Diversions of a Naturalist

by Sir E. Ray Lankester

Of late years we have, however, learnt a great deal more about the race or species of men of which the Neanderthal skull-top was the first indication. We now know that this species of man belonged to a period older than that of the other prehistoric cavemen—the artistic Magdalenians and the bushman-like Aurignacians, which are races of Homo sapiens, not distinct species. The older period is called the Moustierian, or Middle Paleolithic, period, and is marked by a peculiar type of flint implement. It is later than the older river gravels, in which big tongue-shaped and almond-shaped flint implements are common. The two skulls and bones from the cave of Spey, in Belgium, the Gibraltar skull, and the skeletons and skulls of the cavern called the Chapelle aux Saints in the Corrèze (Central France), and of Ferassy, and some neighbouring localities, all belong to this Moustierian age (so named after the village "Le Moustier," in Perigord), and to the peculiar species Homo Neanderthalensis.[10] It is also necessary to include here the more ancient man indicated by the important lower jaw found by Schottensack near Heidelberg ([see Fig. 25]). The Neanderman or Neanderthal-man had a low forehead, with overhanging bony brow-ridges, and a depressed, flattened brain-case, which, nevertheless, was very long and broad and held an unusually large brain, measuring 1600 cubic centimetres, whereas the modern European averages 1450 only of such units. He had a powerful lower jaw, with a broad, upstanding piece or vertical "ramus," and no chin protuberance. Yet his teeth were identical with those of a modern man. His thigh-bones were much curved, and his arms a good deal longer in proportion to his legs than those of a modern man. He did not carry himself upright, but with a forward stoop.

[10] For figures of the skulls and flint implements of these ancient men, see my volume, "Science from an Easy Chair," First Series. Methuen, 1910.

Now that we know more of him, we may ask, "Does this Neanderthal or Moustierian man fill the place of the missing link?" It appears that he does not. He seems to have died out without leaving any descendants. In so far as that his bony jaw sloped directly downwards and backwards from the margin of the sockets of his front teeth, as in the apes, without projecting below, to form a chin protuberance—as it does in all races of Homo sapiens, on account of the shrinking inwards of the gum-line or palisade of front teeth (incisors and canines)—the Neanderman offers a certain approach to the condition of the apes; but in other details of shape of the lower jaw, and especially in regard to the narrowness of the lower surface of the chin and the large and deep attachments on its inner face, for the digastric muscle and certain muscles of the tongue, the bony remains of the Neanderman show that he is distinctly and altogether human, and not like the higher apes. Moreover, in the very large size of his brain (as much as 1600 units) the Neanderman shows no approach to the relatively small brain of the higher apes (which measures 500 units, possibly 800 by exception). There is in these structures some argument for the conclusion that the Neanderman could use articulate language, and inasmuch as the climate in which he flourished was extremely cold, there is ground for supposing that he could produce fire and clothe himself with skins. The flint implements which are definitely associated with him are of more skilful workmanship than the earlier, more elaborate, but less cleverly conceived, Chellean and Acheuillian implements. We cannot refuse to call him "man"—not Homo sapiens, we agree—but of the "genus" Homo—Homo Neanderthalensis.

Fig. 24.—Diagrams of the lower surface of the lower jaw of A, man; B, the Eoanthropus of Piltdown (the left half reconstructed); and C, the Chimpanzee.

The jaws are supposed to be immersed in sand, so as to conceal all but the lower surface. The narrowness of the actual inferior margin of the jaw in man, A, a, b, contrasts with the breadth and flatness of this same border in Eoanthropus, B, a, b, and the Chimpanzee, C, a, b.

In the human jaw A we see behind the narrow front border a the large semicircular excavations for the attachment of the digastric muscles right and left. They pass from here to the hyoid bone. From the spine (double in origin) between the two digastric impressions passes a pair of muscular slips, called the genio-hyoid muscles, also to the hyoid bone, and from the pair of spines marked y a pair of muscles, called the genio-glossals, pass to the tongue. These inferior and superior mental spines and the digastric impressions, much smaller in size than in man, are seen in the chimpanzee's jaw, C, but are rubbed or partly broken and partly rubbed away in the Piltdown half-jaw, B. In the figures A and C the size of the digastric impressions and mental spines is exaggerated, but their relatively much greater size in man than in the chimpanzee is correctly given, and this greater size is connected with the greater control of the tongue and the floor of the mouth in man, possibly connected with speech.

Reference Letters.—a, Broad, upwardly and forwardly sloping surface, reduced in man; b, lower border of the jaw-bone; x, front margin of the digastric "impression" of the right side. Dig, digastric impression; y, superior mental spine of the left side; Fr., fractured edge of the Piltdown jaw, and corresponding region in that of the chimpanzee.

So long as the Neanderman was the sole indication of a creature nearer in some features to the apes than are any living or extinct races of the species Homo sapiens, the view was possible that the two stocks which to-day blossom and display themselves—the one as the human race, the other as the man-like apes (gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and gibbons), became separated from one another in long past geologic ages, and that they have undergone each an independent development from a creature so unlike both as seen to-day, that we cannot speak of it as a missing link or a link at all. That view must be considerably modified by the discovery of the Piltdown jaw—the jaw of Eoanthropus Dawsoni—which is not that of a "man," that is not of the genus Homo, but must, in my judgment, be considered as one of the family Hominidæ—a Hominid, as we may say—a species assigned to a new genus Eoanthropus by Smith Woodward, which is grouped with the genus Homo and the ill-defined genus Pithecanthropus, to form the family Hominidæ; just as the genera Gorilla, Anthropopithecus (chimpanzee), Simia (orang), and Hylobates (gibbon) are grouped together to form the family Simiidæ. In Eoanthropus we have in our hands, at last, the much-talked-of "missing link"—the link obviously connecting man, the genus Homo, with the apes.

The immense importance of the discovery of the jaw of Eoanthropus by Mr. Dawson, and of the clear perception of its distinctive features by Dr. Smith Woodward, is not, as yet, sufficiently recognized. The Piltdown jaw is the most startling and significant fossil bone that has ever been brought to light. The Neandermen and the Java skull-top are simply commonplace and insignificant in comparison with it. "What leads you to say that?" I may be asked. I say so because this jaw and the incomplete skull found with it ([Fig. 29]) really and in simple fact furnish a link—a form intermediate between the man and the ape. Some fragments of the brain-case were found close to the jaw, indicating a fairly round, very thick-walled brain-case, holding a brain of about 1100 units capacity—very small for a man, very large for an ape. It is in the highest degree probable that the brain-case and the jaw belong to the same individual. If we were to put the brain-case aside as not certainly belonging to the same individual, we should guess that the owner of the jaw might have had a brain of about this size—intermediate between that of the larger apes and the living races of men.[11]

[11] The recent discovery by Mr. Dawson of fragments of a second skull of the same character as the first and at the same spot justifies a certain amount of hesitation in concluding that the lower jaw and the fragments of the first found skull belong to one individual.