Chapter XIII

.

[36] The opinion that the Neanderthal race (_Homo Neanderthalensis_) is an extinct species which did not interbreed with the true men (_Homo sapiens_) is held by Professor Osborn, and it is the view to which the writer inclines and to which he has pointed in the treatment of this section; but it is only fair to the reader to note that many writers do not share this view. They write and speak of living “Neanderthalers” in contemporary populations. One observer has written in the past of such types in the west of Ireland; another has observed them in Greece. These so-called “living Neanderthalers” have neither the peculiarities of neck, thumb, nor teeth that distinguish the Neanderthal race of pro-men. The cheek teeth of true men, for instance, have what we call fangs, long fangs; the Neanderthaler’s cheek tooth is a _more complicated and specialized_ cheek tooth, a long tooth with short fangs, and his canine teeth were _less_ marked, _less_ like dog-teeth, than ours. Nothing could show more clearly that he was on a different line of development. We must remember that so far only western Europe has been properly explored for Palæolithic remains, and that practically all we know of the Neanderthal species comes from that area (see Map, p. 89). No doubt the ancestor of _Homo sapiens_ (which species includes the Tasmanians) was a very similar and parallel creature to _Homo Neanderthalensis_. And we are not so far from that ancestor as to have eliminated not indeed “Neanderthal,” but “Neanderthaloid” types. The existence of such types no more proves that the Neanderthal species, the makers of the Chellean and Mousterian implements, interbred with _Homo sapiens_ in the European area than do monkey-faced people testify to an interbreeding with monkeys; or people with faces like horses, that there is an equine strain in our population.

[37] R. I. Pocock.

[38] See Osborn in his _Men of the Old Stone Age_. But see Wright’s _Quaternary Ice Age_ for a different view of the Magdalenian Age.

[39] See, for example, H. G. F. Spurrell, _Modern Man and His Forerunners_, end of