PHYLOGENY 



and probably aided by considerable inbreeding, they developed the clas- 

 sical Neanderthaloid habitus. Meanwhile, the main population to the east 

 developed along diflferent lines, and produced Homo sapiens. Subse- 

 quently, this more progressive man replaced his Neanderthal cousins in 

 western Europe. 



Cro-Magnon Man. A considerable number o£ skeletons of modern man 

 (Homo sapiens) have been found in late Pleistocene deposits of Europe. 

 They make their advent around 40,000 years ago, during the last glacia- 

 tion, and have dominated the European (and world) scene ever since. 

 Their origin is not known, but it is commonly believed that they devel- 

 oped their physical and cultural characteristics elsewhere, probably in 

 Asia, and then invaded Europe. If Weidenreich is correct they are simply 

 the racially diflFerentiated descendants of the early, generalized Neander- 

 thals. Around a hundred of these fossils, called Cro-Magnon after the 

 French cave in which they were first found, are now known. Their char- 

 acteristics are well established and it may be said that they did not dijffer 

 significantly from many modern Europeans. The cranial capacity appears 

 to have been somewhat greater. There is considerable variation among 

 the fossils and they appear to have blended into modern man. 



INTERPRETATIONS OF THE FOSSIL RECORD 



These, then, are the main outlines of the fossil record of man. These data 

 can be agreed upon by every one, but they are subject to a wide variety 

 of interpretations. Practically every fossil type was originally described as 

 a distinct species, either of Homo or of a presumed ancestral genus. With 

 these as data, varying phylogenies have been constructed. Hooton, for ex- 

 ample, visualized two different lines of descent. One line leads from the 

 Piltdown to modern man, with Swanscombe, Galley Hill, and Cro-Magnon 

 men as intermediate steps. The other line leads from Pithecanthropus 

 through Sinanthropiis to Neanderthal man. The Mount Carmel fossils he 

 accounts for on the basis of the assumption that some interbreeding oc- 

 curred between Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal men. Gates believes that 

 each of the major races of modern man should be regarded as a distinct 

 species, and he believes that they have developed independently over the 

 entire span of time covered by known human fossils. At the opposite pole 

 is the opinion of Weidenreich that the anatomical evidence offers no alter- 

 native but to unite all of the known human fossils and modern man in a 

 single species. Homo sapiens. Mayr has tried to simplify the interpretation 

 by the application of the ordinary standards of zoological taxonomy. He 

 feels that this requires that one genus, Homo, include all of the fossils 

 from the australopithecines up through Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon to 

 modern man. In this array, he finds no evidence that there has ever been 

 more than one species at any one time, although subspecies have been 

 contemporaneous. The australopithecines he designates as H. transvaalen- 

 sis, with a possibility of several subspecies. Java and Peking man represent 

 two subspecies of a second and later species, H. ercctus. Finally, all of 

 the later types comprise a single species, H. sapiens, with the extreme 



