hookhke markings on the breast of one
of the Napoe statues of Celebes (Fig.
1) in comparison -wdth designs for tat-
282
NATURAL HISTORY
tooing formerly used by the natives of
Easter Island (Fig. 10).
. No vats or an\i:hing resembling them
are recorded from the Marquesas, but
of Easter Island the following state-
Fig. 10. Tattoo designs used by Easter Islanders
within the memory of the oldest natives. After Rout-
ledge.
The hooks on the breast strikingly resemble those on
the Celebean image shown in Fig. 1
ment is made: "There is a roughly
constructed ahu [burial place] on the
outside of Rano Raraku at the corner
nearest to the sea, of which more wiU
be said hereafter, and a quarried block
of rock on the very top of the westerly
peak was also said to be used for the
exposure of the dead. Close to this
block there are some very curious circu-
lar pits cut in the rock; one examined
was 5 feet 6 inches in depth and 3 feet
6 inches in diameter. It is possible
they were used as vaults, but, if so,
the shape is quite different from those
of the ahu."^ Thus we see that Easter
Island also has its circular vatlike pits
near the images.
T\TiUe considering the points of re-
semblance between Celebes and Easter
Island, it may be mentioned that ib
looking over a glossary^ of some fift)
words, several are the same as worQL
used by the people of Central Celebet..
as Rano for lake, Manu for bird, Atua,
for God, Ika for fish, etc. ; and there are
others that look as if they might sound
like Celebean words if due allowance
were made for differences of spelling.
My conclusion is that the similarities
in physical features must be largely
discounted, due to the great mingling
of peoples throughout the whole region.
The positive evidence, such as the lack
of legs, the placing of the hands, the
hooks on the breast (compared with
tattoo patterns), the association of cir-
cular vats and images, and similarities
at the present time in the languages of
the two places, may prove to be indi-
cative of rather close cultural relation-
ship. Much further archaeological
exploration of the whole region, how-
ever, is necessary before the questions
raised by the stone objects of Celebes
can be fully answered.
iRoutledge, 1919, The Mystery of Easter Island, p.
191.
2Routledge, p. 123.
The Stone Images and Vats of Central Celebes
THE STONE MAX AT XAPOE
Fig 11 A.n image stands among ferns in second-growth jungle not far from the village of Watoe Taoe
(= Stone Man) in the Xapoe district now inhabited by a happy peaceful Toradja people, who but a comparatiyel>
few years ago were warlike head-hunters. Is this image e^-idence of the artistic skill of their ancestors or of another
race?
Fig. 12. Partly buried under earth and coarse grass was the granite cover for a huge vat and across this cover
were carved three large monkeys and one small one
Fig. 13. Front and side views of the image at Boeleli Besoa, known to the inhabitants as "Tadoe Lakoe"
Fig. 14. A great vat in Bcsoa filled with mud and water on wliieh sedge is growing. The cover is to be seen
just as it was shoved off
Fig. 15. The same vat as shown above, from another angle affording a better view of the cover and the
arrangement of monkey figures on it
Fig. 16. The largest of the Besoa vats, about seven feet high and nearly ten in diameter, is the only one orna-
mented with faces
Fig. 17. One of the most interesting vats was cracked, of medium size, and provided with a shelf inside;
like the others it was hewn from a single block of granite
Man and His Creations
SOME EARLY RESTORATIONS OF ANIMALS OF TFIE PAST
By FREDERIC A. LUCAS
Honorory Director, American Museum
WHEN Barnum's Museum was
one of the institutions of New
York, Barnum is credited with
having said that "the pubHc Ukes to
be humbugged. " Were Barnum on the
staff of a modern museum he might
say after reading some of the letters
of inquiry that man prefers the im-
probable to the probable and is loath
to accept a simple explanation of
some fact, or object, if a moi:e ex-
traordinary one seems to fit the case.^
And this seems to be particularly
true when fossils, or things that look
like fossils, are concerned.
Now mankind is gifted, or afflicted,
with what in the Elephant's Child
was called "satiable curtiosity" but
which he terms thirst for knowledge.
So when man began to find fossils he
set about for a reason for their exist-
ence and sought for some explanation
of what they were.
With fossil invertebrates the prob-
lem was simple: they were evidences
of the flood, when the water covered
the face of the earth; that the sheU
fish increased with astounding rapidity
and distributed themselves amazingly
in the space of a few months seems not
to have troubled these theorists.
Vertebrates, however, allowed more
play of the imagination and, after
passing through the stages of consider-
ing them as "freaks of nature" and
later having decided that they were
lA glo-wing, or glaring, instance of ttiis occurred to
the writer many years ago when he identified an object
sent from Kentucky as the breastbone of a horse. The
owner was not [pleased with this identification, and
wrote a most abusive letter in which, among other
things, he remarked that ,it was evidently "an aquati-
cal sea monster" that came up the Ohio and was killed
by reaching fresh water.
neither jettison from the Ark nor the
remains of Hannibal's Elephants, men
went to the other extreme of consider-
ing that they were animals quite unlike
anything hving. In many instances
they were' of course quite right, but
having few facts to interfere with their
theories, some of the earher attempts
at reconstruction could have been
worshipped without violating any com-
mandment, since thej' resembled noth-
ing in the heavens above, the earth
beneath, nor the waters under the
earth. One of the most popular ideas
concerning them was that they were
the remains of giants, not so surprising
when based on the leg bones of Mam-
moth or Mastodon which, to the un-
initiated, have a decidedly himaan
look. And mankind dishkes to give
up the idea that there were "giants in
those days."^
So we have Teutobochus, King of
the Cimbri, 19 feet high and the
Scotch "Littell John" with a height
of 14 feet and other notables. And in
America so late as the beginning of the
eighteenth century we have the " giant "
described at some length in the article
on Jefferson, apparently the same
specimen noted by the Rev. Cotton
Mather and credited with a height of
40 feet. There were no restorations of
these early giants probably because
they were regarded as ha^•ing the hke-
ness of men and, so far as we know, the
first restoration of an extinct verte-
brate was made in 1749 by G. ^^ .
Leibnitz in a pubHcation whose Latin
iDoes not a recent writer of popular articles on prim-
itive man credit the [Cro-Magnons |with attaining a
height of ten feet!
283
WATEEHOUSE HAWKINS' WORKSHOP, IN WHICH WERE MADE THE MODELS
FOR THE RESTORATIONS AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE
From the Illustrated London News about 1852
284
MAN AND HIS CREATIONS
285
^^^vi/m Sccl&U jTTvpe QvedUr\hwr^wn
^ccurn^Cf fc
The earliest known restoration of an extinct animal from a work published in
Latin by G. W. Leibnitz in 1749. Rendered into EngUsh the title reads "Concerning
the Primitive World, the Early Aspect of the Earth, and the Original Monuments of
its most Ancient History"
title when translated reads:
Concerning the Primitive World, the
Early Aspect of the Earth and the
Original Monuments of its most Ancient
History.
This appears to have been based on
the skeleton of some ruminant, as in-
dicated by the jaws and the cm-ious
tail, which is apparently a series of
dorsal vertebrae upside down: the
long horn was probably thrown in to
improve the looks of the restoration.
We may smile at the curious assem-
blage of bones, but it was scarcely more
amusing than the skeleton of the whale
shown for many years in the Niagara
Falls Museum in which the vertebrae
were jumbled together, and often
turned hind side before. It is, per-
haps, hardly fair to call the Rectango-
remus a ' 'restoration' ' since it was doubt-
less constructed to deceive, yet many
who beheld it may have looked upon it
as ''the real thing."
Even as late as 1860 Waterhouse
Hawkins constructed his restorations
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MAN AM) HIS CREATIONS
287
at the Crystal Palace much on the
same principle anil, when Owen, master
anatomist ot" his day, told Hawkins
that he had put two toes too manj^ on
Jquanodon (a three-toed dinosaur),
Hawkins re]ilied that if they were
corns he would gladly remove them
but as they were toes thej^ must re-
main, and there they are.
Hawkins came very near inflicting
his restorations on New York in the
then new Central Park and when Judge
Hinton had the molds destroyed a
storm of protest arose. Fortunateh'
Judge Hinton destroyed (not builded)
better than he knew.
Now Hawkins did have some facts
to guide him, but some of the names
applied to these extinct creatures seem
tohavestimulated his imagination; thus
Iguanodon naturallj- imphed iguana
and so the fii'st restoration of om- duck-
billed dinosaur — Trachodon, a relative
oi Iguanodon — depicted him with the
skull of an iguana magnified man}'
times.
The long, slender iscliia — part of
the hip bones — were a puzzle — a
puzzle that was solved by making
marsupial bones of them. Similarly
'one of the names bestowed upon the
big salamander-like creatm-es known as
lab^i'inthodons was Megalobatrachus —
giant frog — so Hawkins made him a
giant frog, a frog the size of an ox, the
dhnension striven for by the frog in
the fable. Here, too, Hawkins had
some thing besides the name to stii"
the imagination, for the flattened, fossil
skull of the animal does look very like
the cranium of a huge bull frog. The
crushed remains of another fossil
salamander, about the size of the exist-
ing giant salamander of Japan, sug-
gested to an observer with imagination
a flattened hmnan skull, and while its
relationships had been recognized by
its desci'iber, a writer with less knowl-
edge and more imagination saw in it
the remains of one of the victims of the
flood and tlubbed it Iloyno diluvii
testis — man, the evidence of the flood.
Assuredly our forefathers believed that
natural processes moved rapidly in
"the days when the earth was young"
and considered that but a few years
were required to convert mud into
many feet of solid rock.
To realize just how credulous men
were one has but to glance over the
first descriptions of the Treasures of
the British Museum and to read ex-
tracts from the minutes of the meet-
ings of the Roj^al Society pubUshed
in recent numbers of Nature.
To say that men were credulous is,
however, altogether too flattering to
the present generation which has an
undying behef in petrified men and a
real love for H^dng frogs in Carbonifer-
ous rocks. And if we smile at these
early restorations j^et the words Car-
diff Giant, Ponzi, and Mrs. Howe's
Bank, though painful to some, maj^
cause most of us to smile still more
broadh'.
These curious creations of days gone
by were largely due to the fact that
their creators had more imagination
than information, few facts to inter-
fere with their theories. As time has
passed we have become better ac-
quainted with these inhabitants of the
ancient world and in many cases have
complete skeletons, and in rare in-
stances then- very skin has been pre-
served. The relation of muscles to
bones has been carefully studied, and
save in the matter of color, little has
been left to the imagination in the res-
torations shown in the American ^lu-
seum of Natm-al History.
NEANDERTHAL MAN
The completed Neanderthal head modeled on the restored skull of La Chapelle-aux-Saints. This is
the same as the hairless model, Figs. 5 and 7, with the addition of hair and eyebrows, and a shght suggestion
of beard, not sufficient to obscure the chin form. A few wrinkles were indicated, and the ins and pupil
incised so that their shadows might lend life to the eyes. Restoration by J. H. McGregor, photographed
by A. F. Huettner
Restoring Neanderthal Man
By J. H. McGregor
Professor of Zoology, Columbia University: Research Associate in
Human Anatomy, American Museum of Natural History
IX the Hall of the Age of Man, in
the American Museum of Natural
History, are several busts modeled
on skulls of prehistoric races of man.
Some are based on nearly complete
skulls, others on crania which are
more or less fragmentary. On seeing
these heads, the ^dsitor, if he be of an
inquiring turn of mind, is likely to
wonder how authentic such effigies can
be. As the maker of the restorations
in question, I have often been asked
how much may be inferred regarding
the features from the underlying skull.
Sometimes the question takes virtually
this form, — ''Is it possible to model a
portrait head on a skull without
other data?" My answer is a decided
negative, if by a "portrait" is meant a
personal likeness, and if "without other
data" is to be taken Kterally. In a
collection of modern skulls the anthro-
pologist can distinguish race, approxi-
mate age, and usually sex, without
difficulty, but even if, for example, he
knows a certain skull to be that of a
middle-aged man of northern Europe,
he cannot say how fat or how thin
that man was, whether he was bald or
whether he wore a beard, yet obviously
these are matters of importance in
portraiture. Even when these details
are known, they afford no index to
certain subtleties of facial expression
which are essential in a personal por-
trait.
^Miile therefore I do not consider it
possible to construct an indi\idual
likeness soleh' on cranial data, the
skull is a great aid in modeling a mask
or bust of a knoicn indi\ddual especially
if photographs or other portraits are
available. Portrait busts have thus
been modeled on the skulls of several
famous men, for example Schiller and
Bacli. But newspaper accounts of the
identification of murdered men from
the features modeled on skulls dis-
covered long after death, when there
was no other clew, are not to be accepted
at face value, unless the skull in
question possesses some outstanding
peculiarity.
Of course skulls exhibit racial char-
acters. The physical anthropologist
can distinguish the crania of Negroes,
Mongols, and Europeans almost as
readily as the lajinan can identify the
living tj^pes, and if a sculptor-anato-
mist were to model the soft tissues on,
say, a dozen t^'pical skulls of each of
these three races, the la^auan could
doubtless assign most of them to their
proper racial groups even in the
absence of hair and color differences.
Such heads would not be individual
portraits, but tj^pe models or racial
portraits. Such racial portraits are
all we can hope to attain in reconstruct-
ing the soft tissues on skulls of extinct
races, where we have no data except
the bones, and no information as to
hair or complexion, but after all, a
racial model has more scientific value
than an indi^ddual likeness. During
the past few years I have attempted
such restorations of soft parts on five
skulls: Pithecanthropus erectus, the
Piltdown man or Eoanthropm, the
male Neanderthal skuU of La Chapelle-
aux-Saints, the female of the same
species from Gibraltar, and the "old
man of Cro-Magnon." Of these the
data for the first two are relatively
incomplete, while the Cro-Magnon is
so like certain modern European types
289
290
NATURAL HISTORY
that it is not particular!}^ interesting;
but the Neanderthal, representing a
type distinctly different from ovir own
species, and known from a consideral^le
number of examples, is one which has
special interest as a problem in restora-
that it was too wide to articulate prop-
erly with the cranium. The skull was
so nearly complete that restoration
of the missing parts was not difficult.
These portions were restored by me on
a cast of the skull, and the teeth
Fig. 1. — The Neanderthal skull of La Chapelle-aux-Saints. From Boule
Fig. 2. — A plaster cast of the same skull with the teeth, nasal bones, and some other missing parts
restored from studies of other Neanderthal remains. This photograph was made at too short focus, hence
the proportions are not quite accurately represented
tion. In the present article I shall,
therefore, trj^ to indicate the possibiK-
ties and the Hmitations of restoration
as exemplified in Homo neanderthalen-
sis, and specifically the man of La
Chapelle-aux-Saints. This skull, — on
the whole the finest of the race or
species thus far discovered, — was found
in 1908, in the department of Correze
in France. The remains, which com-
prise a considerable part of the skeleton,
are wiclelj^ known through a splendid
monograph by Professor Marcellin
Boule of Paris.
The skull, which was broken into a
number of fragments, was admirably
reconstructed by Professor Boule
(Fig. 1). It is that of a man rather
past middle life, most of whose teeth
had been lost prematurely through a
suppurative disease of the gums, so
that the jaw is more senile in form
than would otherwise have been the
case. The lower jaw had become
slightly warped (a common post mor-
tem occurrence with fossil jaws), so
modeled from numerous casts and
photographs of other Neanderthal
remains, chiefly those from the rich
finds of this race at Krapina, in Jugo-
slavia. The post mortem distortion
of the lower jaw was remedied by a
laborious process which involved mak-
ing, first, a flexible cast in hard plaste-
line, and from this, after correction, a
second cast in plaster. The lower
teeth were then modeled to conform to
the upper, using again the photographs
and casts of other Neanderthal teeth
and skulls. The teeth, as restored,
are those of a young adult, and not
such as would be found in the skull of
an elderly man. This placing of com-
paratively unworn teeth in old jaws
may be open to criticism in that it
produces an unnatural condition. Had
all the teeth been retained the jaw
w^ould not have presented quite the
senile form which it actuaUy shows.
This inconsistency was duly considered
in making the restoration, and was
deemed justifiable in that it enhanced
RESTORING NEANDERTHAL MAN
291
the value of the restored skull
tV)r the dt>nionstration of the typical
X(^anderthal dental characters. The
restoration of the missing nasal
bones was a comparatively easy matter
as the adjacent structures were mostly
(his skull as restored. First the skull
was fixed firmly on the so-called
Frankfort horizontal or "eye-ear
plane," so that a plane passing through
the lower margin of the orbits and the
upper margin of the auditory meatus
Copyright by J. H . McGregor
Figs. 3 and -1. — These figures show the skull posed on the Frankfort horizontal plane, with the large muscles
modeled in plasteline, and the plaster eyeballs in place. In Fig. 3 the tarsal plates of the eyelids and the
removable nasal cartilages are shown on the left side
present, and casts of two other Neander-
thal skulls, — from Gibraltar and
Krapina, — with complete nasal regions,
were available for comparison. Some
other less important gaps were also
â– filled in. The skull, thus restored,
represents a nearly perfect Neander-
thal skull closely approximating the
original condition except for the re-
juvenation of the dentition explained
above. (Fig. 2.)
The flesh restoration here described
and figured was made in 1919. An
earlier one was modeled in 1915, not
on a cast of the original skull, but on a
copj' modeled from it by another
person. The present restoration —
based on an excellent cast — is far
more accurate.
The head was modeled directh' upon
would be horizontal. This poses the
head in a natural position, and, as all
the other heads which I have restored
were built upon skulls similarly
oriented, comparison of slope of fore-
head, chin, etc. in the various models,
is greatl}^ facilitated. Special atten-
tion was devoted to the position and
dimensions of the neck. From Profes-
sor Boule's published photographs and
diagraph drawing of the cervical and
anterior thoracic vertebrae, these bones
were outlined in natural size, and a
mesial section of the neck was con-
structed, drawing in, not only the
vertebrae, but the upper end of the
sternum in proper relation, the neck
ligaments, oesophagus, hyoid bone,
laiynx, trachea, and other organs.
This mesial section, drawn on card-
292
NATURAL HISTORY
board, was adjusted to the skull to
serve as a guide in modeling the neck.
As may be observed from the photo-
graphs the neck, as reconstructed, is
rather thick, but is far from being the
bull neck which certain European
restorers have conferred upon Nean-
derthal man.
Naturally the nose, eyes, and ears are
features requiring careful attention.
As to the nose it is clear from the nasal
aperture of the skull that this feature
must have been of great width. It is
also certain that it was not flat or
depressed, but prominent. Most
restorations of Neanderthal man have
been at fault in representing the nose
as flat like that of certain negroid
types. As published researches indicate
a surprisingly slight correlation be-
tween the width of the nasal aperture
and the external nose, the exact width
of this organ is uncertain. Though
very wide as modeled in the restoration
it is not more so than in some Negroes.
In order to attain as great accuracy as
possible in this feature, the nasal
cartilages were modeled in "moldolith,"
a commercial plastic material which
becomes hard when dry. These were"
further constructed so that the two
halves could be removed and replaced
separately. (Figs. 3 and 4.) Modeling
the eyes required great care. It is
known that the centers of the pupils,
when the eyes are at rest, are slightly
nearer the outer than the inner orbital
border, and slightly nearer the upper
than the lower border. The size of the
adult human eyeball varies but little
as compared with variation of the
size of the orbits, hence, although
Neanderthal orbits are notably capa-
cious, there is no reason to beheve that
the eyeballs were appreciably larger
than in Homo sapiens. Eyeballs of
the proper size were modeled, cast in
plaster, and inserted in the orbits
with due regard to their relations to
the orbital rim. This is not so simple
as might be supposed. There is a
normal variation of some 12 milli-
meters in the prominence of the eye-
ball in its socket, but in the usual
position, which was adopted in this
restoration, the front of the cornea is
about in the plane intersecting the
upper and lower borders of the orbit.
The lacrymal sac and tarsal plates of
the eyelids were modeled to serve as
guides in constructing the soft tissues.
(Fig. 3.) It may be remarked that the
interpupillary distance is wide, 72
millimeters. Plaster casts of the nasal
cartilages in place, and of the orbital
region were made as records and for
use in checking later measurements.
In modehng the ear the point of great-
est importance was to observe the
normal relation to the bony meatus, or
ear\opening, in the skull. As there is
nothing to suggest that the external
ear was remarkable in any way, it was
conservatively modeled as to size and
form. There is no reason to suppose
that the "Darwin's point" of the ear
was more frequent or better developed
in Neanderthal man than in his
modern kin.
Figures 3 and 4 show how the large
muscles, — temporal, masseter, and
sterno-cleido-mastoid, were modeled,
and how heavy bank pins were in-
serted at critical points to serve as
guide-posts. Various investigations
have been published, especially in
Germany, on the thickness of the soft
tissues on various regions of the head
and face in cadavers of different races.
These studies were invaluable in the