§ 4. Fossil Links
All efforts, then, to establish, by means of anatomical and embryological homologies, the lineal descent of man from any known type of monkey or ape have ended in ignominious failure. Comparative anatomy and embryology can, at most, only furnish grounds for extremely vague and indefinite speculations regarding the descent of man, but they can never become a basis for specific conclusions with respect to the phylogeny of Homo sapiens. Every known form of ape, whether extant or extinct, is, as we have seen, far too specialized in its adaptation to arboreal life to pass muster as a feasible ancestor. The only conceivable manner in which the human body could be related to simian stock is by way of collateral descent, and the only means of proving such descent is to adduce a series of intermediate fossil types connecting modern men and modern apes with this alleged common ancestor of both. “The ascent (sic) of man as one of the Primates,” says Henry Fairfield Osborn, “was parallel with that of the families of apes. Man has a long line of ancestry of his own, perhaps two million or more years in length. He is not descended from any known form of ape either living or fossil.” (The Ill. London News, Jan. 8, 1921, p. 40.)
This theory of a hypothetical primate ancestor of man, which is supposed to have inhabited the earth during the earlier part of the Tertiary period, and to have presented a more man-like appearance than any known type of ape, was first propounded by Karl Snell in 1863. It was popularized at the beginning of the present century by Klaatsch, who saw in it a means of escape from the absurdities and perplexities of the theory of lineal descent—“the less,” says the latter, “an ape has changed from its original form, just so much the more human it appears.” This saying is revamped by Kohlbrugge to read: “Man comes from an original form much more like himself than any existing ape.” Kohlbrugge’s comment is as follows: “The line of descent of man thus receives on the side of the primates a quite different form from its previous-one. Such new hypotheses as those of Hubrecht and Klaatsch seem, therefore, fortunate for nature-philosophers, because evolution always failed us when we compared known forms in their details, and led us only to confusion. But if one works with such distant hypothetical ancestors, one escapes much disillusioning.” (Quoted by Dwight, op. cit., p. 195.)
One thing, at any rate, is certain, namely: that we do not possess any fossils of this primitive “large brained, erectly walking primate,” who is alleged to have roamed the earth during the eocene or oligocene epoch. The Foxhall Man, whose culture Osborn ascribes to the Upper Pliocene, is far too recent, and, what is worse, far too intelligent, to be this Tertiary Ancestor. The Pithecanthropus erectus, likewise, is excluded for reasons which we shall presently consider. Meanwhile, let it be noted, that we have Osborn’s assurance for the fact that we are descended from a brainy and upright oligocene ancestor, as yet, however, undiscovered.
But the situation is more hopeful, if we hark back to a still more remote period, whose remains are so scarce and fragmentary, as to eliminate the possibility of embarrassment arising from intractable details. “Back of this,” says Osborn, “ ... was a prehuman arboreal stage.” (Loc. cit.) Here, then, we are back again in the same old rut of tree-climbing simian ancestry, whence we thought to have escaped by abandoning the theory of lineal descent; and, before we have time to speculate upon how we got there, Prof. Wm. Gregory of the American Museum is summoned by Osborn to present us with specimens of this prehuman arboreal stage. This expert, it would seem, favored up till the year 1923 the fossil jaw of the Propliopithecus as representing the common root, whence the human race diverged, on one side, and the races of anthropoid apes, on the other. (Cf. Osborn’s Museum-leaflet of 1923 on “The Hall of the Age of Man,” p. 29.) On April 14, 1923, however, Gregory announced the deposition of Propliopithecus and the enthronement of the jaw of Dryopithecus. This sudden accession of Dryopithecus to the post of common ancestor of apes and men was due to the discovery by Dr. Barnum Brown of three fossil jaws of Dryopithecus in the Miocene deposits of the Siwalik beds in northern India. By some rapturous coincidence, the three jaws in question happen to come from three successive “horizons,” and to be representative of just three different stages in the evolution of Dryopithecus. Doctor Gregory finds, moreover, that the patterns of the minute cracks and furrows on the surviving molar teeth correspond to those on the surface of the enamels of modern ape and human teeth. Hence, with that ephemeral infallibility, which is characteristic of authorities like Doctor Gregory, and which is proof against all discouragement by reason of past blunders, the one who told us but a year ago that the cusps of all the teeth of Propliopithecus “are exactly such as would be expected in the common starting point for the divergent lines leading to the gibbons, to the higher apes, and to man” (loc. cit.), now tells us that both we and the apes have inherited our teeth from Dryopithecus, who had heretofore remained neglected on the side-lines. In 1923, apparently, Dr. Gregory was unimpressed with the crown patterns of Dryopithecus, whose jaw he then excluded from the direct human line. (Cf. Museum-leaflet, p. 5.) Now, however, that the new discoveries have brought Dryopithecus into the limelight, and, particularly because these jaws were found in Miocene deposits, Gregory has shifted his favor from Propliopithecus to Dryopithecus. (Cf. Science, April 25, 1924, suppl. XIII.)
When palæontologists are obliged to do a volte face of this sort, one ought not to scoff. One ought to be an optimist, and eschew above all the spirit of the English statesman, who, on hearing a learned lecture by Pearson on the question of whether Man was descended from hylobatic, or troglodytic stock, was guilty of the following piece of impatience: “I am not particularly interested in the descent of man ... this scientific pursuit of the dead bones of the past does not seem to me a very useful way of spending life. I am accustomed to this mode of study; learned volumes have been written in Sanscrit to explain the conjunction of the two vowels ‘a’ and ‘u’. It is very learned, very ingenious, but not very helpful.... I am not concerned with my genealogy so much as with my future. Our intellects can be more advantageously employed than in finding our diversity from the ape.... There may be no spirit, no soul; there is no proof of their existence. If that is so, let us do away with shams and live like animals. If, on the other hand, there is a soul to be looked after, let us all strain our nerves to the task; there is no use in digging into the sands of time for the skeletons of the past; build your man for the future.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1921, pp. 432, 433.) It is to be hoped, however, that this reactionary spirit is confined to the few, and that the accession of this new primitive ancestor will be hailed with general satisfaction. At any rate, we can wish him well, and trust that the fossilized jaw of Dryopithecus will not lose caste so speedily as that of Propliopithecus.
Propliopithecus, or Dryopithecus? Hylobatic, or troglodytic affinities? Such questions are scarcely the pivots on which the world is turned! Nevertheless, we rejoice that Doctor Gregory has again settled the former problem (provisorily, at least) to his own satisfaction. More important, however, than that of the dentition of Dryopithecus, is the crucial question of whether or not Palæontology is able to furnish evidence of man’s genetic continuity with this primitive pithecoid root. Certainly, no effort has been spared to procure the much desired proofs of our reputed bestial ancestry. The Tertiary deposits of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and the oceanic islands have been diligently ransacked for fossil facts that would be susceptible to an evolutionary interpretation. The aprioristic criterion that all large-brained men are recent, and all small-brained men with recessive chins are necessarily ancient, has always been employed in evaluating the fossil evidence. Notwithstanding all endeavors, however, to bring about the consummation so devoutly desired, the facts discovered not only fail to support the theory of collateral descent, but actually militate against it. For assuming that man and the anthropoid apes constitute two distinct lines of evolution branching out from common Tertiary or pre-Tertiary stock, palæontology should be able to show numerous intermediate fossil forms, not alone for the lateral branch of the apes, but also, and especially, for the lateral line connecting modern men with the common root of the primate tree. But it is precisely in this latter respect that the fossil evidence for collateral descent fails most egregiously. Palæontology knows of many fossil genera and species of apes and lemurs, that might conceivably represent links in a genetic chain connecting modern monkeys with Tertiary stock, but it has yet to discover so much as a single fossil species, much less a fossil genus, intermediate between man, as we know him, and this alleged Tertiary ancestor common to apes and men.
Not even catastrophism can be invoked to save this irremediable situation; for any catastrophe that would have swept away the human links would likewise have swept away the ape links. The presence of many genera and species of fossil apes, in contrast to the absence of any fossil genus or species of man distinct from Homo sapiens, is irreconcilable with the theory of collateral descent. Such is the dilemma proposed to the upholders of this theory by Wasmann, in the 10th chapter of his “Die Moderne Biologie” (3rd edition, 1906), a dilemma, from which, as we shall see, their every attempt to extricate themselves has failed most signally.
“But what,” asked Wasmann, “has palæontology to say concerning this question? It tells us that, up to the present, no connecting link between man and the ape has been found; and, indeed, according to the theory of Klaatsch, it is absurd to speak of a link of direct connection between these two forms, but it tells us much more than this. It shows us, on the basis of the results of the most recent research, that we know the genealogical tree of the various apes, a tree very rich in species, which extends from the present as far back as the hypothetical primitive form assigned to the earliest part of the Tertiary period; and, in fact, in Zittel’s work, “Grundzüge der Paläontologie” (1895), not less than thirty genera of fossil Pro-simiæ and eighteen genera of genuine fossil apes are enumerated, the which have been entombed in those strata of the earth that intervene between the Lower Eocene and the Alluvial epoch, but between this hypothetical primitive form and man of the present time we do not find a single connecting link. The entire genealogical tree of man does not show so much as one fossil genus, or even one fossil species.” (Op. cit., italics his.) A brief consideration of the principal fossil remains, in which certain palæontologists profess to see evidence of a transition between man and the primitive pithecoid stock, will serve to verify Wasmann’s statement, and will reveal the fact that all the alleged connecting links are distinctly human, or purely simian, or merely mismated combinations of human and simian remains.
(1) Pithecanthropus erectus: In 1891 Eugène Dubois, a Dutch army surgeon, discovered in Java, at Trinil, in the Ngawa district of the Madiun Residency, a calvarium (skull-cap), 2 upper molars and a femur, in the central part of an old river bed. The four fragments, however, were not all found in the same year, because the advent of the rainy season compelled him to suspend the work of excavation. “The teeth,” to quote Dubois himself, “were distant from the skull from one to, at most, three meters; the femur was fifteen meters (50 feet) away.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1898, p. 447.) Dubois judged the lapilli stratum, in which the bones were found, to be older than the Pleistocene, and older, perhaps, than the most recent zones of the Pliocene series. “The Trinil ape-man,” says Osborn, “ ... is the first of the conundrums of human ancestry. Is the Trinil race prehuman or not?” (Loc. cit., p. 40.) Certainly, Lower Pleistocene, or Upper Pliocene represents too late a time for the appearance of the upright primate, whence we are said to have sprung. Even Miocene would be too late a date for our alleged divergence from the primitive arboreal stock.
Of the capacity of the calvarium, Dubois says: “I found the above-mentioned cavity measured 550 c.cm. The cast of the cavity of the Neanderthal skull taken to the same plane measures 750 c.cm.” (Loc. cit., p. 450, footnote.) His first estimate of the total cranial capacity of Pithecanthropus was 1000 c.cm., but, later on, when he decided to reconstruct the skull on the basis of the cranium of a gibbon (Hylobates agilis) rather than that of a chimpanzee (Troglodytes niger), he reduced his estimate of the cranial capacity to 900 c.cm. Recently, it is rumored, he has increased the latter estimate, as a sequel to his having removed by means of a dentist’s tool all the siliceous matter adhering to the skull-cap. As regards shape, the calvarium seems to resemble most closely the cranial vault of gibbon. This similarity, as we have seen, led Dubois to reconstruct the skull on hylobatic lines—“the skull of Hylobates agilis,” says Dubois, “ ... strikingly resembles that of Pithecanthropus.” (Loc. cit., p. 450, footnote.) The craniologist Macnamara, it is true, claims that the skull-cap most closely approximates the Troglodyte type. Speaking of the calvarium of Pithecanthropus, the latter says: “The cranium of an average adult male chimpanzee and the Java cranium are so closely related that I believe them to belong to the same family of animals—i.e. to the true apes.” (Archiv. für Anthropologie, XXVIII, 1903, pp. 349-360.) The large cranial capacity, however, would seem to favor Dubois’ interpretation, seeing that gibbons have, in proportion to their bodies, twice as large a brain as the huge Troglodyte apes, namely, the chimpanzee and the gorilla. The maximum cranial capacity for any ape is from 500 to 600 c.cm. Hence, with 900 c.cm. of cranial capacity estimated by Dubois, the Pithecanthropus stands midway between the ape and the Neanderthal Man, a human dwarf, whose cranial capacity Huxley estimated at 1,236 c.cm. This consideration, however, does not of itself entitle the Pithecanthropus to be regarded as a connecting link between man and the anthropoid apes. In all such comparisons, it is the relative, and not the absolute, size of the brain, which is important. The elephant for example, has as large a brain as a man, but the elephant’s brain is small, in comparison to its huge body. The brain of a mouse is insignificant, as regards absolute size, but, considered in relation to the size of the mouse’s body, it is as large as, if not larger than, that of an elephant, and hence the elephant, for all the absolute magnitude of its brain, is no more “intelligent” than a mouse. As we have already seen, man’s brain is unique, not for its absolute size, but for its weight and enormous cortical surface, considered with reference to the comparatively small organism controlled by the brain in question. It is this excess in size which manifests the specialization of the human brain for psychic functions. The Weddas, a dwarf race of Ceylon, have a far smaller cranial capacity than the Neanderthal Man, their average cranial capacity being 960 c.cm., but they are human pigmies, whereas the Pithecanthropus, according to Richard Hertwig, was a giant ape. “The fragments,” says Hertwig, “were regarded by some as belonging to a connecting link between apes and man, Pithecanthropus erectus Dubois; by others they were thought to be the remains of genuine apes, and by others those of genuine men. The opinion that is most probably correct is that the fragments belonged to an anthropoid ape of extraordinary size and enormous cranial capacity.” (“Lehrbuch der Zoologie,” 7th ed.)
Prof. J. H. McGregor essays to make a gradational series out of conjectural brain casts of a large ape, the Pithecanthropus and the Neanderthal Man, in the ratio of 6: 9: 12, this ratio being based upon the estimated cranial capacities of the skulls in question. In a previous chapter, we have seen that such symmetrically graded series have little force as an argument for common descent. In the present instance, however, the gradation gives a wrong impression of the real state of affairs. If Doctor McGregor had taken into account the all-important consideration of relative size, he would not have been able to construct this misleading series. This consideration, however, did not escape Dubois himself, and in his paper of Dec. 14, 1896, before the Berlin Anthropological Society, he confessed that a gigantic ape of hylobatic type would have a cranial capacity close to that of Pithecanthropus, even if we suppose it to have been no taller than a man. (Cf. Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1898, p. 350.) The admission is all the more significant in view of the fact that Dubois was then endeavoring to exclude the possibility of regarding Pithecanthropus as an anthropoid ape.
The teeth, according to Dubois, are unlike the teeth of either men or apes, but according to Virchow and Hrdlička, they are more ape-like than human. The femur, though unquestionably man-like, might conceivably belong to an ape of the gibbon type, inasmuch as the upright posture is more normal to the long-armed gibbon than to any other anthropoid ape, and its thighbone, for this reason, bears the closest resemblance to that of man. According to the “Text-Book of Zoölogy” by Parker and Haswell, the gibbon is the only ape that can walk erectly, which it does, not like other apes, with the fore-limbs used as crutches, but balanced exclusively upon its hind-limbs, with its long arms dangling to the ground—“The Gibbons can walk in an upright position without the assistance of the fore-limbs; in the others, though, in progression on the surface of the ground, the body may be held in a semi-erect position with the weight resting on the hind-limbs, yet the assistance of the long fore-limbs acting as crutches is necessary to enable the animal to swing itself along.” (Op. cit., 3rd ed., 1921, vol. II, p. 494.) The Javanese femur is rounder than in man, and is, in this, as well as other respects, more akin to the thighbone of the gibbon. “After examining hundreds of human femora,” says Dubois, “Manouvrier could find only two that had a somewhat similar shape. It is therefore a very rare form in man. With the gibbon a similar form normally occurs.” (Loc. cit., pp. 456, 457.) Whether the thighbone really belonged to an erectly walking animal has not yet been definitely settled. To decide this matter, it would be necessary to apply the Walkhoff x-ray method, which determines the mode of progression from the arrangement of the bone fibers in frontal, or other, sections from the femur. This test, however, has not hitherto been made. Nor should the significance of the fact that the thighbone was found at a distance of some fifty feet away from the skull-cap be overlooked, seeing that this fact destroys, once and for all, any possibility of certainty that both belonged to the same animal.
In conclusion, therefore, we may say that the remains of Pithecanthropus are so scanty, fragmentary, and doubtful, as to preclude a reliable verdict on their true significance. As Virchow pointed out, the determination of their correct taxonomic position is impossible, in the absence of a complete skeleton. Meanwhile, the most probable opinion is that they represent the remains of a giant ape of the hylobatic type. In other words, the Pithecanthropus belongs to the genealogical tree of the apes, and not to that of man. In fact, he has been excluded from the direct line of human descent by Schwalbe, Alsberg, Kollmann, Haacke, Hubrecht, Klaatsch, and all the foremost protagonists of the theory of collateral descent. (Cf. Dwight, op. cit., ch. VIII.) Professor McGregor’s series consisting of an ape, the Pithecanthropus, Homo neanderthalensis, and the Crô-Magnon Man fails as an argument, not only for the general reason we have discussed in our third chapter, but also for two special reasons, namely: (1) that he completely ignores the chronological question of the comparative age of the fossils in his series, and (2) that he has neglected to take into account the consideration of the body-brain ratio. For as Prof. G. Grant MacCurdy puts it, “We must distinguish between relative (cranial) capacity and absolute capacity.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1909, p. 575.) In justice to Professor McGregor, however, it should be noted that he proposes his interpretation in a purely provisory and tentative sense, and does not dogmatize after the fashion of Osborn and Gregory.
After the year 1896, Dubois appears to have withdrawn the relics of Pithecanthropus from further inspection on the part of scientific men, and to have kept them securely locked up in his safe at Haarlem, Holland. (Cf. Science, June 15, 1923, suppl. VIII.) Since all existing casts of the skull-cap of Pithecanthropus are inaccurate, according to the measurements originally given by Dubois, anthropologists were anxious to have access to bones, in order to verify his figures and to obtain better casts. (Cf. Hrdlička, Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, p. 498.) His obstinate refusal, therefore, to place the Javanese remains at the disposal of scientists was bitterly resented by the latter. Some of them accused him of having become “reactionary” and “orthodox” in his later years, and others went so far as to impugn his good faith in the matter of the discovery. (Cf. W. H. Ballou’s article, North American Review, April, 1922.) A writer in Science says: “It has been rumored that he was influenced by religious bigotry” and refers to the bones as a “skeleton in the closet.” (Cf. loc. cit.) Dubois’ own explanation, however, was that he wished to publish his own finds first. Recently, he seems to have yielded to pressure in the matter, since he permitted Hrdlička, McGregor, and others to examine the fragments of Pithecanthropus. (Cf. Science, Aug. 17, 1923, Suppl. VIII.) Meanwhile, too, his opinion has changed with reference to these bones, which he now regards as the remains of a large ape of the hylobatic type, and not of a form intermediate between men and apes. This opinion is, in all likelihood, the correct one.
(2) The Heidelberg Man: In a quarry near Mauer in the Elsenz Valley, Germany, on Oct. 21, 1907, a workman engaged in excavating drove his shovel into a fossilized human jaw, severing it into two pieces. Herr Joseph Rösch, the owner of the quarry, immediately telegraphed the news of the find to Prof. Otto Schoetensack of the neighboring University of Heidelberg. The Professor arrived on the scene the following day, and “once he got hold of the specimen, he would no more let it out of his possession.” (Cf. Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, p. 510.) He took it back with him to Heidelberg, where he cleaned and repaired it. The crowns of four of the teeth broken by the workman’s shovel were never recovered. The Heidelberg jaw was found at a depth of about 79 feet below the surface (24.1 meters). Fossil bones of Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros etruscus, Felis leo fossilis, etc., are said to have been discovered at the same level. The layer in which it was found has been classed by some as Middle Pleistocene, by others as Early Quaternary; for “there seems to be some uncertainty as to the exact subdivision of the period to which it should be attributed.” (Hrdlička, loc. cit., p. 516.) No other part of the skeleton except the jaw was discovered.
The teeth are of the normal human pattern, being small and vertical. Prof. Arthur Keith says they have the same shape as those of the specimen found at Spy. The jaw has an ape-like appearance, due to the extreme recessiveness of the chin. It is also remarkable for its massiveness and the broadness of the ascending rami. Its anomalous character is indicated by the manifest disproportion between the powerful jaw and the insignificant teeth. “One is impressed,” says Prof. George Grant MacCurdy of Yale, “by the relative smallness of the teeth as compared with the massive jaw in the case of Homo heidelbergensis.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1909, p. 570.) “Why so massive a jaw,” says the late Professor Dwight, former anatomist at Harvard, “should have such inefficient teeth is hard to explain, for the very strength of the jaw implies the fitness of corresponding teeth. Either it is an anomaly or the jaw of some aberrant species of ape.” (Op. cit., p. 164.) This fact alone destroys its evidential force; for, by way of anomaly, almost any sort of feature can appear in apes and men, that is, human characters in apes and simian characters in man. “Thus it is certain,” says Dwight, “that animal features of the most diverse kinds appear in man apparently without rhyme or reason, and also that they appear in precisely the same way in animals far removed from those in which they are normal. It is hopeless to try to account for them by inheritance; and to call them instances of convergence does not help matters.” (Op. cit., pp. 230, 231.)
Kramberger, however, claims that, with the exception of the extremely recessive chin, the features of the Heidelberg jaw are approximated by those which are normal in the modern Eskimo skull. (Cf. Sitzungbericht der Preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaften, 1909.) Prof. J. H. McGregor holds similar views. He claims that the greater use of the jaw in uncivilized peoples, who must masticate tough foods, tends to accentuate and increase the recessiveness of the chin. It is also possible that the backward sloping of the chin may have been intensified in certain primitive races or varieties of the human species as a result of factorial mutation. We would not, however, be justified in segregating a distinct human species on the basis of minor differences, such as the protuberance or recessiveness of chins. On the whole, we are hopelessly at sea with reference to the significance of the Heidelberg mandible. Taxonomic allocation must be grounded on something more than a jaw, otherwise it amounts to nothing more than a piece of capricious speculation.
(3) Eoanthropus Dawsoni: Dec. 18, 1912, is memorable with evolutionary anthropologists as the day on which Charles Dawson announced his discovery of the famous Dawn Man. The period of discovery extended from the years prior to 1911 up to Aug. 30, 1913, when the canine tooth was found by Father Teilhard de Chardin. The locality was Piltdown Common, Sussex, in England. The fragments recovered were an imperfect cranium, part of the mandible, and the above-mentioned canine tooth. The stratified Piltdown gravel, which Dawson assigns to the Lower Pleistocene or Glacial epoch, had been much disturbed by workmen, “who were digging the gravel for small repairs.” (Dawson.) The discoverer first found a fragment of a parietal bone. Then several years later, after the gravels had been considerably rainwashed, he recovered other fragments of the skull. All parts of the skeletal remains are said to have been found within a radius of several yards from the site of the initial discovery. The skull was reconstructed by Dr. A. Smith Woodward and deposited in the British Museum of Natural History at South Kensington. Eoliths were found in the same gravel as the skull.
Of the skull, according to Woodward, four parts remain, which, however, were integrated from nine fragments of bone. “The human remains,” he says, “comprise the greater part of a brain-case and one ramus of the mandible, with two lower molars.” Of Woodward’s reconstruction, Keith tells us that “an approach to symmetry and a correct adjustment of parts came only after many experimental reconstructions” (cf. “Antiquity of Man,” p. 364), and he also remarks that, when Woodward undertook to “replace the missing points of the jaws, the incisor and canine teeth, he followed simian rather than human lines.” (Op. cit., p. 324.) Here we may be permitted to observe that, even apart from the distorting influence of preconceived theories, this business of reconstruction is a rather dubious procedure. The absence of parts and the inevitable modification introduced by the use of cement employed to make the fragments cohere make accurate reconstruction an impossibility. The fact that Woodward assigned to the lower jaw a tooth which Gerrit Miller of the United States Museum assigns to the upper jaw, may well give pause to those credulous persons, who believe that palæontologists can reliably reconstruct a whole cranium or skeleton from the minutest fragments. Sometimes, apparently, the “experts” are at sea even over so simple a question as the proper allocation of a tooth.
Woodward, however, was fully satisfied with his own artistic work on Eoanthropus; for he says: “While the skull, indeed, is evidently human, only approaching a lower grade in certain characters of the brain, in the attachment for the neck, the extent of the temporal muscles and in the probable size of the face, the mandible appears to be almost precisely that of an ape, with nothing human except the molar teeth.” (Cf. Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, pp. 505, 506.) Of the cranial capacity Woodward gives the following estimate: “The capacity of the brain-case cannot, of course, be exactly determined; but measurements both by millet seed and water show that it must have been at least 1,070 cc., while a consideration of the missing parts suggests that it may have been a little more (note the parsimoniousness of this concession!). It therefore agrees closely with the capacity of the Gibraltar skull, as determined by Professor Keith, and equals that of the lowest skulls of the existing Australians. It is much below the Mousterian skulls from Spy and La Chapelle-aux-Saints.” (Loc. cit., p. 505.)
Where Doctor Woodward came to grief, however, was in his failure to discern the obvious disproportion between the mismated cranium and mandible. As a matter of fact, the mandible is older than the skull and belongs to a fossil ape, whereas the cranium is more recent and is conspicuously human. Woodward, however, was blissfully unconscious of this mésalliance. What there is of the lower jaw, he assures us, “shows the same mineralized condition as the skull” and “corresponds sufficiently well in size to be referred to the same individual without any hesitation.” (Loc. cit., p. 506.)
For this he was roundly taken to task by Prof. David Waterston in an address delivered by the latter before the London Geological Society, Dec., 1912. Nature, the English scientific weekly, reports this criticism as follows: “To refer the mandible and the cranium to the same individual would be equivalent to articulating a chimpanzee foot with the bones of a human thigh and leg.” Prof. J. H. McGregor of Columbia, though he followed Woodward in modeling the head of Eoanthropus now exhibited in “The Hall of the Age of Man,” told the writer that he believed the jaw and the skull to be misfits. Recently, Hrdlička has come out strongly for the separation of the mandible from the cranium, insisting that the former is older and on the order of the jaw of the fossil ape Dryopithecus, while the skull is less antique and indubitably human. The following abstract of Hrdlička’s view is given in Science, May 4, 1923: “Dr. Hrdlička,” we read, “holds that the Piltdown jaw is much older than the skull found near it and to which it had been supposed to belong.” (Cf. suppl. X.) Hrdlička asserts that, from the standpoint of dentition, there is a striking resemblance between the Piltdown jaw and that of the extinct ape Dryopithecus rhenanus. He comments, in fact, on “the close relation of the Piltdown molars to some of the Miocene or early Pliocene human-like teeth of this fossil ape.” (Ibidem.) Still other authorities, however, have claimed that the jaw was that of a chimpanzee.
To conclude, therefore, the Eoanthropus Dawsoni is an invention, and not a discovery, an artistic creation, not a specimen. Anyone can combine a simian mandible with a human cranium, and, if the discovery of a connecting link entails no more than this, then there is no reason why evidence of human evolution should not be turned out wholesale.
(4) The Neanderthal Man (No. 1): The remains of the famous Neanderthal Man were found in August, 1856, by two laborers at work in the Feldhofer Grotte, a small cave about 100 feet from the Düssel river, near Hochdal in Germany. This cave is located at the entrance of the Neanderthal gorge in Westphalia, at a height of 60 feet above the bottom of the valley. No competent scientist, however, saw the bones in situ. Both the bones and the loam, in which they were entombed, had been thrown out of the cave and partly precipitated into the ravine, long before the scientists arrived. Indeed, the scientific discoverer, Dr. C. Fuhlrott, did not come upon the scene until several weeks later. It was then too late to determine the age of the bones geologically and stratigraphically, and no petrigraphic examination of the loam was made. The cave, which is about 25 meters above the level of the river, communicates by crevices with the surface, so that it is possible that the bones and the loam, which covered the floor of the cave, may have been washed in from without. Fuhlrott recovered a skull-cap, two femurs, both humeri, both ulnæ (almost complete), the right radius, the left pelvic bone, a fragment of the right scapula, five pieces of rib, and the right clavicle. (Cf. Hugues Obermaier’s article, Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1906, pp. 394, 395.) “Whether they (the bones) were really in the Alluvial loam,” says Virchow, “no one saw.... The whole importance of the Neanderthal skull consists in the honor ascribed to it from the very beginning, of having rested in the Alluvial loam, which was formed at the time of the early mammals.” (Quoted by Ranke, “Der Mensch,” II, p. 485.) We know nothing, therefore, regarding the age of the fragmentary skeleton; for, as Obermaier says: “It is certain that its exact age is in no way defined, either geologically or stratigraphically.” (Loc. cit., p. 395.)
The remains are no less enigmatic from the anthropological standpoint. For while no doubt has been raised as to their human character, they have given rise to at least a dozen conflicting opinions. Thus Professor Clemont of Bonn pronounced the remains in question to be those of a Mongolian Cossack shot by snipers in 1814, and cast by his slayers into the Feldhofer Grotte. The same verdict had been given by L. Meyer in 1864. C. Carter Blake (1864) and Karl Vogt (1863) declared the skull to be that of an idiot. J. Barnard Davis (1864) claimed that it had been artificially deformed by early obliteration of the cranial sutures. Pruner-Bey (1863) said that it was the skull of an ancient Celt or German; R. Wagner (1864), that it belonged to an ancient Hollander; Rudolf Virchow, that the remains were those of a primitive Frieslander. Prof. G. Schwalbe of Strassburg erected it into a new genus of the Anthropidæ in 1901. In 1904, however, he repented of his rashness and contented himself with calling it a distinct human species, namely, Homo primigenius, in contradistinction to Homo sapiens (modern man). As we shall see presently, however, it is not a distinct species, but, at most, an ancient variety or subspecies (race) of the species Homo sapiens, differing from modern Europeans only in the degree that Polynesians, Mongolians, and Hottentots differ from them, that is, within the limits of the one and only human species. Other opinions might be cited (cf. Hrdlička, Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, p. 518, and H. Muckermann’s “Darwinism and Evolution,” 1906, pp. 63, 64), but the number and variety of the foregoing bear ample testimony to the uncertain and ambiguous character of the remains.
The skull is that of a low, perhaps, degenerate, type of humanity. The facial and basal parts of the skull are missing. Hence we are not sure of the prognathism shown in McGregor’s reconstruction. The skull has, however, a retreating forehead, prominent brow ridges and a sloping occiput. Yet, in spite of the fact that it is of a very low type, it is indubitably human. “In no sense,” says Huxley, “can the Neanderthal bones be regarded as the remains of a human being intermediate between men and apes.” (“Evidence of Man’s Place in Nature,” Humb. ed., p. 253.) D. Schaaffhausen makes the same confession—“In making this discovery,” he owns, “we have not found the missing link.” (“Der Neanderthaler Fund,” p. 49.) The cranial capacity of the Neanderthal skull, as we have seen, is 1,236 c.cm., which is practically the same as that of the average European woman of today. In size it exceeds, but in shape it resembles, the dolichocephalic skull of the modern Australian, being itself a dolichocephalic cranium. Huxley called attention to this resemblance, and Macnamara, after comparing it with a large number of such skulls, reaches this conclusion: “The average cranial capacity of these selected 36 skulls (namely, of Australian and Tasmanian blacks) is even less than that of the Neanderthal group, but in shape some of these two groups are closely related.” (Archiv. für Anthropologie, XXVIII, 1903, p. 358.) Schwalbe’s opinion that the Neanderthal Man constitutes a distinct species, though its author has since abandoned it (cf. Wasmann’s “Modern Biology,” Eng. ed., 1910, p. 506), will be considered later, viz. after we have discussed the Men of Spy, Krapina and Le Moustier, all of whom have been assigned to the Neanderthal group.
(5) Neanderthal Man (No. 2): This specimen is said to be more recent than No. 1. Its discoverers were Rautert, Klaatsch, and Koenen. It consists of a human skeleton without a skull. It was found buried in the loess at a depth of 50 centimeters. This loess had been washed into the ruined cave, where the relics were found, subsequently to its deposition on the plateau above. The bones were most probably washed into the cave along with the loess, which fills the remnant of the destroyed cave. The upper plateau of the region is covered with the same loess. The site of the second discovery was 200 meters to the west of the Neanderthal Cave (i.e. the Feldhofer Grotte). The bones were either washed into the broken cave, or buried there later. We have no indication whatever of their age.
(6) The Man of La Naulette: In 1866, André Dupont found in the cavern of La Naulette, valley of the Lesse, Belgium, a fossil lower jaw, or rather, the fragment of a lower jaw, associated with remains of the mammoth and rhinoceros. The fragment was sufficient to show the dentition, and to indicate the absence of a chin. “Its kinship with the man of Neanderthal,” remarks Professor MacCurdy very naïvely, “whose lower jaw could not be found, was evident. It tended to legitimatize the latter, which hitherto had failed of general recognition.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1909, p. 572.)
(7) The Men of Spy: In June of 1886 two nearly complete skeletons, probably of a woman and a man, were discovered by Messrs. Marcel de Puydt and Maximin Lohest in a terrace fronting a cave at Spy in the Province of Namur, Belgium, 47½ feet above the shallow bed of the stream Orneau. The bones were found at a depth of 13 feet below the surface of the terrace. The remains were associated with bones of the rhinoceros (Rhinoceros tichorhinus), the mammoth (Elephas primigenius), and the great bear (Ursus spelaeus). There were also stone implements indicating Mousterian industry, and the position of one of the skeletons shows that the bodies were buried by friends. The present valley of the Orneau was almost completely formed at the time of the burial. The exact age of the bones cannot be determined nor can these cave deposits be correlated with the river drift and the loess. The cultural evidences are said to be Mousterian, and Mousterian culture is assigned by Obermaier to the Fourth, or last, Glacial period.
Prof. Julien Fraipont of the University of Liége announced the discovery of these palæolithic skeletons Aug. 16, 1886. Skeleton No. 1 has weaker bones and is thought to be that of a woman; No. 2 shows signs of strong musculature and is evidently that of a man. Of No. 1 we have the cranial vault, two portions of the upper jaw (with five molars and four other teeth), a nearly complete mandible with all the teeth, a left clavicle, a right humerus, the shaft of the left humerus, a left radius, the heads of two ulnæ, a nearly complete right femur, a complete left tibia, and the right os calcis. Of No. 2 we have the vault of the skull, two portions of the maxilla with teeth, loose teeth belonging to lower jaw, fragments of the scapulæ, the left clavicle, imperfect humeri, the shaft of the right radius, a left femur, the left os calcis, and the left astragalus. The separation of the bones, however, is not yet satisfactory. The jaw of No. 1 is well-preserved, except in the region of the coronoids and condyles, which makes any position we may give it more or less arbitrary. The skull of this specimen is almost the replica of the Neanderthal skull, except that the forehead is lower and more sloping. But No. 1 has a trace of chin prominence and in this it resembles modern skulls. No. 2 has a higher forehead and the cranial vault is higher and more spacious.
In both skeletons the radius and femur show a peculiar curvature, and in both, too, the arms and legs must have been very short. Hence the men of Spy are described as having been only partially erect, and as having had bowed thighs and bent knees. The source of this modification, however, is not a surviving pithecoid atavism, but a non-inheritable adaptation acquired through the habitual attitude or posture maintained in stalking game—“Now we know,” says Dwight, “that this feature, which is certainly an ape-like one, implies simply that the race was one of those with the habit of ‘squatting,’ which implies that the body hangs from the knees, not touching the ground for hours together. As a matter of course we look for this in savage tribes.” (“Thoughts of a Catholic Anatomist,” p. 168.) The same may be said of the receding chin, which, as we have seen, is also an acquired adaptation. The same, finally, is true of the prominent brow ridges, which are not pithecoid, but are, as Klaatsch has pointed out, related to the size of the eye sockets, and consequently the result of an adaptation of early palæolithic man to the life of a hunter, a natural sequel of the very marked development of his sense of sight. Similar brow ridges, though not quite so prominent, occur among modern Australian blacks.
Nor are the remains as typically Neanderthaloid as Keith and others (who wish to see in palæolithic men a distinct human species) could desire. No. 1, as we have seen, though almost a replica of the Neanderthal skull-cap, has a trace of chin prominence in the mandible. No. 2, though the chin is recessive, has a higher forehead and higher and more spacious cranial vault than the Neanderthal Man. “On the whole,” says Hrdlička, “it may be said that No. 2, while in some respects still very primitive, represents morphologically a decided step from the Neanderthaloid to the present-day type of the human cranium.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, p. 525.)
(8) The Men of Krapina: In the cave, or rather rock shelter, of Krapina, in northern Croatia, beside the small stream Kaprinica which now flows 82 feet below the cave, K. Gorjanovič-Kramberger, Professor of geology and palæontology at the University of Zagreb, found, in the year 1899, ten or twelve skulls in fragments, a large number of teeth, and many other defective parts of skeletons. All told, they represent at least fourteen different individuals. The bones are in a bad state of preservation, and show traces of burning, some of them being calcined. The bones were associated with objects of Mousterian industry, and bones of extinct animals such as Rhinoceros merckii, Ursus spelaeus, Bos primigenius, etc. The aforesaid Rhinoceros is an older type than the Rhinoceros tichorhinus associated with the men of Spy, and implies a hot climate, wherein the Rhinoceros merckii managed to persist for a longer time than in the north. Hence the remains are thought to belong to the last Interglacial period.
In general, the bones show the same racial characteristics as those of Neanderthal and Spy, though they are said to be of a perceptibly more modern type than the latter. They were men of short stature and strong muscular development. “The crania,” says Hrdlička, “were of good size externally, but the brain cavities were probably below the present average. The vault of the skull was of good length and at the same time fairly broad, so that the cephalic index, at least in some of the individuals, was more elevated than usual in the crania of early man.” (Loc. cit., pp. 530, 531.) The reader must take Hrdlička’s use of the word “usual” with “the grain of salt” necessitated in view of the scanty number of specimens whence such inductive generalizations are derived. The pronounced and complete supraorbital arcs characteristic of the Neanderthaloid type occur in this group also, though in a less marked manner. The stone implements are evidence of the intelligence of these men.
(9) The Le Moustier Man: This specimen, Homo mousteriensis Hauseri, was found by Prof. O. Hauser in the “lower Moustier Cave” at Le Moustier in the valley of the Vézère, Department of Dordogne in France, during the March of 1908. It consists of the complete skull and other skeletal parts of a youth of about 15 years. At this age, the sex cannot be determined from the bones alone. Obermaier assigns these bones to the Fourth Glacial period. Prof. George Grant MacCurdy’s anthropological evaluation is the following: “The race characters ... are not so distinct (i.e. at the age of 15 years) as they would be at full maturity; but they point unmistakably to the type of Neanderthal, Spy, and Krapina—the so-called Homo primigenius which now also becomes Homo mousteriensis. It was a rather stocky type, robust and of a low stature. The arms and legs were relatively short, especially the forearm and from the knee down, as is the case among the Eskimo. Ape-like characters are noticeable in the curvature of the radius and of the femur, the latter being also rounder in section than is the case with Homo sapiens. In the retreating forehead, prominent brow ridges, and prognathism (i.e. projection of the jaws) it is approached to some extent by the modern Australian. The industry associated with this skeleton is that typical of the Mousterian epoch.” (Loc. cit., p. 573.) As we have already seen, the so-called ape-like features are simply acquired adaptations to the hunter’s life, and, if inheritable characters, they do not exceed the limits of a varietal mutation. That the Mousterian men were endowed with the same intelligence as ourselves, appears from the evidences of solemn burial which surround the remains of this youth of 15 years, and prove, as Klaatsch points out, that these men of the Glacial period were persuaded of their own immortality. The head reclined on a pillow of earth, which still retains the impression of the youth’s cheek, the body having been laid on its side. Around the corpse are the best examples of the stone implements of the period, the parents having buried their choicest possession with the corpse of their son.
(10) The La Chapelle Man: On August 3, 1908, the Abbés J. and A. Bouyssonie and L. Bardon, assisted by Paul Bouyssonie (a younger brother of the first two), discovered palæolithic human remains, which are also assigned to the Neanderthal group. The locality of the discovery was the village of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, 22 kilometers south of the town of Brive, in the department of Corrèze, in southern France. In the side of a moderate elevation, 200 yards south of the aforesaid village, and beyond the left bank of a small stream, the Sourdoire, there is a cave now known as the Cave of La Chapelle-aux-Saints. It was here, on the above-mentioned date, that the priests discovered the bones of a human skeleton surrounded by unmistakable evidences of solemn burial. “The body lay on its back, with the head to the westward, the latter being surrounded by stones.... About the body were many flakes of quartz and flint, some fragments of ochre, broken animal bones, etc.” (Hrdlička.) Another token of burial is the rectangular pit, in which the remains were found. It is sunk to a depth of 30 to 40 centimeters in the floor of the cavern.
“They (the remains) were covered,” says Prof. G. G. MacCurdy, “by a deposit intact 30 to 40 centimeters thick, consisting of a magma of bone, of stone implements, and of clay. The stone implements belong to a pure Mousterian industry. While some pieces suggest a vague survival of Acheulian implements (i.e. from the cool latter half of the Third Interglacial period), others presage the coming of the Aurignacian (close of last Glacial period). Directly over the human skull were the foot bones, still in connection, of a bison—proof that the piece had been placed there with the flesh still on, and proof, too, that the deposit had not been disturbed. Two hearths were noted also, and the fact that there were no implements of bone, the industry differing in this respect from that of La Quina and Petit-Puymoyen (Charente), as well as at Wildkirchli, Switzerland.
“The human bones include the cranium and lower jaw (broken, but the pieces nearly all present and easily replaced in exact position), a few vertebræ and long bones, several ribs, phalanges, and metacarpals, clavicle, astragalus, calcaneum, parts of scaphoid, ilium, and sacrum. The ensemble denotes an individual of the male sex whose height was about 1.60 meters. The condition of the sutures and of the jaws proves the skull to be that of an old man. The cranium is dolichocephalic, with an index of 75. It is said to be flatter in the frontal region than those of Neanderthal and Spy.” (Loc. cit., p. 574.)
The associated remains of fossil animals comprise the horse, reindeer, bison, Rhinoceros tichorinus, etc., and, according to Hrdlička, “indicate that the deposits date from somewhere near the middle of the glacial epoch.” (Loc. cit., p. 539.) The discoverers turned over the skeleton to Marcellin Boule of the Paris Museum of Natural History for cleaning and reconstruction. It is the first instance of a palæolithic man, in which the basal parts of the skull, including the foramen magnum, were recovered. Professor Boule estimates the cranial capacity as being something between 1,600 and 1,620 c.cm. He found the lower part of the face to be prognathic, but not excessively so, the vault like the Neanderthal cranium, but larger, the occiput broad and protruding, the supraorbital arch prominent and complete, the nasal process broad, the forehead low, and the mandible stout and chinless, though not sloping backward at the symphysis.
Alluding to the rectangular burial pit in the cave, Hrdlička remarks: “The depression was clearly made by the primitive inhabitants or visitors of the cave for the body and the whole represents very plainly a regular burial, the most ancient intentional burial thus far discovered.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, p. 539.)
The specimens of Neanderthal, Spy, La Naulette, Krapina, Le Moustier and La Chapelle, as we have seen, are the principal remains said to represent the Neanderthal type, which, according to Keith and others, is a distinct human species. As Aurignacian Man (assigned to the close of the “Old Stone Age,” or Glacial epoch), including the Grimaldi or Negroid as well as the Crô-Magnon type, are universally acknowledged to belong to the species Homo sapiens, we need not discuss them here. The same holds true, a fortiori, of Neolithic races such as the Solutreans and the Magdalenians. The main issue for the present is whether or not the Neanderthal type represents a distinct species of human being.
Anent this question, Professor MacCurdy has the following: “Boule estimated the capacity of the Chapelle-aux-Saints skull according to the formulæ of Manouvrier, of Lee, and of Beddoe, obtaining results that varied between 1,570 and 1,750 cubic centimeters. By the use of millet and of shot an average capacity of 1,626 was obtained. Judging from these figures the capacity of the crania of Neanderthal and Spy has been underestimated by Schaaffhausen, Huxley, and Schwalbe. By its cranial capacity, therefore, the Neanderthal race belongs easily in the class of Homo sapiens. But we must distinguish between relative capacity and absolute capacity. In modern man, where the transverse and antero-posterior diameters are the same as in the skull of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, the vertical diameter would be much greater, which would increase the capacity to 1,800 cubic centimeters and even to 1,900 cubic centimeters. Such voluminous modern crania are very rare. Thus Bismarck, with horizontal cranial diameters scarcely greater than in the man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, is said to have had a cranial capacity of 1,965 cubic centimeters.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1909, p. 575.)
As for the structural features which are alleged to constitute a specific difference between the Neanderthal type and modern man, v.g. the prominent brow ridges, prognathism, retreating forehead, receding chin, etc., all of these occur, albeit in a lesser degree, in modern Australian blacks, who are universally acknowledged to belong to the species Homo sapiens. Moreover, there is much fluctuation, as Kramberger has shown from the examination of an enormous number of modern and fossil skulls, in both the Neanderthal and the modern type; that is to say, Neanderthaloid features occur in modern skulls and, conversely, modern features occur in the skulls of Homo neanderthalensis (cf. “Biolog. Zentralblatt,” 1905, p. 810; and Wasmann’s “Modern Biology,” Eng. ed., pp. 472, 473).
All the differences between modern and palæolithic man are explicable, partly upon the basis of acquired adaptation, inasmuch as the primitive mode of life pursued by the latter entailed the formation of body-modifying habits very different from our present customs and habits (viz. those of our modern civilized life). But these modifications, not being inheritable, passed away with the passing of the habits that gave rise to them. In part, however, the differences may be due to heritable mutations, which gave rise to new races or varieties or subspecies, such as Indo-Europeans, Mongolians, and Negroes. And, if the evolutionary palæontologist insists on magnifying characters that are well within the scope of mere factorial mutation into a specific difference, we shall reply, with Bateson and Morgan, by denying his competence to pronounce on taxonomic questions, without consulting the verdict of the geneticist. Without breeding tests, the criterions of intersterility and longevity cannot be applied, and breeding tests are impossible in the case of fossils. As for an a priori verdict, no modern geneticist, if called upon to give his opinion, would concede that the differences which divide the modern and the Neanderthal types of men exceed the limits of factorial mutations, or of natural varieties within the same species. Here, then, it is a case of the wish being father to the thought. So anxious are the materialistic evolutionists to secure evidence of a connection between man and the brute, that no pretext is too insignificant to serve as warrant for recognizing an “intermediate species.”
Even waiving this point, however, there is no evidence at all that the Neanderthal type is ancestral to the Crô-Magnon type. Both of these races must have migrated into Europe from the east or the south, and we have no proof whatever of genetic relationship between them. True, attempts have been made to capitalize the fact that the Neanderthal race was represented by specimens discovered in what were alleged to be the older deposits of the Glacial epoch, but we have seen that the evidences of antiquity are very precarious in the case of these Neanderthaloid skeletons. Time-scales based on extinct species and characteristic stone implements, etc., are always satisfactory to evolutionists, because they can date their fossils and archæological cultures according to the theory of evolution, but, for one whose confidence in the “reality” of evolution is not so great, these palæontological chronometers are open to grave suspicion.
If the horizon levels are not too finely graded, the difficulty of accepting such a time-scale is not excessive. Hence we might be prepared to accept the chronometric value of the division of fossiliferous rocks into Groups, such as the Palæozoic, the Mesozoic, and the Cænozoic, even though we are assured by Grabau that this time-scale is “based on the changes of life, with the result that fossils alone determine whether a formation belongs to one or the other of these great divisions” (“Principles of Stratigraphy,” p. 1103), but when it comes to projecting an elaborate scheme of levels or horizons into Pleistocene deposits on the dubious basis of index fossils and “industries,” our credulity is not equal to the demands that are made upon it. And this is particularly true with reference to fossil men. Man has the geologically unfortunate habit of burying his dead. Other fossils have been entombed on the spot where they died, and therefore belong where we find them. But it is otherwise with man. In Hilo, Hawaii, the writer heard of a Kanaka, who was buried to a depth of 80 feet, having stipulated this sort of burial through a special disposition in his will. His purpose, in so doing, was to preclude the possibility of his bones ever being disturbed by a plough or other instrument. Nor have we any right to assume that indications of burial will always be present in a case of this nature. We may, on the contrary, assume it as a general rule that human remains are always more recent than the formations in which they are found.
Be that as it may, the evidences for the antiquity of the Neanderthaloid man prove, at most, that he was prior to the Crô-Magnon man in Europe, but they do not prove that the former was prior to the latter absolutely. Things may, for all we know, have been just the reverse in Asia. Hence we have no ground for regarding the Man of Neanderthal as ancestral to the race of artists, who frescoed the caves of France and Spain. In fact, to the unprejudiced mind the Neanderthal type conveys the impression of a race on the downward path of degeneration rather than an embodiment of the promise of better things. “There is another view,” says Dwight, “ ... though it is so at variance with the Zeitgeist that little is heard of it. May it not be that many low forms of man, archaic as well as contemporary, are degenerate races? We are told everything about progress; but decline is put aside. It is impossible to construct a tolerable scheme of ascent among the races of man; but cannot dark points be made light by this theory of degeneration? One of the most obscure, and to me most attractive of questions, is the wiping out of old civilizations. That it has occurred repeatedly, and on very extensive scales, is as certain as any fact in history. Why is it not reasonable to believe that bodily degeneration took place in those fallen from a higher estate, who, half-starved and degraded, returned to savagery? Moreover, the workings of the soul would be hampered by a degenerating brain. For my part I believe the Neanderthal man to be a specimen of a race, not arrested in its upward climb, but thrown down from a higher position.” (Op. cit., pp. 169, 170.)
The view, however, that the Neanderthaloid type had degenerated from a previous higher human type was not at all in accord with the then prevalent opinion that this type was far more ancient than any other. And Dwight himself admitted the force of the “objection ... that the Neanderthal race was an excessively old one and that skeletons of the higher race which, according to the view which I have offered, must have existed at the same time as the degenerate ones, are still to be discovered.” (Op. cit., p. 170.) In fact, the Neanderthal ancestry of the present human race was so generally accepted that, in the very year in which Dwight’s book appeared, Sir Arthur Keith declared: “The Neanderthal type represents the stock from which all modern races have arisen.” Time, however, as Dr. James Walsh remarked (America, Dec. 15, 1917, pp. 230, 231), has triumphantly vindicated the expectations of Professor Dwight. For in his latest book, “The Antiquity of Man” (1916), Sir Arthur Keith has a chapter of Conclusions, in which the following recantation appears: “We were compelled to admit,” he owns, “that men of the modern type had been in existence long before the Neanderthal type.”
But, even if it were true that savagery preceded civilization in Europe, such could not have been the case everywhere; for it is certain that civilization and culture of a comparatively high order were imported into Europe before the close of the Old Stone Age. The Hungarian Lake-dwellings show that culture of a high type existed in the New Stone Age. These two ages are regarded as prehistoric in Europe, though in America the Stone Age belongs to history. It is also possible that in Europe much of the Stone Age was coëval with the history of civilized nations, and that it may be coincident with, instead of prior to, the Bronze Age, which seems to have begun in Egypt, and which belongs unquestionably to history. And here we may be permitted to remark that history gives the lie to the evolutionary conceit that civilized man has arisen from a primitive state of barbarism. History begins almost contemporaneously in many different centers, such as Egypt, Babylonia, Chaldea, China, and Crete, about 5,000 or 6,000 years ago, and, as far back as history goes, we find the record of high civilizations existing side by side with a coëval barbarism. Barbarism is historically a state of degeneration and stagnation, and history knows of no instance of a people sunk in barbarism elevating itself by its own efforts to higher stages of civilization. Always civilization has been imposed upon barbarians from without. Savages, so far as history knows them, have never become civilized, save through the intervention of some contemporary civilized nation. History is one long refutation of the Darwinian theory of constant and inevitable progress. The progress of civilization is not subsequent, but prior, or parallel, to the retrogression of barbarism.
That savagery and barbarism represent a degenerate, rather than a primitive, state, is proved by the fact that savage tribes, in general, despite their brutish degradation, possess languages too perfectly elaborated and systematized to be accounted for by the mental attainments of the men who now use them, languages which testify unmistakably to the superior intellectual and cultural level of their civilized ancestors, to whom the initial construction of such marvelous means of communication was due. “It is indeed one of the paradoxes of linguistic science,” says Dr. Edwin Sapir, in a lecture delivered April 1, 1911, at the University of Pennsylvania, “that some of the most complexly organized languages are spoken by so-called primitive peoples, while, on the other hand, not a few languages of relatively simple structure are found among peoples of considerable advance in culture. Relatively to the modern inhabitants of England, to cite but one instance out of an indefinitely large number, the Eskimos must be considered as rather limited in cultural development. Yet there is just as little doubt that in complexity of form the Eskimo language goes far beyond English. I wish merely to indicate that, however we may indulge in speaking of primitive man, of a primitive language in the true sense of the word we find nowhere a trace.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1912, p. 573.) Pierre Duponceau makes a similar observation with reference to the logical and orderly organization of the Indian languages: “The dialects of the Indian tribes,” he says, “appear to be the work of philosophers rather than of savages.” (Cited by F. A. Tholuck, “Verm. Schr.,” ii, p. 260.)
It was considerations of this sort which led the great philologist Max Müller to ridicule Darwin’s conception of primitive man as a savage. “As far as we can trace the footsteps of man,” he writes, “even on the lowest strata of history, we see that the Divine gift of a sound and sober intellect belonged to him from the very first; and the idea of humanity emerging slowly from the depths of an animal brutality can never be maintained again in our century. The earliest work of art wrought by the human mind—more ancient than any literary document, and prior even to the first whisperings of tradition—the human language, forms one uninterrupted chain, from the first dawn of history down to our own times. We still speak the language of the first ancestors of our race; and this language with its wonderful structures, bears witness against such gratuitous theories. The formation of language, the composition of roots, the gradual discrimination of meanings, the systematic elaboration of grammatic forms—all this working which we can see under the surface of our own speech attests from the very first the presence of a rational mind, of an artist as great at least as his work.” (“Essays,” vol. I, p. 306.) History and philology are far more solid and certain as a basis for inference than are “index fossils” and prehistoric archæology; and the lesson taught by history and philology is that primitive man was not a savage, but a cultured being endowed with an intellect equal, if not superior, to our own.
But, even if we grant the priority, which evolutionists claim for the Old Stone Age, there are not absent even from that cultural level evident tokens of artistic genius and high intellectual gifts. Speaking of the pictures in the caves of Altamira, of Marsoulas in the Haute Garonne, and of Fonte de Gaume in the Dordogne, the archæologist Sir Arthur Evans says: “These primeval frescoes display not only consummate mastery of natural design, but an extraordinary technical resource. Apart from the charcoal used in certain outlines, the chief coloring matter was red and yellow ochre, mortars and palettes for the preparation of which have come to light. In single animals the tints varied from black to dark and ruddy brown or brilliant orange, and so, by fine gradations, to paler nuances, obtained by scraping and washing. Outlines and details are brought out by white incised lines, and the artists availed themselves with great skill of the reliefs afforded by convexities of the rock surface. But the greatest marvel of all is that such polychrome masterpieces as the bisons, standing and couchant, or with limbs huddled together, of the Altamira Cave, were executed on the ceilings of inner vaults and galleries where the light of day has never penetrated. Nowhere is there any trace of smoke, and it is clear that great progress in the art of artificial illumination had already been made. We know that stone lamps, decorated in one case with the engraved head of an ibex, were already in existence. Such was the level of artistic attainment in southwestern Europe, at a modest estimate, some 10,000 years earlier than the most ancient monuments of Egypt or Chaldæa!” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1916, pp. 429, 430.) While reaffirming our distrust of the undocumented chronology of “prehistory,” we cite these examples of palæolithic art as a proof of the fact that everywhere the manifestation of man’s physical presence coincides with the manifestation of his intelligence, and that neither in history nor in prehistory have we any evidence of the existence of a bestial or irrational man preceding Homo sapiens, as we know him today. It is interesting to note in this connection that a certain J. Taylor claims to have found a prehistoric engraving of a mastodon on a bone found in a rock shelter known as Jacobs’ Cavern in Missouri (cf. Science, Oct. 14, 1921, p. 357). Incidents of this sort must needs dampen the enthusiasm of those who are overeager to believe in the enormous antiquity of the Old Stone Age in Europe.
(11) The Rhodesian Man: In 1921 a human skull was found by miners in the “Bone Cave” of the Broken Hill Mine in southern Rhodesia. It was associated with human and animal bones, as well as very crude instruments (knives and scrapers) in flint and quartz. It was found at a depth of 60 feet below the surface. The lower jaw was missing, and has not been recovered. It was sent to the British Museum, South Kensington, where it is now preserved. Doctor Smith-Woodward has examined and described it. “The skull is in some features the most primitive one that has ever been found; at the same time it has many points of resemblance to (or even identity with) that of modern man.” (Science, Feb. 3, 1922, p. 129.) The face is intact. The forehead is low, and the brow ridges are more pronounced than in any known fossil human skull. The prognathism of the upper jaw is very accentuated. The cranium is very flat on top and broad in the back. “Its total capacity is surprisingly large. At least one prominent authority thinks that this man had quite as much gray matter as the average modern man.” (Loc. cit., pp. 129, 130.) Woodward, however, estimates the cranial capacity of this skull as 1280 c.cm. The neck must have had powerful muscles. The nasal bone is prominent and Neanderthaloid in character. “The wisdom tooth is reduced in size—another point in common with modern man and never found before in a fossil skull.” (Ibidem.) The palate and the teeth in general are like those of existing men. The femur is not curved like that of the Neanderthal man—“In contrast to the Neanderthal man who is supposed to have walked in a crouching position (because of the rather curved femur and other bits of evidence), this man is believed to have maintained the upright position, because the femur is relatively straight and when fitted to the tibia (which was also found) presents a perfectly good, straight leg.” (Ibidem.) According to the writer we have quoted, Dr. Elliot Smith entertained hopes that the Rhodesian man might represent the “missing link” in man’s ancestry, leaving the Neanderthal man as an offshoot from the main ancestral trunk. No comment is necessary. The skull may be a pathological specimen, but, in any case, it is evidently human as regards its cranial capacity. The remains, moreover, serve to emphasize the fluctuational character of the so-called Homo primigenius type, being a mixture of modern and Neanderthaloid features. They are not fossilized and present a recent appearance. Hence, as B. Windle suggests, they may have fallen into the cave through a crack, and may be modern rather than prehistoric.
(12) The Foxhall Man: This is the earliest known prehistoric man. He is known to us, however, only through “his flint instruments partly burned with fire, found near the little hamlet of Foxhall, near Norwich, on the east coast of England. These flints, discovered in 1921, constitute the first proofs that man of sufficient intelligence to make a variety of flint implements and to use fire existed in Britain at the close of the Age of Mammals; this is the first true Tertiary man ever found.” (Osborn: Guide-leaflet to “The Hall of the Age of Man,” 2nd ed., 1923, p. 9.) Osborn assigns the twelve kinds of flint instruments typical of the Foxhallian culture to the Upper Pliocene epoch. R. A. Macalister, however, denies that the deposits are Tertiary. Abbé Henri Breuil’s verdict was undecided. In any case, the Foxhallian culture proves that the earliest of prehistoric men were intelligent like ourselves.
Summa summarum: So far as science knows, only one human species has ever existed on the earth, and that is Homo sapiens. All the alleged connecting links between men and apes are found, on careful examination, to be illusory. When not wholly ambiguous in view of their inadequate preservation and fragmentary character, they are (as regards both mind and body) distinctly human, like the Neanderthal man, or they are purely simian, like the Pithecanthropus, or they are heterogeneous combinations of human and simian bones, like the Eoanthropus Dawsoni.[18] “With absolute certainty,” says Hugues Obermaier, “we can only say that man of the Quaternary period differed in no essential respect from man of the present day. In no way did he go beyond the limits of variation of the normal human body.” (“The Oldest Remains of the Human Body, etc.,” Vienna, 1905.) The so-called Homo primigenius, therefore, is not a distinct species of human being, but merely an ancient race that is, at most, a distinct variety or subspecies of man. In spite of tireless searching, no traces of a bestial, irrational man have been discovered. Indeed, man whom nature has left naked, defenseless, unarmed with natural weapons, and deficient in instinct, has no other resource than his reason and could never have survived without it. To imagine primitive man in a condition analogous to that of the idiot is preposterous. “For other animals,” says St. Thomas of Aquin, “nature has prepared food, garments of fur, means of defense, such as teeth, horns, and hoofs, or at least swiftness in flight. But man is so constituted that, none of these things having been prepared for him by nature, reason is given him in their stead, reason by which through his handiwork he is enabled to prepare all these things.... Moreover, in other animals there is inborn a certain natural economy respecting those things which are useful or hurtful, as the lamb by nature knows the wolf to be its enemy. Some animals also by natural instinct are aware of the medicinal properties of herbs and of other things which are necessary for life. Man, however, has a natural knowledge of these things which are necessary for life only in general, as being able to arrive at the knowledge of the particular necessities of human life by way of inference from general principles.” (“De regim. princ.,” l. I, c. I.) As a matter of fact, man is never found apart from evidences of his intelligence. The Neanderthaloid race, with their solemn burials and implements of bone and stone, exemplify this truth no less than the palæolithic artists of the Cave of Altamira.