Abstract
IT is now generally accepted that no skeletal remains of the genus Homo other than those of ‘modern’ man have hitherto been found on the American continent. Since the arguments put forward by Ameghino early in the present century in support of the primitive character and high antiquity of the skulls he had found in South America were shown by Dr. Ales Hrdlicka to be untenable, it has been claimed from time to time that human remains exhibiting characters other than those of Homo sapiens have been discovered; but invariably closer examination of the evidence has failed to support this interpretation. One of the latest discoveries of this nature is that of a fragment of a skull found by Dr. Earl H. Pell, of the Nebraska University, in a large mound of unknown age near the site of a prehistoric village in Nebraska. The skull was that of a middle age man which showed abnormally highly developed eyebrow ridges, intermediate in degree between Neanderthal man and ‘modern’ man. On the evidence of these supra-orbital ridges it was at first thought that the skull might be included in the Neanderthal group. It has now been subjected to a close analysis by Dr. Hrdlicka, whose decision is not only adverse to any close affinity with Neanderthal man, but definitely rules that it comes within the ‘modern’ group, on the evidence that in all its characters, excepting the eyebrow ridges, it belongs to the type of the modern Indian. In discussing the skull (Amer. J. Phys. Anthrop., 20, 2), Dr. Hrdlicka goes on to point out that while the high development of these ridges may be regarded as evidence of “an ancestral connection with Neanderthal Man somewhere outside America” it does not show uninterrupted filiation, nor can it serve as an index of antiquity.
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Primitive Traits in Amerindian Skulls. Nature 136, 543 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136543b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136543b0