182 



DISCOVERY 



side. The acceptance of the Foxhall eoliths dis- 

 covered in East Anglia by Mr. J. Reid Moir would 

 attribute to man in this country an antiquity of possibly 

 one hundred thousand years. It cannot yet be 

 said with certainty that human remains of anything 

 like that age have been found in this country. 



In addition there was a second class of difficulties 

 in connection with the human remains. What were 

 the phj-sical characters of the individual to whom they 

 belonged ? The evidence consisted of only a few 

 fragments of the cranium and part of a lower jaw. It 

 was not certain, though to be presumed, that they 

 belonged to the same individual. Soon after the dis- 

 covery. Dr. A. Smith Woodward and Mr. W. L. 

 Pycraft, of the British Museum (Natural History), 

 attempted reconstructions of the skull which confirmed 



THE NEW RECOXSTRICTION OF THE PII.TDOU^' .SKULL- 



one another in a remarkable degree. From these 

 reconstructions it appeared that the skull was low 

 but of a remarkable breadth, being, in fact, broader 

 than any other known skull ; its capacity was low 

 — under 1,300 cubic centimetres, which is considerably 

 below the average of modern man. It was, however, 

 typically human. In the case of the lower jaw there 

 was a difference. Without going into technical 

 details, it may be said that in the absence of chin, tlie 

 character and disposition of the teeth, and in general 

 conformation, it was distinctly simian, and might 

 have belonged to an extinct form of chimpanzee. So 

 great was the discrepancy that one school, which has 

 received strong support in the United States, boldly 

 declared that the fragments of the cranium and the 

 jawbone were not related, but belonged to two indi- 

 viduals, of which one was human and the other an 



anthropoid. \Miile this is not impossible, the proba- 

 bility, in view of the circumstances, is against this 

 close association of the remains of man and anthro- 

 poid ; but the undoubted parado.x of the typically 

 human cranium and the simian jaw has proved a 

 serious stumbling block to manv anatomists of note. 

 The accuracy of the reconstruction has accordingly 

 been called in question. 



Fresh light has been thrown on this question by the 

 remarkable contribution to the subject to which 

 allusion was made at the beginning of this note. A 

 fresh reconstruction of the skull has been made by 

 Professors Elliot Smith and Hunter. Their object 

 was to obtain an endocranial cast, i.e. a cast of the 

 inside of the skull, to form one of a continuous series 

 of endocranial casts ranging from the gorilla to the 

 highest type of modern man, in this case represented 

 by Dean Swift. For their purpose a reconstruction 

 of the skull was necessary, and it was determined to 

 make this reconstruction afresh. To describe the 

 method followed in full would involve great technical 

 detail, which would here be out of place. Briefly, the 

 relation of the fragments one to another was deter- 

 mined by a minute and careful examination of the 

 anatomical points of each and bv bringing these into 

 their natural and inevitable disposition. For instance, 

 two of the fragments had retained originally adjacent 

 portions of the natural margins, which, though super- 

 ficially obliterated in the adult, offer a natural line 

 of fracture in a cranium subjected to violence. In 

 other cases the lines of the sutures indicated the 

 necessary position of the adjacent portion of the 

 skull. .\s the result of endless experiment, a recon- 

 struction has been built up which was exhibited and 

 described at a recent meeting of the Anatomical 

 Society. It is difficult to speak in terms of modera- 

 tion of the skill and profound anatomical knowledge 

 which have combined to the making of this recon- 

 struction. The account of the method followed and 

 the detailed description of the result there given 

 carried complete conviction and produced the same 

 effect as the contemplation of a finished work of con- 

 summate art. 



The new reconstruction generally is confirmatory of 

 the accuracy of the earlier I'econstructions of Dr. 

 Smith Woodward and Mr. Pycraft. It is low and 

 broad and of a capacity below 1,300 c.c. It differs, 

 however, in one important respect. The occipital 

 fragment, which determines the shape of the back of 

 the skull, assumes a more vertical position, and this, 

 with the consequent modification produced in the 

 conformation of other parts of the skull, has produced 

 a form which more nearly resembles the anthropoid 

 skull than that of modern man. The result, as Pro- 

 fessor Elliot Smith pointed out, is a skull like no other 



