The stratum in which it was found belongs to the deeper and older Pleistocene series; this fossil jaw thus represents a race which lived long before the men who practised the Mousterian culture. Yet so like is the mandible of Heidelberg man to that of Neanderthal man, in the majority of its characters, that we may safely regard him as an ancestral representative of the Neander thal species. In Heidelberg man the canine tooth did not project above its neighbours as in Eoanthropus. At the close of 1927 it was announced that many further fragments of Heidelberg man had been discovered at Mauer; his leg bones are even more an thropoid in their characterization than those of Neanderthal man. In a still older stratum of the same formation were found the fossil remains of a species of man—a forerunner of the Neander thal type—of a large anthropoid ape and of two smaller apes, akin to the gibbon, showing that at the end of the Pliocene period Europe was inhabited by a low species of humanity and by vari ous species of anthropoid apes.
At one time it was believed that Neanderthal man represented an ancestral phase of modern man. Every bone of his body shows distinctive markings, many of these being of a simian na ture. His eyebrow ridges were like those of the gorilla and chim panzee; the roof of his skull was low like theirs, and yet in size of brain he equalled, if he did not surpass, modern Europeans. He had, however, certain specializations of structure which mod ern or Neanthropic man does not possess. Besides, the archaeo logical evidence is now complete that he was replaced in Europe by the arrival of men of the modern kind—represented by people of the Cromagnon type. For these reasons Neanderthal man cannot be regarded as an ancestor of modern man. Neanderthal man and men of the modern type, however, have so much in common that they must be looked upon as descendants of a common ancestor.
probably alive in Africa when men of the Neanderthal type domi nated Europe. His limb bones show that he was tall, quite 5 ft. 10 in. in height, and stoutly made, after the manner of modern man. His skull, which is complete save the lower jaw, possesses many primitive traits. His brain space was small (1,30o c. c.) ; in point of development the brain falls below that of Eoanthropus. The eyebrow ridges are extremely massive, and the face has fea tures which recall those of the gorilla. Yet his teeth, although large, are human in every respect and were ravaged by caries. Rhodesian man might well stand as an ancestral type to modern man.
351, 1918), is of the same form as that of living Australian ab origines, but possesses additional primitive features. In 1926 Dr.
W. Colin Mackenzie announced the discovery of a fossil skull showing the same primitive features as the Talgai specimen. It was found in a swamp at Cohuna, in the basin of the Murray river, northern Victoria. Prof. E. Dubois discovered a Pleisto cene form of man at Wadjak, Java, one with a very large cranial capacity (Proc. Roy. Acad. Sc. Amsterdam, vol. xxiii., pt. 7, 192o). Such discoveries, although they bear out the truth of evo lution, do not throw light on man's evolutionary pedigree.