160 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



the outlines of the post-parietal and occipital portions of the cranial 

 arcs almost exactly coincided in the two specimens examined. The 

 great result of this frontal expansion has been to wipe out almost 

 entirely the "fallen in" appearance of the frontal arc, thus producing 

 the typical outline of the highly evolved skull of the white races of 

 modern mankind. 



A comparative study of the Neanderthal, Piltdown and modern 

 European skulls was found to yield several points of interest. (See 

 Fig. 5.) As is well known there has been much controversy over the 

 reconstruction of the Piltdown skull, so that it is advisable to again 

 mention that in these comparative researches Smith Woodward's 

 first model has been utilised. The external occipital protuberance 

 of the Piltdown skull was found to form "the hindmost point of the 

 cranium" as Smith Woodward remarks.^ The glabella-occipital 

 length taken to this point was 190 mm. He gives the calvarial 

 height from this line as 90 mm. By a little calculation I found that 

 the index of calvarial height proved to be 4-7 -4. The skull thus 

 indicated an adv^ance in cranial evolution of 14-7% from 

 the Neanderthal type of skull, so far as this index was concerned, a 

 very substantial step indeed, as it demonstrated a general expansion 

 of the whole cranial arc, as shown in Fig. 5. Here again the outlines 

 of the three skulls are drawn to scale on a standard glabella-occipital 

 base line. The great expansion of the frontal portion of the cranial 

 arc in the Piltdown skull is particularly striking. The remarkable 

 fact about the rate of expansion of these two skulls, however, is that 

 Piltdown man was located by Dawson and Woodward in the first half 

 of the pleistocene epoch. That is to say, he existed many thousands 

 of years before Neanderthal man. Judging from this fact one would 

 have gathered that the intellectual progress shown by Neanderthal 

 man ought to have been greater than that of Piltdown man, thus 

 placing the curve of his cranial arc above the latter instead of markedly 

 below. The only feasible explanation of this remarkable fact is that 

 Neanderthal man must have belonged to a degenerate species of the 

 hominidae which drifted away from the main evolutionary stream, 

 and probably became extinct^ as a result of the unequal struggle for 

 existence in these strenuous ages. I have also previously pointed 



• op. cit. p. 126. 



- The literature on this subject is already vast. I would specially mention 

 that Osborn {Meyi of the Old Stone Age, New York, 1916), Schwalbe {Zeitsch, fur 

 Morph und AnthropoL, Bd. XVI.), Boule (Ext. Ami. Pal., Tomes, VI, VII and 

 VIII.) and Gregory {Geology of To-Day, London, 1915) hold this view; while Hrdlicka 

 ' (Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1913) maintains the opposite opinion. In 

 this relationship I would also refer the student to Ex.- Près. Theodore Roosevelt's 

 popular and illuminating article in the National Geographic Magazine for Feb., 1916. 



