Belgians of the present day, being generally shorter and stouter. The bones of the thigh and forearm have a curiously bent appearance, and the lower ends of the former are so fashioned as to prevent the limb being fully straightened. It is, however, but just to say that, so far as the measurements of the other Spy skull could be determined, its pithecoid characters are less pronounced. The cranial vault is more lofty, and the cephalic index at least 74.
FIGS. 29 and 30. Side and top views of the Skull (No. 1) from the Grotte de Spy. (After Fraipont.)
The Belgian professor came to the conclusion that the Spy men belonged to a race relatively of small stature, analogous to the modern Laplanders, having voluminous heads, massive bodies, short arms, and bent legs. They led a sedentary life, frequented caves, manufactured flint implements after the type known as Moustérien, and were contemporary with the mammoth and woolly-haired rhinoceros. From a peculiarly large and slanting appearance of the articular surfaces of the femur and tibia, he drew the inference that the Spy men could not stand perfectly erect. But at the International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric archæology, held in Paris in 1889, Professor Manouvrier exposed the fallacy of M. Fraipont's argument (C.A.P., 1889, p. 353).
