466 EVOLUTIONARY MORPHOLOGY 



did not stand straight up, but stooped considerably. The 

 hip-girdle was still long, and the foot rested mostly on its 

 outer border, as in young children and certain savage races 

 to-day. While having lost the capacity to be opposed to the 

 other toes, the large toe was considerably separate from the 

 remainder. The neanderthal race has gone extinct, doubtless 

 because of its specialisations, and the insufficient development 

 of the brain which handicapped it in the competition with 

 Homo sapiens. Here, the brain has achieved maximum 

 development, so much so that its front wall has been pushed 

 forwards to form a more or less vertical forehead. This 

 vertical wall of bone provides the necessary resistance for the 

 reduced lower jaw to bite against. In the apes, Pithecan- 

 thropus, rhodesian and neanderthal man, where the lower 

 jaw is still large and there is no forehead, the strain of the bite 

 is taken up in the large brow-ridges which are developed in the 

 adult. These brow-ridges are therefore not a primitive 

 feature, but independently acquired as an adaptation in certain 

 groups. Their presence, however, rules their possessors out 

 from modern man's ancestry. 



The face in Homo sapiens is relatively smaller than in any 

 mammal, the lower jaw is slender and provided with a promi- 

 nent chin, and the canine teeth are small. The hip-girdle is 

 short and wide, and the vertebral column and legs enable man 

 to stand bolt upright. 



In connexion with the expansion of the brain and the 

 assumption of an erect attitude, it is consistently found, on 

 ascending the scale of Primate evolution to man, that the 

 foramen magnum through which the spinal cord joins the brain 

 is movedr elatively farther and farther forward. This fact is 

 obvious when it is considered that the head of an ordinary 

 lower mammal projects forwards horizontally from its neck, 

 whereas man's head is carried vertically above his neck. At the 

 same time, the eyes of lower mammals and of man look hori- 

 zontally from about the middle of the front of the face. There 

 has therefore been a progressive expansion of the hinder and 

 upper part of the skull accompanying the development of the 

 brain, and which moves the face-region farther and farther 



