Schaaffhausen estimated its capacity at 1033.4 c.c. (63 cubic inches), but Huxley makes it 1330 c.c. (75 cubic inches). Huxley, writing in 1863, thus expresses his opinion of the Neanderthal skull :—
"There can be no doubt that, as Professor Schaaffhausen and Mr Busk have stated, this skull is the most brutal of all known human skulls, resembling those of the apes not only in the prodigious development of the superciliary prominences, and the forward extension of the orbits, but still more in the depressed form of the brain-case, in the straightness of the squamosal suture, and in the complete retreat of the occiput forward and upward, from the superior occipital ridges." (Antiquity of Man, p. 84.)
Lyell's "Antiquity of Man."
With the appearance of The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, anthropology may be said to have suddenly sprung into existence fully armed and fledged, like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter. In this celebrated work the author collected the previously recorded materials bearing on the early history of man from all parts of the world. The effect of its accumulated details was so overwhelming that there could no longer be any doubt that the existence of humanity on the globe must be relegated far back into the Quaternary period. Many circumstances contributed to this remarkable revolution in current philosophical beliefs. We have already noted the sensational result of the sudden admission by the foremost archæologists of the day, that the quaint flint objects discovered by Boucher de Perthes were the genuine implements of an old-world people whose very existence had previously been either unknown or ignored. Moreover, the entire borderland of geology and anthropology was being better understood, especially as regards the glacial phenomena of Northern and Western Europe ; and archæology proper, independently of its new-born Palæolithic phase, had acquired a wider significance, owing to the more rigid and scientific methods adopted in its study. The successive discoveries of the Danish Kökkenmöddings and the Swiss lake-dwellings, with the vast and varied wealth of prehistoric materials which they brought to light, now also began to attract attention.
