[hill-tout] PHYLOGENY OF MAN 75 



Pan vetus- — and refuses to see any relation between the skull and the 

 jaw. The other, following our British authorities, Smith Woodward 

 and Keith, who both hold that the humanity of the mandible is clear 

 and unmistakeable notwithstanding its pronounced canines and 

 chinlessness, is equally satisfied that it rightly belongs to this skull. 

 Millar, in a recent article upon the subject in the American Journal 

 of Physical Anthropology * gives a list of the names of the writers 

 who, up to the time of his writing, had expressed themselves upon 

 this point, a perusal of which makes it clear that anthropologists 

 are about equally divided on the question of the relation of the 

 mandible to the skull. 



An impartial consideration, however, of the evidence ofïered by 

 these opposing schools in substantiation of their views brings out 

 the fact that most of the features upon which they have been obliged 

 to base their opinions are of too general and indeterminate a character 

 to really settle the question one way or another, most of the characters 

 claimed to be peculiarly simian by one school being shown by the 

 other to be equally diagnostic of man ; and hence the unsatisfactory 

 and unsettled state of our knowledge up to the present time in respect 

 to this highly-interesting type of humanity 



From the outset of the discussion Millar takes, what seems to 

 the present writer to be, a very questionable position. He declares 

 we ought to dissociate the jaw entirely from the skull and judge it 

 independently by the accepted standards of palaeontological evidence 

 as if it had not been found in association with the skull and had no 

 possible relation to it. This method of procedure may be ideally 

 perfect from a purely palaeontological point of view, but it is impossible 

 to regard the mandible wholly in this manner. No matter how 

 anomalous its characters and however much it may be regarded as 

 out of harmony with the skull, the association and contiguity in the 

 same geological bed should have its due weight and must, at least 

 to some extent, inform and direct our judgment. It does not appear 

 to me to be a valid argument to say that if the mandible had been 

 found alone no doubt of its simian origin would have been enter- 

 tained. It was not found alone and this fact must be taken into 

 consideration and cannot be disregarded in determining its status, 

 the more especially when its characters are said to be equally diag- 

 nostic of a man or an ape. The contiguity and the geological con- 

 ditions must be considered as carrying weight in the circumstances, 



* January— March, 1918 



