THE ORIGIN OF MAN 115 



collection in the world. It tells its own sto^3^ These 

 bones belonged to a creature which was half ape and 

 half man, or midway between the higher apes and the 

 lowest savages. As a matter of fact, scientific men 

 at first disputed very warmly whether they were the 

 bones of an ape or a man. We now admit definitely 

 that they are human, and that they do not even repre- 

 sent the earliest human phase. Man had already 

 been evolving for hundreds of thousands of years. 

 But, of course, the Java branch of the family have re- 

 mained stationary, as isolated tribes do. The bones 

 in that case really represent a much earlier phase of 

 htunan evolution, and are most interesting. The 

 thigh bones are curved, the teeth projecting, and the 

 skull extremely low in the scale of intelligence. 



We have a dozen skulls and jaws representing the 

 next chief phase — man of the Old Stone Age. The 

 Piltdown skull seems to belong to quite the earliest 

 part of it, and is very valuable. Other skulls found 

 in France, Belgium, and Germany show various 

 stages in the long journey upward. Man was still, 

 after half-a-million years development, below the 

 level of the Australian black. The skull of an Aus- 

 tralian black grimly watches me, in my study, as I 

 write this. It is quite respectable in comparison 

 with some of the prehistoric skulls I have examined. 

 The man of the Old Stone Age had a low, retreating 

 forehead, brutal jaws, and a robust but not tall frame. 

 He wore no clothes, but had still a thick coat of hair 



