The Important Features of Chancelade are mentioned below:
1. Discovery:
The discovery was made in a rock shelter near Chancelade in Dordogne, France in the year 1888. A human skeleton with its arms folded on its breast region and the knees just touching the jaw was unearthed.
The body was powdered with red ochre. The posture in which the skeleton was laid suggests method of burial found among many ancient and modern people.
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2. Habitat:
The Chancelade lived in Magdalenian time. In the same rock shelter some typical fauna and implements of the Magdalenian period were also found.
3. Description:
1. The skull is long and narrow measuring 19.4 cm in length and 18.75 cm in breadth and thus showing a cranial index of 70.9 (dolichocephalic).
2. The cranial capacity is estimated at 1530 cc by Keith and 1710 by Testut.
3. The vault is high.
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4. The supraorbital ridges are slightly marked.
5. The forehead is almost vertical.
6. The parietal tuberosities are well marked.
7. The mastoid processes are fully developed.
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8. When looked at from the front a ridge-like elevation along the sagittal plane of the skull is noticed.
9. The face is very long and broad. Thus, the skull is said to be harmonic.
10. The face appears to be flat due to the prominence of strongly developed cheek-bones.
11. The orbits are large, high quadrilateral in shape.
12. The nose is leptorrhine.
13. No sub-nasal pragmatism is noticed.
14. The palate is narrow; the alveolar is elliptical in outline.
15. The lower jaw is strong but very narrow.
16. The ascending ramii are very broad.
17. The chin is prominent.
18. The skeleton materials suggest that the man was old and died between the ages of 55 and 65 years and that he was of short stature (about 5 feet 1 inch).
19. The limb bones are strong and massive, which indicate that the man had a strong muscular body.
20. The upper limbs are comparatively longer.
21. The femur is bent.
22. The tibia is platymetric.
23. The foot is large. It resembles that of Neanderthal man in the separation of the first metatarsal of the great toe from that of the second toe.
4. Resemblance with Modem Eskimo:
The Chancelade man resembles the modern Eskimo in the following characters: short stature; large, high dolichocephalism head; elevated sagittal region; a very wide and long face; flat, prominent cheek-bones; narrow nasal aperture; powerful masticator apparatus. Besides the physical characteristics, there exist between the Chancelade and the Eskimo some cultural similarities also, on the basis of which some authorities are inclined to consider the former as the ancestor of the later.
According to them at the close of the glacial period with the retreat of the ice, the Chancelade people moved northward and ultimately reached North America, and their descendants are the modern Eskimos. Others, including Hooton, however, decline to believe this Chancelade origin of the Eskimos.
5. Difference with Cro-Magnon:
It is stated that the Cro-Magnon and Chancelade do not differ greatly. They, however, may be differentiated from one another by some characters, like:
1. The Cro-Magnon was much taller than the Chancelade.
2. In the former the head was disharmonic whereas in the later it was harmonic.
3. The orbits are rectangular in Cro-Magnon but quadrilateral in Chancelade.