WHOLE VOL. SKELETAL REMAINS OF EARLY MAN TTRDFJCKA II7 



THE SKULL 



Mr. Pycraft has done a very conscientious piece of work. If, as 

 appears from the reviews of his work, his conclusions are not meeting 

 with favor, it is mainly because he has chosen to associate organically 

 with the Rhodesian skull remains of which no man can say with full 

 confidence that they belong to it ; because he has seen more in the 

 morphology of these additional remains than others can see ; and 

 because he makes of the Rhodesian man a new. genus (" Cyphan- 

 thropus"). These are all grievous sins which may or may not be 

 outweighed by the painstaking work on the skull. However this may 

 be, it will be but proper to quote Mr. Pycraft's main conclusions 

 on the cranium. They are : 



Highly specialised in some particulars, this skull must nevertheless be re- 

 garded as of a relatively low type, having a definite resemblance to the skulls 

 of Neanderthal Man, with which race it has affinities. 



Its specialised characters are perhaps most marked in the enormous supra- 

 orbital torus, whose likeness to that of the Gorilla seems to have been some- 

 what over-emphasised. The distance between the styloid process and the mastoid, 

 and the greatly developed nuchal plate, are apparently correlated with the very 

 large, broad, and flat face. Similarly, the height of the maxilla, a markedly 

 simian character, is closely correlated with the sub-nasal length. The face was 

 mesognathous, and not prognathous as would at first appear. Others have already 

 commented on the great size of the palate, but it seems to have escaped attention 

 that this palate was once even larger. The reduction in size began with the decay 

 of the teeth. As the alveoli closed up, the palate shortened. 



When the contours of the Rhodesian and Gibraltar skulls are superposed there 

 is seen to be an undoubted likeness between the two. Similar resemblances be- 

 tween this skull and that from La Chapelle further justify the suggested affinities 

 with Neanderthal Man. They seem, however, to be derived from a common stock 

 rather than directly related. The superposed contours of the Rhodesian skull 

 and of a skull from St. Edmond's Priory, selected at random as a type of the 

 modern skull, brings out two important features. It shows that the frontal fossa 

 is much longer in modern Man, and that the cranial cavity has greatly increased 

 in height. 



When this skull is orientated on the Frankfort plane, the low forehead and the 

 rapidly sloping parietal roof at once attract attention. In longitudinal section it 

 will be noticed that the floor of the posterior cranial fossa was essentially as in 

 modern skulls. The clivjis is steep, though not more so than in many modern 

 skulls, but it is longer, thus raising the dorsum sellae and the pituitary fossa 

 some 8 mm. higher than they are in the St. Edmond's Priory skull. 



There are other features which seem to indicate that Rhodesian Man was 

 nearer to the Chimpanzee and Gorilla than was Neanderthal Alan. Thus, if a 

 longitudinal section of the face of the Gorilla or Chimpanzee be examined, it will 

 be found that a line drawn at right angles to the alveolar border, and immedi- 

 ately behind the last molar, will pass upwards just behind the torus, and in front 

 of the cerebral cavity. This is true also of the Rhodesian skull. But in Nean- 

 derthal Man this line cuts through the fore-part of the anterior fossa, and in 



