Cranial Morphology of Neanderthal Man

Abstract

RECENT attempts^1,2 to explain the features of Neanderthal remains in terms of rickets and treponemal disease assume that such features cannot be of adaptive significance or reflect geographical variation. They further imply that the differences between the European Neanderthals and the succeeding Upper Palaeolithic populations are too great to be accounted for in terms of phyletic change and polytypism. Consequently, the European Neanderthals are considered an isolated or aberrant population whose distinctive morphology results from genetic drift or pathological changes. Mayr and Campbell³ have criticized these assumptions and have drawn attention to the marked diversity between approximately contemporary but geographically separate populations during the late Pleistocene. My work indicates that the European Neanderthals are cranially more similar to Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens sapiens than is generally appreciated, and that attempts to categorize the early Würm Neanderthals as pathologically deformed are ill founded, at least as far as the features of the skull are concerned.