The Ascent of Man 169 



(Homo heidelbergensis) , discovered near Heidelberg in 1907 by 

 Dr. Schoetensack. But the remains consisted only of a lower jaw 

 and its teeth. Along with this relic were bones of various mam- 

 mals, including some long since extinct in Europe, such as ele- 

 phant, rhinoceros, bison, and lion. The circumstances indicate an 

 age of perhaps 300,000 years ago. There were also very crude 

 flint implements (or eoliths) . But the teeth are human teeth, and 

 the jaw seems transitional between that of an anthropoid ape and 

 that of man. Thus there was no chin. According to most authori- 

 ties the lower jaw from the Heidelberg sand-pit must be regarded 

 as a relic of a primitive type off the main line of human ascent. 



3. It was in all probability in the Pliocene that there took 

 origin the Neanderthal species of man, Homo neanderihalensis , 

 first known from remains found in 1856 in the Neanderthal ravine 

 near Dtisseldorf. According to some authorities Neanderthal 

 man was living in Europe a quarter of a million years ago. Other 

 specimens were afterwards found elsewhere, e.g. in Belgium ( "the 

 men of Spy"), in France, in Croatia, and at Gibraltar, so that a 

 good deal is known of Neanderthal man. He was a loose-limbed 

 fellow, short of stature and of slouching gait, but a skilful artifi- 

 cer, fashioning beautifully worked flints with a characteristic 

 style. He used fire ; he buried his dead reverently and furnished 

 them with an outfit for a long journey; and he had a big brain. 

 But he had great beetling, ape-like eyebrow ridges and massive 

 jaws, and he showed "simian characters swarming in the details 

 of his structure." In most of the points in which he differs from 

 modern man he approaches the anthropoid apes, and he must be 

 regarded as a low type of man off the main line. Huxley regarded 

 the Neanderthal man as a low form of the modern type, but ex- 

 pert opinion seems to agree rather with the view maintained in 

 1864 by Professor William King of Galway, that the Neander- 

 thal man represents a distinct species off the main line of ascent. 

 He disappeared with apparent suddenness (like some aboriginal 

 races to-day) about the end of the Fourth Great Ice Age; but 



