Another find in Germany was made at Steinheim. It consists of the fragmentary skull of a man. It is very important because of its relative completeness, but it has not yet been fully studied. The bone is thick, but the back of the head is neither very low nor primitive, and the face is also not primitive. The forehead does, however, have big ridges over the eyes. The more fragmentary skull from Swanscombe in England (p. 11) has been much more carefully studied. Only the top and back of that skull have been found. Since the skull rounds up nicely, it has been assumed that the face and forehead must have been quite “modern.” Careful comparison with Steinheim shows that this was not necessarily so. This is important because it bears on the question of how early truly “modern” man appeared.
Recently two fragmentary jaws were found at Ternafine in Algeria, northwest Africa. They look like the jaws of Peking man. Tools were found with them. Since no jaws have yet been found at Steinheim or Swanscombe, but the time is the same, one wonders if these people had jaws like those of Ternafine.
WHAT HAPPENED TO JAVA AND PEKING MEN
Professor Weidenreich thought that there were at least a dozen ways in which the Peking man resembled the modern Mongoloids. This would seem to indicate that Peking man was really just a very early Chinese.
Several later fossil men have been found in the Java-Australian area. The best known of these is the so-called Solo man. There are some finds from Australia itself which we now know to be quite late. But it looks as if we may assume a line of evolution from Java man down to the modern Australian natives. During parts of the Ice Age there was a land bridge all the way from Java to Australia.
TWO ENGLISHMEN WHO WEREN’T OLD
The older textbooks contain descriptions of two English finds which were thought to be very old. These were called Piltdown (Eoanthropus dawsoni) and Galley Hill. The skulls were very modern in appearance. In 1948–49, British scientists began making chemical tests which proved that neither of these finds is very old. It is now known that both “Piltdown man” and the tools which were said to have been found with him were part of an elaborate fake!
TYPICAL “CAVE MEN”
The next men we have to talk about are all members of a related group. These are the Neanderthal group. “Neanderthal man” himself was found in the Neander Valley, near Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1856. He was the first human fossil to be recognized as such.