[[Categoria:Pagine che usano RigaIntestazione|Scientia - Vol. IX.djvu{{padleft:130|3|0]]of a bison also, plainly intended to provide food for the departed spirit on its journey to the next world.

The races of Solutrian and Magdalenian times were endowed with no mean intellectual powers; the steady advance in the perfection of their weapons testifies to their inventiveness; their sculpture in bone and ivory, their line-engravings, and the mural paintings with which they adorned the caves that sheltered them are distinguished by truth, vigour, and refinement, and suggest comparison with the art of ancient Greece. Add to this that, according to Piette, they had bridled the horse, and in the case of the Magdalenians had adopted to some extent the custom of wearing clothes. We are thus far from recognizing in these primitive palaeolithic hunters the brutal animal of dawning intelligence which we have been taught to expect, and the origin of our race must be pushed an indefinite distance farther back.

We have seen that four of the Mousterian skulls possess a capacity of 1600 c. c. or over, but the Gibraltar skull, which, though « undated », is also probably Mousterian, falls far short of this; according to my measurements, its capacity amounts to 1260 c. c., and I do not think that it can have exceeded this to any appreciable extent. But a range of capacity between 1260 and 1700 c. c. falls well within the limits observed in recent races, whether primitive, like the Australians, or civilized, like ourselves. It is possible also that the Gibraltar skull belonged to a woman.

A doubt may arise, as to whether the Mousterian skulls are merely chance selections: they may have belonged to exceptional men, tribal chiefs perhaps, and the fact that in two instances they were found under circumstances which point to a ceremonial burial might tend to strengthen this suspicion. Hut, apart from the fact that exceptional men are not, as a rule, distinguished by exceptional heads, it is evident that the argument will not apply to the three skulls discovered in the Neanderthal and at Spy, for these were not found in a tomb.

The result of the numerous investigations carried out during the last quarter of a century is to show that no discoverable relation (exists between the magnitude of the brain - or even its gross anatomy - and intellectual power.