NATURAL SCIENCE: 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No 47. Vol. VIII. JANUARY. 1896. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



Our Bengawan Fossil Ancestor. 



AT a recent meeting of the Anthropological Institute, Dr. Dubois 

 showed to the leading anatomists of England the far-famed 

 remains he discovered in Java. The remains consist of the roof 

 of a skull which belongs to no known human or anthropoid 

 type, and which is yet both human and anthropoid in appearance ; a 

 second and third molar, from opposite sides of the upper jaw, which 

 are more human than ape-like ; and a femur, in almost every respect 

 distinctively human. Dr. Dubois, who sat beside the President and 

 showed no trace of the malarious climate of Java, is completing a tour 

 round the leading scientific centres of Europe. In France, he found 

 that there was practically a consensus in favour of regarding the 

 remains as indications of an animal that was human-like but not 

 human : in Germany, they were thought to be ape-like and belonging 

 to an ape. Now, in Britain, most have thought them human-like and 

 of a man. These differences of opinion are themselves evidence that 

 the anatomical gulf between man and apes has been exaggerated. 



The Neanderthal skull was formerly the subject of an equally great 

 conflict of opinion. Some anatomists declared that it belonged to an 

 ape : some that it belonged to an abnormal man : some accepted it 

 as evidence for the existence of a Quaternary type of man : others 

 cautiously declared the evidence insufficient for any conclusion. At 

 the meeting of the Anthropological Institute the same four groups of 

 opinions were shown. Even to-day anthropology hesitates to speak 

 with a certain voice upon the chief point of its own subject-matter. 



As the normal human skull, the Neanderthal skull, and this 

 Bengawan skull lay on the table together, it seemed clear enough 

 that the three formed a series of grading forms. The differences 

 between the normal and the Neanderthal skulls were much the same 



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