104 THE MAIN CURRENTS OF ZOOLOGY 



tural gradations into those of recent type. The 

 skeleton of Mentonne, that of Combe Chapelle (1909), 

 of Galley Hill (1895), the Cro-magnon race and other 

 representatives are forms that connect palaeolithic 

 with recent man. 



Putting these discoveries together we have an 

 interesting series of gradations of skulls, leading one 

 into the other, and covering a range of cranial capac- 

 ity from 930 cu. cm., that of the Java man, to 1480- 

 1555 cu. cm. that of the average white European. 

 The Neanderthal skulls occupy an intermediate 

 position with a cranial capacity of approximately 

 1400 cu. cm. 



In tracing backwards from recent man, it is not to 

 be assumed that the ancestral line breaks off ab- 

 ruptly. Even the Java man had antecedents, and 

 it is natural to assume his derivation from an extinct 

 Primate of the Earlier Tertiary deposits. Positive 

 evidences are lacking, but the known presence of 

 anthropomorphous Primates in the Miocene of 

 France offers a possible suggestion. Paleontological 

 discoveries have supplied the line of genealogy of 

 several families of mammals, and if, on this basis, we 

 assume that man and the anthropoid apes had a 

 generalized ancestor, it is nevertheless clear that the 



