MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
The next important question in connection with the jaw 
was whether or not it was human. All possible pains 
were taken to determine this point, regardless both of the 
skull and of previously expressed opinions. It may as 
well be said at once that all the results of the study point 
to the specimen being a very early man or an advanced 
human precursor, and not an anthropoid ape. 
The jaw is more primitive than any other known jaw 
relating to early man. It still had a marked submentoneal 
shelf, in all probability a large canine, and teeth of ances- 
tral prehuman form. It resembles more or less in a num- 
ber of points the jaws of the chimpanzee, but it differs 
from these in a whole series of points of importance, such 
as the form of the notch; type of coronoid process; sub- 
dued musculature; markedly reduced internal massive- 
ness of body, especially near symphysis; and the most 
important characteristics of the teeth, namely, height of 
crown, height of enamel, nature of “‘cingulum” and stout- 
ness of cusps—in all of which features it is more nearly if 
not actually human. 
Thus most authorities feel, in view of all this, that it is 
no longer possible to regard the jaw as belonging to a 
chimpanzee or any other anthropoid ape; but that it is 
really the jaw either of man’s precursor or of very early 
man himself. Hence Smith Woodward’s designation of 
this form as Eoanthropus—a being from the dawn of the 
human period—seems entirely appropriate. 
Portions of at least one other skull of similar type were 
found, it will be recalled, two miles away. These included 
a fragment of the frontal bone and another of the occipital, 
both probably belonging to the same cranium. 
This second specimen makes it certain that in the Pilt- 
down gravels, within a few feet of the surface, there occur 
fossilized skulls nearly if not wholly of modern form, 
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