Occipital.—The upper portion of this bone is quite semicircular in outline, its sutural (lambdoidal) border running with an even crescentic curve from one transverse ridge to the other:[1] generally in human skulls, including the Engis one, the outline approaches more or less to an isosceles triangle.[2] The width of the occipital at the transverse ridges is much less than is common to Man; and the disparity is the more striking in consequence of the widest portion of the fossil occupying an unusually backward position.
Taking into consideration the forward and upward curving of the upper portion of the occipital bone as previously noticed, its semicircular outline, and smallness of width, we have in these characters, taken together, a totality as yet unobserved in any human skull belonging to cither extinct, or existing races; while it exists as a conspicuous feature in the skull of the Chimpanzee.
Parietals.—In Man the upper border of these bones is longer than the inferior one; but it is quite the reverse in the Neanderthal skull. The difference, amounting to nearly an inch, will be readily seen by referring to Figures 1 and 2, in Plate II.; the former representing the right parietal of a British human skull, and the latter the corresponding bone of the fossil. These figures also show that the Neanderthal parietals are strongly distinguished by their shape, and the form of their margins: in shape they are five-sided, and not subquadrate, like those of the British skull;[3] while their anterior and posterior margins have each exactly the reverse of the form characteristic of Man.
The additamentum, which undoubtedly gives the parietals their five-sided shape, is on a level with the superior transverse ridge, and much longer than usual. This peculiarity is common to the human fœtus: I have, likewise, observed an approach to it in a "Caffre" skull belonging to the Dublin University Museum, in which, also, the upper and lower borders of the parietals are about equal in length. But still the abnormality of the latter case is not at all so extreme as the condition observed in the fossil. These particular features also are characteristically simial; for in extending our survey to the Chimpanzee, and some other so-called Quadrumanes, their parietals are seen to present a great similarity to those of the Neanderthal skull.[4]
I have now, as it appears to me, satisfactorily shown that not only in its general, but equally so in its particular characters, has the fossil
- ↑ Plate II. Fig. 4.
- ↑ Plate II. Fig. 3.
- ↑ The outlines were taken by pressing a sheet of paper on the parietals: and, when in this position, marking their margins by following the bounding sutures; next, by entting the paper according to the lines given by the sutures, and allowing it to retain its acquired convexity: the outlines were then marked off on another sheet of paper. Possibly the antero-inferior angle of the Neanderthal parietal, as given in the figure, is not strictly correct, owing to the coronal suture being obliterated in that part, but I venture to state that it is approximately true.
- ↑ On the east, an incised line runs from the lambdoidal suture (where the addimentatum joins it) towards the posterior tubercle. Is this the suture which occurs near and parallel to the transverse ridges in fœtal skulls, and occasionally in that of adults? In the skull of the "Caffre," noticed in the text, this suture, which is only seen on the right side, is situated above the ridge but in the fossil, but in the fossil, it is below this part.
