496 



THE CHANGING GENERATIONS 



were somewhat tusklike, and the dental arch was narrower and more 

 apelike than in modern man, with distinct gaps in the upper tooth row 

 for reception of the lower canines. By our standards Java man must have 

 been an extraordinarily ugly, brutish creature. There is no telling whether 

 he could speak, and no direct proof that he used tools, though some of the 

 skulls had been crushed as though by a club or stone ax. 



Peking man is much better known. Not quite so tall as Java Man, he 

 stood more erect and had a slightly more human face. His brow ridges 

 were less heavy and his brain cavity was a little larger, though far smaller 

 than the average in modern man (Fig. 30. 5C). His canine teeth did not 

 project beyond the others, and there were no gaps for the lower canines. 

 Peking man is quite definitely placed in the first interglacial age by the 



associated animal and plant remains. 

 He had tools and used fire — at 

 least Yi million years ago ! His is the 

 oldest known culture, to which we 

 shall again refer in the next chapter. 

 Asiatic Giants. In southern Asia 

 there have been found traces of 

 giant primates which Weidenreich 

 thinks were true men. From lower 

 Pleistocene deposits of Java comes a 

 portion of a lower jaw with molar 

 teeth which must have belonged to 

 a creature about as large as a gorilla. 

 And in a Hong Kong drugstore, among other fossils used in the Chinese 

 pharmacopoeia, were found some much larger fossil teeth of definitely 

 human aspect. The indications are that they came from lower or middle 

 Pleistocene cave deposits in southern China. 1 These Chinese teeth are 

 the biggest ever attributed to a human being. The largest molar has a 

 mass about six times that of the corresponding tooth in modern man. 

 Whether man or ape, the owner of these teeth must have been bigger than 

 the biggest gorilla. Weidenreich believes that such giants are ancestral 

 to Java and Peking man and that man has grown smaller. Others regard 

 the giants as extinct side branches of the human stock. Perhaps they died 

 out because they specialized on size and strength rather than on brains. 

 The Neanderthaloids. Many fossils of more advanced old-type men 

 have been found in Europe, Asia, and Africa. These men, though not all 

 alike, were evidently related and can be grouped as the Neanderthaloids. 

 The earliest is Heidelberg man, who lived in Europe during the second 

 glacial age. Neanderthal man is by far the best known; he was the typical 



1 Von Koenigswald, who found both, named the Javanese giant Meganthropus 

 paleojavanicus, and the Chinese giant Gigantopithecus blacki. 



Fig. 30.6. How man got a nose and chin. 

 Median sagittal sections through the skulls 

 of gorilla and man. N, nose; T, tongue. 

 {Redrawn from Howells, Mankind So Far, 

 by permission Doubleday & Company, Inc.) 



