File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (18134505626).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo16amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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322 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL brain-case is the only representative of a pre- Mousterian human skull known to us, except- ing only that of the more primitive and aber- rant Pithecanthropus; and, in spite of its obtrusively human features, in certain re- spects it is much more primitive and apelike than any other known skull. There has been a vast amount of controversy as to how the real form of this cranium should be recon- structed from the broken fragments that were recovered. Although no two recon- structions that have been made are quite identical, the defi- nite anatomical details clearly dis- cernible on the fragments leave no room for any doubt as to the general form of the skull, and af- ford no warrant for certain gro- tesque "restora- tions" which were exhibited in 1913. It is satisfactory to note that Pro- fessor Osborn's restoration is in substantial agree- ment with Dr. Smith Wood- ward's, and is a very close approx- imation to the truth, although I think that they both err slightly in exaggerating the extent of the cranial cavity. The jaw found with the Piltdown skull is the only part that enables any com- parison to be made with the Heidelberg speci- men. Now, although the latter is very massive and of primitive conformation, the structure of the chin region — for there is no real chin — and of the teeth is definitely human. The Piltdown jaw however, is equally definitely simian in most of its char- acters. Some authorities are so impressed by this fact that they claim it to be an ape's jaw, which does not belong to the skull with which it was found.
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The brute strength of the Neanderthal men did not enable them to hold their own against the species Homo sapiens which came after. After restoration by J. H. McGregor This is not the place to discuss this ques- tion. But the acceptance of the view that the jaw is an ape's and the cranium a man's would involve the supposition that a hitherto unknown and extremely primitive apelike man, and an equally unknown manlike ape, died on the same spot, and that one of them left his skull without the jaw and the other his jaw without the skull. Not only so, but it would involve also the admission that an anthropoid ape was living in England in middle Pleistocene times, and would therefore invalidate Pro- ~ ^ fessor Osborn's conclusion that the lowering of the temperature in Europe swept out all such apes by the middle of the Pliocene, un- less it is claimed that they returned in the Pleistocene But is there any real need for in- voking such enor- mously improb- able coincidences and such drastic rearranging of our ideas of the palae- ontology of Eu- rope? In spite of their primitive form and simian appearance the teeth are human. Theoretical con- siderations, no less than certain remarkably prim- itive features of the brain-case, also add confirmation to the view that the jaw really belongs to the skull. If we admit this, it will follow that, what- ever the relative ages of the individuals found near Heidelberg and Piltdown respectively, the latter belongs to an earlier genus than the former. As to the route by which the Piltdown tribe reached Europe there is no conclusive evi- dence. Professor Osborn tells us that "so far as present evidence goes it would appear that pre-Chellean culture did not enter

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