CHARACTERS—FOSSIL HUMAN SKULL OF THE ENGIS CAVE NEAR LIÉGE—PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S DESCRIPTION OF THESE SKULLS—COMPARISON OF EACH, WITH EXTREME VARIETIES OF THE NATIVE AUSTRALIAN RACE—RANGE OF CAPACITY IN THE HUMAN AND SIMIAN BRAINS—SKULL FROM BORREBY IN DENMARK—CONCLUSIONS OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY—BEARING OF THE PECULIAR CHARACTERS OF THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF TRANSMUTATION.
Fossil human Skeleton of the Neanderthal Cave near Düsseldorf.
BEFORE I speak more particularly of the opinions which anatomists have expressed respecting the osteological characters of the human skull from Engis, near Liége, mentioned in the last chapter and described by Dr. Schmerling, it will be desirable to say something of the geological position of another skull, or rather skeleton, which, on account of its peculiar conformation, has excited no small sensation in the last few years. I allude to the skull found in 1857, in a cave situated in that part of the valley of the Düssel, near Düsseldorf, which is called the Neanderthal. The spot is a deep and narrow ravine about seventy English miles north-east of the region of the Liége caverns treated of in the last chapter, and close to the village and railway station of Hochdal between Düsseldorf and Elberfeld. The cave occurs in the precipitous southern or left side of the winding ravine, about sixty feet above the stream, and a
