198 Changing Human Nature 



50). At the time there was a great deal of dispute as to 

 whether the bones represented human remains or not. Dr. 

 Rudolf Virchow, distinguished for having founded mod- 

 ern scientific pathology but nevertheless a tight-minded per- 

 son, attacked the evidence and insisted that the remains 

 represented a freak, or a degenerate person. He could not 

 admit into the human family a being with such a low fore- 

 head, with such prominent eyebrow ridges, such a massive 

 jaw, such a retreating chin (Fig. 49) . More and more skulls 

 and other bones of the same type were dug up over a larger 

 and larger part of Europe. Stone implements were discovered 

 in association with these fossils. It became at last impossi- 

 ble to deny the human character of the strange, extinct race. 

 For a long time this type was considered a distinct species, 

 a side branch that had been supplanted by Hovto sapiens 

 migrating, presumably, from Asia. This is indeed the view 

 of Professor Osborn, although other biologists consider the 

 Neanderthal a direct ancestor of modern man. 



In 1 89 1 Dr. Eugene Dubois, a Dutch army surgeon, 

 found in Java a skull-cap, some teeth, and a left thigh bone 

 that belonged to the Tertiary period, judging by the rock 

 formation in which the fragments were lying. The skull-cap 

 has distinctly gibbon-like characteristics, while the thigh 

 bone is just as distinctly human, and the teeth are consid- 

 ered as intermediate between the ape and man. The frag- 

 ments were assigned to an unknown species of primate and 

 given the name Pithecanthropus erectus^ the erect ape-man 

 (Fig. 49). 



The fossil record of man's direct ancestors represented 

 probably no more than fifty to a hundred thousand years 

 of the earth's history, which is after all a comparatively short 

 period. Yet during this period, the facts show, there ap- 

 peared several distinct types of man from the ape-man, 

 Vithecanthropiis erectus found in Java, the Heidelberg man 

 of massive jaw, belonging probably to the first inter-glacial 

 time, to the magnificent Cro-Magnon and the more recently 

 discovered Piltdown skull and the Rhodesian man of South 



