22 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 



hardly occur, according to the law of probabilities, in both of 

 the only known instances if the jaw and skull were not those 

 of the same form. 



The jaw is indeed peculiar, as the symphysis is distinctly 

 simian, while according to Keith, the rear part is as distinctly 

 human. The whole, taken together with the canine tooth, 

 points to a man of bestial visage, united with a rather modern- 

 looking cranium, a combination which excludes him from our 

 species and genus, and to which the name Eoanthropus daw- 

 soni is most aptly applied, no one, as Keith says, having ever 

 anticipated the discovery of one of man's progenitors showing 

 such a remarkable mixture of human and simian characters. 

 Chief among the peculiarities of the jaw is, therefore, the 

 symphysis, which is even more simian than that of Heidelberg 

 in that there is no rudiment or suggestion of the forming chin. 

 The ape-like genial pit is present, together with the encroach- 

 ment of bone on the floor of the mouth. The anterior teeth, 

 so far as known, are also simian, while the molars are human, 

 although, as Gregory says, extremely like those of a chimpan- 

 zee, but these, in turn, are closely related in pattern to primi- 

 tive human molars. 



As has been said, very primitive eoliths, stained brown, were 

 found actually associated with the skull; in the gravel above, 

 however, the flints are a brilliant colored iron red and of such 

 degree of workmanship that Dawson considers them as Chel- 

 lean or at the earliest pre-Chellean in age. The man, however, 

 as has been said, was not buried down into the older strata 

 but contemporaneous therewith, possibly the result of a drown- 

 ing accident. The British authorities, Lewis Abbott and 

 J. Reid Moir, both refer the older gravels to the Pliocene, but 

 the more widely accepted belief is that the Piltdown man is 

 Lower Pleistocene, of Second or Third Interglacial time, so 

 that in terms of years his age is from 200,000 to 300,000 

 years. 



