Keith, Arthur. Ancient Types of Man, (1911) Chapter VI, The Grimaldi or Negroid Type in Europe, page 59-63:

In the cliffs which flank the beach near Men-tone there are a number of caves which for a long period of time afforded a habitation for ancient man. At the close of the last and at the beginning of the present century, largely owing to the interest taken in the history of primitive man by the Prince of Monaco, systematic excavations were carried out in deep strata of their floors. In one of these, the "Grotte des Enfants," usually named the Grimaldi Cave, the various strata of the floor made up a thickness of 8 1/2 metres (28 feet). In the lowest layer of all were found two skeletons—one of a woman past middle life, with a stature estimated at 1570 mm. (5 ft. 2 in.), and the other of a boy about sixteen to seventeen years of age, and about 1550 mm. (5 ft. 1 in.) in height.

Civilization or Barbarism, (1981) by Cheikh Anta Diop, page 15-16:

The Grimaldi Negroids have left their numerous traces all over Europe and Asia, from the Iberian Peninsula to Lake Baykal in Siberia, passing through France, Austria, the Crimea, and the Basin of Don, etc. In these last two regions, the late Soviet Professor Mikhail Gerasimov, a scholar of rare objectivity, identified the Negroid type from skulls found in the Middle Mousterian period.

If one bases one's judgment on morphology, the first White appeared only around 20,000 years ago: the Cro-Magnon Man. He is probably the result of a mutation from the Grimaldi Negroid due to an existence of 20,000 years in the excessively cold climate of Europe at the end of the last glaciation.

The Basques, who live today in the Franco-Catabrian region where the Cro-Magnon was born, would be his descendants; in any case there are many of them in the southern region of France.

The Grimaldi or Negroid Type in Europe

Ancient Types of Man, (1911) continued:

With them were found traces of a civilization and of a fauna which has led anthropologists to assign them to the end of the Mousterien or beginning of the Aurignacien Period [40,000 to 28,000 years ago]—about the same or perhaps before the period assigned to the Combe-Capelle man. They have the narrow and long heads of the Galley Hill race. In the woman the maximum length of the head is 191 mm.; in the boy, probably her son, it is 192 ; the width of the skull in the mother is 131 and in the son 133. The proportion of breadth to length is about 68 per cent—the same as in the Galley Hill race. Yet French anthopologist Dr. Verneau,(1) who has published the results of a minute examination of these two ancient individuals, from various features seen in the skeletons, had no hesitation in assigning them to a negroid race.

It is an easy matter to distinguish the skeleton of the true negro from that of the pure white, but there are many intermediate races—not hybrids —which show a puzzling mixture of characters. The ancient Grimaldi woman and boy are of the mixed or negroid type. We associate large white teeth, full prominent jaws, and receding chin with the races showing pigmented skins. In the old woman, a great number of the teeth have been lost during life and the dental characters are uncertain. The shallow, projecting incisor part of the upper jaw and the characters of the chin are certainly features of a negroid race. So are the wide opening of the nose, the prominent cheek bones, the flat and short face. Yet the bridge of the nose is not flat as in negroes, but rather prominent as in Europeans, and the capacity of the skull (1375 cc.) is of ample dimensions for a woman of her size.

As to the boy, his teeth are large and of the negro type; he bears a striking resemblance to the woman, and his cranial capacity (1580 cc.) indicates a brain distinctly above the modern in size. The leg bones of mother and son are relatively long as in negroes. In that race the two eminences or bosses of the forehead usually meet and join together in a high median prominence, whereas in white races they remain separated, and this is the case in the Grimaldi skulls. Indeed, in the features of the forehead the Grimaldi remains agree with the Galley Hill type. It is a remarkable fact that the natives of the uplands of the Sandwich Islands—a true negroid race—reproduce today the cranial features of the ancient inhabitants of the Grimaldi caves.

To appreciate the true significance of a negroid race in the south of Europe towards the close of the Glacial Period, we must look at the distribution of moden races. A line from Gibraltar in the West to the Phillipine Islands in the Far East passes through a zone where the fairer skins of the North pass into the darker skins of the South. To some extent it may be a zone in which intermixtures of fairer and darker races occur, but in the main it is better to regard it as a zone in which human races have inherited from the ancestral stock of modern humanity some of the characters which now distinguish the European, and some that distinguish the Negro; but both Negro and European are highly specialized examples of the modern type of man. The discovery of the Grimaldi race does not indicate that we have reached the common stock from which black and white races have evolved; that point must lie much farther in the past. It merely indicates that towards the end of the Glacial Period the negroid race which we see in the north of Africa today was already evolved, and that it extended into Europe.

The land connections between Europe and Africa we know to have been much closer in the time of the Grimaldi people than they are today. There are other evidences of a negroid race in Europe. The negroid traits of the Combe-Capelle man have been mentioned; but there is also the remarkable fact that statuettes and engravings which are assigned to this period represent certain bodily characters of the negro. The Grimaldi people are the earliest negroid type so far discovered, yet they are so modern and highly evolved in character that we cannot suppose them to represent a common ancestor of European and African races. If, however, we suppose that all races of modern man have been evolved from a common stock, we naturally expect, especially in the earlier stages of the evolution of modern races, to find intermediate types between the extreme racial forms now found in North Europe and Central Africa. The Grimaldi people seem to represent an intermediate type in the evolution of the typical white and black races.

Footnote:

(1) Dr. Rene Verneau, Les Grottes de Grimaldi, Vol. II., Monaco, 1906.