PKIMITIVE MAN IN CHINA — SMITH 535 



served to create a widespread confusion in the minds, not merely of 

 the general public, but even of anatomists and paleontologists, and 

 profound doubt as to the importance and precise significance of this 

 great discovery in Sussex. This lack of confidence in the validity of 

 the remains of Pithecanthropus and Eoanthropus was intensified by 

 the fact that these two doubtful members of the human family were 

 so dissimilar that they seemed to be hardly compatible with one an- 

 other. This increased the doubt as to whether two primitive mem- 

 bers of the human family who were supposed to be roughly con* 

 temporaneous one with the other — that is, Early Pleistocene in age — 

 could differ so profoundly as these two skulls did, although the 

 whole breadth of the great continent of Europe and Asia separated 

 them from one another. So profound is the scepticism concerning 

 Piltdown Man that important treatises on the fossil remains of man 

 published in Germany during the last few years have either re- 

 frained altogether from referring to the Piltdown discovery (which 

 obviously is of crucial importance) or have stated that the issue is so 

 doubtful as to be excluded from the argument. 



Even those of us who have always been convinced that both 

 Pithecanthropus and Eoanthropus were genuine members of the 

 human family, were somewhat puzzled to know how to define their 

 relations to one another, and precisely what light they shed upon 

 the process of the evolution of later types of human beings. 



The discovery of SinantJiropus in China has put an end to this 

 uncertainty and marks a new epoch in human paleontology. The 

 skull found at Chou Kou Tien on December 2, 1929, has dissipated 

 the chief elements of doubt and uncertainty in regard to the other 

 two genera of the human family, for it not only provides us with 

 much fuller and unequivocal, information concerning a third and 

 hitherto unknown genus of early Pleistocene man, but in addition 

 it establishes a bond of union between the other two types, and 

 shows that the Ape Man of Java and the Dawn Man of Piltdown are 

 not really incompatible with one another. Many of the most charac- 

 teristic features of these two divergent types are combined in the 

 same individual of the genus Sinanthropus. Hence it clears away 

 the mists of doubt and suspicion. Thus the discovery in China is not 

 only a tremendous contribution to the exact knowledge of early 

 Pleistocene man, but in addition it gives a respectability to these 

 other early men, whose remains were being discredited, and a co- 

 herence to our knowledge of all three types which thus establishes 

 upon a sure foundation our knowledge of the most primitive men 

 so far recovered. 



The discovery of the Peking remains is a romantic story, differing 

 from the finding of the other two genera, just as the nature of the 



