Biology Reference
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the 1857 meeting of the Natural History Society of Prussian Rhineland and
Westphalia, at Kassel. Their insistence that the strange bones were from a nor-
mal human of great antiquity met with resistance from many of the attendees.
4. Gruber 1948, 436.
5. Quoted in Gruber 1948, 438
-39. These opinions were expressed, respec-
tively, by William King, anatomist at Ireland's Queen's University; C. Carter
Blake, honorary secretary of the Anthropological Society of London; and the
German anatomist A. Mayer. The German pathologist Rudolf Virchow also
believed the Neanderthal specimen was a human who had suffered from rick-
ets. For additional information about the controversial discovery of Neander-
thals, see Drell 2000; Regal 2004; Trinkaus and Shipman 1993; and de Vos 2009.
6. Although many workers have argued that Neanderthals were an entirely
separate species of early human,
Homo neanderthalensis,
a recent analysis of Nean-
derthal genes by Green et al. (2010, 722) “shows that they are likely to have had
a role in the genetic ancestry of present-day humans outside of Africa.” This
finding suggests that Neanderthals merely constituted a separate subspecies of
human, namely
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.
7. See de Vos 2009 for another treatment of parallels in the initial rejec-
tions and eventual acceptances by scholars of the discoveries of Neanderthals
and
Homo (Pithecanthropus) erectus.
De Vos observes that
Homo floresiensis
is at
the beginning of a similar process and predicts that it will also, eventually, be
accepted as a legitimate species.
8. Details about the negative reception to the discovery of
Pithecanthropus
erectus
are also provided by Dubois 1896; Regal 2004; and Shipman 2002.
9. The controversial reaction to Taung is discussed in Findlay 1972; and
Tobias 1996.
10. Krause 2009.
11. Vidal 2005.
12. Indeed, Bill Griffith's comic strip
Zippy the Pinhead
was partly inspired
by several famous microcephalics who performed in sideshows in the late 1800s
and early 1900s, as detailed in the unnumbered note above.
13. See Falk, Hildebolt, et al., “Brain shape,” 2007, for details.
14. Hornberger 2005.
15. Comas 1968.
16. Tod Browning's extraordinary 1932 film,
Freaks,
employed actual carnival
performers as actors. Although it was extremely controversial when it was first
shown by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the thriller celebrated the abilities of its
physically deformed cast members, who were portrayed as heroes in contrast to
