the mammoth and rhinoceros, was that found in 1866 by Dupont in the cavern of La Naulette, valley of the Lesse, Belgium. It was only a fragment, but enough remained to demonstrate the complete absence of chin and the nature of the dentition. Its kinship with the man of Neanderthal, whose lower jaw could not be found, was evident. It tended therefore to legitimatize the latter, which hitherto had failed of general recognition. The fortunate association of skull with lower jaw came in 1886, when the remains of two individuals were discovered in the cavern of Spy, also in Belgium. In the same layer were found not only remains of the mammoth and the rhinoceros, but also an industry of the Mousterian type.
Among the human remains found in 1899 by Professor Gorjanovič-Kramberger at Krapina, there are parts of a number of lower jaws that bear the same racial characters as those of La Naulette and Spy. They were also associated with a Mousterian industry. Instead, however, of the Rhinoceros tichorhinus, as at Spy, there were remains of Rhinoceros merckii, an older type. This may be accounted for by the fact that Rhinoceros merckii would persist longer in the south than in the north.
That the lower jaws of La Naulette, Spy, and Krapina represent one and the same stage in the evolution of Homo sapiens, there is no longer any doubt. That this stage is intermediate between recent man and Homo heidelbergensis, a careful comparison of the specimens in question furnishes ample proof.[1] The lower jaw from Mauer is therefore pre-Neanderthaloid. That it also exhibits pre- anthropoid characters gives it a fundamental position in the line of human evolution. Doctor Schoetensack is to be congratulated on his rich reward for a twenty years' vigil.
The lower jaws of the Neanderthal, or so-called primigenius, type, mentioned above, were all found in cavern or rock-shelter deposits. These cannot be definitely correlated with river-drift and loess; hence we cannot measure the time that separates the man of Spy from Homo heidelbergensis. Judging from somatic characters alone, the time separating the two must have been considerable.
The Mousterian industry which is found associated with Homo primigenius occurs in deposits that mark the close of the middle Quaternary, and also in cavern deposits corresponding to the base of the upper Quaternary. It belongs to the transition from the Riss glacial period to the Riss-Würm interglacial period. At Wild- kirchli, in the Alps, it is frankly interglacial, a station that probably belongs to the close of the Mousterian epoch.
The position of the Mauer lower jaw near the bottom of the old diluvium, and its association with the remains of Elephas antiquus
- ↑ Spy approximates more closely the Mauer type than does Krapina.
