Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and Art

by Henry Fairfield Osborn

Certainly Java was then a part of the Asiatic continent, and similar herds of great mammals roamed freely over the plains from the foot-hills of the Himalaya Mountains to the borders of the ancient Trinil River, while similar apes inhabited the forests. At this time the orang may have entered the forests of Borneo, which are at present its home; it is the only ape thus far found in the uppermost Pliocene of India. We may, therefore, anticipate the discovery, at any time, in India of a race similar to Pithecanthropus.

The geologic age of the Trinil race is, therefore, to be considered as late Pliocene or early Pleistocene.

Fig. 34. The top (1) and side (1a) views of the skull-top of Pithecanthropus erectus. After Dubois. One-third life size.

This great discovery of Dubois aroused wide-spread and heated discussion, in which the foremost anatomists and palæontologists of the world took part. Some regarded the skull as that of a giant gibbon, others as prehuman, and still others as a transition form. We may form our own opinion, however, from a fuller understanding of the specimens themselves, always keeping in mind that it is a question whether the femur and the skull belong to the same individual or even to the same race. First, we are struck by the marked resemblance which the top of the skull bears, both on viewing it from the side and from above, to that of the Neanderthal race. This fully justifies the opinion of the anatomist Schwalbe[(21)] that the skull of Pithecanthropus is nearer to that of Neanderthal man than to that of even the highest of the anthropoid apes. As measured by Schwalbe, the index of the height of the cranium (Kalottenhöheindex) may be compared with others as follows:

Lowest human race		52 per cent.
Neanderthal man		40.4 per cent.
Pithecanthropus, or Trinil race		34.2 per cent.

Fig. 35. Head of chimpanzee—front and side views—exhibiting a head of somewhat similar shape to that of Pithecanthropus, with prominent eyebrow ridges, but much smaller brain capacity. Photograph from the New York Zoological Park.

This accords with the estimate of the brain capacity[P] of 855 c.cm. (Dubois) as compared with 1,230 c.cm., the smallest brain capacity found in a member of the Neanderthal race. Second, as seen from above, we are struck with the great length of the calvarium as compared with its breadth, the cephalic index or ratio of breadth to length being 73.4 per cent (Schwalbe) as compared with 73.9 per cent in the Neanderthal type skull; this dolichocephaly accords with the fact that all of the earliest human races thus far found are long-headed, although according to Schwalbe[(22)] all anthropoids are broad-headed. This is a very important distinction. The third feature is the prominence and width of the bony eyebrow ridges above the orbits, which are almost as great as in the chimpanzee and greatly exceed those of the Neanderthal race and of the modern Australian. The profile of the Trinil head restored by McGregor (Fig. 38) exhibits this prominent bony ridge and the low, retreating forehead. In the latest opinion of Schwalbe[(23)] Pithecanthropus may be regarded as one of the direct ancestors of Neanderthal man and even of the highest human species, Homo sapiens. He also considers that when the lower jaw of the Trinil race becomes known, it will be found to be very similar to that of the Heidelberg man, the final conclusion being that Pithecanthropus and the nearly allied Heidelberg man may be regarded as the common ancestors of the Neanderthal race, on the one hand, and of the higher races on the other. There are, however, reasons for excluding Pithecanthropus from the direct ancestral line of the higher races of man.