Looking for an old novel about mind-transfer with primitive aliens

[mojojojo]

Looking for the name of an old sci-fi novel that was probably published in the 70s. It was about a college professor who finds that he can shift his consciousness into to the mind of a being on another word. This being is a infant of a species of ape-like creatures who are as intelligent as humans but have a paleolithic level of technology. The professor is seen as something like a God, by these creatures and soon makes it his mission to jump start them on the road to civilization and introduces such things as domestication of plants/animals,metallurgy and cities.The cover of the book features the professors human face merging into the ape-like face of one of the aliens.

 

[CassFrank]

SOLVED! After searching for what feels like millennia for this book, I finally stumbled across the cover today.
This novel is John Robert Russell's Cabu (1974).

Here is the blurb: "George Piget was only human. A frail history professor with just a few months to live, he dreamed of having the power of a Caesar, the genius of a Napoleon, the ruthless cunning of a Hitler. Then one day he awoke from a deep sleep to find himself in the dark, primitive world of Cabu, where to be 'only human' was to be the highest form of life. At first he was terrified of the huge lizardlike beasts that stalked him on the vast plains, of the hairy subhuman creatures that made him one of their own. But then his memory of human history took hold, and he plotted to make his dream of world domination come true..."

And the cover, as the OPs originally described exactly: