86 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL.83 



CONCLUSIONS 



A detailed study of the Piltdown jaw shows this to be a truly remarkable 

 specimen, and the more it is understood the more valuable it appears as a material 

 proof of man's antiquity. 



The jaw is more primitive than any other known jaw relating to early man. 

 It still has a marked sub-mentoneal shelf, in all probability a large canine, and 

 teeth of ancestral pre-human form. It resembles more or less in a number of 

 points the jaws of the chimpanzee, but it differs from these in a whole series of 

 points of importance, such as the form of the notch, type of coronoid process, 

 subdued musculature, markedly reduced internal niassiveness of body especially 

 near symphysis ; and in the most important characteristics of the teeth, namely, 

 height of crovv'n, lieight of enamel, nature of " cingulum " and stoutness of 

 cusps — in all of which features it is nearer or like human. 



It appears to the author that in view of all this it is no longer possible to 

 regard the jaw as that of a chimpanzee or any other anthropoid ape; but that 

 it is the jaw of either a human precursor or very early man. Dr. Smith Wood- 

 ward's designation of this form as " Eoanthropus "■ — a being from the dawn of 

 the human period — seems very appropriate. 



An individual, or even genetic, specific, association of the Piltdown 

 jaw with the massive remains of the two Piltdown skulls is, it may 

 be repeated once more, exceedingly difficult of acceptance. The more 

 the lower jaw is studied and understood the less in harmony it appears 

 with the skulls and it is not unlikely that these latter belong to totally 

 diiTerent, possibly chronologically much younger, human individuals. 



The above may be supplemented with the conclusions which I have 

 arrived at by a detailed comparative study of the Piltdown molars.' 



The peculiar molars of the Piltdown jaw connect, though in respect 

 to their length and crown index only at the base of the range of vari- 

 ation, with the teeth of man of today. 



They connect more closely with the more ancient teeth of early 

 man and may without violence be included among them. 



They do not connect with the teeth of any of the living forms of 

 anthropoid apes, though in general these are nearer to them than 

 most man's teeth in the crown index. 



In relative, and in one case even in absolute, proportion, they re- 

 semble very closely the teeth from the Bohnerz Alb attributed to 

 Dryopithecus rhcnamis, particularly one of the lower molars ; but in 

 morphological details they differ from these, being more human. 



The only conclusion that appears justified from these further 

 studies, as from the previous ones, is that the Piltdown teeth, primi- 



^ Hrdlicka, A., Dimensions of the First and Second Lower Molars with Their 

 Bearing on the Piltdown Jaw and on Man's Phylogeny. Amer. Journ. Phys. 

 Anthrop., Vol. 6, No. 2, p. 216, 1923. 



