The *Piltdown skull* found in Sussex, Eng land, in 1911-12, has perhaps evoked more vigorous discussion and more divergence of opinion than any similar discovery. The bones were found in a shallow gravel-bed, are un questionably Pleistocene, and probable as early as third interglacial. With them were found teeth of very early types of elephant and hippo potamus, and a few roughly chipped *eoliths.* There are several fragments of a human cra nium of great thickness, but which any anato mist would identify as Homo sapiens. Near one of these was found the right half of a lower jaw containing two molar teeth. This jaw is a veritable "bone of contention* for a number of able anatomists regard it as belong ing not to the associated human cranium but to a fossil ape, though no such animals are known to have lived in England during the Pleistocene. The chin region is entirely ape-like, the molars somewhat so, and, the same may be said of a canine tooth, discovered later.
Dr. A. Smith Woodward, in the belief that the discovery represents an exceedingly early hominid, essentially an ape-jawed man, created for it a new genus and species, Eoanthropus datusoni (the dawn man), the specific name in honor of the discoverer. Dr. Woodward's restoration is shown in figure 6. The British anatomists generally accept the validity of Eoanthropus, and regard it as a discovery of prime importance in the ancestry of the genus Homo, but outside the British Isles opinion is divided. Those who maintain that the jaw is that of an ape, hold that it, together with the bones and teeth of other animals, became acci dentally washed out of their original resting places and mingled in the river gravels with the human remains. G. S. Miller, as a result of careful comparative studies, regards the jaw as undoubtedly belonging to an extinct species of chimpanzee. Of course if this view is correct, Woodward's genus *Eoanthropus* is only a figment, and the cranium merely that of an early man of our own species. At present it would seem that Eoanthropus can be only tentatively accepted, pending further evidence.
As above stated there are strong reasons for believing that the human family originated in central Asia and thence deployed in various directions. Besides the western migrants who gradually spread over Europe, others worked southward and populated the African continent, and the possible relation of the Grimaldi type to some of these has been mentioned. There is evidence that the Bushmen, at least, have drifted from more northerly parts of Africa, and some reason to suppose that they were preceded in South Africa by a Palaeolithic people of stronger physique. A fragmentary skull of large size found at Boskop, in the Transvaal, in 1915, is believed to be of Pleistocene Age. It is not sufficiently complete to permit certain diagnosis as a negroid type. Broom has named it Homo capensis, but the reasons for erecting the new species seem in adequate to the present writer.
The African, Australian, Papuan and Melanesian peoples, descendants of stocks which spread, southward from Asia, have a number of characters in common. Of these races the Australian blacks and the recently ex tinct Tasmanians are modern Palaeolithic men and represent a cultural level scarcely higher than that of the Neanderthals. Their early segregation from other races is generally ad mitted, but thus far the only Australian dis covery of great antiquity is a cranium, the Talgai skull, found in a Pleistocene formation in Queensland. and described in 1917, by Dr. Arthur Smith. This skull, though badly crushed, shows the essential features of the very distinctive Australian type, but is remarkably primitive, almost ape-like, in the rectangular form of the palate, and the enlarged canine teeth; just such a skull as one might posit as a Pleistocene progenitor of the Australian race. This discovery is highly significant as proving the early human invasion of the continent, and the differentiation at a time so remote of the Australioid type.
Though actual remains of Pleistocene man in the western hemisphere are extremely rare, and the antiquity of most of these somewhat questionable, there are excellent reasons for believing that a branch of the human species had become established in America before the last glaciation, an offshoot from the same eastern Asian division which gave rise to the Mongolian peoples. These first American im migrants probably entered the continent in the region of Alaska, when that part of the world enjoyed a more genial climate than was later the case, and spread eastward and southward, finally extending to the southern extremity of South America. This view, however, is not universally held, and some competent ethnol ogists maintain that the migration of the Eskimo has been westward from Greenland. The affinity of American to Mongoloid peoples is generally admitted, as is also the racial unity of all the Americans from the Eskimo to the Fuegians. Prehistoric remains, both skeletal and cultural, are of course extremely abundant, but all of the former, including even those be lieved to be Pleistocene, exhibit the essential characters of the American Indian type. Among the more important discoveries of possible pre glacial (i.e., before the last ice advance) or glacial age are several fragmentary skeletons from the Trenton gravels of New Jersey, and some bones of two individuals found at Vero, Fla., in 1915-16. A skeleton discovered in the famous asphalt pits of Rancho La Brea near Los Angeles, Cal., in 1914, and at first hailed as a Pleistocene man, is not different from the modern type, and is almost certainly postglacial. Various discoveries in Argentina described by Ameghino as Tertiary (Miocene and Pliocene) prehuman remains, to which he assigned the generic names of Tetraprothomo and Diprothomo, have been entirely discredited. It may be said in general that the essential Indian character of all the prehistoric remains found in America, and the likeness of this type to the Asian Mongols, indicate that the first American immigrants were already highly developed, and very similar physically to the Indian of to-day.
In this brief review of the ethnology of earliest man, the reader must have observed that the somatic evidence is extremely meagre, except in the cases of the Neanderthal and Cr6 Magnon types. In several cases a race or even a species is based on a few bones from a single individual, but. it must be understood that a few skeletal fragments, especially of the skull, may convey a great amount of information to the skilled anatomist, also that the location, associated animal remains and cultural evi dences all aid largely in solving the riddles of mankind's remote past. It has not been possible to make more than a hasty survey of the physi cal characters of the earliest types of the human family. The late Palaeolithic migrants into Europe,— the long-headed Nordic (north ern) and Mediterranean (southern) races, and the broad-headed Alpine race, of great im portance as the chief stocks from which the present peoples of Europe have descended, must perforce be omitted. For the consideration of the cultures of the Palaeolithic, as well as of the Neolithic and Bronze Age, see ARCH2EOLOGY.
Bibliography.— Of general works the fol lowing may be especially recommended: Sol las, W. J., 'Ancient Hunters' (2d ed., London 1915) ; Osborn, H. F., 'Men of the Old Stone Age' (2d ed., New York 1918) ; Keith, A., 'An cient Types of Ma& (New York 1911) ; HrdliCka, A., 'The Most Ancient Skeletal Re mains of Ma& (Smithsonian Report for 1913, 2d ed., Washington 1916). On prehistoric man in American consult two critical surveys by HrdliClca, A., 'Early Man in South America' (Bul. 52, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1912), and 'Recent Discoveries Attributed to Early Man in America' (Bul. 66, 1918). Ex tensive monographs have been published on most of the important discoveries, somatic and cultural, references to which will be found in the general works named above.