Grimaldi Man-Any info?

[aroundtheworld]

My friend is obsessed with archaic history. He has been calling me for the past 2 hours talking about the differences between a skeleton found by Dr. Leaky and now he talks about the Grimaldi man being African and being the oldest skeleton found. does anyone have any information on this?

[ndrthl]

Grimaldi man used to live in Europe a very long time ago. According to some experts, Grimaldi man's physical traits share some similarities with the subsaharan Africans. Im curious to know whether scientists have already made some genetic tests so as to determine more accurately the ancestry of the Grimaldi man. You may judge by yourself though.

Here is a Grimaldi skull:

img203.imageshack.us/my.php?image=grimaldi3co.gif



'Typical' subsaharan skull (Negroid):
img213.imageshack.us/my.php?image=negroid0mo.gif



'Typical' caucasoid skull:

img63.imageshack.us/my.php?image=caucasoid2su.gif



A Cro Magnon skull (which is clearly caucasoid):

img490.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cromagnon4zr.gif

[aroundtheworld]

Thanks for the information. Very interesting.

[Planet Asia]

aroundtheworld said:

Thanks for the information. Very interesting.

Grimaldi Man has sub-Saharan morphology although some anthropologists in an attempt to deny this simply try to classify them as Cro-Magnons or question the dating of the skeletons.

[Agrippa]

They are obviously not Europid, I dont know anybody who said they are Cromagnid, they are just contemporary (more or less ) and therefore called "Cro Magnon" too sometimes not as a racial but general sapiens designation.

They show very plesiomorphic, primitive traits and are sometimes seen to be related with Boskopids/Proto-Khoisanids which might represent the most primitive group of sapiens of that time we know of.

[Crimson Guard]

The Upper Paleolithic People and Their Culture

IN EUROPE the Wurm I-II or Gottweig Interstadial,lasting from about 40,000 to about 29,000 B.C.,was a period of mild,but not hot,climate,like that of the present,and of favored spots like Palestine during Wurm I. It was a time of important racial and cultural change. During it,the Neanderthals were replaced by Upper Paleolithic people similar to modern Europeans,and the Mousterian flake culture was succeeded by a blade culture that endured,in many forms and under many names,to the end of the Pleistocene,around 8,000 B.C. Similar but not identical blade cultures have been found in Siberia,in northern Afghanistan,in the Zagros Mountains of Iraq and Iran,in Turkey,and in Lebanon,Syria,and Palestine.

A favorite cliche of anthropology,as widespread as the image of the brutal Neanderthals,is that Upper Paleolithic Europeans belonged to three:the Cro-Magnon,which was Caucasoid;the Negroid Grimaldis;and the Eskimoid race of Chancelade. This concept is a product of the type-specimen procedure. There was,infact,only one Upper Paleolithic European race. It was Caucasoid and it inhabits Europe today. We know this not only from skeletons but also from the representations of the human body in Upper Paleolithic art.


The Racial Characteristics of the Upper Paleolithic Europeans

THE UPPER PALEOLITHIC EUROPEANS,who lived from about 30,000 to about 10,000 years ago,where modern Caucasoid's. Were they barbered and dressed in the current styles,they could sit in any western European restaurant without arousing particular comment except for tehir tables manners. A few very observant fellow customers might notice that they closed their deeply worn teeth with an edge-to-edge bite,and that their well-developed temporal and masseter muscles bulged they chewed.

As von Bonin has shown,the men where not notably tall. The mean stature for twelve adult male skeletons is only five feet eight inches (173 cm.),shorter than modern Americans. The famous Old Man of Cro-Magnon,depicted in textbooks as a giant,was only five feet six (168.4 cm.). The two tallest men of the series,Grotte des Enfants and Barma Grande2,were five feet eleven and a half inches(181.8 cm.). The shortest Upper Paleolithic man was Chancelade. He was only five feet three (160 cm.),and was lived during a brief spell of intense cold. As we know ,intense cold tends to reduce stature.

The Aurignacian Grimaldi woman,found ina double burial with ehr so-called Negroid son,had a long radius and a short humerus. Elongated shin bones were found in a skeleton of Combe-Capelle,who lived in mild Gottweig Interstadial,and in two Aurignacian Skeletons from the Riviera,one from Grotte du Cavillon and the other(not to be confused with the Grimaldi pair) from Baoussi. None of these men,nor Grimaldi mother and child,was exposed to great cold. Both Skhul 4 and Skhul 5 had similar limb proportions. The hands and feet of the Upper Paleolithic Europeans are better known to us from archeological than from osteological evidence. many negative silhouettes of hands,made spraying pigment out of a bone tube over hand held against a wall,have been found on walls of French caves,bare footprints have been found on cavern floors in France and Italy. Both the hands and the feet were normal for slenderly buil Europeans.

Morant's series of twenty male skulls and von Bonin's series of thirteen female skulls represent nearly all countries from France to Czechoslovakia,and all archeological culures. The male skulls are large,with a mean cranial capacity of 1,580cc.,about female skulls are much smaller,with a capacity of 1,370 cc.,about the size of a Swanscombe. The detailed measurements of these skulls reveal a very long,moderately broad and high brain case of fully modern proportions;a face of moderate to great length, and a considerable breadth. This was not the case among the Neanderthals,nor is it among most modern Europeans. Heavy chewing combined with relatively narrow brain case,is responsible for this archaic feature,found also among Eskimo. It has no racial significance.

Most skulls are not prognathous,an exception being the recently discovered female sull from the Proto-Magdalenian of Abri Patuad. Brow ridges are of moderate size or they are missing in most of the skulls,excpet in Czechoslavokian ones of the early Auringacian,which come closest to Skhul 5 and Jebel Qafza 6. They,however,show no trace of Skhul 5's alveolar prognathism. The series of male skulls also resemble a late,Neolithic series from France,Iron Age skulls from Norway,and Anglo-Saxon ones from the east coast of England.

Although most of the teeth are too worn to permit accurate observation,those of the so-called Negroid boy of Grimaldi are in perfect condition. His upper jaw shows irregular tooth eruptions, gaps,and malocclusion. The upper median incisors have vertical ridges on the lingual side,and a basal protuberance. These are dental characteristics of a Negro,but not exclusively. They are also on a number of teeth from Krapina and on those of Neanderthals, and also present,as we have just mentioned,in the Mount Carmel population. An upper canine from Magdalenian maxilla of Farincourt has the same features, The Grimaldi child was no more Negroid than the Palestinians of Skhul and many living Europeans of the Mediterranean region.

The other alleged intruder in teh European populations,Chancelade had wide zygomatic arches and flaring gonial angles,as befitted a heavy chewer living in extreme arctic conditions. But he had high-rooted nasal bones,face that was far from flat;and a completely Caucasoid configuration of the malars. He was as European as the rest of the Upper Paleolithic people.