THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 9? 



Pithecanthropus bridges the gulf with a capacity 

 variously estimated at from 900 to 1,000. The bones, 

 therefore, recall a race of beings, squat and stunted in 

 figure, with more or less upright posture, whose promi- 

 nent jaws and eye-ridges and low foreheads revealed an 

 intelligence as much below that of the lowest known 

 man as it was above that of the highest known ape. It 

 was "the missing link." 



The spot in which the bones were found seems to 

 shed some light on the scarcity of the bones of our 

 Tertiary ancestors. Animals of the ape kind are, of 

 course, rarely preserved in the earth. They die on the 

 land, and their frames gradually decay. To be fossilised 

 they must be deposited in suitable material at the 

 bottom of water, and their grave must be brought to the 

 surface by some fortunate accident. The chances are 

 heavily against our finding such bones. For instance, 

 early Paleolithic man lived so long or in such numbers 

 in what we now call France that one single locality 

 (St. Acheul) has yielded 20,000 specimens of his flint 

 implements. The number for the whole of France is so 

 prodigious that many authorities will not admit less than 

 150,000 years for the life of Paleolithic man alone in 

 France, one of his chief homes. Yet the only bones of 

 him that we find in France are one or two disputable 

 jaw bones, and we have no Paleolithic remains in 

 England, though man lived here for the same period. 

 The chances of finding bones of our much less numerous 

 Tertiary ancestors may be calculated from this. More- 

 over, the Java bones were found on the edge of the 

 Indian Ocean, and we know that a large amount of land 

 has sunk below the waves of that ocean in the Tertiary 

 epoch. We have to resign ourselves to the thought that 

 this lost continent may have been the centre of human 

 development, and have carried the osseous traces of it 



