PREHISTORIC MAN 



505 



one another are still in large degree conjectural. We know that within 

 our own species the three great stocks, "Whites," "Blacks," and "Yel- 

 lows" — or at least the bony structures characteristic of these stocks — 

 were already differentiated at least 35,000 years ago and probably very 

 much earlier. The "Australoids" are often considered a fourth stock; 

 they were here also. And finally, we know that these stocks were dis- 

 tributed in late Pleistocene times much as they are today. There were 

 Caucasoids in Europe, Negroids in southern Europe and Africa, Austra- 

 loids in the East Indies, New Guinea, and Australia, and Mongoloids in 

 Asia and spreading into the New World. 



Fig. 30.13. Skulls of gorilla, old type men, and modern man, showing differences in propor- 

 tions. Upper row: A, gorilla; B, Neanderthal man; C, Australian (Homo sapieris); D, 

 European (Homo sapiens). Note modification of the brow ridges and increasing skull height. 

 Lower row: E, Java man; F, Neanderthal man; G, Australian; H, European. Note the 

 increasing breadth of the cranium relative to its length. (Courtesy American Museum of 

 Natural History.) 



Some hypotheses. The fossil record of man lends itself to varied 

 interpretations. Weidenreich is the leader of a school which views human 

 evolution as an essentially orthogenetic process. According to his hypoth- 

 esis gigantic Asiatic ancestral types produced the smaller Java-Peking 

 stock, which in turn gave rise to various populations in all of which 

 similar changes occurred, leading through Neanderthaloid stages to 

 modern man. Thus Java man begat Solo man who begat Wadjak man who 

 begat the Proto- Australoids who begat the native Australian race ; Peking 

 man is regarded as ancestral to the Mongoloids; and from some ancestor 

 like Java man came Heidelberg, from Heidelberg Neanderthal, and from 

 Neanderthal the modern men of Europe. The Palestinian cave dwellers 

 are thought to show the transition from the Neanderthaloid to the nean- 

 thropic level, as do Solo man and Rhodesian man. The rate of change is 

 presumed to have varied in the different lines, but the general direction 



