20Section I.G. Sergi.
Of these two fossil forms the Neandertaloid is extinct in both its
secondary branches, while the other has not left descendants in the brachi-
morphic branch, as I have shown in another place : only the dolicomorphic
branch has persisted dividing into various forms, those forms, namely,
which we have found from quaternary to neolithic times. The
skulls of Ipswich, of Galley Hill, of Clichy, of Tilbury, of Combe Capelle,
of Cromagnon, of Mentone, or Predmost, of the Balzi Rossi, of Laugerie
Basse, of Solutre, of Sorde, have all many modern characters with pre
cisely the same variations which are already found in the neolithic skulls
and in their descendants.
If the skeleton of Castenedolo is really of the Lower Pliocene, as I now
anew maintain, the skull cannot be distinguished from a recent one, nor can
the rest of the skeleton. Professor Keith in the skeleton of Ipswich finds
that some of the characters do not differ from those of an Englishman of
recent date. Everyone sees what resistance this human type has presented
from the Tertiary Period, and this fact would suffice to prove how fantastic
are all the modern theories and all the strange hypotheses put forth regard
ing the variability of the human skull when this has already assumed a
definite form; and it does not matter if the Evolutionary Theory, as it has
been till now conceived, is affected, because facts are of more value than
theories, which, in order to possess worth, must have their foundation in
facts and not in baseless speculations.
A phenomenon of much importance again and again explained by myself,
which serves to prove the persistence of forms, is that derived from the ad
mixture of the two characteristic forms, dolico and brachimorphic, in human
crossing. According to some, in this case we might expect an intermediate
form, and a certain anthropologist has thus maintained, especially wishing to
explain that mesocephalic type, which is simply a conventional one in
craniometry. I have formerly shown that the mesocephalic type does not
constitute a morphological, but only a craniometrical, type; it is only a
variation, according to the width of the skull, of the dolicomorphic type,
and is always met with invariably, with greater or less frequency, wherever
the long type is dominant, whether there are or are not crossings with the
brachimorphic type. There are entire regions where the dolico and meso
cephalic types rule without a single brachicephalic specimen.
That an intermediate form does not exist as the result of crossing is
easily shown from the persistence of one or the other type in the same
place, or in the same intermixed families. In this case there is that segrega
tion in the descendants which is found in Heredity, according to the Men-
delian Theory. We have no direct observations verifying the generations and
the number of forms amongst the descendants, where the separation takes
place; but this does not invalidate the fact often observed by me of families
in which the parents had heads of different forms, and the descendants are
divided so that some inherited the paternal and others the maternal form.
