The Olmo Skull.
In 1863 a human skull, a pointed flint implement, the lower jaw of a horse, portion of the tusk of an elephant, and some charcoal were found in a railway cutting at a place called Olmo, in the valley of the Arno, above Florence. All these relics are described by Professor J. Cocchi (L' Uomo ossile nell' Italia Centrale, Milan, 1867) as lying on the same level within a few yards of each other, and at a depth of about 15 metres from the surface. They were embedded in a bluish compact lacustrine deposit of the Post-pliocene Age, under a mass of ancient and recent alluvial beds of ferruginous sand and gravel. M. Cocchi regarded the skull as belonging to the lower Quaternary period ; but Forsyth Major and others made it out to be older. Subsequently M. Cocchi, in support of his opinion, announced at a meeting of a Geological Congress held at Lucca in 1895, that the entire skeleton of Elephas antiquus had been discovered 3 kilometres from the site of the Olmo skull, but in the same geological bed. (B.P., 1897, p. 51.)
MM. de Quaterfages and Hamy have accepted this skull (Crania Ethnica) as an example of the Canstadt race ; but geologists are not agreed as to the chronology of the lacustrine deposit, some regarding it (Forsyth Major) as Pliocene, while G. de Mortillet, judging from the form and workmanship of the flint implement, holds it to be Moustérien. The skull was badly fractured and the cephalic index is uncertain, owing to compression from the weight of earth under which it lay. No certain conclusions can therefore be drawn from the osseous characters of the Olmo skull.
The Eguisheim Skull.
In 1867 M. Faudel (Bull. Soc. Hist. Nat. de Colmar) reported the discovery of fragments of a human skull at a depth of about 8 feet in river-deposits, while digging a beer-cellar at Eguisheim, near Colmar. In various places in this same deposit were found a mammoth-tooth, the forehead of a great unknown species of stag, the metacarpal bone of a small horse, etc. The skull is said to have a similar appearance to that of Neanderthal, especially in the projection of the occipital
