Homo Sapiens — Chancelede

Chancelade skeleton, a human (genus Homo) skeleton discovered in a shelter made of rock at Chancelade, southwestern France, in 1888. The 17,000-year-old skeleton was discovered curled up beneath the shelter’s floor, indicating a deliberate burial. The Chancelade skull was examined by French anatomist Jean-Léo Testut, who determined that it was of Eskimo type and designated it as the type specimen of a fictitious “Chancelade race.”

Although many paleoanthropologists believed the Chancelade skull had Eskimo affinities for a long time, later experts have generally agreed that it is Cro-Magnon. From about 40,000 to 10,000 years ago, the Cro-Magnons were early modern humans (Homo sapiens) who occupied Europe after the Neanderthals. Cro-Magnons had larger brow ridges, wider faces, and larger skulls than contemporary populations, despite being broadly similar to modern humans. The physical characteristics displayed by modern humans, according to most researchers, are of more recent origin and certainly predate the Chancelade specimen.

History and Context of the Fossil Discoveries

Identifying the features that distinguish the human genus Homo is difficult because the group includes not only all living people but also our closest fossil relatives. Furthermore, many of the characteristics that distinguish humans are behavioural in nature and do not leave any fossil evidence. It’s difficult to tell whether a particular type of early human developed a language, society, or art, so other features found in fossils are usually used to infer these characteristics.

Australopithecines from Southern Africa

In 1924, the first australopithecine fossil was discovered in a cave at the Buxton Limeworks near Taung, Kimberley, in southern Africa.

Water channels running through the limestone formed the Taung cave, as they did at other australopithecine sites in southern Africa. When the caves first started to form, they had openings on the ground surface through which soil and debris washed in, including bone.

In 1888, fossil remains were discovered in a rock shelter near Chancelade, France. The skull is long and narrow, measuring 19.4 centimetres in length and 18.75 centimetres in width, with a cranial index of 70.9. (dolichocephalic). The supraorbital ridges are slightly marked, and the vault is high.

The parietal tuberosities are well defined, and the forehead is almost vertical. The mastoid processes have reached their full potential. In the following ways, the Chancelade man resembles a modern Eskimo: short stature; large, high dolichocephalism head; elevated sagittal region; wide, long face; flat, prominent cheekbones; narrow nasal aperture; powerful masticatory apparatus

Physical Characteristics

The following are some of Chancelade’s most notable characteristics:

• The Skull

1. The skull is long and narrow, with a length of 19.4 cm and a width of 18.75 cm, resulting in a cranial index of 70.9. (dolichocephalic).
2. Keith calculates a cranial capacity of 1530 cc, while Testut calculates a capacity of 1710.
3. An extremely high vault 
4. The supraorbital ridges have a faint outline.
5. The brow is nearly vertical.
6. There are distinct parietal tuberosities.
7. The mastoid processes have reached their full potential.
8. A ridge-like elevation along the sagittal plane of the skull is visible when viewed from the front.
9. The face is broad and long. As a result, the skull is described as harmonic.
10. Due to the prominence of prominent cheekbones, the face appears to be flat.
11. The orbits are shaped like a large, high quadrilateral.
12. This is a leptorrhine nose.
13. There is no evidence of sub-nasal pragmatism.
14. The alveolar is elliptical in shape, and the palate is narrow.
15. The lower jaw is powerful, but it is also very narrow.

The ascending ramii are extremely wide.

17. There is a prominent chin.

• The Teeth

1.  Molars are powerful teeth that grow in size from the first to the third. 
2. This is a feature that modern man shares.

• The Limbs

1. According to the skeleton materials, the man was old and died between the ages of 55 and 65, and he was of short stature (about 5 feet 1 inch).
2. The limb bones are massive and strong, indicating that the man had a muscular body.
3. The upper limbs are longer than the lower limbs.
4. The femur has a bend in it.
5. The tibia has platymetric proportions.
6. The foot is quite big. The separation of the first metatarsal of the great toe from the second metatarsal of the second toe is similar to that of Neanderthal man.

Phylogenetic Position

The Chancelade man is thought to have a lot in common with modern Eskimos, both in terms of physical features and cultural traits. A. Keith and Hooton disagree with this viewpoint. According to some scholars, the Chancelade people crossed the Bering Strait and arrived in North America as the ice sheet receded, and they are the ancestors of the modern Eskimo and Mongoloids. Whatever the case may be, the Chancelade man is universally accepted as a member of Homo Sapiens.

Conclusion 

The discovery of more than 10,000-year-old human remains is always cause for celebration in the scientific community. Such discoveries are uncommon and valuable because each new sample or technique may reveal new threads in our understanding of human evolution. As a result, existing and newly discovered human bones must always be measured, cast, and sampled. The positive replica (plaster, plastic, bronze, etc.) is cast, and the negative is created by brushing or pouring a material (usually a type of rubber) over the original. The cast can be made of bone or soft tissue.