The Evidence of Fossil Remains

Eoanthropus.

The discovery which ranks next in importance to that of Pithecanthropus was made by Mr. Charles Dawson at Piltdown, Sussex, between the years 1911 and 1915. He found the greater part of the left half of a deeply mineralized human skull, also part of the right half ; the right half of the lower jaw, damaged at certain parts but carrying the first and second molar teeth and the socket of the third molar or wisdom tooth. The lower jaw, in the region beneath the chin, had a bar of bone known as the "simian shelf," which until then had been regarded as a mark of the ape. Later a pointed upper canine tooth was added; its characters were simian rather than human. The stratum of gravel proved to have been laid down early in the Pleistocene period, and it is certain that the fossil fragments of this human skull were as old as the date of deposition. From the fossil f rag ments thus found, Sir Arthur Smith Woodward reconstructed an extinct genus of mankind, Eoanthropus, the dawn man (Quay. Jour. Geol. Soc., 1913-15). Subsequently (1915) there was found a remarkable bone implement hewn from the thigh bone of an extinct kind of elephant ; its state of mineralization and its colour ing show that it had been embedded originally in the deepest stra tum and was certainly as old as the human fossil remains ; in a neighbouring field two other fragments of a human skull of the same kind came to light, and another molar tooth.

Some experts still doubt whether a lower jaw which resembles that of a chimpanzee in several respects should be assigned to a skull which is purely human in its characters. At first there were differences of opinion as to the size and characters of the brain of Eoanthropus. Amongst British authorities there is now agree ment that the skull and jaw are parts of the same individual, and that the brain, as revealed by casts taken from the interior of the skull, is human in its size and in all its characters. If we divide living races into three classes according to the size of brain. the large-brained having a cranial capacity above 1,45o c.c., the small-brained a capacity under 1,35o c.c., then Eoanthropus cer tainly reached the upper limits of the small-brained class if not actually a member of the medium-brained group. The brain of Eoanthropus has risen many stages above that of Pithecanthropus; the bone implement affords evidence of manual skill and of in ventive ability on the part of its owner. The eyebrow ridges of Pithecanthropus are shaped as in the gibbon, chimpanzee and gorilla; in Piltdown man they are fashioned nearer to the form seen in the skull of the orang. Professor Frassetto of Bologna has drawn attention to several points in which the Piltdown mandible resembles that of the Orang (Man., July 1927). The discovery at Piltdown shows that at the beginning of the Pleistocene period a race of mankind had come by a brain that had reached a human estate, and that this race still retained certain definite simian characteristics in its jaws, teeth and face.

Neanderthal

1857 while workmen were clearing out the Neanderthal cave near Dusseldorf, Germany, they found the vault of a fossilized skull and limb bones of a man who proved to be, in the light of further discoveries, a representative of an extinct species of man—Homo neanderthalensis. A fossil skull

which was dug up at Gibraltar in 1848 is of the Neanderthal type. In 1926 Miss Dorothy Garrod, while excavating the floor of a recently discovered cave at Gibraltar, unearthed the greater part of the skull of a Neanderthal child, aged about five years. The stratum in which it was embedded contained flint implements worked in the upper or later Mousterian style. This skull is as capacious as that of a modern child of the same age and as the supraorbital ridges are still undeveloped, the forehead is not so unlike that of modern children. The skull of a Neanderthal child, older than the Gibraltar example, was found at La Quina, France, in 1921 by Dr. Henri Martin. Fossil remains of the same species have been found in Belgium (at Naulette, 1866, and at Spy, 1886), but the caves of France have proved the richest source of Neanderthal remains, particularly those in the valley of the Dordogne.

The evidence found at La Chapelle (1908), at La Ferrassie (1909), at Le Moustier (1908) and at La Quina I) made it quite clear that this extinct type of man, marked as he was by many simian traits of body, buried his dead with signs of respect. He worked flint implements with great skill, in the style or cul ture known as Mousterian. He was a hunter and lived in caves and rock shelters. His molar teeth were often shaped in a peculiar manner; his teeth have been found in cave deposits in Jersey 0910 and in Malta (1917). His remains have been found in Moravia (1906) and at Krapina in Croatia (1899-5906). His culture has been found in Italy and in England, but no trace of his body. Only once have fossil remains of Neanderthal man been found outside the limits of Europe, in a cave situated on the western shores of the Sea of Galilee (1925).

Neanderthal man appears to have been the sole occupant of Europe during the middle of the Pleistocene period—throughout the time in which the Mousterian culture prevailed in that con tinent. The date of this culture may be put down tentatively as extending from 4000o B.C. to 20000 B.C. ; perhaps its duration was much longer. Remains of Neanderthal man rather more primitive in type, and found in strata older than the Mousterian strata of France, have been discovered at Taubach (1895) and at Ehringsdorf (1914), both of these sites being near Weimar, Ger many. In 1925 a human skull was discovered in the limestone de posit of Ehringsdorf. This discovery is of especial importance for the geological evidence gives to it a greater antiquity than that of the Neanderthal skulls of France. The fauna embedded in the same stratum as the skull is that of the warm period which pre ceded the Mousterian glaciation. Yet the new Ehringsdorf skull (Weidenreich, V erhand. Gesellsch. f. Phys. AnthroP., 1927, P. 34) has all the characteristics of the Neanderthal species, but is very capacious, particularly when its feminine features are taken into account. Weidenreich estimates the cranial capacity of this woman to have been 1,45o c.c. Her skull had been fractured by a blow given by a wedge-shaped weapon at, or soon after, death. The Heidelberg mandible was found at a depth of 78 ft. in a sandpit at Mauer, ten miles to the east of Heidelberg, in 1907.