Chapter V: The Grimaldi or Negroid Race

The date of the ending of the Neanderthal race and the beginning of the Cro-Magnon supremacy is the first date that can be given with any confidence. Geologists are agreed that this, which corresponds roughly with the ending of the Fourth Glacial Period and the beginning of the present Postglacial time, took place about 25,000 years ago. This race came in with the Aurignacian culture. The early stations of this period are scattered along the north and south shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and are not found in eastern or central Europe. Apparently they came from Asia through the land of Phoenicia, part of them passing along the northern coast of Africa, including Tunis, into Spain; and perhaps part along the northern coast of the Mediterranean through Italy. Where they came from we cannot with any certainty state. It was probably from somewhere on the continent of Asia; for their physical structure is of the Asiatic type, and hardly at all of the African or Ethiopian type. The reason that we cannot speak with definiteness of Asia as their homeland, is that this continent has been only slightly explored for anthropological remains. At the present time several large expeditions are at work in Asia, especially in the backlands of Thibet north of the Himalayas; it is confidently believed that here, or in northern India, the central scattering point of the human race may be discovered, with the possibility of the discovery of remains of a race closely akin to the Trinil Man, the Ape-man of Java. Without this evidence, we can only indicate the probability that these Cro-Magnons came from Asia, and followed the trail later taken by the true Mediterranean race, dark-haired, long-headed, narrow-faced people, who followed this coast in early Neolithic years, or, again, like the wave of Arabian Moslem advance which pushed forward along the north coast of Africa into Spain and as far as mid-France, more than a thousand years ago.

An additional support to this theory of migration along the north coast of Africa is given by the presence of the skeletons of two members of an entirely distinct race, which were found in the Grotto of Grimaldi, near Mentone, France. These skeletons were found in 1906 by Vernau. They are called the negroids of Grimaldi, because they are the only Upper Old Stone Age race discovered in Europe resembling the African negroid race. Anatomically they are not closely related to either the Neanderthals or the Cro-Magnons. Their culture seems to have been Aurignacian, because their skeletal remains were found just above the layer which marked the close of Mousterian times. There are nine grottoes of Grimaldi, which yielded the remains of sixteen individuals, fourteen of which apparently belonged to the Cro-Magnon race, and two to the Grimaldi negroids. At this time, along this southerly shore, the hippopotamus, the straight-tusked elephant, and the rhinoceros still roamed, as the last members of the great African-Asiatic animals. Vernau, the discoverer of the Grimaldi negroids, is inclined to regard them as of a very ancient race, much older than the Cro-Magnons. He believes that they belonged to a new racial type which formerly played an important role in Europe, and enjoyed wide geographic distribution. A professor in Cambridge has recently elaborated this theory, holding that the negroid race was the first human race to separate from the parent stock in Asia; that its members divided, part going south into Africa, and part more directly westward into Europe, where they scattered widely and blended into subsequent stocks. There is as yet small evidence for this enlarged theory. Osborn is one who holds that these two skeletons were probably true negroids who found their way into Europe from Africa, but never became fully established as a race in Europe.

Of the two skeletons found by Vernau, one is that of a middle-aged woman; the other that of a youth of sixteen or seventeen. Both clearly belong to the existing species of man, _Homo sapiens_. In the Grotto of the Infants, in which the bodies were found, there is at the bottom traces of Mousterian fire-hearths, probably used by Neanderthals; above that, the two Grimaldi negroids; above and in close proximity to these, various remains of the Cro-Magnon race. The Grimaldi negroids were not a tall race, averaging 5 feet 2 inches; this is noticeably shorter than the Cro-Magnon women and youths. There are many negroid characteristics in the skull, the hip-girdle, and the proportions of the limbs. In common with the man-like apes, there are found the long forearm, the curved thigh-bone, and the marked projection of the teeth. The nose is broad and flat, the jaw heavy without much chin. Somewhat to the contrary implications is the fact that the head is long and disharmonic, as are the Cro-Magnon heads. By disharmonic is meant that, with a long head, the face is short and quite broad. The brain capacity is relatively high, being estimated at 1,580 c. cm. The forearm and thigh-bone resemble the man-like apes; the proportions of the leg are similar to the Cro-Magnons.

Upon the subject, Vernau writes: “The fact remains that at a very remote period of the Pleistocene there existed in Europe, beside the Neanderthal race, a type of man that in many of his cephalic (head) characters, in the structure of his pelvis, and in his limb proportions, showed striking analogies to the negro of today. In their remarkable proportions they exaggerate some of the peculiarities of the recent Negroes; their teeth resemble those of the Australian type. There is evidence of the establishment and spread of the Grimaldi race throughout western Europe, namely, in cases of partial reversion to this type among the skeletal remains of the Neolithic Age, the Bronze Age, and the early Iron Age in Brittany, Switzerland, and northern Italy. Extreme prognathism (projection of the face) is the characteristic that most frequently appears, and in some instances there is the broad nose, with the same osteological peculiarities that mark the Grimaldi type. In every instance these individuals show dolichocephaly (long-headedness), nearly always combined with a short, broad face. Until the discovery of the Grimaldi type we were at a loss to explain the existence of these individuals among a population from which they differed so radically.”

In view of the divergence of the authorities, it may be safer to conclude with Keith that the Grimaldi people represent an intermediate type in the evolution of the typical white and black races. The Grimaldi negroids constitute one of the great puzzles of anthropology. By the ratio of skeletons preserved to probable human beings existing, these two bodies indicate that a large number of negroids inhabited Europe at this period. Whether they were as widely spread and as influential as Vernau contends is problematical. Future excavations may throw further light upon them, even if it be only in a negative way.