Chancelade man

Cast of skull of Chancalade man

Chancelade man or the Chancelade find is a male skeleton of an ancient anatomically modern human found in Chancelade in France in 1888.^[1] The skeleton was that of a rather short man, mere 1,55 meters tall. Early interpretations was that the skeleton was that of an Eskimo, but modern researchers have grouped the skeleton with the Cro-Magnon (in the wider sense) since the 1960s.^[2][3] The term European early modern humans is today preferred for this expanded assemblage.

The Chancelade find

The original Chancelade find was discovered in 1888 in the cave of Raymonden Chancelade in the Dordogne. Lying all the way down by the bedrock, below three layers containing Magdalenian tools, the find contained a single skeleton. The skeleton was that of an adult man, estimated to have been between 55 and 65 at death. The man had been intentionally buried and liberally coated with ochre. The skeleton was found in a flexed position with the knees bent up to the chin, similar to other stone age finds and current burial practice among San people and some aboriginal Australians and Eskiomos. The grave also contained Magdalenian tools, dating from 17 000 to 12 000 years before present.^[4]

The study also indicated that the individual was relatively small (155 cm) and stocky, but had a very high cranial capacity ( 1670 cm3). The cranium was rather narrow, but long and tall, and with a clear sagittal keel along the suture between the parietal bones. The face was large, both wide and high , with high orbits quite close together and of somewhat rectangular shape. The cheek-bones were also quite priminent, high and broad at the same time. The nasal opening was tall but narrow, and the nasal bone (now lost on the original Chancelade skull), indicate a pronounced nasal bridge and large nose, similar to that found in some European and Middle Eastern people.^[5] The chin was well developed and the limb bones were strong. The original skeleton is today housed in the Musée d'art et d'archéologie du Périgord in Perigueux.^[6]

The tools tied the Chancalade skeleton to the Magdalenian culture. This culture was known for their finely worked tools and ornaments from animela teeth and snail shells. They were also thought responsible for much of the amazing cave paintings found in Europe.^[7]

Chancelade man as a race

Aurochs engraving from Laugerie-Basse

In 1889, the influential French anatomist Leo Testut published a study in which he states that Man Chancelade was a separate race from the Cro-Magnon, and might have been an ancestor of the Eskimos.^[8] This thesis today rejected and forgotten, was supported in publications until 1927.^[9] This study was part of a prevailing view of the time, dividing the many pre-historic finds into more finely grained racial groups than is presently the norm.

The Chancalade skeleton, together with finds from Laugerie-Basse and the Duruthy cave near Sorde-l'Abbaye were sometimes grouped as a distinct "Magdalenian race", presumed to have been primarily reindeer hunters.^[7] Compared to the earlier big-game hunting Cro-Magnon people, the Chancelade or Magdalenian people were short and stocky. While both the cranium of "Old man of Cro-Magnon" and the Chancelade find were markedly dolicocahhalic, the Cro-Magnon skull was long and broad, the Chnacalade skull narrow and tall, and with a larger brain volume.^[3] The Chancalade people had longer faces with a long nose and tall orbitae, unlike the broad faces of the Cro-Magnons.^[5]

The ideas of early writers like Arthur de Gobineau made the more politically minded archaeologists of the day consider Europeans as the original (superior) race.^[10] Hence, the African and Asian races had to come from somewhere. The skull from Chancelade showing traits similar to that of Eskimos was suggested as an ancestor for the "yellow" race, while the much older Grimaldi finds satisfied the need for an ancestor for the "black" race.^[11] In the post-Victorian science, and particularly after the 2nd World War such fine grading of human races fell out of favour, and the interpretation of Chancalade man as an ancestor of Asian people have been seen as imaginations resulting from the theories of de Gobineau, to prove the superiority and anteriority of the white race.^[12] Harvard evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin stated that “no justification can be offered for continuing the biological concept of race. (...) Genetic data shows that no matter how racial groups are defined, two people from the same racial group are about as different from each other as two people from any two different racial groups.^[13]

Chancelade man as Cro-Magnon

With the end of the 2nd World War, much of the pre-war racial theories and literature was rejected, and fossil humans were grouped into broader categories. New finds from Jebel in Israel, Combe-Capelle in France, Minatogawa in Japan and several Paleo-Indians had considerably broadened the knowledge of early man.^[14] All these finds group with Cro-Magnons rather than with Neanderthals, and the old term Cro-Magnon was expanded to encompass all early modern humans, including the Chancelade man.^[10]

In this understanding of the term "Cro-Magnon", the short and stocky Chancelade man did not stand out. This change coincided with a shift of paleoanthropological focus away from Europe. Cro-Magnon in the wide sense is now replaced by "Anatomically modern humans" or AMH, and the name Cro-Magnon has come to denote remains similar to the original find, though not as a formal unit.^[15]

Modern knowledge of the genetic history of Europe demonstrates that the European continent has been populated in several waves of ethnic groups.^[16] It is well within the realm of the possible that this also happened in the early phase of modern human settlement of Europe, and that the earliest population history of Europe may be more complex than traditionally assumed from palaeontology alone.

References