500 THE CHANGING GENERATIONS 



was discovered but in late instead of early Pleistocene deposits. Like 

 Neanderthal skulls these had a low forehead and heavy brow ridges and 

 held an even smaller brain; but the shape of the head is rounder, so that 

 some authorities have regarded Solo man as a very primitive form of 

 Homo sapiens. The enigmatic Rhodesian man poses an even more difficult 

 problem. The single known skull from Broken Hill cave, Rhodesia, is 

 much more bestial in appearance than other Neanderthaloids. The bones 

 are very thick, the brow ridges are even larger than in Java man, the face 

 and palate are enormously developed, and the brain is small for so large 

 a skull. In spite of these primitive features the brain case approaches the 

 modern form, as does that of Solo man. 



Piltdown man. The "dawn man," Eoanthropus dawsoni, was de- 

 scribed by Smith-Woodward in 1913, from a cranium and lower jaw 

 found in a gravel pit at Piltdown in Sussex, England. The brain case is 

 clearly human and much more modern in appearance than those of 

 typical paleanthropic men. It is well rounded, with broad, high forehead 

 and weak brow ridges, and has a brain capacity well within the sapiens 

 range. The enormous thickness of the cranial walls is its only really 

 primitive feature. The jaw, on the other hand, is scarcely distinguishable 

 from that of a chimpanzee. It is chinless, with apelike mode of attach- 

 ment of the tongue muscles, and has massive tusklike lower canines 

 projecting two-thirds of an inch beyond the rest of the tooth row. For 

 years a controversy persisted as to whether the human brain case and 

 apelike jaw could possibly be parts of one individual. Furthermore the 

 question of age was unsettled, for in the same gravel bed occurred fossils 

 of early, middle, and late Pleistocene animals, mixed together by stream 

 action. 



Discovery in 1915 of teeth and parts of a second skull 2 miles from the 

 original locality gave strong support to the idea that the skull and jaw 

 really belonged together; and in 1950, Oakley and Hoskins showed by 

 the fluorine test 1 that the jaw and brain case are of the same age and 

 almost certainly belonged to a single individual. Most surprisingly they 

 also proved that Piltdown cannot be older than late Pleistocene; with 

 the aid of geological data he can be assigned to the last interglacial age. 

 Thus the original uncertainties have been cleared up, only to raise new 

 problems. Here is a type of man, altogether human in cranium and face 

 but with tusked, apelike jaw, living in England at a period when Homo 

 sapiens and Neanderthalers were present in Europe. What was the rela- 



1 The fluorine content of buried bones and teeth increases with time, and at a given 

 locality all fossils of the same age have about the same percentage of fluorine. At 

 Piltdown the early Pleistocene fossils had 2 to 3%; the middle Pleistocene fossils, 

 about 1 %; and Eoanthropus and other upper Pleistocene fossils, from O.f to 0.4% of 

 fluorine. 



