WHOLE VOL. SKELETAL REMAINS OF EARLY MAN HRDLICKA 55 



of at least 165 cm. This would agree with about the medium human 

 stature in a male, but is far above that of the female, the average 

 human female height except in a few of the tallest human groups 

 approximating 153 cm. It would further mean that the corresponding 

 male Pithecanthropus had a stature of about 177 cm. (nearly 5 ft. 

 10 in.) or over. All of which is possible, or may have been modified 

 through a different relation in the Pithecanthropus of the length of 

 the femur to that of the body. Nevertheless the matter constitutes 

 another aspect of the case on which more light is needed. 



All of this, and there are other points, cannot but leave the 

 association of the several parts found at Trinil, however probable 

 this may appear, in some uncertainty ; which is further increased 

 by the late definite attachment to the Trinil remains of the Brubus 

 jaw. 



But all this is not the pivotal essential of the find, and diminishes 

 in no wise its high interest and value, both of which are universally 

 acknowledged, particularly since the endocranial cast has become 

 available. Neither should the student allow himself to be confused 

 by the seeming flood of discrepancies of opinion on the remains. The 

 dift'erences are often more apparent than real, and even where real 

 they by no means discredit the find, but are only so many attempts, 

 under all the great limitations of our present collections and knowl- 

 edge, to reach a true conclusion. 



The Trinil skull alone is sufficient to establish the presence in what 

 is now Java, somewhere during the early Quaternary and possibly 

 earlier, of a class of beings that so resembled the anthropoid apes, on 

 one hand, and came so far in the direction of man on the other, that 

 if they were to be named today we could hardly find a more appropri- 

 ate name for them than " Pithecanthropus." 



Broadly speaking, it is really of little moment whether one student 

 calls these beings giant gibbons, another human precursors, or inter- 

 mediary forms, and a third a proto-homo, or even a very low man; 

 unless they have strayed from the truth through a lack of sufficient 

 contact with the remains, they all mean a form somewhere between 

 the status of all the known apes and all except perhaps the earliest 

 man. Who can say just where we could class a being with such an 

 ape-like skullcap, but with such a near-human brain within it, if he 

 appeared in life today? Witness the conclusions of the able discov- 

 erer himself, who has had the originals at hand now for 36 years; 

 first they represent for him a great chimpanzee, then a human pre- 

 cursor and direct ancestor, and then an intermediary but not human 

 ancestral form. 



