37© BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 



The most recent discovery of pre-human remains comes 

 from England. At Piltdown Common, in Sussex, in 191 2, 

 there was unearthed a skull, with parts of the lower jaw and 

 teeth, that fits into the series of the pre-Neanderthaloid. 

 It has been suggestively named the dawn man (Eoanthropus 

 Dawsonii). The controversies of Dr. Smith- Woodward and 

 Professor Keith over details of the reconstruction of missing 

 parts, and the estimated capacity of the skull, were given 

 wide publicity through the periodical Nature. They are 

 technical and do not materially affect the question of the 

 great antiquity of this skull and its relative position in the 

 series. 



Above the Neanderthal race come the numerous fossil > 

 remains of Neolithic man, merging by structural gradations 

 into those of recent type. The skeleton of Mentonne, that 

 of Combe Chapelle (1909), of Galley Hill (1895), the skull of 

 Engis, the cro-mangon race, and other representatives, are 

 the 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 capacity from 930 cu. cm., that 

 of the Java man, to 1480-1555 cu. cm., that of the average 

 adult white European. The Neanderthal skulls occupy an 

 intermediate position with a cranial capacity of approxi- 

 mately 1400 cu. cm. 



Figure 1 1 1 shows in outline profile reconstructions of some 

 of the fossil types as compared with the short-headed type of 

 Europe. 



In tracing backwards from recent man, it is not to be as- 

 sumed that the ancestral line breaks off abruptly. Even the 

 Java man had antecedents, and it is natural to assume his 

 derivation from an extinct primate of the earlier tertiary de- 

 posits. Positive evidences are lacking, but the known pres- 

 ence of anthropomorphous primates in the Miocene of France 



