When one ventures to speculate as to the story of the earliest men in Europe, one can but feel, even after handling the specimens and carefully following the excavations, how small and fragmentary and difficult to interpret is the evidence at present brought to light. And yet there the evidence is, gathered with the utmost care and intelligent method, discussed and interpreted by men of rare knowledge and experience, who, after long comparison of contending opinions and the discovery of an ever-increasing body of fact, have arrived at a definite certainty as to the sequence of arts, races, animals, and climates which I have given above, and is again summarised in the tabular statement on [page 384 bis].
Hereafter these conclusions will be modified and extended by excavations in other parts of the world, at present untouched. The one point upon which the best authorities will not commit themselves is the exact, or even approximately exact, number of thousands of years which these events have occupied. The whole story, so far as it is at present worked out, is a marvellous result of patient research and scientific reasoning. Some of the cave collections upon which it is based are to be seen in London, in the British Museum.
Fig. 78.—The skull-top of the primitive kind of man from Pleistocene sands in Java, called Pithecanthropus. One-third (linear) of the natural size. Compare with [Fig. 65], and refer to that figure for the explanation of the letters and dotted lines.
[Transcriber’s Note: The original image is approximately 1½ inches (4cm) high and 2½ inches (6.5cm) wide.]
There is one other discovery of a fossil man which comes properly at this point, to cap and confirm what has already been said. Fifteen years ago a skull-top and a thigh-bone were found by Dr. Dubois at Trinil, in the island of Java, at a depth of thirty feet in a sandy deposit, considered by good authority (but not certainly) to be of Pliocene age. From recent reports on the deposit it seems that it may very well be of Pleistocene age. These remains have become celebrated as those of a monkey-like man, and the name Pithecanthropus has been given to the creature to which they belonged. This skull-top (or cranial roof) is now in Utrecht, and is well known ([Fig. 78]). It indicates a race of men or men-like creatures, with the flatness of skull, receding forehead, and large bony eye-ridges, such as we see in the Neander Men and in some South Australians, but greatly exaggerated. The skull was so low and flat as greatly to resemble that of the Gibbon, though much larger. The volume of the cranial cavity (showing the size of the brain) was about 900 units—far smaller than that of the average Australian—the skull of smallest cavity among living races of men. The volume of the brain-cavity of the largest ape (gorilla) amounts to about 500 units (cubic centimetres); so that, allowing for rare individual fluctuations of as much as one-fourth more or one-fourth less (an amount of variation which, great as it is, is definitely known and recorded in specimens of the skulls of human races), we get the following list of “cranial capacities” or brain-sizes, forming a nearly unbroken series between the highest European and the ape. The middle figure represents the normal or average, and the first and last figure in each group the constant, though rare, minimum and maximum. Gorilla, 350, 500, 650; Java race, 675, 900, 1125; Australians, 900, 1200, 1500; Cromagnard and European, 1165, 1550, 1940 (European skulls of this great capacity are known). The Neander-man skulls are left out of the above list—although the Corrèze specimen allows of a satisfactory measurement of its capacity—for a very curious reason, which is explained in the next chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] In this connection it seems to be important to note the “Ethiopic” character of the arrangement of the hair in the little carving of a woman’s head from the Brassempouy Cave (dep. Landes), shown in [Fig. 7].