THE DAWN MAN OF PILTDOWN 



199 



man, as in the apes, these tubercles are 

 absent and the tongue rests below upon 

 a shelf of bone. Nevertheless it may not 

 therefore be assumed that the Piltdown 

 man was entirely speechless. The brain 

 cast shows in the temporal region (Fig. 

 8) an elliptical swelling {T) which fore- 

 shadows a certain greatly expanded 

 center in the modern brain, a center 

 "which recent clinical research leads 

 us to associate with the power of spon- 

 taneous elaboration of speech and the 

 ability to recall names" (Elliot Smith). 



Evolutionary significance of the 



PiLTDOAVN RACE 



Assuming that the jaw really belonged 

 with the brain-case. Dr. Woodward very 

 properly erected a new genus and species 

 Eoanthropus dawsoni for the reception 

 of this strange creature. He pointed 

 out also that the rounded forehead with 

 little or no brow ridges is characteristic 

 of young apes (Fig. 10, A) while the 

 flattened forehead with projecting brow 

 ridges is characteristic of adult apes 

 (Fig. 10, C) and also of the prehistoric 

 Neanderthal race of man (Fig. 10, D); 

 he therefore suggests that the still un- 

 discovered mid-Tertiary apes which 

 gave rise on the one hand to the various 

 species of mankind and on the other to 

 the existing anthropoids probably had 

 rounded foreheads and a relatively short 

 face. 



Professor Keith's widely published 

 but very questionable reconstruction 

 showing the Piltdown man with a 

 highly modernized brain-case has given 

 opportunity to that part of the public 

 which dislikes the idea of man's evo- 

 lution from lower animals, to express 

 the opinion that " the Darwinian theory 

 is exploded." By palaeontologists and 

 comparative anatomists however, the 

 evidence for man's cousinship with the 



anthropoid apes is regarded as no longer 

 an hypothesis but an established fact. 



The proof of the ascent of man from 

 certain still undiscovered mid-Tertiary 

 primitive apes does not rest largely upon 

 the scant fossil remains of extinct races 

 of men and of apes. It does rest upon 

 the convergence of many lines of evi- 

 dence offered by the embryology, anat- 

 omy and fossil history of numerous 

 races of animals. To mention only a 

 single line of evidence, the adult anat- 

 omy of man and of the anthropoid apes 

 is extraordinarily similar not only in 

 general plan throughout, but in thou- 

 sands of minute details in every part of 

 the body. By a detailed comparison of 

 the skulls of man, anthropoid apes, and 

 Old World monke\'s and other mammals 

 one sees directly that the human skull 

 is merely a special modification of the 

 primitive anthropoid type, with the 

 brain-case larger, the face shorter, the 

 dentition weaker; but everywhere the 

 fundamental architecture is the same. 

 For example consider the region of the 

 under side of the temporal bone in man 

 and in the anthropoids (Fig. 7); here 

 are precisely homologous parts through- 

 out, the same processes and ridges, the 

 same canal for the internal carotid 

 artery, the same styloid pit for the 

 attachment of the hyoid bone and so 

 forth. And so it is everywhere, through- 

 out the skull and the entire skeleton, 

 throughout the marvelously intricate 

 architecture of the brain, spinal cord, and 

 musculature, in all the vascular, respira- 

 tory, digestive and reproductive organs; 

 so that no matter how long one continues 

 the comparison, new similarities are con- 

 stantly being revealed. 



Palaeontologists and comparative anat- 

 omists likewise recognize and value the 

 differences between men and apes. They 

 realize that even the lowest existing 

 races of mankind are extremely superior 



