[CAMERON] THE HUMAN SKULL 181 



time of Piltdown man. It would therefore appear that one must 

 look in other directions for an expansion of the skull that is at all 

 commensurate with the high degree of cerebral evolution attained in 

 the higher races of modern mankind. 



3. The minimum post-orbital diameter, the maximum parietal 

 breadth and the fronto-parietal index of the Piltdown cranium are all 

 consistently within the range of variation of these in the modern 

 European type of skull. 



4. In studying the various cranial outlines in this investigation 

 it was found most convenient to reduce them all to the same standard 

 glabella-inion line. For tffis purpose the writer has devised what he 

 terms the "ordinate method" of reconstruction. A study of the 

 standardised cranial outlines thus obtained was found to yield very in- 

 structive results. 



5. On comparing the outline of the Piltdown skull with that of 

 the Neanderthal specimen on the same standardised glabella-inion 

 line, it was found that the latter outline was situated very much 

 below the other. Now the geological strata in which the Piltdown 

 remains were found indicated that they were much more ancient than 

 the Neanderthal. Therefore it is clear that the cranial outline of 

 Neanderthal man is chronologically in the wrong position, a fact 

 which helps to prove that he was a degenerate off-shoot from the main 

 evolutionary stem, and probably became extinct. 



6. If the Neanderthal or Mousterian type of skull must not be 

 utilised as a stage in the main path of evolutionary progress, it is 

 apparent that there is a vast gap between the stages represented by 

 the Java man-ape and Piltdown man which still requires to be filled up. 

 Thus a very important "link," in the evolution of the brain and skull 

 is really still "missing." In fact that link in the chain connecting the 

 Java man-ape with Homo sapiens has still to be forged, in order to 

 prove that Pithecanthropus erectus is really an ancestral type for 

 modern man. 



7. Piltdown man and Cro-magnon man, so far as their skulls are 

 concerned, are (in striking contrast to Neanderthal man) in their 

 correct relative positions on the main evolutionary stem, but their 

 cranial outlines are close up to that of the modern European type of 

 skull, a fact which still further emphasises the extent of the great 

 hiatus between them and the cranial outline of Pithecanthropus 

 erectus. 



8. The evolution of the frontal cranial arc, as such, has remained 

 practically stationary since the time of Piltdown man; the extra 

 amount of uplifting necessary to produce the modern orthognathous 



