272 Master Minds of Modern Science 



been formed by a strong eddy. Every flood that came 

 down, washing with it odds and ends from upstream, left 

 remains in the bottom of this deep whirling pool. There 

 were bones of long-extinct animals, flint instruments, and 

 finally, greatest treasure of all, there was dug up in the 

 late autumn of 1912 part of a human skull. 



After examining this Sir Arthur pronounced it to be 

 that of a different species of man older than any yet 

 known, to which he gave the generic name of Eoanthropus. 

 His interpretation was at first the subject of much criticism 

 by certain anatomists, but later discoveries of a tooth 

 and other small portions of the skull proved that he 

 was right. 



The skull was that of a woman, and it is certain that at 

 least fifty thousand years have passed since she walked 

 the soil of England. It may be a very much longer 

 period, and some geologists have estimated it at two 

 hundred thousand years. The woman was semi-simian 

 — that is, she combined in herself the traits of a human 

 being and the characteristics of the ape. She was nearer, 

 indeed, to what is generally called the " missing link ' 

 than any other creature of which remains have been 

 found. 



What was actually found was only a portion of the left- 

 hand side of the skull and a piece of the lower jaw, but 

 with these as a guide there has been built up a faithful 

 and reliable model of the whole skull, and this may be 

 seen in the South Kensington Museum. No modern 

 human being possesses teeth of the size or shape of those 

 seen in this reconstructed model; these and the heavy 

 under-jaw emphasize the ape-like characteristics of the 

 Piltdown woman. Another point is that the brain 

 development is only about two-thirds of that of the modern 

 woman, being sixty-four and three-quarter cubic inches 

 as compared with ninety cubic inches. 



It is certain that the race to which this woman belonged 



