[CAMERON] THE HUMAN SKULL 159 



cranial arc when compared with the Java Calvaria. It may be 

 particularly noted, however, that the frontal portion of the Neander- 

 thal cranial arc still exhibits the "fallen in" appearance. The prog- 

 ress between the Neanderthal stage (if I may be permitted to recall 

 him back for a moment to the main evolutionary stem) and the 

 modern aboriginal Australian skull is very pronounced, and is again 

 practically uniform in all directions. Note, however, that more 

 rapid progress has been made somewhat about the centre of the cranial 

 arc than at the frontal and occipital extremities. The "fallen in" 

 appearance in the frontal arc is still manifest, thus imparting the 

 prominent superciliary ridges to the aboriginal Australian skull, 

 and constituting one of its main features. 



On coming now to the final stage of all, it is of interest to note 

 that practically all the evolutionary progress made by the modern 

 European skull has been in the frontal region, for it was found that 



Fig. 5. — Note first of all the remarkable degree of expansion of the Piltdown skull, 

 particularly in the f'-ontal region, when compared with the Neanderthal 

 calvaria. This contrast is all the more striking when it is recollected that 

 Piltdown man existed an untold number of years before the Neanderthal 

 type. Judging from this fact one would have gathered that the intellectual 

 progress shown by the latter ought to have been much greater than that of 

 Piltdown man, thus placing the curve of his cranial arc above instead of 

 markedly below. The cranial outline of Neanderthal man is thus chrono- 

 logically in the wrong place and the only feasible explanation of this re- 

 markable fact is that he must have belonged to a degenerate species of the 

 hominidae which drifted away from the main evolutionary stem and probably 

 became extinct. 



